Episode 29 - Political Violence in America

Speaker 0 00:00:01 So good afternoon, Hillary Speaker 1 00:00:04 And Jeff, how are you doing today? Speaker 0 00:00:06 I'm pretty good. It's a gloomy day. We're going to jump straight to the weather and our little intro spot here. It's a gloomy day in San Diego. Speaker 1 00:00:14 I heard it was very windy recently, is this true? Speaker 0 00:00:16 Had ridiculous wins lately. Some of my friends who live out kind of where your husband is from out in the Imperial Valley, they said they were having 70 mile an hour gusts out there. Wow. Speaker 1 00:00:29 And there'll be like the sand storms out there where it will just wreck the paint job on your car. Speaker 0 00:00:35 Yeah. But yeah, it's kinda cool. Kind of gloomy. Um, how about Mississippi? How's the weather Speaker 1 00:00:44 Eventful? Um, really nice day out. Cool. Mild, probably in the high fifties, low sixties. It was very sunny earlier and the dogs were just basking in the sunshine, but it's just a nice day. I mean, you can't really complain when it's 60 something in January, right. I mean, it's just kind of wild. Speaker 0 00:01:07 Yeah. It's, it's kind of peaceful though, even though it's squirmy here today, it's peaceful and it's yeah. Speaker 1 00:01:13 Do you feel like just kind of lighter? Speaker 0 00:01:16 Well, we're, I think we're going to talk about that once we get into the episode, but I, I, I do think that there's been a little change, atmospheric change. I don't know how much, um, but uh, today we're going to be talking about political violence in us history, which I think is a very interesting and timely topic. Yes. Um, but yeah, and you know, it's obviously we'll connect it to contemporary events and some events in the past, but I think it should be an interesting conversation and it kind of continues things we've been talking about. Speaker 1 00:01:51 Well, what I like about this topic is that it's timely based on events that have happened within recent weeks where we, you know, kind of went through what happened on January six with the insurrection at the Capitol. But it's also just a straight important topic I think, to discuss in United States history. It's not just a political timely thing, but it's really is like, it's a topic in and of itself, uh, in our history that I don't think we spend enough time diving into or even covering it all. I mean, I never heard any of this until I researched it or was in graduate school. I never heard any of it about political violence through any part of my education. So I think to discuss it and to recognize it, to acknowledge that it existed prior to January 6th may, I don't know. I think it may help us understand a little bit of how we got here. Speaker 0 00:02:50 Yeah. I, I definitely think so. This is, I think it's going to be an interesting conversation today. Um, hopefully our listeners will think so as well. So, uh, anyway, let's get started. Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff Speaker 1 00:03:06 And we're your hosts for this weekly history? Speaker 2 00:03:08 <inaudible> Speaker 0 00:03:31 So I wanted to start today by congratulating our 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, maybe he's listening. Jeff, maybe he's listening. Uh, we have over 10,000 listeners. Speaker 1 00:03:45 This is very exciting. I shared that with my husband the other day. He's not amongst, um, our listeners, but he was very impressed. Speaker 0 00:03:53 Um, our, I, I would like to congratulate him. I'd also like to congratulate Kamala Harris, our first female vice president, our first vice president, who is a person of color. Um, Speaker 1 00:04:08 Madam vice president has a nice ring to it. Doesn't Speaker 0 00:04:11 It? It does. And here's the thing I would say there are three moments of transition of power in the United States that were tenuous. And I think this, I think this is one of those three. I think there was great fear in 1860 with the South threatening succession at Lincoln, this election, I think there was great fear in 1800, um, about what would happen as political parties. Uh, the, basically the single party system was replaced by a two party system, whether or not that would be a peaceful transition. And I think 20, 20, 20, 21. Speaker 1 00:04:59 Yeah, I agree. I think that, um, the fit through by John Adams to not attend the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson is also similar to what we just witnessed in 2021. Wouldn't you say? Speaker 0 00:05:10 I think it's kind of, I mean, Jefferson and Adams hated each other for a long time. Um, the interesting thing in their old age, there was a reconciliation that took place though. We've got these great letters that Adams and Jefferson write each other and they, they never doubted the other's intelligence, but they said some pretty spicy things about one another. And at the end of their lives, they kind of made up, Speaker 1 00:05:38 Well, the thing to point out though, too. Yes, they made up. And I think that that is interesting that they wrote these letters back and forth that they have this reconciliation. But the difference, I would say between what happened in 1800 and what happened just the other day is that there really wasn't a longstanding precedent that was set. Um, you know, Adam's leaving town before the inauguration of Jefferson, you know, it could have been seen as well. He should have been there or something, but there really wasn't a huge line of tradition and precedent that had been set for that. Whereas when we're transitioning from the 45th to the 46 president, there was certainly long standing tradition that the peaceful transfer of power takes place and that the former president welcomes the incoming president. And there's this it's very ceremonial, but what happened in 1800, there wasn't, it wasn't as shocking. I don't think because we kind of were new at this and weren't sure exactly what protocol was. Speaker 0 00:06:41 Well, it's like 1933, Herbert Hoover and FDR. There's no love loss between the two of them. And a lot of that is FTRs fault. Um, Hoover felt that FDR didn't really want any advice from Hoover about anything. Speaker 1 00:06:58 Can we add that to my list of reasons? I don't like FDR Speaker 0 00:07:01 Well, but here's the thing though. Hoover is there for the inauguration Hoover rides in the car with FDR to the inauguration. Now they don't talk during the entire car ride, which is just hilarious. I must've been this the longest car ride down Pennsylvania Avenue, but I think it's, there have been strong disagreements between the outgoing