Our Own Worst Enemies: Robert Pape on America’s Age of Violent Populism

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Last month, we had the very distinguished American novelist, Kurt Andersen, on the show. His new novel is called The Breakup, and it imagines a future breakup of the United States, which is triggered in many ways by what Kurt calls low-level violence. Many others think of a potential American civil war in terms of very high-level violence. Some of you may have seen, Alex Garland's movie, Civil War, in 2024, which imagines a full-blown civil war in the United States, which results in its breakup. Garland and Andersen, of course, are fictional artists. My guest today is very much focused on the facts of violence. Robert A. Pape has been teaching violence and researching it at the University of Chicago for the last thirty years. He heads up at the university the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, and he has a new book out today, Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism. He's joining us from Chicago today. Robert, congratulations on your new book. I'm not sure if you ever saw Garland's movie or had a chance to read, Kurt Andersen's book about, the breakup, which imagines a post-union United States. But what comes first, Robert? The theory, the ideology, the disagreement, or the violence?

00:02:10 Robert Pape: Oh, absolutely. What comes first is major political violence. And I think that this is what is very important to understand is that although, of course, we can talk about a future civil war and we can talk about the, United States breaking up, that's a future that is certainly out five or ten years from now. That's not happening in the next few months, here. That's not happening in the next year. But that doesn't mean what's happening in the next few months and next year don't matter. You see, if we have another January 6, and this time it could be by either side, then that doesn't mean we're having the civil war scenario. It does mean we're well underway to ending our democracy. So we need to understand that the real threats to democracy are not fictional threats. They're not five or ten years out, but they're right here, coming in front of us. And democracies don't die silently, sleepwalking. Democracies die by going through periods of pretty serious political violence. That's what I call the era of violent populism that we're now in, and this is right in front of us. This is not a danger that's five or ten years away. This is not, something we have to hypothesize about. This is something that's right here now, and that's why it's important to focus on the here and now. And we're about to come to probably the most dangerous elections in our lifetimes, and that's only six weeks away.

00:03:49 Andrew Keen: Well, we'll talk about those elections in a few minutes. As you know, the subtitle of your book is America in the Age of Violent Populism. Don't need me to tell you, Robert, that the history of America is very much one of violence. You're a researcher. You're a quantitative fellow. You've been doing your research and counting up the violence. Is America today more or less violent than it's been historically? I mean, of course, it experienced its own remarkably violent civil war as well.

00:04:23 Robert Pape: Yes. Well, so, of course, we can look at the American Revolution two hundred and fifty years ago, the American Civil War a hundred and sixty years ago, and say, well, we have a history of— what— no. No. No. We this is a wrong set of benchmark. It's all true, of course, and, that's I'm not saying those facts are wrong. What we have typically experienced for decades is, violent extremism, political violence, hate against African Americans, against Jews, against immigrants that has been on the fringe. Think of it as a fringe, and that hate is still with us today. I don't mean to say it's gone. But, what we're experiencing in the last six or seven years is another level of violence beyond that. And, that is the era of violent populism. And, it's happening on both the right and the left. And, it's not quite historically unprecedented, but we haven't seen this level of violence, political violence, since the nineteen sixties. So it is historically, not quite unprecedented, but truly historically high. And those are the dimensions I wanna talk to you about.

00:05:47 Andrew Keen: Go back to the sixties then, Robert. What happened then, and how does it compare? How did the twenty twenties compare to the nineteen sixties when it comes to violence and maybe what you call violent populism?

00:06:00 Robert Pape: Yeah. So let's go back to the nineteen sixties, and there were two there were string of assassination attempts. You have to remember Martin Luther King assassinated, Bobby Kennedy, then a Democratic pres— candidate for president assassinated before the election. And, also, there were strings of violent protests. So in cities, in what are called at the time, they were called the ghettos in the cities, especially in northern cities, there were strings of Black riots that had emerged, and they were demanding political representation. Then also and this is in the late sixties. These are both in the late sixties. In the late sixties, you had strings of anti-war political violent protests. And these actually both string both of these came together in Chicago, the city where I live, in downtown in, the, nineteen sixty-eight Democratic convention, here, which was the most violent convention we have ever had in our country.

