Tier 2
Toleration or encouragement of political violence
Leaders unambiguously condemn political violence and do not pardon, praise, or align with it.
Standing reading
Actions
Reading since 2026-07-10
Rhetoric
Not yet calibrated.
Rhetoric praising, excusing, minimizing, or inciting political violence, or violence-adjacent language directed at protesters or opponents, independent of any pardon, clemency, or other material act taken.
Event timeline
Event list (text)
- The record on January 6 clemency and political violence, January 2025–July 2026 — 2025-01-20 (pattern)
- Judge grants DOJ motion to dismiss remaining Proud Boys Jan. 6 convictions — 2026-07-10 (pattern)
What raises this reading
- Pardoning or praising politically motivated violence
- ties to or coordination with armed or paramilitary groups
What lowers it
- Clear, unqualified condemnation of political violence
- isolated rhetoric without any material or clemency-based follow-through
Levitsky & Ziblatt Robert Paxton Ruth Ben-Ghiat Bright Line Watch Protect Democracy
Disconfirmer
A future act of unambiguous, sustained condemnation of political violence without qualification, or reversal/rescission of clemency granted to perpetrators of politically motivated violence, would lower this reading; further pardons, praise, or excusal of political violence would raise it further.
Provenance
- Levitsky & Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (2018) — indicator 3 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die
- Robert Paxton, "The Five Stages of Fascism" and his 2021 reversal on the fascism label after January 6 — https://www.newsweek.com/robert-paxton-trump-fascist-1560652
- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (2020) — https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/218-ruth-ben-ghiat.html
- Bright Line Watch, event threat ratings — January 6 pardons rated a 95% threat, the highest-rated event in the survey — https://brightlinewatch.org/accelerated-transgressions-in-the-second-trump-presidency/
- Protect Democracy, The Authoritarian Playbook (tactic 7: stoking violence) — https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-authoritarian-playbook/
Changelog (actions)
- 2026-07-10: (initial) → pattern: Initial calibration. This is the single most heavily corroborated item in the source record: Bright Line Watch's expert panel rated the January 6 clemency grants a 95% threat to democratic norms, the highest-rated event in their entire survey, and Paxton — a historian who spent Trump's first term declining the fascism label — named encouragement/reward of that specific violence as the threshold that changed his professional judgment. No prior administration has granted clemency at this scale to individuals convicted of politically motivated violence against a branch of government, so this exceeds the base-rate test on scale and precedent. It is scored pattern, not bright-line, because it praises/rewards a completed act rather than actively encouraging a new one; the disconfirmer is specified above.
Entries (2)
Judge grants DOJ motion to dismiss remaining Proud Boys Jan. 6 convictions
According to The Hill, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a DOJ motion to dismiss the remaining convictions of four Proud Boys leaders, including Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs, tied to the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
The record on January 6 clemency and political violence, January 2025–July 2026
Between January 2025 and July 2026 the administration granted clemency to roughly 1,500 people convicted or charged in the January 6 Capitol attack (full unconditional pardons plus commutations for 14 seditious-conspiracy leaders), dismissed pending cases, and let the action stand without reversal. The payload record contains no restorative or reversing event within the thread.