president president and the ongoing president prior to this year, but it's never, or rarely reach the level this did. And one of the things that happened because of the outgoing president's refusal to concede refusal to accept the election is fairly conducted. And all of these things was this moment of political violence on the 6th of January. And we, you know, we just a couple of weeks ago did a full episode about this and people look at this and they're kind of shocked. And they're like, Oh, something like this hasn't really happened since the war of 18, 12, and Dr. Plot, all this stuff. Um, and we decided we wanted to do an episode about political violence. And as I started digging into it, like full on the data geek went into overdrive because I found these great resources of data and this thing called a peace index and a violence index. And, you know, we can get very theoretical about what political violence is and what is it isn't. But I think what slowly dawned on me much, like you indicated in our intro, there's a lot of political violence in the United States history. Speaker 1 00:08:41 Yeah. And not violence. I mean, the way that I like that you said that to consider how we even define violence. I mean, to me, the violence that takes place in the 18th and the late 18th and 19th centuries, it's just outright brawling. That's taking place in politics and, you know, in the house, um, in legislative chambers, across the country, um, where they're actually using weapons to dual one another, they're caning each other, they're stabbing each other. I mean, it's not this Lily white atmosphere, uh, that we might like to imagine. And, you know, I, if you go back to our episode where we recapped, we, it was on January 7th that we recapped, we were horrified at what happened and in no way to dismiss what happened. But I will say the Pearl clutching that happened in the aftermath, like this is the most sacred building in the entire world. How dare you? There is a long history of some really nasty stuff happening in that sacred building. And so, again, not to dismiss what happened in any way, but the horror struck, like this has never happened before. It kind of struck me as ignorant as to the history of the things that actually have taken place in that building. And I don't think that those should continue, but to suggest somehow that violence within that space or violence within politics was completely unprecedented. Um, it's a mis-characterization Speaker 0 00:10:19 I think it, I think it was partially a conscious mis-characterization, but I think it's also an ignorance of our history, um, or rejection to view the reality of our history. I mean, here's the thing, um, would somebody who had survived the destruction of black Tulsa in 1920? I mean, what would their response have been to the capital violence? Do you think? Speaker 1 00:10:50 What do you mean? Would they have been so shocked by it? Yeah. Would they have been shocked? You know, I think that it would have been considered kind of a natural progression of events. Speaker 0 00:11:00 It's like you live by the sword, you die by the sword, right? You've, you've used political violence to kind of put down black communities. It's not surprising that now you're turning on yourselves and this, and let's make this clear. I mean, the, these congresses overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male, and the protestors who stormed the, the insurrectionists this edition is who stormed the capital on January 6th, overwhelmingly white overwhelmingly male. Speaker 1 00:11:33 I will say there were a lot of women there too though. You know, historically speaking, I don't, I don't want to say like, Oh, yay, progress feminism. But it was interesting how many women actually showed up, Speaker 0 00:11:45 Right? There were more women than I thought would show up for it because traditionally in a lot of these white organizations, women are expected to hold a very subservient position, Speaker 1 00:11:58 But they're very much a part of these organizations, as I think we've discussed, having an episode about the Klan women are so heavily involved in that. Um, I guess not to get completely off topic, but historically it's men, you're right. It's white men who, who kind of perpetuate this violence politically, but then outside political spheres where they, um, politicians will ramp up, um, violence. And I talked about this on our last episode or two episodes ago, I guess about, um, the Wilmington riot in 1898, where politicians just kind of, you know, rallied up all this, uh, disdain and, and upset, you know, everybody in the town to come forth and, um, take over the government of this integrated government in North Carolina at the time. And it, to me, it was really reflective of what had happened just recently this past month, it's like white politicians, get everybody riled up, they get themselves riled up and then they go in and there's violence and the recent events where now there's a metal detector in Congress. I don't think that that's out of line at all. If you really do look at the history and Nancy Pelosi, should she should be pulling up these incidents. I we're going to talk in depth about where it's like, no people have been hurt in this chamber because of weapons. We are in the 21st century. We're not going to do that. Speaker 0 00:13:32 Right. Well, I mean, let's talk about political. Let me give you a quick, dirty definition of political violence. So political violence simply put violence to achieve political goals and it can be used by different groups. So you have state level violence versus other States, we call that war, right? So December 7th, 1944 or 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is political violence, right? It's political violence and the Japanese state versus the United States kind of large level. Speaker 1 00:14:13 Yeah. That's like a really large level, broad scale. What we're talking about. Sure. Speaker 0 00:14:17 Think you have violence between state actors and non-state actors. And this is where the insurrectionists from January six fall in, and this is where you get kind of rebellions and riots and revolutions and counterinsurgencies electoral violence. Speaker 1 00:14:36 Well, then we have violence between elected officials, Speaker 0 00:14:40 Right? Which is a little different, right? Because it's violence between non-state actors kind of, but it falls in a very odd kind of space, but you've, you've got that violence between state and non-state actors. Then you've got one sided violence by the state, genocide torture, capital