In short
Whether political violence in the U.S. is truly getting worse, how rhetoric and partisan identity affect risk, and what can reduce tensions. Mason argues there isn’t an “epidemic” of political violence, but there is more violent rhetoric and a higher frequency of high-profile incidents.
Guest backgrounds
Dr. Liliana Mason is a Johns Hopkins political science professor and co-author of Radical American Partisanship and Uncivil Agreement.
Key claims
Approval of political violence is shared across parties: since 2017, about 7% of Democrats and Republicans said violence is acceptable; by 2023 it’s typically 15–20% for both, with only small gaps. When asked “if the other side starts it,” support jumps to ~50–60%. Rhetoric can encourage violence, but leaders can also reduce it—experiments show a single anti-violence quote from either Biden or Trump lowers support. Social sorting and stacked identities (race, religion, geography) raise election stakes and reduce cross-party contact. Young people approve violence more; mass violence often involves young perpetrators.
Notable examples
Rwanda genocide dehumanizing radio language; London rally where Elon Musk said “violence is coming to you”; claims about Trump/Vance framing violence as a “left problem”; regional polarization and state-level rights changes (e.g., abortion, vaccine mandates) increasing stakes.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding Political Violence
0:02 to 1:24
Discussing the current state and perception of political violence in America.
“AGZ is a nighttime drink designed to support restful, restorative sleep.”
Understanding Political Violence
3:17 to 5:20
Discussing the current state and perception of political violence in America.
“So look, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, a lot of people in politics and people in media, they're worried about some sort of reprisal violence.”
Rhetoric's Role in Political Violence
5:24 to 9:01
Exploring the connection between political rhetoric and violence.
“I want to dig into this question of like kind of the connection between rhetoric and political violence in a minute.”
Generational Perspectives on Violence
9:02 to 11:15
Examining differing views on political violence across generations.
“And then they're going to want to attack back.”
Media's Impact on Political Discourse
11:17 to 14:00
Discussing how media coverage can influence perceptions of violence and safety.
“I don't want to make everybody more anxious for the reasons we just talked about.”
The Connection Between Rhetoric and Violence
14:00 to 18:00
Explore the impact of political rhetoric on violence and societal polarization.
“The American cities are full of crime and it's impossible to walk down the street without getting hurt and mugged and it's terrifying to be on the subway.”
The Connection Between Rhetoric and Violence
18:04 to 19:02
Explore the impact of political rhetoric on violence and societal polarization.
“Thankfully, Tommy John can provide cooling relief with underwear that feels like on-body AC thanks to lightweight, breathable, moisture-wicking fabrics that stop you from getting heated.”
Political Leaders and Violence Condemnation
19:08 to 23:00
Discuss the influence of political leaders' rhetoric on violence and public perception.
“Obviously, Donald Trump has not, you know, turned down the heat at all.”
The Evolution of Partisan Identity
23:01 to 27:22
Understand how partisan identity has evolved and its effects on political conflict.
“Can you talk about that evolution and how it factors into this nastier, you know, kind of zero-sum brand of politics we're all now living with?”
Intergroup Conflict and Social Identity Theory
27:23 to 28:00
Learn about Henri Tajfel's research on intergroup conflict and its implications.
“Most of his family was dead, had been killed.”
Show all 23 chapters
The Psychology Behind Group Identity and Conflict
28:00 to 30:43
Explore how group identity can drive individuals to act against their own interests in competition with others.
“And the first step that he took was to say, all right, so we know about groups hating each other.”
Political Narratives and Scapegoating
31:48 to 37:29
Discuss the role of scapegoating in political discourse and how it affects public perception and party dynamics.
“It kills me because the Democrats are constantly like, if we just told you how much we were helping you, Like if we just told you all the facts about the things that you are really interested in, then you would love us.”
The Impact of State Laws on National Unity
37:29 to 42:06
Examine how differing state laws create divisions within the country and affect citizens' rights.
“And you have to be able to explain things to people so that they connect their feelings to whatever it is that you're talking about.”
The Fractured State of America
42:06 to 42:54
Exploring the impact of political divisions on American society and personal freedoms.
“Because we start, we're having these like really difficult conversations about like, you know, do I want to be alive?”
Introducing Alex Wagner
42:54 to 43:21
An announcement about Alex Wagner joining Crooked Media and her new podcast.
“All right, we're going to take a quick break.”
Introducing Alex Wagner
43:36 to 44:34
An announcement about Alex Wagner joining Crooked Media and her new podcast.
“At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no.”
Lessons from Political Violence
44:40 to 46:02
Investigating historical triggers and warning signs of political violence in societies.
“You know, they devolved into ethnic or political violence.”
Democracy and Changing Majorities
46:02 to 47:12
Discussing how changing demographics may affect American democracy and the GOP's response.
“Everyone will be minorities in the United States in like 20 years.”
Cancel Culture vs. Government Actions
47:12 to 49:14
Differentiating between cancel culture and governmental suppression of speech.
“And you've got a lot of people that ostensibly talked about free speech and cancel culture for their entire lives and careers who are now saying, well, you know, these are just consequences.”
Reflections on Political Chaos
49:14 to 51:42
Comparing current political chaos to the turbulent 1960s, considering societal changes.
“I think what people were talking about was not actions by governments or elected officials or Democrats necessarily.”
The Backlash of Social Progress
51:42 to 55:44
Analyzing the backlash against social progress and the potential for future equality.
“and kind of reduce the risk of political violence or just like chill people out a little bit?”
The Power of Human Connection
55:44 to 56:00
The importance of personal interactions in a divided political climate.
“But I guess what you're talking about is, I think, a very smart, reasonable observation on a structural level.”
Empathy in Political Discourse
56:00 to 59:54
Discover the importance of compassion in political discussions and its impact on society.
“Like I do think that if you're a progressive or Democrat, posting something about how it was wrong and evil to assassinate Charlie Kirk is like a good thing.”
