This blog post is an alert—not necessarily a prediction. It analyzes how political violence develops, with the goal of raising awareness.

One way to find out why people commit political violence is to ask them. The observations here are based on testimony from perpetrators of political violence in apartheid South Africa who answered questions about their violent actions in exchange for amnesty.1 Full disclosure meant they were allowed to go free, so they were strongly motivated to give detailed and comprehensive explanations. What did these violent perpetrators reveal?

To explain how people end up committing politically motivated violence, I adapt Moghaddam’s staircase model of terrorism, with three successive levels of influence: 1) a platform of beliefs and ideology, typically proclaimed and supported by an organization or a set of loosely affiliated organizations; 2) active priming from leaders of the organizations that set up the platforms, including rallies and posts on social media; and 3) a specific triggering event—an incident in the world or a specific directive.

The path to politically motivated violence begins when an individual steps onto a platform of beliefs and then commits to acting on these beliefs. Some extreme right-wing groups, for example, have a platform incorporating the Great Replacement Theory—a belief that “elites,” often Jews, are orchestrating the demise of white culture through immigration, Black empowerment, feminism, and LGBTQ rights.

A single noteworthy event can lead people to step onto a platform. The video-recorded killing of George Floyd in 2020 shocked many people into joining together to protest against police violence. The televised protests were then cited by........

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