{"id":31797,"date":"2026-05-20T16:01:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=31797"},"modified":"2026-05-20T16:07:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:07:33","slug":"are-americans-finally-ready-to-denounce-violence-left-right-and-jihadist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/are-americans-finally-ready-to-denounce-violence-left-right-and-jihadist\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Americans Finally Ready to Denounce Violence \u2014 Left, Right and Jihadist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid so much media noise, with social media creating Algorithmic Radicals, spiraling deeper and deeper into violence-inducing echo chambers, many believe the shriller the better. But words matter \u2013 and tone matters too.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Political violence is like <\/span>pollution \u2013\u00a0no matter what the source, it threatens everyone. Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, the great 20th-century sage, explained that Jews still fast, mourning the assassination of Gedaliah ben Ahikam in 586 B.C.E., because \u201cthe enemy was not from without but from within\u2026 It serves as a reminder that we are our own worst enemy when we allow internal strife to eclipse our shared identity.\u201d Nevertheless, this third assassination attempt against President Donald Trump triggered another round of hypocritical attacks blasting political violence \u2013 from the other side.<\/p>\n

On CNN, Dana Bash asked Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who has called Trump a \u201cfascist,\u201d a \u201ctyrant\u201d and a \u201cgangster\u201d guilty of \u201cmurder\u201d: \u201cYou have, as many of your fellow Democrats, have, used some heated rhetoric against the president. And do you think twice about that when something like this happens?\u201d Raskin stunned everyone by sounding stunned, asking: \u201cWhat rhetoric do you have in mind?\u201d Similarly, Trump\u2019s press secretary blamed the assault on the Democrats\u2019 \u201csystemic demonization\u201d of Trump amid a \u201cleft-wing cult of hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not the pathway to healing. Sanctimonious calls for unity in between partisan rants only backfire. Speaking out of one side of your mouth won\u2019t stop this scourge. All must condemn left-wing, right-wing and Jihadi terrorism consistently. Today\u2019s scorching political rhetoric fuels this exhibitionist violence, as indoctrination eclipses inquiry, certainty banishes uncertainty, and demonization discourages debate \u2013 online, on the air and even in too many classrooms.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, with only one in four attending religious services weekly, Americans are replacing their grandparents\u2019 overriding faith in religion with political orthodoxy. Many fill the God-sized holes in their hearts with simplistic slogans shortcircuiting their brains \u2013 and curdling their souls. More and more seek out romantic partners who agree with them politically, while avoiding conversations with those who dare to disagree.<\/p>\n

This polarized environment has even colored how people view the violent acts that recently wracked the nation. Three-quarters of Democrats deemed the 2020 George Floyd protests peaceful \u2013 despite rioting that caused over a billion dollars of damage and killed dozens \u2013 while 54% of Republicans deemed the protests violent. Yet, 81% of Democrats called the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot an \u201cinsurrection,\u201d with 74% of Republicans disagreeing.<\/p>\n

Partisans keep confusing ends and means. Believing in your cause doesn\u2019t require justifying violence carried out in its name. Actually, the most fervent believers carry special responsibility \u2013 they have the street cred among their comrades to discourage violence.<\/p>\n

Instead, while pro-Palestinian groups have been most identified with the dishonorable, nihilistic, antidemocratic (and antisemitic) cry \u201cby any means necessary,\u201d it\u2019s become an all-purpose rationale whenever your allies overreach. We need the opposite. We need Palestinian and Muslim activists condemning anti-Zionist and anti-Western Jihadi terrorism, socialists decrying the December 2024 murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, liberals mourning Charlie Kirk and conservatives condemning attacks targeting Democrats ranging from Nancy Pelosi\u2019s husband Paul Pelosi to Pennsylvania\u2019s Governor Josh Shapiro.<\/p>\n