Transcript
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1:59Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. It's been a weird, unsettling couple of weeks. On the day this episode comes out, mourners will gather in Arizona for Charlie Kirk's memorial service. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Trump administration is busily working on new ways to punish its political enemies. silenced critics, and is reportedly even preparing to label entire groups of American citizens as terrorists. And more broadly, people are just on edge. The political conversation feels ominous. Elected officials, and even people who just report on or talk about politics for a living, myself included, are thinking about and worrying about whether it's safe to say what we believe.
2:38And so the questions I want to answer today are, is the threat of political violence actually worse now than in the past? Or is that just a feeling? Is this a partisan problem? What role does rhetoric play? And what can we learn from our history, from international examples, and most importantly, how do we take the temperature down? My guest today is Dr. Liliana Mason. She is a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University and the co-author of a book called Radical American Partisanship, Mapping Violent History, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Our Democracy and Uncivil Agreement, how politics became our identity.
3:13I couldn't think of anyone better to have this conversation with. Here it is. Dr. Mason, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me. It is great to talk with you. So look, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, a lot of people in politics and people in media, they're worried about some sort of reprisal violence. They're worried about things maybe spiraling out of control. And there's this feeling, I hear it in my own life, in conversations I have with friends. I see it in the media I read. There's this sense that America and our political discourse is more violent now and more scary than it was before.
3:46But that's a feeling. I know you gather like actual data on this stuff. What does the data tell you about the level of violence in the United States, political violence, compared to the past? Yeah. So the – I mean, first of all, it's not – we don't have like an epidemic of political violence. I think it's important to note that. there certainly is a lot more violent rhetoric coming out of our political leaders, in particular Trump and people adjacent to him. I've noticed that. Yeah, I wonder. And rhetoric doesn't cause violence, right? It can encourage it and it can direct it. But we have seen these sort of very visceral, intense, individual events that have seemed to be happening more frequently in the last year, let's say.
4:34It's not, you know, we're a nation of 300 million people. These are still a very small number of violent events. And the question is, for some of these, are they political violence or are they, you know, violence? Like we have, I would say we're a country with a violence problem and a political problem. And sometimes those overlap and we don't always know whether they're overlapping, right? So, for example, when someone famous who is political is attacked, is it because of their politics or is it because the person who's attacking them wants to be famous, right? Is it because of their fame or their politics?
5:08So these things can be difficult to interpret. We don't always know exactly how to categorize them. I think it's fair to say that we have had a couple of very high-profile violent events over the last year that's sort of more than we're used to. But I wouldn't think of it as like a terrifying epidemic. Got it. That's nice to hear. I want to dig into this question of like kind of the connection between rhetoric and political violence in a minute. But first, I mean, Vice President J.D. Vance says this is a liberal or a left problem. As evidence in this live stream he did, he cited, I think, one online YouGov poll showing that very liberal respondents were more likely than very conservative respondents to say political violence can be justified.
5:48I don't know that making, you know, declarations based off of one online poll quite meets like the gold standard for data science. But what is the totality of the data that you look at? What does it tell you about where if there's a partisan split or not when it comes to justifying or accepting violence? Yeah, so I haven't actually seen the numbers from that Yuga poll that he was citing, and I'm kind of curious what they are. But so my co-author, Nathan Calmo, and I have been collecting data on approval of political violence in the American electorate since 2017, multiple times a year. And we're still collecting that data.
6:22So the question we would ask is very similar to the one that you just said. It's to what extent is it acceptable to use violence to achieve your political goals? And what we just measure is the percentage of people who say anything other than never, right? So it's like never, sometimes, always. we're only interested in how many people say anything besides never. And that in 2017 was only 7 % of Democrats and Republicans. By 20, let's just say like last summer is one of the most recent times we asked that question. It's gone up and it's, you know, tends to be between like 15 and 20 % now for both Democrats and Republicans.
7:01Sometimes Democrats are higher than Republicans. Sometimes Republicans are higher than Democrats. But usually it's by like three percentage points difference. Like it's never very far apart. And it's never very like consistently one party is more approving of violence than the other. But like overall, right, we still have 80 to 90 percent of Americans saying it's never acceptable. And that 10 to 20 percent is saying something that's either a little bit or somewhat or a lot. Got it. And they're very represented on social media, it seems. I saw you tell the New Yorker that, like you just told us, very few people support violence.
7:39But that can change if you say, well, the other side started at first. Can you talk about those sort of respondents? Because on the one hand, like it's kind of obvious on an individual level. Like if someone punches you, you're going to punch back. That doesn't make you a violent person. But these people are saying, if you punch my team, I will punch you back. Like it seems a little different. So, I mean, it's important to note that this question isn't do you want to do violence? It's do you think that it's okay for some people to use it to achieve your political goals? And the vast majority of people who say, who even are like, yeah, violence is great, like most of them will never commit political violence.
8:14So it's really about like, what are the norms in the places where we might have volatile people, right? Like are 20 % of the people around volatile young man saying violence is okay? That changes the way that that person thinks about where to aim their violence. So we asked people a follow-up question, which was, what if the other side starts it? And then we get actually pretty terrible numbers, like 50 sometimes. Last summer, it was 60 percent of both Democrats and Republicans said it would be. And that's pretty scary because that's kind of what you're hearing out of Republicans right now, which is like, you shot at Trump.
8:49They killed Charlie Kirk. Therefore, we need to act. I mean, I think that is kind of what is contributing to the climate of fear, or at least making me feel like this is different and new and worse. Yeah. Well, and also, I mean, I think what makes me the most worried is that, I mean, you can easily see, like, the logical progression from, you know, if they started it, then I'm willing to keep going. And then they're going to want to attack back. And then we're going to want to attack back. And so the risk is that we end up in this sort of vicious cycle where, you know, one side starts it, the other side fights back, and we can end up with a situation, like think about like the Middle East, right, where it's like there's no good guys and no bad guys.
9:27It's just been fighting back and forth, and nobody can stop it because whoever started it loses control of the situation. And that's a situation that we really, really want to avoid because once it starts, it's hard to stop. And so having politicians use rhetoric that's encouraging this type of cycle to start is really irresponsible. Yeah. I also saw there was a recent Wall Street Journal poll that found 93 % of baby boomers and 86 % of Gen X say political violence is never acceptable. But those numbers drop significantly among younger Americans. Just 71 % of millennials and 58 % of Gen Z agree.