punishment, police brutality, things like this. One-sided violence by non-state actors would be acts of terrorism because if it's a state actor, it's not terrorism it's war. And like I said, this is very kind of high level kind of theoretical approach it. But I think it's useful to start separating different types. And then you've got violence between non-state actors and this isn't individual violence as much it is, is things like you get out of class conflict or ethnic conflict or religious conflict here. But I think it's useful to kind of break that up to start thinking of where different moments of political violence in the United States history happens. So I would say January 6th is non-state actors versus state actor. Um, Speaker 1 00:15:53 I think I would complicate it to say that it's, it was state actors against state actors where they brought in extra like reinforcements. Speaker 0 00:16:04 Um, but I don't, I think the problem with the, is the, with viewing the insurrectionist as being state-level actors is they never have the full force of the state behind them. Speaker 1 00:16:16 Well, they're not state-level actors. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying state level actors encouraged their insert. Speaker 0 00:16:22 Yeah. But I mean, right. But technically when we're talking about political violence and are going to talk about a couple of organizations today, international organizations that kind of measure this stuff, they would not, they would say, yeah, that's true. Or maybe true, but it's not, it's not kind of how we would define this, but I, the reason I want to do this is I want to go back to 1920 Tulsa and argued. That's an act, that's a moment of political violence where you have an entire black community, a very prosperous black community that's virtually destroyed completely, um, by white people. Speaker 1 00:17:12 And not that simplify it too much, but it was simply an act of jealousy. Speaker 0 00:17:16 Yeah. It's I mean, it's, it was a very prosperous community and it is a, it's an act well it's jealousy combined with racism and the ability to do violence without penalty from the state, they kind of manifest itself. And then not remember we talked about kind of violence in the 1920s before in a previous episode, but it's, this is part of that is, you know, when a group Lynch's a black man or when a group destroys black community, particularly at this time, it's always with the task that approval or a blind eye turned by local officials or the participation of them. But there's never an attempt by local officials, the state to stop it. Is that a fair characterization? Speaker 1 00:18:19 Okay. So here's where the overlap comes in, though. The state is interested in upholding white supremacy and they encourage it in a way they may not be acting specifically there, but there isn't going to be repercussion for it because it's not seen as a problem. Speaker 0 00:18:43 Right? Well, I mean, this is, this is the whole thing of why do people who are storming the Capitol on January 6th, take selfies or post to Instagram or whatever, while they're doing it because they see no problem with what they're doing. Speaker 1 00:18:58 They thought they were going to walk in riot insurrection, go to olive garden and eat that night. That's an Anderson Cooper joke, stay at the garden in and head home. They didn't think there would be any repercussion for their action because they felt encouraged and emboldened and empowered by the leader of our country at the time Speaker 0 00:19:18 They were right. That they had right on their side. Um, but I mean, that's, that's the thing is I think this political violence thing, it's always, the state sits there and you have to kind of wrestle with what role does States, even if it's not a state level act of political violence, what role the state is either, um, either allowing something to happen in, or as you said, components of the state giving kind of either tacit or explicit approval for something to happen. Um, now here's a kind of a controversial claim I'd like to make the United States is born out of political violence and we never escape it. Speaker 1 00:20:06 Oh, that's not controversial at all. I totally agree. Speaker 0 00:20:10 Be for some people, Speaker 1 00:20:14 I think it would be for the 1776 report yeah. Speaker 0 00:20:18 Of which we will be having an episode devoted towards, to, uh, dissecting the 1776 report Speaker 1 00:20:27 Like a stroke. Yes. Speaker 0 00:20:29 Um, while we're recording. Uh we're actually, so I actually, I'm going to make a link to the PDF available on, uh, an incomplete history because I think it isn't a document. Every American needs to read it is one of the most chilling documents ever read. No, Speaker 1 00:20:48 I don't think every American needs to read it because I think that it would just reinforce already false ideas that may have been floated from the time that they were little. I mean, I would like to dissect it and talk about it, but my goodness, Speaker 0 00:21:02 Well, every American should read it and also read legitimate historians responses to it. Speaker 1 00:21:12 Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, that makes me upset. So we will do an episode on that, Speaker 0 00:21:20 But I think that's the thing is I think the United States is born out of an act of political violence. So the act of separating from great Britain is an act of political violence. Um, and you know, the revolution through a series of events and coincidences and Happy's, you know, circumstances breaks the way of the people in the American colonies who wanted to separate. So the United States becomes an independent country, but the political violence doesn't stop there. I mean, go back and listen to our rebellion's episode. Right. Speaker 1 00:21:58 What we need to point out though, is that the reason why the violence never stops is because the United States was never United in a car. I mean, they were United in a cause briefly to fight off, you know, the British to say, we don't want you taxing us here and stuff like that. It was always such a loose piece. It was always such a loose group of people, uh, to come together and like try to make a country out of this. You know, you can't make like a, full-blown successful, happy relationship because you both hate the same person. Can you, you know, I mean, I know that's over simplifying it, but to the idea of a United States is so tenuous. I mean, it's, it's not a United Speaker 0 00:22:51 One. Doesn't want to be part of the United States from the very beginning. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:22:56 Well, a lot of them really didn't. I mean, it was, Speaker 0 00:22:59 There's one, there's one state that really didn't want to be part of it. Speaker 3 00:23:07 South Carolina, Speaker 1 00:23:11 Carolina. Yes. Um, Speaker 0 00:23:15 I really don't want to be part of it at all. There. It's hard to convince them. I mean, it's, it's so hard to convince them to sign the declaration of independence. They, they just don't really want to be with this because South Carolina's economy is completely dependent on exports across the British empire. Speaker 1 00:23:38 Well, and that's so I would say South Carolina was very British and you can still see so many, um, traces of that British roots when you go yeah. If you're in Charleston or something like that, and even the accent, um, has it very British undertones to it, but yes, of course they wouldn't want to separate from that power because that was exactly what their economy relied upon. And you know, the idea of like, okay, let's fight them off and make them go away from us. But then to be saddled by a new federal government and a new organization, they're not pumped on that either. And that's not just South Carolina. So many of the colonies who United under this one umbrella because they never got along with one another. And I've said this in lots of episodes, but the 1790s was a complete and utter riotous disaster in the government. No one wanted to be friends with each other. Speaker 0 00:24:41 So you have enter, you have interstate conflict, right? So you have conflict between the States and every state is just arguing with their neighbors and far away States, but you also have kind of rural, urban conflict, something we've never gotten away from in this country. Um, you've got, you know, kind of several cities where people who don't live in those cities really do not agree with anything coming out of them. You also have coastal versus inland conflict. This is really important in things like, um, Bacon's rebellion or not Bacon's rebellion. Um, Shay's rebellion, um, this kind of coastal versus interior conflict, uh, all of these are, are kind of carrying on. And as the 18th century ends, you get a growing conflict between people who want to perpetuate slavery versus people who initially thought it would just disappear. But now maybe want to start, particularly when we get into the early 19th century, want to start dismantling slavery on some level. So there are multiple modes, multiple points of conflict in the country. Speaker 1 00:25:54 There are multiple modes of conflict. And then there's also this bringing together of all these people with different interests, right? And putting them all in one chamber. And they don't like each other. They have, um, competing motivations, different backgrounds, you know, all this, all this difference coming into this one chamber and they fight with each other. And it's not just verbally. They physically get into fights with one another over sometimes really dumb things. Like you insulted my wife, you called her ugly. I'm going to get a cane from the fireplace and smack you over the head with it. I mean, you have all these men, all this testosterone brought together and they're just so violent with one another in this time period in the late 18th, early 19th centuries and the political violence, it's not just over differences on their interests, but it's like, they are unable to get along with one another. Cause they don't want to be there in the first place. I don't think Speaker 0 00:26:56 So. You would argue political violence is kind of lashing out at something you it's lashing out because you feel maybe your, your views are not even want to be part of this haven't been listened to. Speaker 1 00:27:11 Yes. Maybe, but also just there's no. Yeah. There's no desire to really, to get along because it seemed that nobody's going to walk away happy. And that's the way I think politics is so muddied at the moment is because nobody's walking away happy from the situation. Right. And so you're kind of forcing everybody to get together. Like we're going to create this government. And like, there are some people who were pumped on it, but others kind of get, um, roped into a situation that they don't want. And it's because their economies become somewhat reliant and dependent on one another, particularly because they're, you know, in this foreign land, it's not their land. And we've talked about this before, are ongoing Wars with native people who are being dispossessed of their land. And so people, the start of the United States is basically an Alliance of people who look similar, who come from somewhat similar backgrounds to try to come together to quell. Speaker 1 00:28:13 Um, two, is that a fair word to use like quell rebellion or something on the land that they've now taken. And so they have this loose Alliance with one another first to fight off great Britain, but then they have this loose Alliance in order to remain in charge of this land that they continue to take more and more and more of, and also to keep the slave population, they keep bringing slaves. And I mean, their, their Alliance with one another is so loose, but it ends up being based simply upon perhaps national origin, skin color, something along those lines, right. Where it's not, they don't have really strong interest with one another politically. It's just, they have so many common enemies and that's not enough to keep the peace at all times. Speaker 0 00:29:04 I think they, I think at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, they have a couple of common points that for most of them, they kind of view themselves as connected on some level. And one of those is this developing idea of whiteness, which isn't fully formulated in much of the 18th century, but eventually kind of crystallizes into something, but it's also their religion prod. They view their Protestant. And we've talked about this before, as well as there is Catholics for a long time are not viewed as American because there's a suspicion that they cannot have both loyalty to the United States and loyalty to the Catholic church or the Pope. Right? Speaker 1 00:29:56 Yeah. And that's such a good point, but again, it's such a loose it to me, it's such a loose connection or commonality in which to build an entire government off of, Speaker 0 00:30:07 Well, you have descendants of Puritans in new England who have very different ideas of what economic and societal success looks like from people in the Chesapeake versus people in the Carolinas. And then