The internet has fractured information sources, with different sources for different people, but the broader political environment remains important in discouraging violence. Reject the blame game, and demand a stop to the violent rhetoric. Debate ideas not people. Just my 2 cents in these unsettled times.

Some politicians want this to be a Reichstag fire moment. I recognize and reject that reasoning. Collective punishment is wrong (and a war crime).

Blame game after acts of political violence can lead to further attacks, experts warn
“Extremism is becoming a salad bowl of ideologies where you can pick whatever you want,” Hoffman said, adding that the increasing number of lone wolf attacks means violence is increasingly unmoored from organizations with clear political goals.

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What’s more important than the attackers’ state of mind, experts stressed, is the broader political environment. The more heated the atmosphere, the more likely it’ll lead unstable people to commit violence.

“What they all share is a political ecosystem that’s very permissive about violence towards political rivals,” Arie Perlinger, a professor of security studies at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, said of recent perpetrators of political violence. “Because politicians are incentivized to use extreme rhetoric and extreme language, that leads to demonization of political rivals.” ...

Hoffman said that in modern history, the right has been responsible for more political attacks on people than the left. He said that’s because left-wing radicals are more likely to target property rather than people, and because the extreme right boasts organizations such as militias.

He added that after Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to overturn his election loss, “there’s a belief in certain quarters that, if you engage in violence, the slate can be wiped clean.”

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