From Protests to Violence: Political Unrest on the Rise?

Written by Matt Haldane

On the 16th of July, former president Donald Trump had a near-death experience after Thomas Matthew Crooks fired upon him from a nearby rooftop. The event came as a major shock to the population of America and the rest of the world, with some saying it was an act of hate towards Trump and the Republicans. 

(Image Credit: National Catholic Reporter)

Fast forward to September 16th, a second attempt on Trump’s life also nearly occurred. Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, about 15 minutes from Trump's Florida residence. After the Secret Service fired shots in the shooter's direction. A member of the public saw Routh running from the scene, but police later arrested him.

These two events have raised the question of politics becoming a violent topic of discussion. With further examples of political events going violent, such as the riots in the UK during the summer over immigration policies and the current wars in Ukraine and Palestine, that seems to be the direction that politics is going.

With the US general election now over and Donald Trump back in office, many citizens are despondent at the news, with some even planning to move countries. In a study conducted by Reuters, they researched the amount of Google searches that the American population searched for after the results of the election were shown and found that “move to Canada” searches rose by 1270%, followed by New Zealand with 2000% more searches and Australia with 870% more searches. (Jackson, 2024)

Number of searches by US citizens to New Zealand a couple of days after 2024 election results…

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the two attacks on Trump’s life show that tensions are rising between the democratic party supporters and Republican supporters. However, this is not a new phenomenon in America. Warwick University professor Lydia Plath said, “Violence is being encouraged, at least to some extent, by one of the candidates and their supporters.” We have seen examples of this, such as the storming of the Capitol building in 2021. 

During that time, Trump took to Twitter/X repeating false claims that the 2020 election result was stolen from him, to which he told his followers to “walk down to the Capitol building [...] You’ll never take back our country with weakness”. Following this tweet, we saw the Trump supporters rally at the Capitol building, eventually storming it. This violent riot ended up injuring many people, from police officers to the general public, but it also resulted in the death of multiple police officers as well. 

(Image Credit: AP News)

It’s not just a one-off thing either in America. Over the seven years from 2014-2020, there was an increase in the number of right-wing attacks in the USA, some of which produced casualties and others that left people injured.

(Image Credit: CSIS)

With violence like this happening in America, other countries may also follow suit. We are already seeing political violence creep up in the UK population. I asked Lydia Plath if she thought political violence was increasing in the UK, and she mentioned how “ we already are – there was violence following the Brexit referendum and again this summer against migrants and asylum seekers – I don’t think it is a coincidence that this happened following the election of the Labour Party.”

With events such as these, political violence seems to be a more common occurrence in this day and age and features in more countries than just America. 

But what is causing this gradual rise?

Social media analyst Alex Krasodomski believes that social media is the root of most of the political problems in recent years. Since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, the amount of political speech has risen on the platform. This is because Musk lifted the ban on political advertising, which was set in 2019, to allow people free speech on the platform. Krasodomski believes that social media is a “foundational piece of political infrastructure” as people are free to spread their political beliefs to the masses, whether it has violent undertones in the messaging or not.

(Image Credit: Financial Times)

This idea that social media is a cause for the new rise in violence in politics is an idea shared with a member of Coventry City Council, as he believes “social media companies still are too under-regulated. They're big, and they're powerful, and because they're a new technology, they outstrip the law, which can happen, but legislation has to catch up.”

With social media helping to incite violent demonstrations when it comes to political conversations, with examples such as the Capitol building riots and the EDL using social media to organise rallies in the UK, there seems to be more bad than good when talking about politics. A simple solution to this would be to get social media companies to start adding regulations in place to protect users from violent and hateful comments or even restrict certain people’s accounts if they spread too much political hate.

UK rioters at Anti Immigration protests (Footage from the Wall Street Journal)

Even if regulations are put in place to try and reduce the political hate and violence on social media, there will always be little groups that will try to ignite a flame under other people's feet. Regulations and restrictions can always be worked around by people, which the individual at Coventry City Council says, “It's always dangerous when small numbers of angry people get to twist the fabric of our democracy”.

With wars still raging on in certain countries and riots happening in others, violence in politics is something that has been building up for a while, and we are now starting to see that built-up pressure start to burst. With many experts claiming that social media is one of the main causes of this problem, should we now start questioning the companies that run these sites to ask if they are doing enough to resolve this worrying issue?

Hopefully, over time, this global problem will get resolved, and we start to see a decrease in political violence, but this may still be a long way off.