you throw in places like New York colonies that are out a little bit later that were multi-ethnic in a way, those other colonies weren't initially you add all this together. And there's just very little in common. And a lot of historians, we argue it's not till the civil war in the middle of the 19th century, that the United States actually starts to develop something that kind of welds the nation together, Speaker 1 00:30:49 Forcibly after decades of political violence and infighting between States and parties and legislature legislators. Right. And I think it's important to point out though, just how pervasive violence is during this time period. Because oftentimes when there was any sort of dispute, it was settled in violent ways, physical, violent, physically violent ways. And so dueling was, you know, not out of the question, um, being in a physical altercation, hitting somebody over the head, stabbing somebody, it wasn't out of the question. So when you have people who come together and they have all of these major differences, one of the ways that was considered appropriate to settle those differences was to physically fight one another. And so you have these little skirmishes that break out for decades in the lead up to the civil war. And then you finally, I thought, this sounds terrible, but you have this complete breakout of the entire country settling a dispute with violence because so many of these disputes had been settled violently prior to that. And it almost took that in order to finally come to an agreement and because of the pervasive nature and the, because of the allowance of violence on so many levels, that it was almost a sanctioned. Would, would that be fair to say? Speaker 0 00:32:16 I mean, what's interesting is it's a very personal level of violence, right? It's all about the self first. Speaker 1 00:32:25 What's about protecting your honor and the honor of your family first, and then it kind of radio radiate out, radiates out from there. Speaker 0 00:32:36 But it's interesting because it's very different than I would say, post civil war, political violence, which becomes much more recognizable to contemporary forms of political violence. You have the rise of the KKK, a terrorist organization, and I want to start giving some data. Cause I, you know, I told you, I gathered all this data and now I have to like deploy it over the last four years. Far-right terrorism and the West, the West broadly defined, um, Western Europe, the United States, uh, 320% increase. Speaker 1 00:33:14 Wow. You know, that is, so to me directly correlated with the generation who is died off now, who witnessed the last uptick of such. Speaker 0 00:33:27 Yeah. So here's, so here's the thing. Is there a lot of people, the Institute for economics and peace kind of argues that there is a 50 year cycle of violence that happens in societies, modern societies. And they actually argue, this has happened based regularly over the last 200 years. And they argue, there's a couple of things that lead to this cycle. Um, so they have this idea of positive peace and it's kind of a political climate and a social and cultural climate that values reconciliation and kind of demonizes violence as a solution. Um, but they say positive peace deteriorates over time. And that there are these things about violence and they kind of categorize violent activities, contagious that once one group does uses violence to achieve a goal or try to achieve a goal. Other groups are more likely to resort to violence to do that as well. So it's this ratcheting up and they argue that this happens in 50 year cycles and eventually popular attitudes turn against conflict and move back towards quote reconciliation. Speaker 1 00:34:40 Well, and that's interesting too. I would say though, that the violence is ratcheted up when there's a successful campaign for it. Right. So if you use violence, as you know, say you're a social movement that has this end goal and you use violence to attain that goal much like any terrorist organization would do, then yes, it would ratchet up. But when it's, when your violence, your violent acts are authoritative, what is the, where do you go from there? I mean that, and that's the limbo we're sitting in right now wondering, right. Is it going to increase or is it going to decrease that? I don't know. What is your, what is your thought on that from your data? Speaker 0 00:35:22 So let's talk about the political movement that happened over the summer and it's continuing and I hope it doesn't go away, but the one that for some people on the right is kind of held up as a C it's violent on the left as well. So black lives, um, May 25th, 2020, uh, Minneapolis police arrested George Floyd and murdered him or sass stated or killed him depending on your political bent. You'll call it a different word, but he dies. George Floyd dies in police custody as the direct result of one of the officers daily on a stack. And this actually kind of sparks this wave of protest. And from May 26th until August 22nd, there were 7,750 demonstrations directly linked to black lives matter is held across the United States, almost 8,000 protest, Speaker 1 00:36:25 But they weren't violent for the most part. Speaker 0 00:36:27 95% of them were peaceful protest and included no substantive element of violence. 95%. Speaker 1 00:36:38 What people get so upset about though is the destruction of property, which to me is so deeply tied to our origins in this country where we value property over people. Speaker 0 00:36:50 But that's less than 5,000 are 5% of those demonstrations had any level of violence, including property destruction. Speaker 1 00:36:58 You would say property destruction as violence. Speaker 0 00:37:02 Some people would view it that, but the way this is being defined, they include property destruction in the violence as well. Speaker 1 00:37:07 That's a staggering statistic. I mean, that's staggering because if you talk to other people, who'd be like, well, that's all they were doing. They were doing was, you know, rioting burning things. And it's like, no, not really though. Speaker 0 00:37:20 It is the black lives matter, gets a solid a for avoiding violence. A 95% out of a hundred is a solid day. Speaker 1 00:37:31 That's a solid day, Speaker 0 00:37:33 Almost 8,000 protests. And fewer than 5% actively engage in any level of violence. Speaker 1 00:37:43 Anytime there was violence as it was, um, encouraged by police presence. I mean, I watched that, Speaker 0 00:37:51 But I mean, this is the thing it's, you've got this huge Siri, this huge political