10:05Is that a function of all of us kind of maturing with age? Is this something we need to worry about? Like, how do you think about those numbers? Yeah, young people tend to approve of violence more than older people, like, throughout time, I think. Most people, I mean, there's a reason that, you know, when we see mass violent events, no matter whether they're political or not, that it tends to be young people who are perpetrating them. We tend to, you know, our brains don't mature perfectly by the time we're, you know, even just in our early 20s. And so all of our, like, risk assessments and our ideas about, you know, what's socially responsible and what our values are, like, that stuff isn't hardwired yet until we're, like, 25.
10:46And so it doesn't surprise me to find that young people generally are more comfortable with violence. Yeah. And even just, like, the minute you have kids, like, I was talking to a friend yesterday. I used to get on planes and have turbulence and be like, oh, this is fun. You know, like, no concern about anything. Now you're like, oh, no. What would I leave behind? Yeah. Not to be especially dark here. I'm just getting on a plane tomorrow. I should tell the listeners, you're recording this in Austria. So no dark history of political violence there to speak of. We'll just kind of ignore that. So look, for me, like figuring out how to cover this, to talk about it and be responsible is kind of challenging because I don't want to hype the threat.
11:26I don't want to make everybody more anxious for the reasons we just talked about. Like I don't want people on edge that like the other side is coming for them. I also don't want to have a terrible two weeks of sleep like I just had because I wake up thinking about this shit. But also, we can't ignore what's happening in the world. How do you think the media strikes the right balance here? It's really, really hard because the incentives are off. What we know in terms of just like journalism, we've been saying this like forever, right? If it bleeds, it leads. People pay more attention to the media when it's about scary things.
11:58and we are more willing to click on a story if it's telling us that there's a big fight going on. We're much more likely to pay attention to two people not getting along, for example, than like two people having a pleasant conversation. This is like an evolutionary thing where we have to pay attention to danger because it might hurt us. And like a beautiful garden we can come back to later. Like that's not an emergency for us. So like our brains are drawn to conflict and negativity and violence. And so for the news media, they're really in a bind because they want attention and clicks and they want to sell ads.
12:35And they mostly don't want to, you know, encourage a wave of escalating violence. It's impossible to stop. But so but those are those are incentives that are really at odds with each other. And I understand. Right. It's like a difficult situation. but I think that the most important thing that I, whenever I talk to journalists I try to remind them that this is, it's a delicate situation and if people have the perception that everything is spiraling out of control already they're more willing to engage in risky and chaotic behavior because it already feels like chaos everywhere and if it's not chaos everywhere yet, then let's not try to tell people that it is because then they're going to behave in ways that are undesirable.
13:19And that's so hard these days. I mean, like we, I live in Los Angeles. There were weeks and weeks of coverage about Donald Trump sending the troops here to put down protests that like literally I had not seen, no one I knew had seen because they existed within like a three block area downtown and were quickly stopped by a local curfew. But everyone I knew outside of LA was like, are you guys okay? Is your house okay? I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't hear that story coming from the White House, though, right? That it's in their interest to make it feel like they are like this mass force taking over major political cities and that, you know, there's a battle going on.
13:59And they were doing this even during the campaign last year, right? The American cities are full of crime and it's impossible to walk down the street without getting hurt and mugged and it's terrifying to be on the subway. All of these things are false. And anybody who lives in any of these cities knows that, like, that's just not what it's like to live there. But it is. But, you know, we're unfortunately we have a situation where we are actually polarized by place. And so rural areas are much more Republican. Urban areas are much more liberal. And so it's, you know, it's in the right's interest to say all those liberal places are super dangerous.
14:37Yeah, I want to ask you about this regional polarization question because I thought it was really interesting. I was reading something you'd written about it. On this question of the connection between rhetoric and violence, I mean, I'm wondering how you think, where do we draw the line? Because, like, there's historical examples of clear, direct incitement to violence, right? Like the Rwandan genocide, for example, was precipitated by months of this like dehumanizing rhetoric about the Tutsi minority and barely disguised calls to kill them. But, you know, there's more nebulous. Like Democrats said that Trump's January 6th rhetoric led the mob to attack the Capitol.
15:13I happen to think that's true, but a lot of people dispute it. And Republicans are now saying that Democrats, even using the word fascist or fascism, is contributing to violence or led to the attack on Charlie Kirk. How do you think about where to draw the line? I mean, it's hard, right, especially if we're talking about like a legal line. A friend was just telling me the story about during the during the trials after the Rwandan genocide, the people who are running the media channels that were that were sort of spreading dehumanizing language, they were on trial. And the lawyer asked a witness like they never touched a machete.
15:52Right. They like why are they supposed what did they do? They didn't actually kill anybody. And the witness said, no, but they sprinkled petrol all over the ground everywhere they could so that when one person dropped a match, everything caught on fire. So, right, there is this idea that, like, I didn't actually do anything violent. I just made people ready to start being violent as soon as I told them to, right, or as soon as anything went wrong. And that's a realistic narrative, I think. But it also, I think it's important to think about the other end of it, which is that our leaders can make us less violent, too.
16:29And I've run experiments where we sort of have people just read either a quote from Joe Biden, a quote from Donald Trump, or nothing at all. And the quotes are sort of, you know, saying, don't be violent, basically. It's a short little sentence. It's a very, like, simple test. And what we find is that the people who read the quote from either Biden or Trump are much less supportive of violence than the people who read nothing. And it doesn't matter which leader said it. It doesn't matter whether it was their leader or the other party's leader. It's just hearing from elected people and leaders that makes people step back.
17:03And it's so easy to do that, right? We just had them read one sentence from one of these guys. And so the bigger problem, I mean, it is a big problem to have violent rhetoric going on. But it's also a problem to not have discouraging, you know, messages of just saying, like, we don't do this. This is, please don't do this. Don't do this on my behalf. You know, I'll disavow you if you engage in this type of behavior on my behalf. Like, it's pretty simple to knock it back. And the fact that we don't see the sort of people, you know, people in the White House right now actively trying to do that, that's also pretty worrying.
