Specter of rising political violence haunts 2024 election season: analysis

Matt Welch, a writer for the libertarian magazine Reason, sees worrying signs about potential political violence escalating over the next year.

On one side of the spectrum, Welch notes that pro-Palestinian protesters are blocking highways, causing commuters to lash out in anger while police seem to do little or nothing. Protesters are also showing up at public officials' homes and staging demonstrations.

"There has been violence outside of Democratic Party headquarters, violence outside the Museum of Tolerance, and at least one death resulting from a street clash, for which an allegedly counter-protesting assailant has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and battery causing serious injury," Welch writes.

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All this is taking place as Donald Trump continues to rise in the polls and is still regurgitating the same inflammatory rhetoric as he has in the past, making it very hard to visualize a path to de-escalation.

"If your starting point is that Gaza pre-October 6 was an open-air concentration camp, that immigrants pre-2024 were 'poisoning the blood of our country,' that Trump pre-primary season is deliberately mining Hitler for speechwriting tips, then painting your hands a symbolic blood-red before screaming in the face of baby-murderers almost begins to make sense," Welch writes.

But things don't have to deteriorate the way some fear, according to Welch.

"Just because the political class sneezes doesn't mean the rest of us are obliged to catch a cold."

Read the full op-ed over at Reason.