00:07:10 Andrew Keen: So that, of course, was, as you know, the violence orchestrated by Mayor Daley at the time. That was state violence. How do you distinguish between the violence of the state, of the Chicago police, and the violence of individual assassins, or the violence of gangs, the violence of looters. Are they all political? I mean, when you think of—

00:07:31 Robert Pape: No. No. No. No, Andrew. It's not quite right. So first of all, absolutely. When Mayor Daley gave the shoot-to-kill order, that is political violence by the state. But that is that's not the only violence that happened here. And so I don't mean to diminish the political violence by the state. I'm not doing that, Andrew. But what and the book will lay out the political violence that is bottom-up, the political violence by the state now, which is largely ICE political violence against Democratic protesters, whole chapter on that in the book. So, Andrew, it's not that see, what tends to happen in our conversations is we tend to focus on one element of the era violent populism that we're in as if that was the whole thing. What this book is doing that's different is laying out the whole layer cake, the whole layer cake, which is what is much, much more disturbing picture, you see. And as in the nineteen sixties, where you saw, violent protesters, here and then, violent political assassins and then also political violence by the state, that cocktail, Andrew, is on full display in the last six years in the United States. And that's what is the era of violent populism because what's happened is political violence has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. And the number one fact that's so critical to explain it all is that we have today tens of millions of Americans on both sides of the aisle that support political violence. And what that means is, if you are, outside of— out of office, the political violence that's coming from the left, in the form of this five to 7% of the protests during the George Floyd protests in the summer of twenty twenty that were violent. And, also, keep in mind, that's five to 7% of 28 million people protesting in the summer of twenty twenty. So that's not a trivial number. You see that. And then you also see January 6 political violence, but let's also come more recently to violence by the state. So we talk about, ICE using political violence against, democratic protesters, say, in Minneapolis. Absolutely the case. Two dead protesters here that should not be dead. But how does that connect to that support for political violence I just mentioned? Well, we need to understand there are tens of millions of Americans and we've surveyed America. We— 20 times. We know a lot about this. There are tens of millions of Americans who support President Trump using violent force against Democratic protesters. So this isn't just a handful of case of some rogue handful, Border Patrol. There are a couple rogue, and once we get rid of them, we're all good. No. You've got tens of millions of Americans supporting President Trump for this.

00:10:58 Andrew Keen: So, yeah. So that's the chilling, Robert. Yep. Before we get to these tens of millions on both sides of the aisle, I'm quoting you, so both on the left and the right. Yeah. Did that exist in the sixties? Were there similarly similar kinds of numbers? Are we talking about millions of Americans who supported political violence of one kind or another?

00:11:21 Robert Pape: Absolutely. And then in the sixties, although there were pockets of use of political violence by the state, and really, I'm not trying to diminish that, most of the political violence that occurred was by the left. And it was also supported by the left. Again, it's the Black riots in hundreds of Black riots, by the way. These are not just three or four. Going on over five years, these have all been, you know, chronicled by scholars for decades. The book has whole chapter on the nineteen sixties to lay out, all of this. And then also the anti-war political violence that was occurring, and there it's violent protests, and also the Weather Underground, which was effectively a terrorist organization conducting 20 bombings of the Pentagon and other sites to protest the war. Bombings, I'm talking about, here. And at the same time, we have Gallup surveys. We just as I'm doing national surveys now of support for political violence in the United States, we have those surveys in the nineteen sixties. I've gone to the lengths to collect all of this so we can really get the full picture of what was happening in the nineteen sixties. And it was a it was an era of violent populism mostly from the left.

00:12:42 Andrew Keen: So just to be clear, so what you're saying is in terms of your research, the violence on the left was supported and to some extent on the right in the sixties was supported by millions of Americans.

00:12:54 Robert Pape: Oh my God. For sure. Without a doubt. With and you'll see this laid out in detail, numerous, survey after survey. And, see, a lot of people remember the nineteen sixties, the first five years of the nineteen sixties, which were basically peaceful demonstrations for the civil rights movement, which were incredibly successful, by the way. We got the 1964, 1965. We got the civil rights legislation in '64 and '65, and that's coming from a little bit like our No Kings protests that have been occurring from virtually a 100 percent peaceful protest after peaceful protest after peaceful protest. However, there's another five years to the nineteen sixties. That's the back half of the nineteen sixties. That's 1965, to actually, the 1971. So it goes a little bit beyond the '60s. But this much, much more violent. That's the chaos. That's the actual violence. And notice, it actually, doesn't we're fortunate that the civil rights legislation was done as early as it was because it's the peaceful democracy and democratic movements, they were highly productive. The violence, that's another story. So—

00:14:15 Andrew Keen: I know that a lot of political scientists and historians suggest that you often get revolution and violence when things get better. Why before we get to the violence, the contemporary violence, which is the subject of your book, our own worst enemies. Why did we have this eruption, not just the violence, but of millions of people supporting the violence from the mid sixties onwards after the passing of civil rights legislation.