movement that does not devolve into political violence. And you can contrast that with something like January 6th. Speaker 1 00:38:10 So here's my thing. Like I'm teaching a class on social movements this semester and I'm gonna have, you know, a lecture on Tuesday about what is a social movement and what is, you know, what are the means by which people get together and come up with a cause and all this kind of stuff. Is it a social movement if there's violence or is it a mob riot, insurrection, terrorism, you know, cause what, okay. What sets BLM apart from January 6th, like we would use different words to describe what was happening depending on what side of the aisle we lean politically. Speaker 0 00:38:54 So maybe what separates the black lives matter from groups of who subscribed to like Q Anon ideas, right? What separates them? I think they're both social movements. One of them actively rejects violence and the other has violence embedded in its very ideology. Speaker 1 00:39:12 Well, and the, the outcomes or the goals are so very different because the way to reach the goal of, I don't even know what to call the insurrectionists on January 6th. I mean, I guess the queue movement and I hate to even give them that kind of crap, Speaker 0 00:39:29 But not all of them are in that, right? Not all of them. Speaker 1 00:39:33 The goal though, was to overturn our government and that was not going to happen peacefully. All of BLM is to stop violence, Speaker 0 00:39:42 But here's the thing. I don't think they, so I don't think the January six protesters, many of them, some of them definitely did, but I think some of them did not view what they were doing is overturning the government. They were convinced that they were simply allowing the true government that was going to stand up against this global conspiracy. And they thought they were, Speaker 1 00:40:01 They thought they were upholding or uplifting. Speaker 0 00:40:04 Exactly. They thought they were upholding that. Right? So here's the thing is I think the difference is this. I think black lives matter at its core identifies ideal society as says it espouses and wants to hold society accountable for doing that and say, you are not doing a good job of assuring safety and security and their pursuit of freedom and Liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a substantial portion of the population. We are not doing a good job of doing that. In fact, we're actually doing the opposite. Not only are you not protecting the rights of certain people in the United States, African-Americans amongst them, the, the ability to pursue happiness, but you're actively working against that bodily in the most harsh way possible, which is physically killing them, right? So you have these acts of political violence, state actors, police killing black citizens, United States. Speaker 0 00:41:16 And what they're saying is we want to hold society accountable to that. They say this, they need to make sure what they're saying is what they're actually doing. Whereas I think the sedition is to storm the Capitol on January 6th, have a very dim view of, of what the United States base ideals are. I think they have a very disturbing view of what it means to be American. And I think for them it's wrapped up in white supremacy. It's wrapped up in, kill them before they kill you. Um, it hearkens back to kind of early 20th century rhetoric of race suicide. Um, it's just the worst of everything kind of coming together, outside the Capitol building and assaulting this symbol of authority. I mean, is that, how do you feel that? Speaker 1 00:42:19 Well, I think for me, when I look at the differences and I look at the movements is that w if we look at, okay, let's look at BLM, just isolated. The movement is to stop violence against black Americans to say that black lives matter. Okay, who's going to argue with that. Well, you have people coming along saying blue lives matter. Number one, nobody's born blue. It's a job, right? Police lives are not in danger. Police officers are not being killed in mass. Um, nobody is threatening the lives of police officers by saying that black lives matter. And by saying, we want to protect black people from police. It doesn't mean that black people want to kill the police. Right? So for me, when I look at the movements, it's like, there's one movement that is very firmly committed to stopping violence. And then there's another movement that's committed to perpetuating violence in order to reach their goals. Speaker 1 00:43:26 And, and I say that as somebody who watched a police officer getting beat to death with an American flag at the insurrection, you know, blue lives stopped mattering when it had to do with wanting to, um, you know, reach their own goals. And so when I look at the two movements, I see one as being, you know, there's one, that's just like encouraging violence, where there ha where people are arming themselves, they're coming prepared to be violent. You don't show up somewhere with a gun with weapons, with zip ties, with the intention of being peaceful. So one there's like intentional violence and the other it's, you know, it's trying to stop the violence. And so to me, they're, they're both social movements, but I think one uses violence in order to, or wants to use violence or encourages the use of violence to attain their goal while the other is actively saying, we want the violence to stop to attain. So I think we would explain our goal if the violence stopped Speaker 0 00:44:36 Well, here's the thing. And I think there is political violence that emerges out of the black lives matter movement and that political violence is the state's response to BLM. So 95% of BLM protests are peaceful. The general rate over decades of police intervention in protests is below 3%. So when you have protests take place fewer than 3% of them kind of spark a government intervention, 95% of black miners protests are completely peaceful. 