This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Leftists long have given evidence of their advocacy for extreme violence: Consider the billions of dollars in damages Antifa and Black Lives Matter inflicted on American cities following George Floyd's death.
Whole city blocks were torched, businesses destroyed, buildings incinerated, and people died.
Or their long record of rioting on university campuses with the goal of silencing speech and speakers with whom they disagree.
And now it's gotten worse: A new study reveals that "the unhinged left, fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome and seething hatred for Elon Musk," is growing, and political violence against leftists' opponents is being "normalized."
A report at the Federalist explains the results are from the work of the Network of Contagion Research Institute in partnership with Rutgers University's Social Perception Lab.
That result is a finding that a broader "assassination culture" is "emerging within segments of the U.S.
It was not even a year ago that in two different incidents, assassins tried to take out President Trump, who then was a candidate for his second term in office. He was injured in one attack.
"These attitudes are not fringe – they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse," the report, "Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became a Meme Aesthetic for Political Violence," warns.
The report follows several others that explained how social media narratives "were legitimizing political violence, including assassination…"
The report states that 31% and 38% of respondents said it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively.
Musk is the head of the President's Department of Government Efficiency and has been working under Trump's instructions to find and eliminate waste, fraud, corruption, and criminality in the federal government's spending.
The report noted, "These effects were largely driven by respondents that self-identified as left of center, with 48% and 55% at least somewhat justifying murder for Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively, indicating significantly higher justification for violence against these figures."
Nearly 40% say it is "at least somewhat acceptable (or more) to destroy a Tesla dealership" in a protest, the report said.
Outright lobbying, and demands, for violence, are growing, the report said.
"In February, law enforcement officials charged 28-year-old David Allen June Cherry of southern Indiana with felony intimidation after police say he posted online multiple violent threats against Elon Musk, including that Cherry would 'gut' the close adviser to President Donald Trump. 'You've broken the law. You're on the hit list,' Cherry allegedly declared on the Musk-owned social media platform X, to a Musk post, according to an affidavit. 'You're robbing American people. We will gut you and parade your corpse in the streets,' the leftist allegedly menaced Musk a short time later."
Further, a man from Tennessee was upset with Trump and Musk and was arrested on charges of assembling explosives to "burn down" a Musk data center in that state, the report said.
There have been dozens of violent attacks on Tesla EVs, dealerships, and charging stations, too.
And, the Federalist notes, "While threats and acts of violence rise on the left, the silence from Democrats in power is deafening. But we've seen this movie before. Spoiler Alert: It doesn't end well for a lot of innocent people."
NCRI stated, "Unless political and cultural leadership explicitly confronts and condemns this trend, NCRI assesses a growing probability of real-world escalation. Given the current economic volatility and institutional distrust, the online normalization of political violence may increasingly translate into offline action."
