[On Jan. 6, a mob took clear direction from Donald Trump and other
political leaders to turn dangerous sentiments into violent reality.
But the movement itself is larger and more complex than many people
might like to think.] [[link removed]]

21 MILLION AMERICANS SAY TRUMP SHOULD BE RESTORED BY VIOLENCE  
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Robert A. Pape
September 23, 2021
The Conversation

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_ On Jan. 6, a mob took clear direction from Donald Trump and other
political leaders to turn dangerous sentiments into violent reality.
But the movement itself is larger and more complex than many people
might like to think. _

, Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore

 

A recent Washington demonstration supporting those charged with crimes
for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fizzled, with no more
than 200
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demonstrators showing up. The organizers had promised 700 people would
turn out – or more.

But the threat from far-right insurrectionists is not over.

For months, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago Project
on Security and Threats [[link removed]] have been
tracking insurrectionist sentiments in U.S. adults, most recently in
surveys in June. We have found that 47 million American adults –
nearly 1 in 5 – agree with the statement that “the 2020 election
was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate
president.” Of those, 21 million also agree that “use of force is
justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency.”

Our survey found that many of these 21 million people with
insurrectionist sentiments have the capacity for violent mobilization.
At least 7 million of them already own a gun, and at least 3 million
have served in the U.S. military and so have lethal skills. Of those
21 million, 6 million said they supported right-wing militias and
extremist groups, and 1 million said they are themselves or personally
know a member of such a group, including the Oath Keepers and Proud
Boys.

Only a small percentage of people who hold extremist views
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ever actually commit acts of violence, but our findings reveal how
many Americans hold views that could turn them toward insurrection.

A solid survey

In June 2021, our group commissioned a survey done by the independent,
non-partisan researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago
[[link removed]], seeking to discover how
widespread insurrectionist sentiments are among U.S. adults.

The research methods meet the highest standards in the polling
industry – a random sample of a representative sample. It’s the
same process NORC uses to conduct polling for The Associated Press,
the federal government and other major institutions
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First, NORC pulls together a panel of 40,000 people, called AmeriSpeak
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who are representative of the entire U.S. population on dozens of
characteristics, such as age, race, income, location of residence and
religion. From that representative sample, NORC drew a random sample
– in our case, 1,070 people.

Extreme beliefs

This polling found that 9% of American adults
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say they agree with the statement that “Use of force is justified to
restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency.” And 25% of adults either
strongly or somewhat agree with the statement that “The 2020
election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate
president.”

Overall, 8% of the survey participants share both of those views.

The margin of error of this survey was plus or minus 4 percentage
points. So when calculating the number of the 258 million adult
Americans
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who hold these views, we looked at the range of between 4% and 12% –
which gave us between 10 million and 31 million. The best single
figure is the middle of that range, 21 million.

[A view of people storming the US Capitol]
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On Jan. 6, 2021, people claiming the presidential election had been
stolen stormed the U.S. Capitol in hopes of keeping Donald Trump in
office. AP Photo/John Minchillo
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People who said force is justified to restore Trump were consistent in
their insurrectionist sentiments: Of them, 90% also see Biden as
illegitimate
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and 68% also think force may be needed to preserve America’s
traditional way of life.

The fringe moving into the mainstream

Combined with their military experience, gun ownership and connections
to extremist groups and militias, this signals the existence of
significant mainstream support in America for a violent insurrection.

This group of 21 million who agree both that force is justified to
restore Trump and that Biden is an illegitimate president has two
additional views that are also on the fringes of mainstream society:

* 63% agree with the statement
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that “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will
eventually have more rights than whites” – a belief sometimes
called “the Great Replacement
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* 54% agree
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that “A secret group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is ruling the
US government,” which is the key belief in the QAnon movement
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Some people with insurrectionist sentiments hold one of these
political views but not the other, suggesting there are multiple ways
of thinking that lead a person toward the insurrectionist movement.

Broader support

This latest research reinforces our previous findings, that the Jan. 6
insurrection represents a far more mainstream movement
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than earlier instances of right-wing extremism across the country.
Those events, mostly limited to white supremacist and militia groups,
saw more than 100 individuals arrested from 2015 to 2020
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But just 14% of those arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 are members
of those groups. More than half are business owners or middle-aged
white-collar professionals
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and only 7% are unemployed.

There is no way to say for sure when – or even whether – these
insurrectionists will take action. On Jan. 6, it took clear direction
from Donald Trump and other political leaders to turn these dangerous
sentiments into a violent reality. But the movement itself is larger
and more complex than many people might like to think.

[_Get The Conversation’s most important politics headlines, in our
Politics Weekly newsletter
[[link removed]]._][The
Conversation]

Robert A. Pape
[[link removed]],
Professor of Political Science, _University of Chicago
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This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]].

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