9%, actually a little more than 9% closer to 10% of all black ladders lives matter. Protest sparked direct police intervention. And many times police intervened with tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper sprays beating with batons at a level which was entirely disproportionate with even a perception of what violence may have been going on out of the protestors. Speaker 1 00:45:47 So the social movement and the protest itself is not practicing political violence in order to reach their goal, but the state response to movement response with political violence. Speaker 0 00:46:01 Yeah. And I think this is the thing, and I think this is what shocked us all. Maybe January 6th is we did not see a strong state reaction to that assaulted. Speaker 1 00:46:16 You saw virtually no state reaction to it, because Speaker 0 00:46:20 Little bit of the opposite where we saw Capitol police letting protesters in Speaker 1 00:46:25 Participating, but there was no. Okay. Speaker 0 00:46:29 And this is, and I think this gets to a broader issue, which is, um, there are certain groups that as a culture, we've decided political violence is acceptable to be leveled against. And there are other groups where we've decided it's not accepted Speaker 1 00:46:48 When we talk about first amendment rights a lot. Right. So one thing I want to say though, is I don't think that police or state intervention in any sort of, I don't want to seem more militarization. I don't want to see more police. I don't want to see more state control over what's going on, but there's a lot of discussion about like, well, this is our first amendment rights and like we're allowed to protest. Okay. What about when Colin Kaepernick, kneeled, no violence whatsoever, a political protest, um, just drawing attention to a movement and he can't get hired by any team in the NFL. Whereas somebody who, you know, like Josh Holly, who's in the Senate who encouraged the violence, who raises his white fist up in the air, encouraging the protesters on, he gets a book deal canceled. And the next day the option's picked up by another publisher. The whole idea you're right. There are certain groups who are allowed to do this, where it's sanctioned, where it's not, uh, there's just no intervention to it. And there are other groups that are responded to incredibly violently and it falls along race lines. And that's just plain and simple. Speaker 0 00:48:12 Well, I mean, here's the thing is, you know, in the United States today, a white protestor with a semiotic weapon, semi-automatic weapon dressed in paramilitary gear does not elicit the same police response as a young black man wearing a hoodie, carrying no apparent weapon. Speaker 1 00:48:33 Well, a lot of these people were shaking hands with the police, taking selfies with them. They feel that they have deputized themselves because there's a long history of white people who work alongside police and are somewhat deputized to go out and be vigilante justice. And I think we touched on this during the lynching, um, where we talked about lynching and Jim Crow, um, oftentimes pair up with the police with the, with the state forces or we know whatever powers that be. And they go out and they think that they can just work right alongside police Speaker 3 00:49:13 And encourage Speaker 0 00:49:14 So rage against the machine was correct. Speaker 1 00:49:18 They were right. A long time ago. Speaker 0 00:49:21 It's true. This song is so true. Speaker 1 00:49:24 You can tell what song are you referencing? Just, Speaker 0 00:49:27 Oh, what's the name of the song? It's a summer where badges also burn crosses. Right? Which means, I mean, this is the thing, the share sheriffs across the Southern United States, particularly, but let's not let other parts of the United States get off the bat here. I mean, Indiana one point has the highest participation rate in the Klu Klux Klan of any state in the United States. Uh, lynchings also take place in California. Um, but you would have sheriffs who were active members of organizations like the Klan. And even today you see this where you've got the three percenters, which is a white supremacist group. Uh, you've got police in some jurisdictions who openly wear patches, announcing their membership in the three percenters. Speaker 3 00:50:23 Yeah. It's just hugely troublesome. And I, that we're seeing Speaker 1 00:50:28 A lot of people who were at the insurrection or being identified as people who work for state government entities, being police forces fire. Um, there were just a lot of people who were there who were participating in that violent insurrection, um, who, you know, are supposed to be upholding the law or that's what they're they say they're doing is upholding the law. And so what are we to make of that as citizens when we see that? Speaker 0 00:50:57 Well, I, I do want to kind of point out a source. I think listeners who are interested in learning a little bit more about this should go to, so one of the places, one of the things I look at fairly regularly, there are a couple of places. One is the Southern poverty law center in a really good job of catalog cataloging like violence across the United States, particularly violence, via hate groups that kind of talk about these things called hate groups. But another is militia watch militia watches, a really great kind of blog that tracks militia movements. And this is the thing. Here are the groups that are present at the Jews or the January 6th insurrection, um, Gulf coast Patriots, three percenters, Michigan people's defense league, the New Mexico civil guard, the Patriot front Virginia nights, uh, Yellowstone militia. Boogaloos the Bundy ranch, the KKK, uh, proud boys amongst others. Speaker 0 00:52:05 I mean, it's just, it's this list of groups and their form of political violence. Surprisingly is not met with a commensurate violent response by the state. And I think this is the frustration out of a lot of observers. Is the state in other moments of kind of non-state actor versus state actor violence in the United States, history has responded pretty forcefully. I mean, we can go back and talk about Vietnam war protests and how the state responds to those. I mean, you can look at Kent state, the Ohio national guard comes in and shoots students protesting against the Vietnam war. Um, Speaker 1 00:52:52 I am right now, you have the national guard come into wellness during integration, Speaker 0 00:52:57 Right. But it's perplexing to us. And I think you brought up an interesting question about does our, if, if political violence runs in 50 year cycles, where are we on the current cycle? Um, are we at the beginning of a cycle? Are we in the middle or in the end, but kind of to come full circle to how we, what we talked about at the beginning? I, I, the optimist in me likes to think maybe we are at the very worst in the middle, if not, maybe moving towards the end of a cycle. I hope, um, there's a normalcy in the functioning of our government that's suddenly present again, which I really liked. Um, Anthony Fowchee spoke yesterday and he said the government's COVID response would be based on facts and that if they didn't know anything, they would not just make things up. They