SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Since being shot at over the weekend, former President Donald Trump's bandaged ear has become another part of the candidate's iconography, much like red baseball caps. Some convention delegates have even taken to putting bandages over their own ears. It had been decades since an assassination attempt against a president or major party presidential nominee. But more broadly, political violence has a long history in this country. And in recent years, it had been on the rise.
Our next guest has been thinking about how to turn that trend around. Rachel Kleinfeld is an expert on democracies facing political violence at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and joins me now. Welcome.
RACHEL KLEINFELD: So glad to be here.
DETROW: You know, you pay a lot of attention to this. It's been incredibly relevant the last few days. So I'm wondering what you have made of the Republican Convention so far. Have you been surprised in any way by the way Trump and his supporters have responded to the assassination attempt?
KLEINFELD: So I don't think I've been surprised, but I've been a little disappointed because there's no one on Earth who has more ability to take down the temperature in the United States right now than Trump himself. And if he was willing to make a statement that really reset things at the convention, where other Republicans could use that kind of permission to do the same, it would just be a tremendous difference. And, of course, that hasn't really happened.
DETROW: What specifically is a way to reset, though - whether it's Trump or somebody else? How do you get out of a violent cycle that just increases and increases politically?
KLEINFELD: So there's two things that have been shown very clearly in the research to bring down justifications for violence. Now, justifications aren't the same as violence because the people who commit violence tend to be a little more impulsive and more aggressive. They're often not very partisan. But they're very influenced by the talk and the kind of heat in the general atmosphere.
So the two things that are shown to work are, first, leaders making statements, which is why I started with Trump being so important. People don't really care about the other side and what they say. If you finger-wave at the other side, it doesn't do any good. But they care a lot about the norms their own side sets - what it means to be part of that group. And so for each side to make it very clear that violence has no place within their side is hugely important.
The other thing that makes a big difference is correcting misperceptions. Americans see these politicians behaving badly, like J.D. Vance blaming the other side right away, and they think that's indicative of all people of that tribe. And it's not. We know that almost all Americans actually disagree with political violence when you ask them to be serious about it. And most of the Republicans and Democrats have much more nuanced views than their leaders, who are much more extreme and ideological. So correcting those misperceptions so Americans understand the difference between their neighbors and the leaders has also been shown to do a lot to take down political violence.
DETROW: We specifically talked about Trump's response. You said that it's more important than not to take cues from the leader of your own political tribe. But I do want to ask what you made of President Biden's response in the hours following the shooting, the days following the shooting, including that Oval Office address, asking the country to take the temperature down.
KLEINFELD: So I'm glad he asked the country to take the temperature down. It was the right thing to do. He certainly used some language that I wouldn't have used about, you know, targeting Trump and so on. I think that was unhelpful. But it was good that he made the statement. It was good that Obama and Clinton came out right away with statements and that Democratic leaders have been quite condemning of the violence - obviously, rank and file. There have been conspiracy theories and other types of things on the internet as well.
DETROW: Is there anything that individual voters can do to try and individually lead to a less violent political system?
KLEINFELD: Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is a moment when I think a lot of Americans over the last couple of weeks or years have probably been looking at our political life as if it's a car heading over a precipice, and they want to cover their eyes. But we're the passengers in that car. And so we really need to take the wheel, and there's a lot we can do.
I mean, the first thing we can do is demand that our politicians and leaders tone down the rhetoric - stop the harassment, the threats, the dehumanizing language. You can also stop voting for those people. You can stop giving them money. This is how you express your views in a democracy - is through the electoral process, not at the barrel of a gun.
We could also require our leaders, ahead of time, to accept the outcomes of elections. We know that a belief that elections are fraudulent is extraordinarily likely to lead to violence globally. So pre-accepting those outcomes, whatever they are, is important.
And I think we can also actually stop spreading conspiracies. You know, this had been a big problem more on the right. It is now getting to be a bigger problem on the left, especially after this assassination attempt. And what we know about conspiracy theories is, first of all, they're quite correlated with violence.
DETROW: Yeah.
KLEINFELD: And second of all, once you believe one, you believe more than one. So when people start speculating about an incident like this and say things that you think are real conspiratorial, you can call them out. And again, just like politicians, you need to call out your own side. Nobody really cares when you call out the other.
DETROW: That's Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an expert on political violence and democracies. Thanks so much.
KLEINFELD: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
