October 20, 2025
Charlie Kirk’s assassination reveals the growing threat of Democrats’ violence
By Joseph Ford Cotto
The numbers were shocking. The implications, worse.
In a recent conversation on my show News Sight, Patrick Basham laid out findings that expose a political culture edging toward something darker than polarization. His words stayed with me long after our broadcast aired on October 7.
Basham, the director of the Democracy Institute, has spent decades studying political behavior on both sides of the Atlantic. He is measured, data-driven, and careful with his language. Which is why what he said was so striking.
Reflecting on the Institute’s fresh polling data, he told me, “It’s a sort of quite terrifying, or at least unnerving, result. Just across the board, such a large minority admit to a pollster that they have hatred in their heart for those who hold opposing political views. But that said, we get to the nub of the issue, which is that a majority of Democrats admit that they hate at least some people who hold opposing views.”
The choice of words in the poll was deliberate. “We use the word ‘hatred,’ ‘hate,’ because we didn’t want to say ‘dislike’ or ‘strongly disagree.’ That’s just too tame today,” Basham explained. “This poll was taken in the days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. We wanted to identify how intense the sentiments were. And we were not shocked that a majority of Democrats would acknowledge quite openly that that is how they felt about political opponents.”
excerpt:
By the end of our conversation, one truth was unmistakable. America has entered a period where hatred is mainstream, and political violence is no longer unthinkable. Basham’s data-driven warnings are not predictions; they are descriptions of the present. Pretending otherwise would be a dangerous mistake.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/10/charlie_kirk_s_assassination_reveals_the_growing_threat_of_democrats_violence.html
