Study: Antisemitism fueling political violence on both sides
In the days since the assassination of right-wing figure Charlie Kirk, the media have been reporting on the rising popularity of political violence. One quote in particular from a leading expert has been making the rounds. But most news agencies are ignore what the same expert said next.
In June, Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) wrote an op-ed for The New York Times. The headline delivered an ominous warning: “We May Be on the Brink of an Extremely Violent Era in American Politics.”
He wrote, “About 40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from the presidency, and about 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of the military to stop protests against Mr. Trump’s agenda. These numbers more than doubled since last fall, when we asked similar questions.”
Most media stop the quote there. But here’s what Pape wrote next:
In April 2023, my organization and the Anti-Defamation League conducted a survey to examine the overlap of support for political violence and antisemitism in the United States. Among Americans who express strong support for anti-Jewish tropes, there was significantly more support for the use of force in the service of both right-leaning and left-leaning causes… This may help explain the intensification of political violence today, where violence against the Trump administration’s agenda, against the agendas of Democratic leaders and in the service of antisemitism seem to fuel one another.
Antisemitism and political violence are locked in a vicious cycle. But today’s media refuses to do the hard work of acknowledging that this problem is raging on both sides. Instead, right-wing media downplay or explain away right-wing antisemitic movements like the “great replacement theory,” while mainstream media downplay or explain away the vicious antisemitism at the core of “anti-Israel protests.”
On They Stand Corrected, my podcast and newsletter fact checking the news, I focus on big mainstream outlets. While they recognize other forms of bigotry, they refuse to see screamingly obvious antisemitism of the left.
In reality, all the following things are antisemitic by definition: chanting antisemitic terrorist group’s slogans; spreading Hamas propaganda as fact; and attacking Israel for responding through war to the October 7 massacres, while ignoring what all other countries do in wars following terrorist attacks.
As I discuss in the latest episode (on Spotify, Apple, and the other apps), none of this will get better until Americans — and people in democracies across the world — understand reality. That’s why we desperately need trustworthy sources of truth. Those should be the news media.
But the media’s endless failures have pushed people away. So they turn to increasingly more partisan and extreme outlets instead. To try to win them back, the media giants play into the game, becoming more and more biased themselves. That’s another vicious cycle.
During my 20 years on NPR and CNN, I saw things get steadily worse. Since then, it’s gotten even worse. To fight back, we must leave failed media behind. End paid subscriptions and social media follows to the giant platforms that ignore antisemitism coming from their own camp. Join and support new media ventures.
We can do this. We can fight to deradicalize. But it requires a new era of media that delivers the two ingredients of truth: facts plus context.