17:40Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, the Rwand example, I mean, the radio hosts were calling the Tutis, you know, cockroaches and talking about how we need to go chop down the trees, which was their code for like, go attack them with machete. So again, yeah, quite overt.
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19:08But it was interesting after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I thought it was great to see like basically every former president come out and condemn it. Obviously, Donald Trump has not, you know, turned down the heat at all. Like how impactful do you think it would be were he to say political violence is bad, I condemn it, don't do this in my name, given the research you have that shows that like sort of any president condemning violence or turning down the temperature tends to have an impact as well? Yeah. So, I mean, I think part of the reason, though, that any president has influence is that we tend to overestimate the degree to which the other side is violent.
19:49So we are always thinking that people on the other side are more violent than they actually are. And so to hear the leader of the other side condemn violence actually is like surprising. Interesting. And so we kind of feel less threatened by them and then we don't have to advocate for violence either. And so it would be against type if he did that, right? I think it would be surprising for a lot of people and I think it would be pretty refreshing to hear that kind of message come from him. I think the good thing is that it doesn't have to be him. It would be great if it was him, but it doesn't have to be him as long as we have like sustained condemnation from other people.
20:25That does help also. That's good to hear. Unfortunately, there are some other arsonists out there. I mean, about a week ago, there was this huge rally in London organized by a far right activist named Tavi Robinson, who's just a hooligan. Elon Musk video conference into it. He said, quote, whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die. He said the left is the party of murder. He also talked about the great replacement theory. What are those comments by our buddy Elon sort of rank in the incitement meter? And how worried are you about kind of the metanarratives, the conspiracy theories, like the great replacement theory when it comes to inciting people?
21:06Yeah, he's really losing it. I don't know what this is like. Even for Elon Musk, this is pretty remarkable. I mean, it's very bad. to the extent that he still has people, you know, he's famous for having like a bunch of fanboys even before he became involved in politics. Like he just has these like very loyal supporters and they tend to be young men, which is the group of people that tends to be the most violent and the most inclined towards violence. So it's not great to hear him kind of using this existential language and really threatening language too, right? It's like you can't escape it.
21:41What he's basically narrating is like, the time has come. And that's absolutely not true, right? We are not in a national war. This is not happening on the streets. And what he's doing is it's honestly making it more likely that somebody else uses violence. Because I mean, I think about, as I was sort of saying before, like, these young men, often, you know, we have a lot of volatile young men and they have very easy access to guns and some of them kind of are kind of ready to do something violent anyway. What language like that does is it tells them where to point their violence. And so it points them in a political direction and aims them at, you know, elected officials or just liberals in the neighborhood.
22:29I don't actually know, you know, We don't know how the violence exactly comes out, but by connecting these violent impulses directly to politics and to an entire political group or category of people, which is half of the political people in the country, it's just extremely irresponsible. And I really hope it doesn't actually end up hurting somebody. Yeah, me too. You've sort of taken a look at the broader structural challenges in our politics and how partisan affiliation has evolved over time to become about our identity more than just sort of a bucket of policy views. Can you talk about that evolution and how it factors into this nastier, you know, kind of zero-sum brand of politics we're all now living with?
23:14Yeah. So I call this social sorting. Basically, after the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, a bunch of conservative white Southern Democrats were very, very, very upset with their own party before passing civil rights legislation. And the thing is, then, there is no way they were going to call themselves Republicans, right? Because, like, in the South, the Republicans were the aggressors in the Civil War. They absolutely despised them. And so it took like a generation for white conservative Southerners to switch parties completely. Basically, their kids had to switch party affiliation. So that was like over 20 or 30 years of realignment.
23:57And then at the same time, the Democratic Party became clearly the party of civil rights. And so people who were into civil rights became Democrats. And then in the 70s and 80s, we had the Christian coalition emerge, which was basically evangelical churches deciding to leave their prior position of just sort of leaving public life altogether. Like they just didn't want anything to do with the secular world until the 70s and 80s when they started to be courted by the Republican Party and realized that they had a lot of potential political power. So now we have racial identities lined up with our party identity and religious identities lined up with our party identity.
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24:35And then in the 80s and 90s, we saw this emerging segregation of partisanship by geographic area. So people in rural areas, like I said, were increasingly Republican. People in urban areas were increasingly democratic. And so we just sort of like piled identity on top of identity on top of identity. And one thing that we know from social psychology about social identities is that we're really, really strongly motivated to want our groups to win. And it feels really good when they win and it feels really bad when they lose. And so what this sort of stacking of identities did is it made it so that our elections were not just about which government policies we wanted enacted.
25:20It was about like, is my party a winner? Is my racial group a winner? Is my religious group a winner? Right. Like, is my whole cultural identity going to be a loser after this thing? And so the stakes of elections grew, not because of specific policies, but because they just took up more of our kind of emotional and psychological space when we think about our status in the world, where we belong, like, are we accepted to people like us? And so that period, you know, sort of, I think I would say it culminated in the early 2000s, and we're pretty much totally sorted by now. There's fewer cross-cutting identities, so we don't know as many people from the other party.
25:58and it just makes it easier to hate each other because we barely know each other at all. It's harder to hate somebody when you meet them at church once a week. Yeah, that is true. Well, can you tell us a little more about like the, I heard you talk about status threat in the social identity theory and sort of the roots of it and how the evolution of the theory and sort of who came up with it because I think it was an important, it was helpful for me to understand kind of where this came from. Yeah, thank you for asking that. No one ever, I'm like, I can talk about the science. So there's a guy named Henri Tajvel, who was a chemistry PhD student in France right before World War II.
26:38But he had grown up in Poland, and he was Jewish. He went to France. He didn't really like studying chemistry. He was super into learning French, though. So he learned French really, really well. Had a perfect accent. And then the war broke out. he decided to join the armed forces and fight the Nazis. And he was not very good at fighting Nazis, and he was immediately captured by the Nazis and put in a prison camp. And he stayed in that prison camp for six years. While he was there, he lied to the guards and told them that they knew he was Jewish, but they didn't know he was Polish. And he told them he was a French Jew, which kept him alive.
