As Election Day nears, uncertainty remains high over almost every aspect of the presidential race. In swing states, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Harris continue to poll closely. There have been two attempted assassinations against Trump. But many researchers and conflict mitigation practitioners are concerned that the possibility of political violence in the coming weeks and months may be more certain than it has in any recent election.
“Every single number is elevated, from hate crimes, political homicides, people driving into protesters, you name it,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If it's a kind of political violence, it's been going up since 2015.”
In February, Kleinfeld invited roughly 100 people to discuss trends and consider the future, looking at the possibility of violence going into, during and after the election. The group included academics, as well as civil society groups focused on democracy and violence mitigation work. Kleinfeld said it was an unprecedented exercise.
“There has been no scenario planning for violence at election time, even when the elections were really close, like 2000 with Gore versus Bush,” she said. “This time is very different.”
NPR spoke with more than a dozen people who, like Kleinfeld, have been involved in such scenario planning. All of them work outside of government and law enforcement, but have been involved in efforts aimed at de-escalating polarization campaigns that might otherwise turn violent. While concern remains high, many say violence is not inevitable and that ordinary people can play an important part of defusing tensions.
Experts are worried about state and local political violence
Among the worrying scenarios that organizations are planning for is one where Trump again loses and refuses to concede. Few, however, believe there will be a repeat of the January 6th attack at the U.S. Capitol. Instead, many say there may be organized efforts to interfere with state certification processes or local vote tallying efforts.
“It might be more diffuse, in lots of places across the country, which, in many respects, actually heightens the threat,” said Pete Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University.
Common Defense, a national, progressive, grassroots organization of 40,000 veterans has been preparing its own network to respond to locations where such crises may unfold. It is assembling Quick Reaction Forces, or QRFs, to show up unarmed and in plainclothes.
“We're training a lot of folks in de-escalation,” said Perry O’Brien, co-founder of Common Defense. “We're training folks in monitoring and capturing video for accountability.”
In addition, O’Brien said the organization is training its own members to gather open source intelligence — publicly available information, often posted to social media sites — to monitor extremist activity in swing states around the election.
“That's obviously the area that we're anticipating a lot of these threats are going to come from,” he said.
The consensus among experts is not just that political violence in the U.S. will become more diffuse in location, but that potential targets will be more varied, as well. Heightened polarization has extended the division between “left” and “right” so deeply that even people and organizations that do human services work are having to think about security.
“This includes the LGBTQ community, this includes anyone who defends minorities and … defends immigrant rights,” said David Neiwert, a longtime journalist who has documented the far right. “These people are going to be targeted for various acts of domestic terrorism as well.”
These dynamics have already been apparent, with many pointing to the controversy in Springfield, Ohio, as a case study. There, right wing social media accounts and the Trump campaign amplified lies about Haitian immigrants, inflaming local tensions. The frenzy of attention brought dozens of bomb threats and white nationalist groups that used the controversy to spread propaganda and recruit more members, instilling fear among residents.
Building local resilience
Many civil society organizations have quietly undertaken work in the last five years to help small communities avoid scenarios like the one that unfolded in Springfield. Some have decades of experience in other countries where polarization has led to civil war. The application of those practices to a U.S. context is new.
“Often we're looking at how can we have …non-securitized responses, meaning how can we respond as people, as civil society outside of police or the National Guard,” said Nealin Parker, executive director of Common Ground USA. Her organization, launched after the January 6 Capitol riot, is the U.S.-focused part of the global peacebuilding organization Search for Common Ground.
Parker said she is particularly concerned about the period of time after Election Day, when the outcome of the race may still be uncertain.
“That's a period of time where uncertainty is filled with toxic polarization,” said Parker. “So there is work that we are doing now to try to help equip influencers across a lot of different ideologies and communities to be able to take back messages of ‘here is what we understand is going on, here is what's happening in the election.’”
Parker talks about “influencers” who are not of the social media variety. Instead, her organization has been cultivating relationships with stakeholders across the country — especially in swing states — who command local respect. The purpose, she said, is to provide them early warning of polarizing mis- and disinformation narratives that may be formulating to divide their communities, and to support them in getting better information and rebuffing false claims.
“If you, again, do work ahead of time that depolarizes and do work with influencers where they are able to get clear information from trusted sources early enough … then you are able to in-group influence,” Parker said. “You're able to share that information into communities in ways that will keep them safe and that will de-escalate.”
Parker said these partners come from many sectors, including faith, business, government and athletics. They also cross political, ideological and religious lines. For this reason, she said many of them prefer not to reveal their involvement with these efforts. It may undermine their credibility with their constituencies.
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Building peace for the long term
The focus on the election has heightened public awareness around political violence, but many working to mitigate the issue say that they are equally concerned about the long term.
“Extremism gets worse under either election outcome,” said O’Brien of Common Defense. “It's going to be crucially important to continue developing mobilization infrastructure that can just protect communities from direct threats, whether it's about an election or not.”
It’s one reason that Jill Garvey recently co-founded States at the Core (STAC), which supports communities responding to authoritarianism. Her organization has worked closely with communities, such as in Nashville, Tenn., for example, that have had to navigate a response to coordinated white nationalist activity.
“There is rapid response support needed in moments of crisis. There is also just more capacity needed at the local level,” Garvey said. “Local communities are going to be the linchpin to staving off authoritarianism.”
Garvey said one difficulty, however, has been the systematic attacks on the “social infrastructure” that has historically helped keep communities together. Garvey said spaces like schools and libraries used to provide venues for dialogue.
“That's, I think, why you see authoritarian movements go after libraries, you see them go after schools, you see them go after the YMCA,” said Garvey. “Because once they sort of shut those places down or make them … places where people don't want to engage, communities have a much harder time getting to some middle ground, I think, on a lot of issues, and you see a lot more polarization happening.”
But organizations invested in the project of de-polarizing America themselves face a challenge of funding.
“Just compare, for example, the country of Germany … and the investment that they make in preventing radicalization where they invested over $1 billion over a three-year period to try to address that issue,” said Parker, “whereas in the United States, we have nothing remotely comparable to that.”
Some private foundations have begun stepping into the void. Joe Goldman, president of The Democracy Fund, said they’ve given money to organizations that study political violence in university settings, or that work to build community resilience. Some have needed money for digital, and even physical, security.
“We try to make sure that they have supports to feel as safe as they can,” he said.
But many philanthropies working in this space would not speak on the record to NPR. There is concern that, should Trump win, Republicans will step up activities targeting civil society organizations that have engaged in pro-democracy work. Nonetheless, the urgency of the moment has spurred some increase in resources from the philanthropic sector.
“We've certainly seen a significant increase over the past decade, something on the order of 50% more resources going into the democracy space,” said Joe Goldman, president of the Democracy Fund. “It still represents a small fraction, less than 1% of overall philanthropic giving ... But we've certainly seen a good number of new philanthropies coming into the space and expressing the concern about the health of our democracy and the integrity of our political system.”
For those who see all light flashing red as the election nears, there is also a consensus that the future is not preordained. Many say it is important to remind Americans that everyone has agency to help overcome deep division.
“Most of the interactions that most people in this country will have over the next month are not with radicalized people,” said Parker. “They are with people where you can walk away from the precipice, and you should engage in those conversations to do that.”
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