00:14:46 Robert Pape: It's—

00:14:46 Andrew Keen: Why did people begin to— is it because, in their view, the system didn't work? It was illegitimate? Or they just had no idea— no other peaceful idea of how to fix the system?

00:14:58 Robert Pape: Well, there's elements of truth to those phrases that you are using. That's why those phrases, stay around. What I'm showing is there's a framework you can really understand this, though, in a much more robust and solid way, which is it's rapid social change, Andrew, that is outpacing the political establishment, which is leading to the political violence. There's a gap, you see, between the rapidity of the social change and the political institutions, which is why, as you said, it feels like the establishment is out of sync. It's not working. Well, it's not just in general. That wasn't true, even in the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties, by the way, that was not true. It was really true in the nineteen sixties because of rapidity of social change. And, by the way, although the details of the social changes are different in our era today of violent populism, it's still the rapidity of social change. This is what's really driving and breaking us apart.

00:16:03 Andrew Keen: So— so that's, yeah. So I wanna come to that rapid social change and the gap that exists today. But is, Robert, is the reason why the violence of the sixties, it didn't completely go away, but it calmed down between the sixties and today until we have this new eruption, that the establishment caught up, that gap you talked about created by rapid social change went away. How can we explain Yeah. The I mean, we see the sixties and today as the bookends, but what about the period between those bookends? Yeah. No. That's why we have a reaction in violence.

00:16:50 Robert Pape: No. That's it, Andrew. So you're putting your finger this is what the book is laying out. So you're following my logic here. And, this is what the chapter on the '60s is pointing out. It doesn't just explain the origins and depth and breadth of the violence, but why it ends. And, that's really important to see. And, basically, you're right. So what the two social changes that occurred that were so critical was, number one, the Great Migration of Blacks, African Americans, from the South to the northern industrial cities, in the, starting in the nineteen fifties. This is a post World War Two phenomenon. It's the biggest movement of population in our country in our history, by the way. Anyway, big a big movement moves to the northern cities and but what happens when the Black population moves to the northern cities? They're not getting political representation. That's when in 1964, Malcolm X publishes his famous and this is part of a speech he gave called The Ballot or the Bullets [ed.: the speech is "The Ballot or the Bullet"]. Because what he's explaining there is you've got underrepresentation by vast numbers of people. I wait through I walk through the city of Chicago example in the book. But vast popular where although the population has changed the composition in, say, like, for example, the city of Chicago, by the mid nineteen sixties, there's no Black mayor. The aldermen, there's only two of this is grossly, grossly disproportionate to the representation of the now vast Black population in Chicago. And there's a second social change that happens in the nineteen sixties, 1965. And it's not so much a new law is we have the Vietnam War, which then makes conscription. See, Vietnam War is not just an unpopular war. We are literally drafting, millions to go and fight in that war, and one in ten are going to either die or be maimed for life. Think about that, Andrew. Well, many of those who we draft are who? Disproportionately the poor, unrepresented Black Americans. Now and not just Black. I wanna also point out. But what you are seeing is those social changes come together powerfully, and, oh my goodness gracious, do they touch off a wave of violent populism, and it's a complex wave. I explained the mosaic of the violence in the book. But then, why has it come to an end in the mid 1970s? Why does that happen? Well, number one, with the Vietnam War, we don't just end the Vietnam War, Andrew. We end the draft. We literally haven't had a draft in our country since 1973. Just think about that. And that changed everything with that element of the political violence, obviously stopping a lot of that anger. But something else happened, which is we did get greater representation for minorities and Blacks. We start the Congressional Black Caucus that we talk about so much today, that starts in the early 1970s. Black mayors, Atlanta, Detroit, numerous other cities, that starts in the 1970s. So, fundamentally, what happened in the 1960s is you had rapid social change. The political system could not, manage that, keep up the establishment. That's why the Man was the problem. Well, it changes, and that gap closed. It's not perfect. Things are still not a perfect representation. The book will lay that out. I'm not trying to, you know, whitewash anything. I'm just trying to point out that's real reason why violent populism occurred when it did, why it occurred in the late 1960s and not in the late 1940s, for example, and also why it ended when it did. And, that's very important because that tells us a lot about what we're going through, different, specifics, but, also, it gives us a little bit of hope. Right?

00:21:09 Andrew Keen: Yeah. It gives us a great deal of hope. But before we get to that hope, Robert, we gotta we gotta know more about what's changed. So you talked about the rapid social change and the gap that existed in the sixties. Explain the because America has always been the engine of rapid social change ever since its beginnings, what has happened over the last, what, fifteen, twenty-five years to inaugurate a new period of rapid social change and this gap to create a new age of violent populism. Is there a date you begin this new period?