27:18He believes that that's the reason he lived through the entire prison camp experience because he saw Polish people being murdered in the camp. He got out. The war was over. Most of his family was dead, had been killed. And he was thinking about like, what do I do? Do I go back and get my chemistry degree? And instead, he decided to start studying intergroup conflict, like what makes people hate each other? Because it was just so amazing to him that the fact that he had lied about which group he belonged in kept him alive. Like it was a matter of life or death, whether he was French or Polish. And it clearly, you know, the difference wasn't real because like they couldn't tell by looking at him.
28:02And that's why he survived. So he decided to study this. And the first step that he took was to say, all right, so we know about groups hating each other. But I want to know when that starts, Like how much competition or conflict between the groups has to exist for them to start being prejudiced against each other? So he started, he was like, I'm going to start with a baseline test where I'm going to use an identity that no one ever had or heard about before. I'm going to assign an identity to people randomly. They're definitely not part of this group because he said, I want you to look at a page of dots and estimate the number of dots you see.
28:40Okay, thank you. You're an overestimator. Some people are underestimators, but you're an overestimator. Brand new identity, never heard of it. And then at the end of the study, he said, we're going to do a money allocation task. So you can decide how to allocate this, you know, this little pot of money that I've given you. And this is a simplification, but basically saying you can either, and we're going to use the overestimator, underestimator thing just for convenience. Like, don't worry about it. We just have to make groups. you can either give$5 to everyone in the whole study. Just every single person who took this study gets$5.
29:17Or the overestimators, your guys, can get$4 and the underestimators can get$3. So you're literally sacrificing the well-being of your group in order to win, in order to be better than the other guys. You've never met the other guys. You've never met your guys. You're just alone in the lab, right? So there's no incentive, normally, rationally, there's no incentive to take the lower amount of money. But this is what people kept doing. And this is one of these experiments that's been replicated hundreds of times. People always choose the condition where they get less money, but the other group gets even less than them.
29:54And so Toshfeld was like, what is happening? I don't understand. He was like, this is supposed to be the baseline, right? So there's something going on here that's really deeply rooted in the psyche. And he developed social identity theory, which basically says that our identities form our sense of self-esteem. And there's almost nothing more important to us than our sense of ourselves in the world. Which seems to undercut every single political theory you hear from progressives, which is like, look, we're going to lift all boats and we're going to make schools better for everybody. And we're going to give everybody health care and all the wages are going to go up.
30:30And in reality, everyone's just like, no, fuck you. I don't like that guy over there or that group over there.
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31:47That feels like an unfixable problem to me. It kills me because the Democrats are constantly like, if we just told you how much we were helping you, Like if we just told you all the facts about the things that you are really interested in, then you would love us. Right. And it's just not how people process information. It's not it's not about the specific hard facts. It's more about how people feel and and whether they feel like they're losing or winning. and they're going to chase the win every single time. And I don't know if you remember in 2016, of course you remember, in 2016 Trump was just like, he used the word winning constantly, right?
32:24He was like, you're going to be so tired of winning by the time I'm done. You're going to be like, please, let's stop winning. He used the word, and it's not because he knows about social identity theory, but I think he does have an instinct for this type of kind of psychological dynamic that we all have where we're chasing the high status feeling. And it's so deeply hardwired in us that we do things that make absolutely no sense. in order to get that feeling. And look, part of the sort of zero-sum political fight problem we have in the United States comes from our history of slavery and Jim Crow and racial segregation against black people.
32:57I think the sort of modern iteration that Trump is using to divide us has come from immigration. And that's not, you know, unique to the United States, right? I mean, the MAGA folks have demagogued immigration. Viktor Orban in Hungary is demagogued immigration. The The AfD party has risen on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. The FPÖ party in Austria, where you're at currently. Did they have the prime minister? They were close, right? Anyway, super far right, scary party running things. How does immigration factor into partisan splits and discord and potential violence, in your view? Yeah. And you're right that, like, immigration is one of these things that just sort of works to turn immigrants into a scapegoat basically anywhere.
33:44It is also racist, though, right? Because it's like it's not the white immigrants that they're really bad about in most places.
33:53What Trump really did, I think, in taking advantage of this in the 2016 election was effectively to say, like, everything sucks. We're all losers. America's a loser. But the reason for it is those people. Right. And if we could just get rid of those people, then we would be winners again. And that is basically a way of saying, like, I know you're not feeling great, but the reason you're not feeling great is because of this group. And this is a, you know, tried and tested method of authoritarians everywhere, populists everywhere to identify a minority, make them the scapegoat, and then make people so angry at them that they forget about the things they really need.
34:33And so instead of thinking about, you know, do we really want a billionaire in charge of a populist party? Like none of those things had to be thought about because or do we really want someone who's going to like get rid of our health care? They didn't have to think about those things because there was this very vivid example of some people who were taking stuff away from you. And it's very simple. It's very emotional. It's easy to understand. And it feels like the solution is easy, too. And those types of stories just land. They always land. And meanwhile, the Democrats over here being like, I want, you know, whatever Hillary was doing, like Alaska for America plan.
35:12Like, trust me, when you hear about this policy, you're going to love it. And like, here's all the details. Yeah, we're reading all the white papers here in America. Yeah, yeah. And meanwhile, Trump is just like, those people are the reason that you don't feel good right now. And so we should go get them together. Yeah. Well, let me channel my inner Bernie for a second, which is to say, like, I could also probably argue, and you tell me if this is right, that political violence is more likely when people feel like the system that we have to solve problems is intractable and broken, right? I mean, politics is what we do to avoid going to war with each other, shorthand, basically.
35:49And when the politics part isn't working, it's going to lead us to war. So aren't these wonky, lame, good government Democrats talking about their programs that benefit everyone? Isn't that part of – isn't that necessary maybe to avoid violent outcomes? I mean, I think doing those policies is, right? But it's like describing an antidepressant to somebody instead of giving them the antidepressant. It isn't the way that these things work. And you have to get them involved and emotional. They need to be part of the story that you're telling about America and about the future and about the things that we could have together.
