America the extreme
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The U.S. entered into the weekend bracing for conflict. President Trump was celebrating his birthday with a military parade that had people on edge. No King's protests were scheduled in hundreds of cities, had people on edge. L.A., unresolved with Marines still on the ground, had people on edge. The shocker was so much of what was feared didn't come to pass, except in Minnesota. A moment in this country where we watched violence erupt, this cannot be the norm.

It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences. A gunman dressed as a police officer shot four people, killing two of them, in what the governor called a targeted assassination of Minnesota state lawmakers. Vance Bolter was caught last night. These were 72 hours that had Americans asking, what the hell is going on? And we're going to do our best to answer that on Today Explained.

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Welcome to the premiere side of light, Corona Premiere.

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It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. John Lewis is a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. John focuses on Americans who commit violence in the name of ideology. John, what happened in Minnesota is still developing, but Governor Tim Walz called it an assassination. Would you say we know enough at this point to call what happened there political violence?

It certainly fits the description of the events, yes. Again, based on the reporting, based on the official comments so far from law enforcement, from Governor Walz,

This certainly appears to have been a targeted act, an individual who was motivated by, again, some ideology, some grievance, whether it's personal or political, who chose these individuals in particular to target, which I think certainly speaks to the potential deeper motivations here. There's been...

What feels like a lot of this lately, we have the killings of the two Israeli embassy workers in Washington, D.C. We have the attack on the hostage demonstration in Boulder, Colorado. We have Governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, his home being set on fire. So it feels like political violence is on the rise here.

What do the numbers say, though? The numbers absolutely support that. When we look at the data, we've seen a marked increase in recent years, not only in actual successful plots and attacks, but in the number of arrests and investigations the FBI are involved in when it comes to threats to public officials. I think when we look at the broader societal effects of

social media, of COVID, of the normalization of this violent rhetoric into our political mainstream. I think that's really a caustic, perfect storm there to really, again, just inspire your average Americans who are lost, are confused, are dissatisfied, who are looking for answers and

And I think in a lot of cases, this rhetoric, this very aggressive, very us versus them kind of rhetoric can really be the trigger for a lot of people who are angry, who are lost, who are confused. How do we know, other than headlines, how do we know that violence is increasing? You're an analyst. How do we measure this?

Yeah, so there's some excellent research that's being done in this space. You can look at work that's being done by this organization called NSITE over at the University of Omaha. It's a DHS funder.

funded center of excellence. They've been studying the drastic spike in cases, in federal cases brought charging people who have been threatening public officials, whether it's calling their office, whether it's stalking, harassing, doxing, swatting, things like that. And then look, you know, you look at the anecdotal cases that we're talking about here. It's very clear that in recent years, we have seen the normalization of

this violence, and that is leading these lone actors. And again, barely even ideological in a lot of these cases. We look at the Trump assassination attempt. You look at some of these other cases where the individual clearly barely has a coherent grasp on the ideology and is really just looking for justification. I think that when you really peel that back, you see how prevalent these cases are becoming. Who is doing the violence? Is there a pattern to who's committing these acts?

I would say by and large, the offline violence here is coming from the far right. It's obviously, it's always important to say that conspiracy theories don't fit neatly into the political spectrum, but

But when we look at the individuals who are committing this violence, it certainly fits a far-right mobilization. There are, of course, left-wing, leftist attacks. There are lone-actor violence on both sides here. But predominantly, the dead bodies here, when they stack up, it's not really a close comparison. What should we make of that?

I think, look, this is the years-long consequence of this campaign to really convince Americans that anyone who is not part of your tribe, your specific in-group,

is somehow un-American, is somehow less than you, and is somehow a worthy target for political violence. And I think that should be extraordinarily concerning for average Americans everywhere.

I think that many Americans feel, whether they like President Trump or not, that something in the rhetoric began to change when he was elected the first time. Is that just a feeling or is that grounded in reality? No, it's absolutely grounded in reality. I think when you look at the messaging that comes out from President Trump's office, it certainly aligns with the

the most incendiary, most aggressive rhetoric that we see coming out of the right-wing media ecosystem. And look, this trickles down, right? When you have the president of the United States using language about radical left, democratic politicians, calling migrants, you know, people who are poisoning the blood of this country, that sends a powerful message. And it's something that average Americans will pick up and engage with.

Does the atmosphere in which we're living now, does it contribute to the reality of political violence? Like, everybody is on edge. I was at the Army's birthday parade this weekend and nothing happened. I mean, it was actually really rather dull, but the...

sense was that something could pop off at any time, in part because law enforcement had been, you know, urging people to be cautious, in part because the president had said, if you protest, you're going to be met with violence. Do those kinds of warnings translate into reality? These vibes don't happen in a vacuum, right?