Instead, too many political leaders and influencers are so angry, they forget that their political rivals are fellow citizens too. In November, President Trump condemned six Democratic lawmakers for \u201cSEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!\u201d Even all the Washington \u201cswamp\u201d talk is rabble-rousing \u2013 swamps are toxic and must be drained.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) shouldn\u2019t have called the duly-elected President of the United States an \u201cexistential threat to democracy,\u201d while her Michigan congressional colleague Rashida Tlaib (D) shouldn\u2019t have branded him a \u201cwar criminal.\u201d And anyone romanticizing the murderer of Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO, or, like the influencer Hasan Piker, invoking \u201csocial murder\u201d to \u201cexplain\u201d it, is part of the problem.<\/p>\n

Amid so much media noise, with social media creating Algorithmic Radicals, spiraling deeper and deeper into violence-inducing echo chambers, many believe the shriller the better. But words matter \u2013 and tone matters too. It\u2019s no better to have Candace Owens calling Democrats \u201cdemonic\u201d than for Bill Clinton\u2019s Secretary of Labor, Professor Robert Reich, to say \u201cDonald Trump poses a threat to civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Nature of Prejudice\u201d (1954), Harvard\u2019s legendary social psychologist, Gordon Allport, studied racism to show how words can kill. His five-point scale built from \u201cverbal violence\u201d \u2013 trash-talking \u2013 to snubbing, discriminating, wounding then killing. With so many angry, lost, broken Americans today, the overheated rhetoric creates armies of rageoholics ready to fight on the street \u2013 or hunt down political enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Long before the Internet monetized today\u2019s aggression-attention economy, America seemed addicted to political violence \u2013 roused by waves of barn-burners. Historians have long speculated about what causes this bloody red-white-and-blue affliction. It\u2019s resulted in four martyred presidents, Civil War, and so many riots \u2013 against immigrants in the 1850s and by immigrants resisting the draft in the 1860s; by antiwar forces and pro-war forces a century later; and by racists against Blacks, and by Blacks against racism, among other manifestations. The violence may come from America\u2019s wild, rollicking, frontier origins; many demagogues\u2019 need to rally around some enemy; the alienation people feel in such a diverse, rootless, mobile, society; or the anxiety they feel amid America\u2019s dynamic but chaotic economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Often, like today, high-stakes clashes over complicated challenges leave even reasonable people worried that their political opponents pose unreasonable threats.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, America also has a rich history of leaders who stirred what Abraham Lincoln called \u201cthe better angels of our nature.\u201d George Washington faced down a potential mutiny with his Newburgh Address in 1783, warning that \u201cthe flood Gates of Civil discord\u201d would only \u201cdeluge our rising Empire in Blood.\u201d By simply fumbling with his spectacles, the aging general broadcast a sense of humility and patriotism that calmed the furies.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1838, Abraham Lincoln\u2019s \u201cLyceum Address\u201d offered a \u201csimple\u201d answer to the great threat that most feared America faced \u2013\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>collective suicide through internal dissension: \u201cLet every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in 1968, still mourning his beloved brother John\u2019s 1963 assassination, Robert Kennedy soothed angry mourners in Indianapolis minutes after Martin Luther King\u2019s murder. RFK proclaimed: \u201cWhat we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

If our leaders, our social media influencers, our Facebook \u201cfriends\u201d cannot model such behavior \u2013 these historical voices must resonate throughout the land. The White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner was filled with Trump Administration officials \u2013 and critics. But bullets, like pollutants, threaten everyone, whether they\u2019re on the wrong side or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Americans need not bury the hatchet \u2013 but we must lower the rhetorical temperature. Jews have long appreciated the power of\u00a0machloket<\/i>, constructive, even if impassioned, debate. The Progressive educator John Dewey was right: \u201cDemocracy begins in conversation.\u201d But democracy only survives when watered with self-doubt, open-mindedness, and respect for our fellow-citizens \u2013 especially when they exasperate us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Published in Jewish Journal<\/a><\/strong>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid so much media noise, with social media creating Algorithmic Radicals, spiraling deeper and deeper into violence-inducing echo chambers, many believe the shriller the better. But words matter \u2013 and tone matters too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-antisemitism-and-de-legitimization","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31797"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31802,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31797\/revisions\/31802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}