36:31But you also have to deliver the things. Right. So it's it's having having relief, but it's also knowing actually who is to blame for your suffering. Right. We've convinced rural America has become convinced that Democrats are taking money away from rural America. And that's just absolutely not the case. Right. The people that have disinvested in rural America have pretty consistently been Republicans. I mean, I think you can you can point to Bill Clinton for NAFTA. And like that is the entire explanation that rural America needs to blame Democrats for everything that's that's hurting them. But but in specific, especially in red states, right, like the state governments have just completely deinvested in rural areas.
37:10They don't help them at all. And it's not because the Democrats are evil pedophiles. Right. It's because the state governments have decided that they don't want to tax their people. And so they don't want to spend money to help the people who are suffering. And that's like that's a story where you understand who is to blame for the thing that's really hurting you. But it has to have – like stories need protagonists and they need good guys and bad guys. And you have to be able to explain things to people so that they connect their feelings to whatever it is that you're talking about. Yeah, I mean we learned this the hard way after the Affordable Care Act passed and a bunch of Republican states rejected free Medicaid money to give more people health care in their states.
37:49So is what you're getting at that Democrats need an enemy in this story and need to tell a more coherent story that includes – I don't know, the billionaires, the oligarchs? Like, is that kind of message the solution in your view? Sure. Sure, it can be. I mean, it almost doesn't matter, right? Like, this is what we learned from the Republican Party. They just pick somebody. Pick one, yeah. And usually it's somebody they hate, right? But, and so it's convenient for them. It works really well because it's like, we wanted to get rid of those guys anyway. But it's, I think it's more, it's, there is a game that the Republicans are playing that Democrats are just constantly being fooled into playing along with them.
38:28And so it's like, you know, Trump's immigration platform is super popular. So Democrats can never say immigration is good, right? Like, let's never get on the wrong side of that. And this whole, like, popularist argument, which makes me crazy, which is like, whatever the public opinion is, you got to do that. Instead of, like, admitting that you have leadership abilities, you're supposed to be the leader, right? Like you as the leader are supposed to explain your side of the story instead of constantly taking the losing side of somebody else's story. They're just not. I mean, what's driving me crazy about the Democrats right now is they're just not taking advantage of any of their opportunities to actually like scream right now.
39:09Like things are really bad, you guys. Like this is really scary. And listen, this is what we need to do. Right. This is who's hurting you. This is what we need to do. Let's say it's the billionaire oligarchs. Great. It's a great opportunity to do that because they just turn their backs on Democrats. I actually think that might have been a tactical error. They were donating to Democrats before, and Democrats kind of let them off the hook. Now they're not. So it just feels like they need to have a better sense of their job as leaders. I disagree. I think our leadership is perfect and everything is going great.
39:42No, I'm totally with it. The hardest thing, a couple hard things as a politician these days. One is figuring out when you are trying to shape public opinion and lead people versus be responsive to the people who voted for you, right? Like that's a perennial challenge. But you're right. I think the balance is off big time. But then also, you know, the Democrats who are saying the right things, who are screaming as loud as they can, actually reaching the voters these days in a algorithmic-driven Elon Musk world is a real bummer. Um, I've heard you talk about the political divisions and partisan divides and the way they've become more geographic.
40:13It's not just like red states and blue states. It's like cities and areas within cities that are more Republican and Democrat. And honestly, like, I used to roll my eyes when I would hear liberals be like, I could never live in a red state. I was like, fucking get over yourself. But now the Dobbs decision happened. And it's like, OK, actually, the risks are quite obvious, right? Like, my wife and I had a lot of pregnancy challenges. If she had a miscarriage, would she be able to get that care? Like, that's a very real scary thing for me. This week, you're seeing, you know, Florida, they just got rid of their, you know, vaccine mandate for schools.
40:45Now you're seeing a push for, like, Louisiana and Texas to follow suit. And I worry about those stories for a lot of reasons. Like, I don't want a bunch of kids to get the measles. But also, like, when the stakes go up like that, am I wrong to fear that this could supercharge these divisions that you've written about? Yeah. I mean, I think it's it also calls into question, like, what is a nation? Right. I mean, if if you're if your physical rights as a human being change as you drive across a highway, are you in one country the whole time? You know what I mean? Like it's it changes like it's a very strange.
41:21It's a strange way to think about one country as as sort of depending on which state you're in, you might die or you might not die if you have a miscarriage. And and the or you might die or you might not die if your kid is in school and gets, you know, whooping cough or whatever. And so the I think it not only supercharges the way that we think about ourselves in terms of being Democrats and Republicans, because now we have different rights in whether, you know, whether we're a Democrat living in one state or another. But it makes us feel more disconnected from each other also. Right. It's just like I just don't understand what it's like to live there.
41:57And that's a situation in which it's really, really, it gets harder and harder and harder for us to understand each other and to sort of think of each other with compassion. Because we start, we're having these like really difficult conversations about like, you know, do I want to be alive? Do I want to be able to survive a miscarriage if I'm on a car trip? And both, I think I would probably say that Democrats are furious about the idea that they can't, you know, just drive on a straight line across the country if they want to. And Republicans are furious because they believe that they don't want people to murder babies in their state, right?
42:33It's like the stakes are so high and we're having these very vicious fights. And the idea that what this court has done, what the Supreme Court has done is remove federal protections kind of one by one, which makes our states more and more and more different from each other in terms of the rights they provide to their citizens. It's just making this country more and more fractured. Yeah, it's very scary. All right, we're going to take a quick break. But in case you missed it, Alex Wagner is officially joining Crooked Media. She is a Pod Save America contributor. You're going to hear her doing these episodes on Sunday very soon.
43:04And she's the host of a brand new podcast. She has also joined the latest episode of our exclusive Friends of the Pod show, Terminally Online. It's our loosest, funniest, most unscripted conversation with hosts and staff about the joyous chaos and absurdity of being way too online while producing the shows you love. To get access to Terminally Online and much more, go to crooked.com slash friends.
