Two hotly competing narratives have emerged over the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard and Marines to California. On one side, the protests symbolize crucial resistance to abuse and overreach by the Trump administration. On the other, radicals are torching cars and the troops are needed to restore law and order.
The ultimate political fallout is still unknown. But one scholar who has drilled deep into the subject is Omar Wasow, a professor at UC Berkeley who published a paper in 2020 showing that non-violent protest — especially when met with violence from the state — shifted public opinion toward the Civil Rights Movement, while protester-initiated violence fueled a right-wing backlash.
The paper happened to come out less than a week before the murder of George Floyd and it caused a stir, with commentators across the political spectrum citing Wasow’s work, and one pollster even losing his job over suggesting that violent protest could hurt Democrats’ election chances.
So, will the LA protests harm Democrats’ political prospects this time around?
In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Wasow said it was too early to make predictions about the political consequences and noted that so far property damage had been relatively contained, with no loss of life. Trump, meanwhile, could face his own political risk if the state engages in “some spectacle of excess violence,” he said.
Wasow also previewed some of his other work that has yet to be published, which includes some depressing, if not entirely surprising, conclusions about where things might go from here.
“Violence works a bit like a bat signal, both for Trump and for the anti-ICE movement,” he said. “People who are pro-Trump get mobilized to be more pro-Trump. And people who are anti-Trump get mobilized on behalf of the anti-mass deportation movement.”