Fulcrum Roundtable: Political Violence

Welcome to the Fulcrum Roundtable.

The program offers insights and discussions about some of the most talked-about topics from the previous month, featuring Fulcrum’s collaborators.

Consistent with the Fulcrum's mission, the Fulcrum Roundtable strives to share many perspectives to widen our audience’s viewpoints.

The latest discussion centers on the rising threat of political violence in the United States following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Fulcrum collaborators examine how inflammatory rhetoric, online radicalization, and hyper-partisan media ecosystems have fueled a climate where violence is no longer a fringe concern—it’s an increasingly present danger.

This moment demands honest reflection on how our public discourse, digital platforms, and political leadership either confront or enable this volatility.

I spoke with...

Kurt Gray, professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of Outraged: Why We Fight about Morality and Politics.

Lura Forcum, president of the Independent Center, and a consumer psychologist.

Mac Chamberlain, a fourth-year English and Spanish major at Lipscomb University.

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Kurt and Lura penned Taking Outrage Seriously: Understanding the Moral Signals Behind Political Anger.

They wrote in part: When conservatives express outrage, liberals dismiss them as bigots and racists. When liberals protest, conservatives roll their eyes at the alleged virtue signaling. We celebrate when our adversaries get upset because their anger means our side is winning.

"When someone mocks us for getting outraged, that's really a dismissal of the feelings of threat," he said. "We don't feel heard. We don't feel seen. And we feel even more threatened."

Lura added that dismissing the other side’s outrage is a dangerous mistake and that we must first take outrage seriously. "Being outraged means that you feel something really deeply. I think we would all do better to hear the message behind that emotion and try to understand what exactly people from across the political aisle are trying to convey to us," she said.

In "An Empathetic Approach to Political Violence, Mac wrote: The ability to condemn political violence correlates with privilege, a perspective which implicitly trusts the power of our voices.

We must consider what shapes the imagination of communities whose voices have been ferociously limited. For communities whose networks are saturated in such language of violence, we must accept a posture of humility in understanding how they feel they can gain access.

"We have this opportunity to be here and to talk, and we have time and opportunity to write and engage with these ideas. People who have been systemically disenfranchised don't necessarily have those opportunities," he said.

To prevent political violence, we must lower the volume of polarizing arguments that drown out opportunities for productive discourse—an effort The Fulcrum supports by offering a platform for thoughtful, thought-provoking debate and civic dialogue.

Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network.