Polarization and political violence: Rachel Kleinfeld

Let's Find Common Ground

USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

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5 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

Violent threats against members of Congress are up, and hate crimes have increased to the highest levels ever recorded. Fear is being used as a tool by both Republicans and Democrats to win votes. In this episode, we speak with Rachel Kleinfeld, a fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Rachel says people talking across differences isn’t enough to end polarization, even if it can create goodwill and lower the temperature in the short term: there needs to be institutional change and politicians who come together to defend democratic norms. A recent podcast guest in the UK told us it sometimes seems like the US is on the verge of civil war. Rachel says this is unlikely. As someone who grew up in Alaska among neighbors firing the occasional warning shot from their yards, Rachel knows firsthand that ‘threats and justification for violence are not the same as attacks.’

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello. I'm Bruce Bond, Common Ground Committee co-founder and CEO. As you listen to today's episode,
0:06.6	please consider that producing it costs money. If you enjoy this in the other episodes of a
0:11.6	Let's Fine Common Ground podcast series, please make a donation. I'll talk more about this later in
0:17.5	the program. Enjoy the show. Violent threats against members of Congress are up, and hate crimes
0:24.2	have increased to the highest levels ever recorded. Fear of the other side and what they want to do
0:32.0	is being used as a tool by both Republicans and Democrats to win votes. But if we can get
0:39.3	regular people to realize the other side is not bent on taking away their rights,
0:43.2	we're much more likely to see each side upholding Democratic rights and norms.
1:05.4	This is Let's Fine Common Ground. I'm Richard Davies, and I'm Ashley Milntite.
1:11.1	We speak here with Rachel Kleinfeld, a fellow in the Democracy Conflict and Governance program
1:17.6	at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Rachel says people talking across differences
1:23.8	isn't enough to end polarization, even if it can lower the temperature in the short term. Instead,
1:29.9	we need institutional change and politicians who come together to defend Democratic norms.
1:36.5	Rachel grew up a long way from most of us in rural Alaska. Yeah, and she says that experience
1:44.2	of being raised in a place with a lot of opportunity and a lot of guns helped shape her interest
1:50.4	in democracy and conflict. Here's our interview. Let's start with the political danger of our current
1:59.9	moment. A recent guest on our podcast, the former British politician Rory Stewart,
2:05.2	said it seems like America could be on the brink of civil war. Is that taking things too far?
2:12.8	What does your research tell you? Well, I can see why you would think that because Americans are
2:18.1	extraordinarily polarized, we're heavily armed and we have more guns in private hands than all
2:23.6	of the world's militaries combined. And we're seeing extreme levels of targeted violence,
2:28.2	threats against members of Congress are up about 10 fold since 2016. Local officials are being
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