We feel less safe because of the spike in domestic terrorism. We feel less safe because of massive counter protests, violence at protests, a general fear that, you know, this inherently random type of violence can happen to us. Again, it's a very normal, very human reaction.

President Trump is fairly unrestrained in the way he talks about protesters, immigrants, universities, even the military. How should we think about the message coming from the top and what it may lead to? Well, yeah, look, I mean, I think very simply here, when language used by President Trump, by Stephen Miller, by DHS employees,

When that mirrors the exact language used by white supremacist mass shooters in their manifestos, that bodes poorly, right? And again, when that mainstream message is being amplified by every neo-Nazi out there, again, because it mirrors the language used by their peers, right?

That just floods the zone with the worst, most abhorrent, most dehumanizing content you can see. And again, you really can't overstate the role of these social media echo chambers. I mean, when it's just day after day after day of these conspiracies from the top getting amplified from the bottom –

conspiracies from the bottom amplified by the top. You just get this bidirectional flow of, I mean, it's brain rot really is what it comes down to. Is this unprecedented or has the U.S. been here before? So look, we've certainly seen spikes in political violence. It's nothing new. We look at the weather underground. We look at other spikes in domestic extremist activity. I think what makes today interesting

unique in some cases is the role of social media, right? We are more interconnected than ever. As humans, that's great. For research, that's great. But that also facilitates a lot of our worst qualities as people. And I think it allows, in many instances, for

These conspiracies, these, again, very racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, hateful narratives, grievances to spread, to fester, and to just become just stuck in these social media echo chambers.

What do we do about this, John? This has to start with our elected officials, right? It's very easy to talk about this and to kind of provide the top-level analysis that terrorism is bad, political violence is bad. But we know that, and we've been having these conversations for, again, I mean, we're, you know, what, nine years now? I mean, it's going to be the same answers, which is that it has to come from politicians, it has to come from our elected officials on both sides, right?

right, left, top, bottom, to, again, quite simply, tamp down on political violence. But instead, what we see day after day after day is this really caustic fanning of the flames, predominantly from the right, around every single culture war issue. And so I think

Until we're able to really reckon with that, to call it what it is, and to start beginning to address it, we're going to keep having these conversations, unfortunately. John Lewis of the program on extremism at George Washington University. Coming up, we went to the parade so you didn't have to.

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You're listening to Today Explained. We're back. I'm Noelle King. You might have seen the video circulating from this weekend of a very bored-looking President Trump grimacing through the military parade celebrating the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army. It was also Trump's birthday. I was at the parade, and Trump was not wrong. Attendance was sparse at best. It was 1,000 degrees. And

And it was pretty boring. Chris's wife made him come. Well, my wife's from China, and so they have parades like that there, but she's never seen one here before, so she wanted to see a military parade here. Franco from Argentina was like, eh, I'm in D.C., why not? I don't get the chance to see a military parade every day. Tim was protesting. I am 60 years old. I've never protested anything in my life. And when I saw the military being turned against our own citizens...

I had already planned to come down here because I thought a military parade, especially on a sitting president's birthday, was not American. But no one seemed to really care about his protest. At least Professor Meredith Lair was excited to be there. Meredith is at George Mason University, where she studies American culture and the military.

What do you think this event tells us about how President Trump sees the military? I think he sees the military as lethal. I think he sees it as an extension of himself. He has said that this is his military. And I think that the Army's choice to emphasize technology is probably something that the White House and the Army came to collectively, that they really wanted to showcase hardware and showcase power.

You said President Trump has said the military is my military. The American president is the commander in chief. What about the way President Trump talks about the military is different from a historian's perspective? I don't think that any other president has ever said anything like that. Hmm.

I think that other presidents have been more mindful of custom. There's a lot of conversation around President Trump that he breaks norms, that he has violated norms. And I think that his presidencies have forced Americans to come to terms with the fact that a lot of how the White House and the presidency operates are not actually enshrined in the Constitution. They're enshrined in custom.

And so he is in that, in stating that this is his military and in giving a very politicized speech at which MAGA merchandise was for sale at Fort Bragg. In Los Angeles, the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles, they're incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists. They're engaged in violence.

This willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by

criminal invaders. He's, you know, violating norms there about keeping the U.S. Armed Forces apolitical. And I think it's fair to remember that the U.S. Armed Forces are not a monolith, that there are a lot of progressives who have joined the military because they want to serve or because it was a path out of poverty. I think it's worth remembering that a lot of the rank and file in the U.S. Armed Forces are not native-born. They are immigrants or they are the children of immigrants.