00:21:48 Robert Pape: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I there is. It's about ten years ago, and I'll explain why exactly here. And notice, I'm gonna have to, I'll slightly be revising a little bit. When you say the word always, Andrew, let I'm actually following this more specifically. So the first there are two social changes that matter. Change number one is a demographic shift where America, for the first time in its two-hundred-and-fifty-year history as a country, is transitioning from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy. For all our history, this was also true in 1776 when you take into account the slaves. So I understand the different issues. And the book will trace this out. Our population has been well over 80% non-Hispanic white. 1990, to give you a date, we are 76% non-Hispanic white in the United States. That was 1990. Today, we're 57% non-Hispanic white. In another ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years, depending on what? Immigration and deportation, and now you're starting to see why that's the lightning rod issue, then will become a true white minority democracy, a true multicultural democracy. And that social change right now, we're going through the tipping point generation. And understanding that helps to explain a lot the meteoric rise of Donald Trump when he came down the escalator. He's not just a reality TV star. There's a lot of those. He made immigration his signature issue. And why did that catch on? It caught on with a lot of people in the Republican Party. They're now called the MAGA, who want to and not everybody votes for Trump who agrees with this, but our poll show huge faction do, that want to slow down and reverse this demographic transition. That's why Trump made immigration the border his number one issue. That's where his popularity on the right came from, and that's why there's a huge popular move for deportations from the MAGA now at the same time, the very rise of Trump, it was produced a lot of anti Trump energy, but it's not just anti Trump on this or that. It's literally coming from people who like on the left this change. They think it should continue. Some of them think it should speed up. And so that, rise of Trump, it's not just Trump derangement in some, you know, like, it I don't know what to say, a personal sense. This is a representation of the demographic shift. The and why is this such a controversial issue, Andrew? Because that demographic shift, it's historic, and it's gonna change politics and the landscape of our politics going on for many generations.

00:25:09 Andrew Keen: I take your point, and it's a very interesting argument, although some people might wonder why this didn't get triggered during the presidency of Barack Obama. But that's another question. So you talked about the first thing. So I take your point, Robert.

00:25:26 Robert Pape: Can I give you a real answer to that, Andrew?

00:25:28 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Absolutely.

00:25:29 Robert Pape: Yeah. 2012 is when, for the first time, children 18 were more likely to be born non-Hispanic, more likely to be born, not non-Hispanic white. That is where you really see the shift. So the real you can really date this. See, this is not something again, I'm not giving you know, sort of hand waving answers here. I'm giving you stuff that actually is rooted in the empirical trajectory. And so we can give actual answers to some of these questions, which is why the tipping point generation starts in 2012. It's gonna build in 2015, and it's going. Yeah.

00:26:10 Andrew Keen: It's going. And for people just listening, Robert is not waving his hands. So, Robert, okay. So we've— I'd—

00:26:18 Robert Pape: So this is change number one. There's a second—

00:26:21 Andrew Keen: So that's my follow-up because you're very disciplined here. What's the second major social change?

00:26:28 Robert Pape: Side by side with this demographic has been a— the wealth shift. So starting as we now know, and we all focus on this a lot with the affordability crisis, starting in the late nineteen eighties, America has shifted wealth to the top 1% of Americans. We have shifted something on the order of 10% of our wealth that used to be in the bottom 90% to the top 1%. And that's happening to the top 1% who are Democrats and Republicans. So this is a true wealth shift. You see what I mean? And what that's doing is that is creating a negative-sum society for most of America. It's not a negative-sum society just for poor people. It's not even just for blue collar people. It's for middle class people. If you make $100,000 a year, you're losing ground year by year by year. Your prospects of being as well off as your parents, if you merely make $100,000 or a hundred is going down fast, and that's because we've shifted so much wealth. Both parties have done this. This has been going on for decades. Democrats did this. Republicans did this. Nobody's taken money away from their rich donors, and that is a poisonous cocktail, Andrew. You put that demographic shift where you're already upsetting the politics apple cart with the wealth shift, where you've got more and more people angry on both sides of the aisle with the political establishment who's basically walling them off from homeownership. I mean, homeownership, you gotta be 40 years old or older. Yeah.

00:28:33 Andrew Keen: We did a show last week on the crisis of homeownership. So many of our viewers and listeners are all too familiar with that.

00:28:40 Robert Pape: Well, and my point is what the thing we're not seeing is that's leading to violent populism. These are not unconnected. Do you see violent populism is in the mainstream, Andrew. So it's the mainstream issues, identity politics, the wealth shift, the top 1%. Those are the sources of what's leading to the violence in America.