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44:39When you look internationally at examples, maybe in history of other countries, that kind of things went bad. You know, they devolved into ethnic or political violence. Like, you know, you always hear people talk about before the breakup of Yugoslavia, like people lived as neighbors. and then one day they were battling each other and they just like could not fathom how they got there. Are there like triggers? Are there warning signs? Are there things like that you look for? Well, there's one political science paper that looked at 112 countries and found that, unfortunately, countries where the political divide is lined up along racial, ethnic, or religious divides are 12 times more likely to fall into civil war.
45:23Cool. Yeah. But it's not inevitable. And so, you know, one of the biggest challenges for us right now, I think, as a country is that I don't think that there's been, I think that there's maybe like a couple teeny tiny places that are exceptions to this. But basically, there's been no country where the ethnic majority has become a minority in a peaceful and democratic fashion. Right. And that's happening in the U.S. by 2045. So we have, you know, maybe 15 to 20 years before. I think it's kind of a beautiful thing. There will be no there will be no racial majority. Right. Everyone will be minorities in the United States in like 20 years.
46:06But that process has never occurred peacefully anywhere because people obviously don't want to give up power. And when you start seeing that kind of change, one thing that happens is that democracy breaks down because the majority sees their electoral advantage disappearing. and they therefore don't like democracy anymore. And that, I think, is a symptom of what we're seeing in the Republican Party right now is people basically being like, we can't win elections. You know, we're losing the people battle. And to the extent that we can rig them, we're going to have to do that to set things up for the future when we won't have enough people to vote for our party anymore.
46:44Yeah, the degree to which ostensibly long-held principled positions are just being discarded minute by minute is quite unnerving. I mean, look, I think when it comes to gerrymandering, it is shocking that Donald Trump has demanded that Texas do a mid-decade gerrymander just because he wants five seats and he's overt about it and no one seems to care. Like both sides have been terrible on gerrymandering. You know, like you can look at some pretty ugly maps that are red and blue, but that is new and novel. I have though been, I mean, the one that's really shocked to me has been this week, where like the FCC blatantly intervened and was like, hey, Disney, nice little network you got there would be a damn shame if we had to rip the license away from ABC.
47:26And then they fired Jimmy Kimmel. And you've got a lot of people that ostensibly talked about free speech and cancel culture for their entire lives and careers who are now saying, well, you know, these are just consequences. Yeah, it's really bad. It's unprecedented. And it's not cancel culture, right? It's like government suppression of speech. This is like what people used to think of. People used to say that cancel culture is like a speaker coming to campus and being shouted down, right? So they were canceled. Or it's a professor says something too conservative and they get fired, which, by the way, has never happened.
48:06Or an old tweet gets surfaced, right? Sure, yeah. But then every time I talk to people about this, I'm like, do you know anybody who's actually been fired? Like the number of people actually losing their jobs for the speech that they have made is very, very small. It's prominent. Those stories, you know, those stories are the things that everybody wants to talk about, including the New York Times. They put it all over the place. But it's very rare. This is different than that. This is the government telling our media what they're allowed to say and not say. And the thing that they – also the thing that they punished him for was like not even really very political.
48:42It was just kind of making fun of Trump talking about like construction instead of expressing compassion. But that wasn't even a very – I don't really think that that was a very political thing to say. It was also an objectively weird comment to be like, how are you holding up, sir? Your friend was just murdered. And he's like, check out the construction going on over from my ballroom. This is great. Yeah. Completely bizarre. Yeah, I think that, like, the FCC calling over to a network and saying, fire a guy my president doesn't like, like, that's clear first amendment violation. I think that the cancel culture thing was, like, was overstated in a lot of ways.
49:18I think what people were talking about was not actions by governments or elected officials or Democrats necessarily. They were, like, upset about online mobs and people surfacing things from the past that destroyed lives and careers. And I think where they had a point was people were seemingly given no pathway back. Like there was no way to apologize. There was no grace offered to people. And that is actually a thing I think we did on the left that was uniquely bad and harmful and scary to people that's been course corrected on. I think long term, big picture, like cancel culture has been a both sides thing forever.
49:57You think like gay people haven't been getting canceled by the far right? Like, come on. What are we talking about here? Yeah. I mean, it's also just like it, you know, in the 80s, it was called political correctness. It's a concept that's been around for a very long time. And a lot of it is people just saying, like, I don't want consequences for saying terrible things. And yeah, we can talk about like how fair it is, right, for like a social media mob to like attack somebody. And like that's definitely overwhelming and terrifying. But I think that what was happening in the 1980s was coming out of like the aftermath of the civil rights legislation, where people throughout the 60s and 70s were kind of trying to figure out, like, okay, how do we live like this?
50:35Like, how do we have a society where we're all in the same neighborhoods and going to the same schools? And like, what am I allowed to say? What am I not allowed to say? And that the term political correctness emerged out of that era, where it was like frustration with not understanding the rules anymore, because now all of a sudden, you know, segregation ended and things looked or not ended, but was being remediated and things felt socially really, really different. Yeah. So whenever people ask me, like, are we going to survive this? Are we going to make it? I usually think about the 60s and, you know, the JFK assassination and then Martin Luther King's assassinated and RFK's assassinated.
51:15And like, I can't imagine what it was like to be alive during that time. Like the horror, the fear, the uncertainty, the utter failure of the government to be transparent about what happened. But here, it's 2025, right? We're still a country. We're having this conversation right now. We have freedom of speech. We have democracy. What did they do then to fix things? And what can we do now to like calm things down and kind of reduce the risk of political violence or just like chill people out a little bit? I'm not going to make you feel better. Okay, good. But the difference between the 60s and now is that the violence in the 60s was like there was a lot of it.
51:57It was social chaos. It was related to a number of things that were going on, including the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, right? Things that were happening that were like social upheaval. And so things felt very chaotic and they were very chaotic. But the Democrats and Republicans were not on two different sides of that violence. It wasn't structured along political lines. Well, it was structured on political lines, but not along partisan lines. Because the parties hadn't been sorted yet fully. Right. I mean, you know, the Democrats and Republicans were on both sides of the civil rights issue.