And I am sure that the American soldiery has complicated perspectives on this event and on President Trump's comments about the military. As somebody who studies this stuff, what message does it impart that today is also President Trump's birthday?

I don't think that this event can be separated from President Trump because no president since President George Herbert Walker Bush has elected to have a parade of this kind. And, you know, we can't so we can't divorce it from President Trump because it's something that he expressly stated he wanted during his first term. And I.

You know, by the same token, I don't think we can divorce it from the larger conversation about the use of the U.S. military on American soil. So this, for good or bad, this event will, I think, always be associated with

these new developments in civil military relations where the military is operating potentially against U.S. citizens. It's absolutely operating on U.S. soil in Los Angeles right now.

And so the army is kind of trying to thread a needle here of focusing on its history, focusing on the equipment and its lethality and trying to remain nonpartisan. We've talked to a bunch of people out here at the parade today. We had one woman whose son is in the army. She actually came out

to see him today. All of this that's going on and we're trying to find him and I can't find him and I just want to see my baby. She said, I don't think Americans understand enough about service. I don't think we treat the military well. And then we talked to another man who is...

protesting today who said, I personally think that we celebrate the military too much in this country. There is a divide in this country between people who, I think it's sometimes even called the civilian military divide, between people who serve or know people who serve or have people in the family who served and people who just haven't and maybe think, why is this such a big deal? Has this always been the case?

No, we're in an interesting moment where the U.S. Armed Forces is the most lethal, but it's also very small relative to what it was, say, in World War II. And the role that veterans play in American society is really different now than it was at mid-century. It's very unusual to know people in the military because less than 1% of Americans will serve in the military. And whereas if you compare that to the post-World War II era,

It was very unusual for men not to have served in the military. So everybody's dad and uncle and brother was off fighting overseas or was in the service somewhere here in this country. So Vietnam is sort of in the middle where of the 27 million Americans who could have served in the Vietnam era, only two and a half million of them actually did go to Vietnam. So, you know, so it's a rare thing now to have been a veteran

And it is not the normal thing or the normative thing for Americans to know people in the military. And I think that is profoundly problematic because I think it has sowed mistrust where people who maybe object to aspects of U.S. foreign policy tend to

paint people, individuals in the military with that same brush or make assumptions about their political opinions. And by the same token, I think people in the military who enjoy such a robust set of social welfare benefits don't really understand the fear and the terror that civilians have at not having health insurance and confronting a major health crisis.

So I think that both groups have a lot to learn from each other. And I think there is probably room for more compassion. And I think to the stories that you shared, I think in the end, they're kind of both right. My dad's expression, he's 87 years old and a two-time Vietnam veteran and is, you know,

served 22 years in the army. And when people thank him for his service, he talks about what a great life he has as a result of that. And he says, I should be thanking you. Anytime you have an event like this, it is a case of America telling a story of itself about itself. What do you think is the story that America is telling about itself here today?

So I could speak for my students. My students, you know, they often will express in their essays and so forth, like this true faith that we are marching towards progress, that everything in the United States will get better and better and better. And I think that the parade is in a way a sort of metaphor for that, where we can see, you know, with the...

there's going to be the soldiers in colonial uniforms and advancing in time all the way to the 21st century. So there's a progression there in the style of clothing and in the technology and the ability to move troops and supplies from here to there. And so the parade gives a feeling of this inexorable march towards progress. But the reality of American history is that

Things will advance forward and things will advance back. The Army has a really rich history and the Army can claim in celebrating its history the liberation of Europe alongside American allies. It can claim for individuals a commitment to duty and faithful service.

And as an Army brat and a proud daughter of a Vietnam veteran, I embrace the good parts of that history. But as a historian, I also have to recognize very flawed parts of the Army's story. But those stories will not be represented here.

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Meredith Lair of George Mason University. The most exciting part of the parade was leaving the parade on Saturday. You had to exit directly into a group of protesters and you thought, surely this is going to get ugly. And then it didn't.

There were a couple shouting matches that quickly wilted. It did seem possible that Minnesota and how easily these things can spin out was on everyone's mind. Lee Babarowska is from Minnesota. He was there to protest. But when I asked him about the killings in his home state, Lee sounded an awful lot like the former cop that he is. They'll catch him. I guarantee they'll catch him. There's no way they're not going to

Victoria Chamberlain was there. She produced today's show. Miranda Kennedy edited with help from Jolie Myers. We were fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Matthew Billy. And I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. ♪♪

See you next time.

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