00:29:04 Andrew Keen: So, Robert, I think some of our viewers and listeners might be surprised with the fact that you've talked about what you call this poisonous cocktail. To make it even more poisonous, of course, we live in the age of the Internet, of social media, of the crisis of mainstream media, I'm in a way surprised that you wouldn't have added, in terms of rapid social change, this profound technological revolution, which, of course, didn't exist in the sixties. I assume you cover it in your book, but is it not as important as either the shift in demographics and the shift in wealth in the United States?

00:29:44 Robert Pape: That's right. It's not independently important the way it's often portrayed, Andrew, here. And it's like pouring gasoline on a fire. So if the fire is already going and you throw gas on it, well, of course, it's gonna be a bigger fire. But the problem is the underlying fire itself. And a big part of the reason here why I say that is because we know we can look at the age cohorts of who supports political violence. We can look at their social media consumption versus others, and it's just not what people want it to be. I mean, people would like it to be that the only people who support political violence are people who are on social media eight hours a day, ten hours a day. They're getting brainwashed in their parents' basements. And if that were true, this—

00:30:34 Andrew Keen: would be in their underwear, of course, Robert.

00:30:37 Robert Pape: No. That's right. And if that were true, then, Andrew, this would be a fringe phenomenon. It would exist. The violence would exist, but it would be a much smaller layer in this layer cake. We have a much the average age of the folks, at January 6 who stormed the Capitol, Andrew, was 42, just to put it that way. Not 22. 42, to put this. So what you are seeing, Routh, the second Trump would-be assassin, 58. So you were not seeing the— these arguments, which I think are just very convenient. You see? Because we can all kinda agree we're gonna complain about social media. And notice nobody's actually doing anything about social media change. You got a lot of people doing clickbait, including in Congress on this. I don't see any actual movement. I see a lot of people doing clicks. That's what I see. And it's what I think is that it's the easy, easy thing to use as the whipping boy here because we can all kinda talk about it. It's kinda polite company. We don't have to get into the social change issues that are actually at the core of this, and therefore, we don't actually fix anything. We're not fixing anything.

00:31:52 Andrew Keen: You've mentioned January 6, which, of course, was an insurrection on the right. Mm-hmm. The Proud Boys very much bound up without a very violent movement.

00:32:03 Robert Pape: Well, actually, the data is not right quite right. Only one in ten of the 50— so, again, I've spent with research teams. We spent years studying each and every one of the 1,575 people who were prosecuted for January 6. And what you're showing with the Proud Boys here is the standard stereotype starts on the second day, the actual day here by the media. It's just wrong. And the reason it's wrong is only one in ten of those prosecuted for January 6, including one in ten of those who beat cops. One in ten are Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, members of other militia groups. And we are virtually certain of that number. And you're going to say, how could you be so certain? It's because when you go through the court system and you're prosecuted, we didn't just track and kind of do a quick Google search. We're reading with our research teams all 100,000 court page documents of this. And when you go through sentencing in our court system, Andrew, both the defendant and the prosecution are digging up all of your background because that's what goes into sentencing. So if you're a member of one of these militia groups, man, does that come out in the States.

00:33:22 Andrew Keen: Okay. So, like I said, I take your point, and it's an interesting point that January 6 was not dominated by—

00:33:29 Robert Pape: Do you know who really dominated January 6? Who? 45% were doctors, lawyers, CEOs, State Department employees, intel executives. Dentists.

00:33:44 Andrew Keen: I bet there were some dentists there. Were there, Robert?

00:33:46 Robert Pape: Dentists were there, and you—

00:33:47 Andrew Keen: —were there. Your doctor or your dentist these days. But my question no. I take your point, and it's an important point. But our audience skews to the left, I think. I'm certain. Well, that's— hold on. Let me ask this question. No. I take your point. I know you there is violence on the left as well, the Kirk assassination, the assassination attempts on Trump. But some people might be listening to this and saying, well, Robert talks about this rapid social change these days, shift to a multicultural America, inequality. And then most of people on the left talking about this, from Bernie Sanders to AOC to Mamdani, they're not violent. They may be populist. So where's the violence, Robert, on the left? You've talked about tens of millions of on both sides of the aisle. What where is this violence?