52:30They were on both sides of all of these different things. And so, you know, we saw huge amounts of protest. And, you know, then the 70s, we had these environmentalists, like a violent leftist environmentalist movement, right? Things were just like chaos. us. Now, the violence is organized. And that's what makes me worried, is that it's organized along partisan lines. And that allows violence to be institutionalized in a way that we really don't want it to be. We don't want it to become part of our party system. We don't want it to become part of the way that we think about elections and voting and governing and legislating and making judgments if you're a judge and, you know, deciding on electoral outcomes if you're an election official.
53:11And these are all things that we really don't want violence to become embedded in. And so that difference makes me a little bit more worried than, you know, I didn't live in the 60s. I'm sure it was absolutely terrifying. And our violence right now is not at that level. I think one thing that changed was that in the 60s was that we kind of just settled into some of these new kind of social realities. And we're still dealing, right? I mean, this is, I think, part of what we're living through right now is still coming out of that era because we've made really fast social progress in this country.
53:46It doesn't feel like it because we're humans and we have certain lifespans. But like on a historic level, my mother couldn't get a bank account without her husband's permission until she was 28 years old. Same-sex marriage is 10 years old. The Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020 were the largest and most racially diverse we've ever, ever had in terms of civil rights protests as a country, like things are changing really fast. And the way that I'm kind of trying to think about this era in my mind is that if I were to like, like, you know, 10 years ago, if I were to say to you like, okay, so imagine the U.S.
54:25or 30 years ago, imagine the U.S. goes through a process where we undo a huge amount of the social hierarchy that we've been forced to live with for hundreds of years. and white Christian men are no longer guaranteed to be given preference and priority in every single job and for every single leadership position. What do you think will happen? Do you think the white Christian men will just sit there politely and say, oh no, please, madam, go ahead, take my power? That's not how we behave. We don't give away power. And so my prediction would have been, well, there's probably going to be a big backlash and it might be violent.
55:04Like that's what I would have assumed would happen. And so, you know, this is like the optimistic take here is that we're in that backlash right now. There's no way for us to go through that process without having some kind of fight from the people who used to have the most power. But like, what we get to decide now is whether this is a backlash and we get past it or whether it succeeds and the last 40 years are actually the blip, right? That we had 40 years of increasing equality and progress, and then that just turns into, like, this weird era in American history. But that's, like, it's sort of empowering, right?
55:42Like, it's up to us. We get to decide whether it works. You're right. You did not make me feel better. But I guess what you're talking about is, I think, a very smart, reasonable observation on a structural level. I guess what I'm thinking is, like, to your point you just made, we do have agency here. And we as individuals, I do think we can do things. Like I do think that if you're a progressive or Democrat, posting something about how it was wrong and evil to assassinate Charlie Kirk is like a good thing. Like I was in my feelings after it happened. Charlie Kirk has little kids about the same age as my kids.
56:15And it really hit me hard. Like there was this video of his daughter running up to him on the Fox and Friends set. And I just thought like that. It just really – it like was gutting. and so I just texted or emailed a bunch of people I know that are MAGA media types and I was just like hey you know what I'm so sorry this happened it is like evil it is gutting like I just was thinking of you and I wanted to say this and it maybe felt trite and like I don't know I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do but they were like thank you for saying that it meant something because I also think because we're living in a moment when everyone is seeing the shittiest people on the planet lifted up algorithmically on social media.
56:55And so like maybe just a little human interaction could help that. Yeah, because you would have appreciated it if they had sent something like that to you when, you know, Nancy Pelosi's husband was brutally attacked, right? To just say like, this is not how I want to be living. I want you to know that this is not how I want to be living. And, you know, It would be nice to have a little bit of less asymmetry in terms of the way that we deal with these terrible, terrible events. And I felt the same way. I saw the same video of his daughter. And it's just awful, right? I mean, nobody wants this. Nobody wants to live like this.
57:33And the idea that we have leaders who are encouraging more of this is insane, right? It's actually so deeply unpopular. It's nobody likes this. And so there are, you know, I think that there are real, possibly real opportunities for connecting with other Americans on that sentiment. I think that we all pretty much agree that it's not how we want to live and it's not how we want to treat each other. And it's not how we want our political figures, you know, to be treated rather than, you know, debated with. It's just not how we want to do democracy in this place. Yeah, and it's just I think we all just have to realize that like Donald Trump, the Unity product is not on the shelf.
58:18You know, you go to that store, you can look forever, you're not going to find it. So all we can do is like we have agency as individuals. We can only account for our own actions and influence things ourselves. And so I don't know, maybe trying is worth it. And hopefully we all will. Well, actually, we have more agency than that because a lot of these things are norms, right? These are just social norms. And there's no law that you have to be compassionate about the murder of a political figure, right? It's a norm to be compassionate. And one thing that we've been seeing over the last decade is that our social norms have been eroded so fast.
58:52Just norms of like kind of basic like decency, being a human being to each other. These things, you know, we've normalized like really rude and cruel language. We've normalized, you know, sort of like laughing at people who are suffering. It's something that is entirely socially constructed. And the only way that social norms are enforced and spread is by us, right? It's by people reminding each other that we would prefer not to be hanging out with someone who's behaving that way. And it's that we've lost a lot of that, right? We've lost a lot of sort of our sense of how we want to behave around each other.
59:31It's entirely up to you to be the spreader of social norms in your community and in your society. And every single person has the ability to do that. I think that we've kind of forgotten that we're responsible for those things, too. Very well said. Well, Dr. Mason, thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you for doing this all the way from around the world. I really appreciate it. I'm happy to do it. Thank you so much.
1:00:00If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illick Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reid Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
1:00:32Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
1:00:59We'll see you next time.
From the publisher
What's causing the rise in political violence in America? Can we overcome it? And if not, what’s in store for our democracy? Dr. Lilly Mason, a professor of political science at John Hopkins and expert on political violence, joins the show to give context to this moment — and offer some hope for what comes next. She talks to Tommy about what Charlie Kirk’s assassination means in our deeply polarized political climate, President Trump’s crackdown on late-night comedians and left-wing organizations, and why Americans — on both sides of the aisle — are increasingly struggling to recognize the humanity in their neighbors.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
