US Election-Campaign Rhetoric Threatens to Ignite Political Violence - Study

The aggressive rhetoric of the US election campaign may raise a wave of political violence in the country, according to the private intelligence firm Soufan Group.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Sustained levels of incendiary rhetoric in the US presidential election threaten to unleash a wave of political violence in the United States, private intelligence firm Soufan Group said in a report Wednesday.

"Sustained levels of extreme rhetoric, coupled with campaign strategies intended to delegitimize and demonize political opponents, create the potential for serious and cascading consequences for the United States," the report said.

According to Soufan’s report, political violence is far below levels seen in the 1970s, but it warned that ubiquitous social media enable incidents to be sensationalized and turned into a false narrative of national crisis.

In addition, pre-election comments between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as well as their campaign aides and supporters, have helped push Americans’ anxiety ever higher, the report asserted.

An example of an emerging trend, the report said, could be last weekend’s firebombing of an unoccupied Republican Party office in the state of North Carolina, accompanied by the painting of a Nazi swastika and threatening message on a nearby building.