Political Violence in the United States: Moving Away From the Precipice Volume 6 - Issue 1

Sukanya Biswas¹* and Poonam Sharma²

• ¹Department of Clinical Psychology, Research Scholar, Amity University, Mumbai, india
• ²Department of Psychology, Assistant Professor, Amity Institute of Behavioural and Allied Sciences (AIBAS), Mumbai, India

Received:October 01, 2021;   Published:October 20, 2021

Corresponding author: Sukanya Biswas, Department of Clinical Psychology, Research Scholar, Amity University, Mumbai, India

DOI: 10.32474/SJPBS.2021.06.000230

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Abstract

The United States has entered into a scary period, where threats of violence against political opponents are becoming normalized. At the national level, only a few Republican members of Congress are willing to speak out against the January 6th attack on the Capitol, even though some attackers called for the lynching of Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Party leaders, who initially denounced the violence have either gone silent (Senator Mitch McConnell) or completely changed their tune (Representative Kevin McCarthy). This failure, on the part of Republican leaders aside from Representative Liz Cheney, has contributed to the normalization of threatening languages and images. At the national level, Republicans are shrugging off Representative Paul Gosar’s posting of an anime video that showed him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Biden. Although Gosar can claim that it is meant as political satire, he must know there are people, who take these suggestions seriously.

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