00:34:39 Robert Pape: Yeah. Well, first of all, George Floyd protests, summer of twenty twenty. That's five to 7% of the protests were violent. That's nearly 600 protests occurring for months in the top 100 cities. So that's not coming from the right, Andrew. And if that's a while—

00:35:00 Andrew Keen: But was this violence political, or was it mostly—

00:35:04 Robert Pape: Oh, for sure. So absolutely, Andrew. When I say a political protest, I am separating out the looting that also occurred, the smash-and-grabs that also occurred. So with my research teams, and this is not just me. We have other groups on both the right and the left that have done this, by the way, here. We our research teams during the summer of twenty twenty at this— at the University of Chicago, we tracked the protests and the violence, including the looting separate from the political violence, day by day by day for the top 50 cities in America. I had 30 students. We were able to do this— thirty hour— each of them worked thirty hours a week, by the way. They were more than what they wanted to find out what really happened. So when I'm talking about this, again, there's much, much more that we know now than we knew in the summer of twenty twenty. And then let me give you a second instance. You might say, okay, Professor Pape. You're right about those five to 7% of the George Floyd protests that were, defund the police, etcetera, etcetera. Just right up there with chants and protests. But what about what's happened recently? Well, let's talk about what's happened since October 7, especially on college campuses. Those protests, which were storming buildings, now they're not quite as violent as the George Floyd protests. The book will make that clear as well. But those, protests that affected nearly a hundred universities over months in both the fall of two thousand twenty-three and the spring of two thousand twenty-four, those protests are not 100 percent coming from the left, but they are 75% coming from the left. And why do I know that? Because I was able to conduct at the expense of $300,000— so this is, I'm fortunate to be at the University of Chicago. This book represents millions of dollars of research, Andrew. So I was able to conduct the largest survey of American undergrad— current undergraduates, in the middle of the October 7 protests on college campuses. 5,000 current undergraduates, the largest ever since. Nobody's ever done this big one because it's so expensive, here. And so what we were able to do with 5,000 and then— 5,000 is we could ask lots of questions about exactly that not just their attitudes, but what did they do? Did they go to the protest, talk about your political background, etcetera, etcetera. So I'm explaining, this is stuff that really isn't known, Andrew. And it's not just that, oh, yes. You know, that there's something I've heard somewhere. This is really why I spent five solid years on the book, and it's five solid years of robust information about what's really breaking our country apart. And this is what's really important to know. And I think people are hungry, Andrew, for the substance, here.

00:38:18 Andrew Keen: I mean, everyone likes it. Certainly, they're hungry to fix things. Robert, let's end with some potentially good news. You noted that, the good news about the sixties is that they ended and that the rapid social change in this gap between the political establishment and society grew smaller. Is that what we need to think about in terms of making America in the age of violent populism less violent? Do we need to address the two issues that you brought up? One, I think, is certainly addressable. One is, inequality. So that can come through economic reform, maybe changes in taxes, maybe some legislation and regulation on AI in Silicon Valley. I'm not entirely sure, though, how you deal with the other—

00:39:10 Robert Pape: —demographic one.

00:39:12 Andrew Keen: Are Americans just gonna come to— sorry. Let me just finish the question. Are Americans simply gonna come to terms eventually with the reality that whites are in a minority and that's just the nature of twenty-first century America?

00:39:25 Robert Pape: They will eventually with assimilation twenty, thirty years from now, but not in the next two years, not three years, here. But there is rather direct thing, and you say most of the audience is from the left. The key policy on, immigration is the Obama era policy. So one of the reasons why we didn't see violent populism under Obama is because, Obama had extremely balanced, bright approach, I believe, to immigration. He wasn't stopping the demographic shift. But at the same time, he was managing it better than we've seen anybody else manage it. Jeh Johnson, his DHS secretary, was absolutely the best, here. And I've looked at all of this over these, you know, thirty years to see how all the different presidents and their, DHS secretaries have handled this. And President Obama was the best. And what was President Obama's policy? It was number one, keep immigration going. That's for sure. Remember the Dreamers? Well, that's an Obama era, program. Number two, keep it moderate. Keep it moderate. No open borders under Obama. Number three, deport the worst of the worst. That was Obama. So you look at that collection of policies, that actually makes sense because when you have the more moderate pace, you end the worst of the worst, you don't have the burst of the open borders as we had under Biden, what you end up with is an opportunity for adjustment and assimilation to change. And if you simply demand absolutely instant change, well, that's how you got the actual problems in Lebanon that went for decades and decades. So you can't I've studied demographic change as a source of violence around the world. It's not just unique to America. Here, it happens in other countries, but the rapidity of the change is really important. And so, yes, there are actual solutions that are, right out of the Democratic Party playbook. President Obama so if we would simply adopt his eight-year program going forward, this would solve 70% of the complaints on the right. This would, be going right back to things that worked. This would be delay you would delay that transition to the white minority by, probably five or so seven years. So it would delay it a little bit. But the bottom line is you wouldn't be breaking the country apart.

