SU Professor: rhetoric and polarization play into violence

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Right wing political commentator Charlie Kirk was killed at an event on a college campus in Utah. The assassination caused lawmakers across the political spectrum to condemn politically motivated violence.

This week on Empire State Weekly, Grant Reheer, a political science professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, explained that political violence has increased since 2016. He explained that factors like political polarization, combined with other circumstances, are likely the causes for the violence.

"We've seen that polarization gets even deeper and so that has increased the heat, the level of emotion, the intensity of all the political rhetoric, and a lot of the antagonisms," Reheer said. "And then you add to that the social media environment, once thes