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Political violence in polarized US at its worst since 1970s

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“POLITICAL WARFARE”

There’s no official tally of how many Americans die each year from political violence.

Such violence isn’t tracked in federal or local crime data. At least six universities and private research groups document the problem in databases built on news reports, court records, social media and police statements. But their definitions of political violence differ.

Some include police violence and random hate crimes. Others exclude such data. And among the relatively few institutions that track the violence, most haven’t released comprehensive data since 2020.

Guided by half a dozen specialists and academic research, Reuters defined political violence as incidents linked to an election or a partisan political dispute, or premeditated acts driven by an identifiable ideology.

Random hate crimes and violence involving police such as officer-involved killings or aggressive crowd-control tactics at protests were not included.

Reporters used that definition to identify cases from a universe of more than 600 violent incidents since Jan 6, 2021, when a mob of pro-Trump rioters attacked the US Capitol in one of the largest acts of political violence in modern American history.

Most of the incidents reviewed for this story were captured in the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, run by a nonpartisan research group in Wisconsin.

Reporters culled additional cases from court documents, police records and news databases.

Some incidents drew national headlines, such as the attack on Paul Pelosi and a series of shootings targeting Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico in December and January.

Media also extensively covered three mass killings that Reuters classified as political violence – a small fraction of the dozens of mass shootings across the US since the start of 2021.

The US government defines a mass killing as three or more deaths, not including the perpetrator.

But many political attacks were at the community level, aimed at local politicians, activists and random bystanders, and got little public attention. Even those that proved fatal – or close to it – often caused little more than a blip on the national radar.

In all, Reuters documented 140 physical attacks and violent confrontations involving guns, knives, pepper spray, cars and fisticuffs. Some involved rival demonstrators at protests.

Others were individual disputes, such as the brawl that left Shawn Popp dead last year in Florida.

Popp was at a friend’s home, smoking pot, when he got into a heated argument with another visitor, Donald Henry, about Trump’s business skills, according to police reports.

Popp noted that some of Trump’s ventures ended in bankruptcy; Henry blamed the failures on Trump’s business partners. The two began fighting and Henry, who was sharpening a kitchen knife, plunged the blade into Popp’s chest, according to police. Popp staggered outside, collapsed and died.

Henry later told police that Popp had hit him in the face, so he used the knife to “stop the threat.” He has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial on murder charges. His attorney did not return calls and emails seeking comment.

Other cases involved local political figures, such as the attempted killing of Democratic Mayor Craig Greenberg of Louisville, Kentucky, as he campaigned for his first term in office in February 2022.

Quintez Brown, a left-wing social justice activist, barged into Greenberg’s campaign headquarters and fired six shots, missing Greenberg so closely that one bullet grazed his sweater, prosecutors said.

Brown, then a university student, faces federal and state charges for attempted murder and trying to intimidate a political candidate. Brown targeted Greenberg, enraged by his economic policies, prosecutors said.

In the days before the shooting, Brown, who is Black, had tweeted a picture of Greenberg, who is white, in flames with the hashtag “gentrification is violence.” Brown also had written online that African Americans faced an environment of “political warfare” that did not end “at the ballot box,” according to prosecutors.

Three of his former professors lamented the decline of a promising young man when they urged a federal judge unsuccessfully to keep Brown under house arrest instead of jail.

Brown, 22, pleaded not guilty. His attorneys said in court filings he struggled with mental health issues and that they plan to argue an insanity defence.

The Greenberg shooting was notable in part because the perpetrator was a leftwing activist – a rarity in political attacks involving lethal force.

Most of the fatal political violence identified by Reuters was carried out by people who embraced far-right views.

There have been a total of 18 deadly political attacks since the Capitol riot, killing 39 people and eight perpetrators, Reuters found.

In 13 of the incidents, accounting for 34 deaths, the perpetrators or suspects articulated clear right-wing motives or views. Another four people died in four incidents that were political, but not tied to partisan US politics.

These include a May 2022 shooting in which police said a suspect, enraged by China-Taiwan political tensions, opened fire at a Taiwanese church in California, killing one worshiper and injuring five.

Only one of the fatal incidents was perpetrated by a suspect clearly identified with the political left: A case last year in which Robert Telles, a Democratic public administrator in Clark County, Nevada, is accused of stabbing and killing a Las Vegas journalist who had written critical stories about Telles’ conduct in office. Telles has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

A KILLING IN PORTLAND

Threats of violence were nothing new to the handful of women gathered at a street corner near Normandale Park in Portland, Oregon, on a chilly February evening last year.