00:42:09 Andrew Keen: And then let's get to the issue of economic inequality. How does that get addressed? Through the left seizing power, the right populism? Who's best positioned to change that?

00:42:23 Robert Pape: I don't think I think we need to so there's another piece of good news here, Andrew, and this is a good time to talk about it, which is there's a great untapped source of strength, and stability for our country. It's the seventy percent of Americans who abhor political violence. So I in the book and also in our we just did a survey two weeks ago, so this is in line with this. We see the large, minorities, but these are substantial minorities in the mainstream that support political violence on both the right and the left. But there is a good news story that we don't lean into enough in our country, and this is what I really lean into, Andrew, which is the 70% of our country who the population, and this includes all races. I mean, so many people, rich, poor, who abhor political violence. And we don't lean enough into those folks. And this is important. So this is why I do a book to reach out to the mainstream, not just do another book to, you know, sort of make another leg up on the academic rung. That's not what I'm this is a book for the 70%, Andrew.

00:43:42 Andrew Keen: Not for the 30%, of course, of the what you call the tens of millions on both sides who are—

00:43:47 Robert Pape: Well, I hope they read it too and understand where they're taking our country. But the 70% in the middle here are in the most important resource that's untapped. And I believe once we raise consciousness to the 70% in the middle, it's not just them learning and learning more about this through the book. It's then I'm encouraging them to go and send emails to their representatives because I've spent years with representatives in Congress on both the right and the left on this issue. And I'm telling you, what a politician is, first and foremost, is a politician. And what a politician cares about, first and foremost, are their constituents' attitudes, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So—

00:44:35 Andrew Keen: But coming back to— I take your point. But coming back to the inequality issue—

00:44:39 Robert Pape: Yeah. I'm getting there. I'm trying to get there. So is it— How you're gonna solve this is not through some new law or some magical institution, because the bottom line is right now, the squeaky wheel getting the grease are coming from the billionaire donors to both sides. How you change that is the 70% need to be the squeaky wheel. And that not calling for violence, not the not reproducing the 30%, calling for their representatives to actually change the tax code. And I'll give you one example of how you could change this, here, but the billionaires would never go for it. But we could get this through, and I bet it would be 80% popular, a flat tax. A flat tax. And you could even grandfather and say a flat tax over $30,000 a year. Whatever you make over— under $30,000, no tax whatsoever. Over $30,000 a year, it's the same tax for everybody. No, break on your home, no charitable deduction here, and you start to work on that. And in that direction, now you're talking real change. Remember Warren Buffett said he pays less tax than the woman who cleans his house? Well, that would change here in a heartbeat, Andrew, but it's not gonna change if all we do is we elect. We have an election, and then the we just go back and say, well, I'm sure our mem our representatives will do the right thing. No. They're gonna listen to their donors. How do you fix that? You fix that by talking to the 70%, Andrew. That's what I'm saying.

00:46:27 Andrew Keen: You have a University of Chicago colleague. I'm not sure if you know him. Eric Zwick. He's the author of a new book about the millions of millionaires in America. He writes about the 3 million millionaires in America who make up the bulk of American wealth. So it's not just taxing the billionaires who aren't—

00:46:45 Robert Pape: Oh, there's no— I would go [unclear]. I'm sorry. I try to do it and, you know, I'm always being encouraged. Say things with fewer words, Andrew. So I would go for the 3 mil— He's exactly right. I don't really you've got it exactly. Thank you for allowing me to give some praise to a great professor at the University of Chicago.

00:47:07 Andrew Keen: Two more brief questions, Robert. It's a fascinating argument. Firstly, you just gave us the good news about how some of this stuff can be fixed, going back to Obama's immigration policy, writing to your local your senator or—

00:47:26 Robert Pape: And not just once. You stay on them—

00:47:28 Andrew Keen: because they got access to the house. Your point. So immigration policy and economic policy, I think makes a lot of sense. But you know that you warn us that the upcoming midterms in November of this year, it's only a couple of months off, theoretically could be the most violent election in American history. Why are you so fearful? What could happen?

00:47:53 Robert Pape: Because we're having my worst nightmare. So two years ago, people would ask me when I gave local talks on this subject, what's actually your worst nightmare? Because we're going through the twenty twenty-four election. I said, well, the only thing that would make me more concerned is if we had an international crisis like with Iran that was wrecking our economy. At the same time, we were having all these social changes occur, and that's exactly what's occurring right now, Andrew. So the fact is, people haven't connected the dots yet, but they are going to. And they're going to soon as we go forward because they're just getting over the shock of $5 gas out right outside my door in Chicago. The gas has gone up a dollar a gallon in the last fourteen days. Okay? So that's a shock. Well, this is gonna have political repercussions as well.

