zlacker

>>david9+(OP)
I was just at a conference today where one of the presenters referenced the "Trust barometer": https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer

According to that study, 23% approved of the statement "I approve hostile activism to drive change by threatening or committing violence". It's even higher if you only focus on 18-34 year olds.

Full report here: https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-0...

>>ipytho+BD
"threatening or committing violence" could mean almost anything. It isn't hard to find evidence of people (especially young ones) equating speech with violence.

I imagine that "I support assassination to drive change" would be even less popular.

>>autoex+xE
Have we already forgotten the absurd amount of support the murderer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare?

Maybe it wasn't 23%, but it was certainly not insignificant.

> It isn't hard to find evidence of people (especially young ones) equating speech with violence.

I don't think anyone conflates the phrase "threatening or committing violence" with "threatening or committing calling you a bad name". Yes, there's too much equating speech and violence, but the particular wording of threatening or committing imho is largely still reserved for the physical variety.

>>zdragn+wH
Depends on what you consider to be "support", but this report is pretty interesting and says something like 24% of US adults sympathize greatly with Mangione, and 63% have some non-zero level of sympathy for him. Outright approval for his actions isn't directly quantified by this poll but is undoubtedly lower than that 24% figure.

One interesting thing is sympathy for Mangione doesn't seem very strongly influenced by income level or level of education. The two biggest mediators seem to be political alignment and age. It seems the vast majority of US adults under 50 have a significant amount of sympathy for him, with only 28% expressing no sympathy at all.

https://www.cloudresearch.com/resources/blog/mangione-suppor...