Veterans of the city’s left-wing social justice protests, they had served regularly as traffic control volunteers and were accustomed to armed right-wing agitators.

But something was different about Benjamin Smith, the bearded, somewhat dishevelled man who accosted them as they gathered to work at a Black Lives Matter protest on the far side of the park.

“He was immediately making specific threats,” said Dajah Beck, one of four women who recounted the events that night in interviews with Reuters.

Smith’s rage was unusually intense, the four said, especially since no protestors were in sight “I’ll shoot you in the fucking head!” he yelled.

As Beck began recording from her motorcycle helmet camera, Smith turned to a woman, identified in court records only as Deg, shouting, “Stay the fuck out of our neighbourhood.”

Another volunteer, Allie Bradley, told Smith they didn’t want to fight. Smith shoved her, the women said.

June Knightly, a 60-year-old cancer survivor awaiting knee replacement, approached Smith on a cane, urging him to go home. Smith shouted at her.

“Push me. Do something. Make me go,” he said, according to Beck’s recording. “You’re not going to intimidate us,” Knightly responded.

Smith pulled a .45 calibre handgun from his pocket and shot Knightly in the face. Then he shot Deg, Bradley, Beck and a volunteer medic who had joined the group and tried to help.

An armed volunteer providing protection at the protest ran towards the gunfire, pointed a semi-automatic gun at Smith and shot him twice in the hip. By then, Knightly was dead.

Deg was paralyzed by a bullet that severed her spinal cord. Bradley, Beck and the medic were gravely injured.

Smith pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder and assault. He was sentenced in April to life in prison.

In an email from prison, Smith told Reuters that the attack “was much less politically motivated than people have assumed.” He did not elaborate.

In the months before the shooting, as protests over police violence roiled Portland and other US cities, Smith went online to vent, making racist and anti-semitic comments and denigrating liberals, according to his posts.

His roommate, Kristine Christenson, said in an interview that he was “tolerable pre-COVID” but “drank the fascist tea” and “threw tantrums,” including shouting about shooting liberal activists. She added that Smith kept several firearms.

Smith’s victims said they see little prospect of easing the cycle of political violence.

“The way the political climate is heating up, I think there are more Ben Smiths out there,” said Deg, now bedridden and on a ventilator. Reuters is withholding Deg’s full name because of her security concerns.

Two of the women, Beck and Bradley, noted that when some progressive Portland protesters and security volunteers began carrying guns to protect themselves from armed rightwing hecklers, conservative media seized on images of gun-toting liberals to further inflame their audiences. “They’re capitalizing on fear,” Bradley said.

Knightly’s widow, Katherine Knapp, used to be anti-gun. She now believes the only way to counter right-wing violence is to threaten violence in retaliation. “De-escalation only works for people who don’t really intend to hurt anybody,” she said in an interview.

“HE WANTED TO BE SPECIAL”

In Ohio, the conflict between Combs and 43-year-old neighbour Anthony King began when King’s mail was mistakenly delivered to Combs’ house starting in 2019, according to the local prosecutor, Pridemore.

In March 2022, Combs walked the mail over to King’s door and blew up, cursing the family and calling them Democrats, the prosecutor said. Alarmed by their neighbour, the family installed a security camera. When Combs stopped by later and apologized to King, the family considered the matter finished – until Nov. 5, when King was doing yard work.

As King, wearing ear plugs, trimmed a hedge with a chainsaw, Combs walked up with a .38 revolver and fired three shots to his head, then put two in his back. King’s wife, Kristen, and their 16-year-old son raced to the back window in time to see Combs returning to his house.

After his arrest, Combs offered a motive to sheriff’s deputies that “was very delusional” and not political, according to Pridemore. Law enforcement has not disclosed the reason. Pridemore said it’s impossible to know what drove Combs.

The King family declined interview requests.

The killing haunts Combs’ friends at Terry B’s, the tavern popular with Trump supporters. Betz doesn’t understand why her friend took a man’s life. She read the same right-wing feeds on her cellphone, scrolled the same Facebook posts, and watched the same cable channels. She said maybe Combs believed people would approve if he attacked his neighbour. “He wanted to be special,” Betz said.

“It breaks my heart,” she added. “A nation against itself can not stand. When we are fighting against each other, we are no good to one another.”

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