00:48:43 Andrew Keen: Yeah. You've written about, you wrote an interesting piece that I came across about why Trump is taking a risky bet on Iran. So that might compound the potential violence in—

00:48:55 Robert Pape: Oh my goodness gracious. And it and what it does is it creates scenarios on both the right and the left. You see. And especially if we have a razor-thin or not clearly decisive election, we already have in our survey that we just did two weeks ago, already about a quarter of the population is very worried about the counts of the vote. So when I say the midterms, I don't just mean election day, November 3. I mean, when the counting starts. And that is a period that goes all the way through seating the winners, in the first week in January. That's the real danger zone. And it's the danger zone because that's where all the issues. Will the losers accept losing, or will they say it's been stolen? Is it objectively clear who won? Is it see, in 2020, November 2020, at least there was objectively clear who won. Will it be objectively clear this time? These are the sources of danger as we go forward for this election. And with gas prices mounting, if, what this means is you're likely to get, the Democrats win both houses of Congress. And for Trump here, is he really go— the man who— who did not accept a loss in 2020, is he actually going to accept this and allow the— the Democrats to— be seated and control both houses of Congress? And if he doesn't allow it, are Democrats gonna just say, oh, yeah. No. I'm good with this. I'm gonna stand by. I don't do violence. No, Andrew. We're heading to what I believe is a very, very serious tension here. And the big thing is I'm getting back to, our politicians in the 70%. A lot of politicians are happy winning by one vote, one vote. And you know why? Because all they have to do is pay off their billion— their billionaire and millionaire donors. When you don't go in and you actually reach into the middle win by 10 or 20%, that is fifty-five/forty-five or sixty/forty. Now you've got to give benefits to the middle. And that is what the 70% need to call for as we go in to this election. You see, we're not we gotta understand. We're all smart enough to know, and this is just the case. A lot of the political leaders, they'll say, well, of course, I wanna win by a big margin. But you know what? That actually is not the reality. The reality is they wanna win first and foremost by one vote. And why? Because then all they have to do is pay back those political those billionaires and millionaires. You're quite right. And so what how do you do this? How do you change this? You activate, you incentivize, you mobilize the 70%. And this is what my book is calling for that's different than anybody than other people.

00:51:57 Andrew Keen: There's not— a need to mobilize that— with the— that's the conclusion of Robert Pape's new book, Our Own Worst Enemies. Finally, Robert, I'm curious. You've come to this conversation with remarkable energy and erudition. You've really dedicated your life to this subject. Very briefly, to end this intriguing conversation, both chilling and in its own way hopeful, why? Why have you dedicated your life to studying political violence?

00:52:28 Robert Pape: I think it goes back. So I have spent thirty years studying the biggest danger to America, violent danger. And for most of that time, it's been overseas. And when I started to see six years ago was, you know, the biggest dangers are now becoming internal, and we're not understanding that. Was I so interested in studying the biggest danger to America? I actually think I had my own kind of epiphany in my thirties. It came from my grandfather in World War Two. You see, my grandfather served in World War Two, and he was the guy who drove the boat you see in Saving Private Ryan where somebody's driving the boat and the people get all mowed down on the beach. My grandfather had to drive those boats. He took those men. They were mowed down. He had to go back and get more men. They were mowed down. And what happened, and my grandmother told me this, was, because he wouldn't talk about it, was what happened is he lost his faith in God, but he never lost his faith in the American people. He never lost his faith in the American people. And I think that's probably what kind of, came through as I was a young boy, as I knew him. He was my actual, father figure, not my father who left when I was very young. Serious question. There's a real reason why I think I've dedicated my life to this. And I think it's because, I really just believe, my grandfather was right. American people who we have to look to as the true source of strength in our country.

00:54:05 Andrew Keen: And those American people, at least 70% of them, are the subject in some ways of Robert Pape's important new book, Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism. It's out today, Robert. Congratulations, and thank you. Real pleasure having you on the show. I'd love to get you on, again, maybe in the early New Year, and we can talk about the outcome of the elections.

00:54:29 Robert Pape: We'll see—

00:54:30 Andrew Keen: —we'll see where violence is then. And, of course, as we run up to the twenty twenty-eight elections, there'll be lots of talk about violence then. But thank you so much for a fascinating conversation, and congratulations on the book.

00:54:42 Robert Pape: Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you so much, Andrew.