Historian explores how polarization and division leads to political violence

As Americans continue to grasp what led up to the threat on former President Trump’s life, Judy Woodruff sought some perspective on how this moment of political violence and deep division relates to the country’s past. It’s the latest in her ongoing series, America at a Crossroads.

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Geoff Bennett: As Americans continue to grasp what led up to the threat made on Donald Trump’s life, Judy Woodruff sought some perspective on how this moment of violence and deep division relates to the country’s past.

Amna Nawaz: It’s the latest in her ongoing series America at a Crossroads.

Judy Woodruff: Kevin Boyle is a professor of American history at Northwestern University and author of the 2021 book “The Shattering: America in the 1960s.”

I traveled to Chicago to ask him about the parallels he sees between our own time and that tumultuous period, which witnessed widespread protests over Vietnam, women’s rights and civil rights, as well as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, and of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Kevin Boyle, Professor of American History, Northwestern University: So, there are a couple of major parallels, in that the issues that I think were most central to the 1960s, the ones that were the most divisive in the 1960s, they have continued to be incredibly divisive issues up to the current day.

The most obvious of those is the question of race in America, foreign policy and the place of the United States in the world, which became a major issue again this spring with the college protest movement over Israeli policy in Gaza.

And then one of the themes that I think we don’t think about quite as much in the 1960s is the really fundamental transformation of the relationship between the government and private life, and particularly sexual life.

One of the great markers of the end of the 1960s was Roe v. Wade.

Judy Woodruff: Roe v. Wade.

Kevin Boyle: And, of course, that’s an issue that had been — has been incredibly divisive ever since, and now, of course, has become a major, major point of contention in American public life.

So there’s huge continuities.

Judy Woodruff: What is it about America that these events keep happening?

Kevin Boyle: I think there’s really three factors that intersect in making these events happen.

One is, as sorry as I am to say this, there is a very long tradition of political violence and violence inside our public life. It cuts across many forms. I think it’s compounded in our current moment, it has for the last 40 years, by the proliferation of gun ownership.

So what that means is that you essentially have motives and means. I don’t know anything about the motivation of this young man, but I think we have to be willing to acknowledge that it is also tied, to a striking degree, to the mental health crisis that does afflict young men particularly and that leads some of those young men to extraordinarily violent behavior.

Judy Woodruff: What are some of the forces that are pulling us apart as a people, that would make us even think about wanting to kill or harm our political leaders?

Kevin Boyle: I think that what’s happened in American public life in recent years is an extraordinarily high level of polarization.

Of course, we have always had differences of opinions. Of course, we have always had deep divides. And, of course, we have always had people on the fringes of American politics who were embracing extreme ideas, and sometimes, not always, but, sometimes, those were the people who committed acts of political violence like the assassinations of presidents.

But the level of polarization in the United States today, the sense of division that makes people in the mainstream — and that’s the extraordinary thing — in the mainstream see their political opponents as enemies, that’s a really dangerous and accelerating situation in the United States today.

Judy Woodruff: And what’s your sense, your understanding of why that is?

Kevin Boyle: There’s a lot of factors to play into it. There’s no question that issues of race play into American polarization and have always played into American polarization.

There’s no question that questions of foreign policy have in the past and continue to play into our polarization. Those issues are perennial points of division. But what’s really fundamentally different now is that, in the past, the Republican and Democratic parties have essentially provided guardrails to that politics.

Those guardrails have fallen off, especially with the Republican Party, so that no more does the Republican Party serve as a way of kind of preventing the sharp polarization that it once did. That’s a fundamental transformation.

Judy Woodruff: And what caused the guardrails to come down?

Kevin Boyle: There are a whole lot of factors that have transformed our politics in the last, say, 20 years or so, even in the last 10 years.

There is a really extraordinary transformation of communication systems in the United States, the ways in which news or disinformation circulate. It’s just dramatically different. In the 1960s, we had three networks. Now, suddenly, you can get information from all sorts of places. You can spread information in all sorts of places.

And that’s broadened out the world of extremist politics, the world of extremist ideas. So that’s certainly one huge factor.

And then I think we have also had massive, massive economic dislocations in the United States, 2008’s financial meltdown, for instance, which has caused a high level of frustration for huge portions of people, of fear for huge portions of people, that then can get channeled in various ways that causes — intensifies that polarization.

Judy Woodruff: Do you have a sense of what it’s going to take to get us to a better place?

Kevin Boyle: We need to tone down American political rhetoric. We need to scale it back, because whether we like it or not, powerful figures have huge influence on the way that ordinary people, a lot of ordinary people, think about politics.

So if the political leadership is willing to scale back the rhetoric — and that happens in both parties, but I do believe that it’s only fair to say that the Republican rhetoric has been much more inflammatory in recent years than the Democratic rhetoric.

It’s not to say there hasn’t been moments of inflammatory rhetoric with the Democrats, but I don’t think there’s an equivalency there.

Judy Woodruff: Are we talking about something that’s going to take generations to make progress on, or is this something that could happen more quickly? What do you think?

Kevin Boyle: I hate to think that it could take generations to solve, but I have a very hard time seeing the way forward in the short term.

These are issues that we have known about for a very long time, that we talk about from time to time, but we don’t see movement on them. I’m a very, very great admirer, as are many, many people, in the United States of Martin Luther King.

And the extraordinary thing about Martin Luther King, the thing that made him such an extraordinary figure in the United States, is that what he was calling for was a transformation of how the nation, how people in the nation thought of themselves, how he wanted to see them create what he called over and over again and the movement called over and over again a beloved community, that you have sense of obligation to each other.

And that’s the fundamental transformation, I think, that King was pushing for in the 1960s and that American society needs today, is the sense that you have an obligation to someone else, rather than to purely, not polar opposites, but to purely to individual rights.

And it seems as if, in the last 40, 50 years, we have moved in very much the opposite direction.

Judy Woodruff: And if our current political leaders don’t change the rhetoric, the language that you were just talking about, what does that mean? What does that look like?

Kevin Boyle: I fear for the country if we don’t manage to think about and act on the crisis that is clearly staring us in the face, and that this horrible event over the weekend is just the latest manifestation of.

Judy Woodruff: For the PBS “News Hour,” I’m Judy Woodruff in Evanston, Illinois.