Why Do Americans Disagree So Much About Political Violence?

Americans disagree less about whether political violence exists than about what should be counted as political violence in the first place, according to a book excerpt published by WIRED and drawn from University of Chicago political scientist Robert A. Pape's "Our Own Worst Enemies," published by The New Press. The excerpt argues that the split between narratives blaming the right and narratives blaming the left is downstream of a prior, less-discussed disagreement over definitions.

What counts as political violence, and why does that matter?

Pape's framing, as excerpted in WIRED, rests on a mechanism rather than a headline number: if two people are arguing about "rising" political violence but one is counting armed threats against sitting members of Congress and the other is counting property damage at protests, they are measuring different phenomena and will reach different conclusions no matter how much data either side presents. The excerpt states plainly that the public argument "stems not from ideology alone but from competing definitions about what should be counted." That distinction — definition before diagnosis — is the policy-relevant starting point, since any legislative or law-enforcement response depends on which acts get classified as political violence to begin with.

What happened to Rep. Jayapal and Rep. Greene?

The excerpt uses two sitting-era House members as case studies. In early July 2022, Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington and her husband were at home in Seattle when men drove past shouting racialized threats. They called police; the men left, then one returned armed with a loaded handgun, a round chambered, according to the account. A neighbor reportedly heard him shout, "Go back to India. I am going to kill you." Jayapal has described the episode as part of a broader shift in which "grievance increasingly functions as permission," per the excerpt.

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia reported hundreds of death threats from ideological opponents during her time as a close Trump ally, the excerpt states. After she broke with Trump over the Epstein files, Gaza, and the meaning of "America first," and after Trump labeled her "Marjorie Traitor Greene," the source and character of threats against her changed: messages named her son and one referenced an assassination with a plane ticket allegedly already purchased. Greene announced her resignation from Congress in November 2025, citing threats to her family.

"I think that comes to a point," Greene said, "where any American can look at that and say that's a high bar and way too much to ask."

Is political violence rising, and who is responsible?

The excerpt does not resolve this question so much as map the competing accounts. One narrative, dominant since 2016, attributes rising violence primarily to the radical right — white nationalism, militias, election denial. A competing narrative holds that violence comes just as strongly from the radical left, citing riots, assaults on police, and organized campus and urban disruption. Pape's excerpted argument is that both camps can marshal real incidents because neither is applying a consistent definition across the political spectrum, which allows each side to selectively count the other's violence while minimizing or reclassifying its own.

What is the timeline behind this argument?

• 2016 onward: Public argument over whether political violence is rising, and who bears responsibility, intensifies according to the excerpt.
• July 2022: Armed threat incident at Rep. Jayapal's Seattle home, followed by continued threats.
• 2023–2025 (unspecified dates in excerpt): Rep. Greene reports hundreds of death threats while a close Trump ally; after her public break with Trump, threats shift to target her family directly.
• November 2025: Greene announces resignation from Congress, citing threats to her family.

What does this mean for how the threat is measured?

The excerpted argument's policy implication is narrow but consequential: Jayapal and Greene, occupying opposite ends of the House's ideological spectrum, both became targets — which the excerpt treats as evidence that political violence has moved "closer to the center of American political life," touching officials across parties rather than remaining confined to one faction or the fringe. Whether that pattern shows up in any given dataset, the excerpt suggests, depends heavily on whether that dataset's authors define threats against officials, property destruction, and organized disruption as the same category of act or as separate ones. Readers evaluating claims about rising or falling political violence, per the excerpt's framing, should ask first what is being counted before asking who is doing it.

Full excerpt: WIRED, "Everything You Know About Political Violence Is Probably Wrong," from Robert A. Pape's "Our Own Worst Enemies" (The New Press).

Artiglio is A coming-soon iPhone chief of staff for briefings and drafts. Not on the App Store yet.