Political Violence Is No Longer Fringe — It’s Local But Not Unstoppable

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 06/17/2025) The shooting of two Minnesota legislators last weekend sounded an alarm among state and local officials that the political rage pumping through today's society could hit home.

But according to a Michigan State University political science professor who surveyed 600 local politicians for a book she's writing, the violence started well before Vance Luther Boelter.

Nazita Lajevardi's research found 5 percent experienced physical violence, including attacks on their property. On top of that, there is a layer of psychological violence -- harassment, verbal abuse, insults, character defamation and doxxing, where personal information is released through social media with the intent of intimidation.

The violence stems from outrage ginned up from national issues circulated on social media networks and can play out at the state and local level because state legislators don’t have the protection or resources of the national level, Lajevardi said.

“We find that political violence against them is even higher than it is among local politicians,” she said. “I think state legislative politicians are incredibly vulnerable,” she said.

She said it was not just outsiders, but their own staff, staffers from the other side of the aisle, and other colleagues.

She said much of the solution focused on the legislators themselves taking measures to improve their own security, such as buying a Ring doorbell, moving to a different neighborhood, not going to events alone and making sure their loved ones know where they are going.

“There were a lot of solutions that people were taking on an individual basis, but when we press them for a bigger solution, they want a change in the national climate,” she said.

She said the mayors they interviewed also had similar experiences and feel as if there's no way of stopping it by themselves. Increasingly, they're calling in law enforcement to step in during public meetings and at other events.

Of course, political violence isn't new in the United States, but it has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to professor Megan Stewart of the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.

She said the isolation of COVID and the anonymity of the digital era discourages people from talking face to face. And in a highly polarized political environment, people end up acting recklessly. They make threatening phone calls to people in power, which has happened to numerous Michigan legislators. They act irrationally, like cooking up plans to take out a sitting official, which happened to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

President Donald Trump added a permissiveness element to the soup when he pardoned those convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

“That raises questions, like ‘If I do this, how much trouble will I really get into?’ which all contribute to a more permissive environment,” Stewart said.

She said there were ways that states and local governments could deal with the causes of political violence, with one piece being dealing with the grievances being expressed by the people.

Looking at policy changes as to what types of crimes are being prioritized and how much prosecution weight is brought down on those committing hate crimes or political violence.

Sometimes grievances aren’t the result of what the people are complaining about, but the result of the cause is no less present. She pointed to things such as automation and artificial intelligence eliminating some jobs, but immigrants being targeted as taking those jobs or those jobs being outsourced to other countries.

She said those needed to be addressed, because the anger and resentment still exist.

“However, not all grievances are just and should be mitigated,” Stewart said.

To combat political violence, government officials at all levels need to work together so they don't undermine each other.

“You might be combating it locally, but facing an uphill battle because you have a different set of information coming in and eroding your efforts,” she said.

Another cause for the tension is the slanted way in which many people prefer to receive their news. Having given up on traditional news outlets, people are consuming social media influencers and unsourced content from people using fake names that is more designed to rile up the reader/viewer as opposed to giving them straight facts with alternating viewpoints.

Western Michigan University Professor of Communication Sue Ellen Christian created the Wonder Media library to help teach media literacy, something that Stewart said needed to be taught early on to children.

A consequence of being trapped in what is known as an informational echo chamber is that your own ideas are reflected at you, reinforcing your own ideals, whether true or false.

“The problem is that misinformation prospers in echo chambers. You’re going to be less likely to be critical of false, misleading or inaccurate videos, memes, posts, and that’s where we get the confirmation bias,” Christian said.

She said the easiest way to break the echo chamber was to pick one subject you care about and look at all points of view. Find out where the information you are looking at came from and the evidence from reputable sources.

Echo chambers come from isolating yourself into a tribe or a specific group and not looking at the whole picture or another point of view.

She said studies from social media echo chambers can lead people to fear their way of life or they themselves are targets and end up radicalized.

“There are many, many factors. We can’t just draw this direct line to online radicalization, but there are real-world threats to online radicalization, and we see them in social psychology and communication research,” she said.

She said it is an idea of “virtuous violence” that doesn’t reflect their surrounding reality. She said people with those ideals tend to search out the content that emphasizes and reinforces their extremist views.

“Social media is certainly a component in real-world political violence, but it is not the only one,” Christian said.

Christian said one of the best things that can be done to defuse this type of behavior, and something that everyone needs, is to get out of the digital space, off the screen, and interact in real life.

“We have a lot in common as humans, and we can find all these commonalities because of the community we share, because of the time we’re living in, all sorts of things that don’t have to be political. And that’s where it starts in the real life – the IRL – connections,” she said.