would tell you, they don't know, Speaker 1 00:54:02 But you know, these conspiracy theorists and these QA non folks have not gone away, their theories have gotten even more outlandish. They feel completely downtrodden to think that it's going to go away. I mean, gosh, I think that that's optimistic Speaker 0 00:54:25 Projects that kind of map political violence and kind of its rise and fall say that when society turns and decides it's no longer permissible to believe those things, things happen pretty rapidly. I mean, it's so I think that's the question there has it become socially has, has being a member of que and honor. These other groups becomes something that will make people pariahs. And if it has, these projects would argue them, we're on the, kind of the backside of the political violence cycle. Speaker 1 00:54:57 It's I think you're right. But I am concerned by the pervasive nature of this, where I think that there's a large enough percentage of people who believe in these series and who are just so anti, I don't know, Biden or whatever, that there are enough people that I don't think it's going to just be squashed immediately. I mean, the social media giants and tech companies have done, I don't know if you saw that statistic that came out this week that said since the banning of all these accounts, conspiracy theory, nonsense circulating across Twitter decreased by 78%, 78%, that's huge just by banning some of these accounts that we don't even know where the information's originating its Mo much of it is not even within this country. Um, so there's definitely an effort to make this movement, one of social pariahs, but there's a lot of people who are involved in it. And I, I think it's because of the internet. I think that it's optimistic to assume that it's just going to go away without first trying to reorganize a rebuild and, and revenge, you know, um, I'm a little concerned about that. Speaker 0 00:56:15 Here's the thing. Okay. So to, to kind of hopefully add a little spark of hope into your life. Oklahoma city bombing 1995 that's 26 years ago. And I would say the Oklahoma city bombing is definitely related to, and part of the violence we saw in January. Speaker 1 00:56:39 So let's talking about this yesterday with my husband about if we were to, if that insurrection were successful on January 6th and it wasn't a rebellion, it actually was a revolution. We would start talking about how the roots of that by talking about the Oklahoma city bombing. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 0 00:56:59 Even go a little bit further back to Waco and Ruby Ridge, which now you're approaching 30 years of history of this. So I think there's evidence, maybe it is. I don't know, but I would say if there truly are these 50 year cycles, are we now getting hopefully to a point where we decide violence is not the solution ever and people who advocate violence to foment political change need to be called out for it centered Speaker 1 00:57:37 Or removed from office or removed Speaker 0 00:57:39 Or, and that the ultimate act of nonpolitical violence is the peaceful removal of a desperate, right. Speaker 1 00:57:51 Right. Well, I'm seeing hope, you know, this week were things do seem less insane. I mean, I can't tell you what a relief it is to open Twitter. And I don't, I don't actively participate in Twitter. I'm kind of a creep, but to open it and not see something just insane trending where you're like, Oh, Speaker 0 00:58:16 I'm a political junkie on many levels. But at the same time, I would just like to have days where I don't worry about what is being tweeted about from the white house. Speaker 1 00:58:27 Yeah. I saw something this morning that said Biden, hasn't been live tweeting Fox and friends. Does he even know how to be the president? It's crappy, but Speaker 0 00:58:38 Sorry. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:58:39 Talk about the violence though. I mean, it's important just to say that, yes, this is something that we've done historically, that there spent a lot of political violence and I thought it was really interesting that you pointed out that the origins of this nation are predicated on political violence. But to say that we, as a society, we want to root that out. We're not, that's not an okay way to go about business and we don't want that. Speaker 0 00:59:04 Well, and that's the thing is I think a lot of, not a lot, but some of the signatories of the declaration of independence, they actually really wondered can anything you do be legitimate if it's born out of violence. And I think, you know, this is kind of goes back to late ideas about separating and you know, it's violence has been part of the American experience and it's not Speaker 1 00:59:33 Really American either. I mean, no, it's Speaker 0 00:59:35 Not uniquely American. It's not uniquely and Erica, but it's, it's we ascribe to higher ideals, but we always seem to come back to this ultimate decision. That violence is the way to achieve things. Speaker 1 00:59:50 When that's what I think kind of circling back to the Pearl clutching of pretending, this has never happened before. We're the United States. It's a huge denial and ignorance of our history. We do ascribe to higher ideals. We do want to be loftier. We do want to do better. And I'm proud of that for us, that we want to try for that. But time and time again, we returned to this incredibly violent, uh, means of, you know, achieving a goal. And it's always predicated on the, of upholding white supremacy in this country. That's what's, that is what is uniquely American to me is like, you know, so many of our political systems have just spent entirely devoted to this, to this upholding of, of, you know, the white regime or the hierarchy, right? Speaker 0 01:00:42 Yeah. Well, I think this is a good place to end it we're at an hour. And I think this, I mean, we could go on and on about this topic. Um, but, uh, Speaker 1 01:00:52 As to like, we were so shook the day after and like we had that episode, no one was happy. We did it, but we were like, we're still thinking about this. And now to me, it's like, we kind of thought about it for a couple of weeks and now we've come back with a little bit more insight or context to me. It's kind of a continuation of that episode, but with a little bit more, a little bit more detail, maybe. Speaker 0 01:01:15 Well, great. Well, um, yeah, this has been interesting. Hopefully you had, uh, you learned to finger to, uh, make sure you join us next time. Um, I'm Jeff Speaker 1 01:01:25 And I'm Hillary. Thanks for joining <inaudible>.