Public Anxiety, Protest and Political Violence in 21st Century America

Lecture presented by Albuquerque International Association. Dr. Adam Garfinkle, founding editor of The American Interest magazine speaks about American protest movements.

Three discrete sources of trouble--the shocks of globalization and automation, political institutional dysfunction and plutocratic parasitism--have combined to plunge the American future into doubt. Public reactions to accumulating signs of systemic crisis have so far been mild, episodic, confused, disorganized and almost entirely non-violent. Aspects of American exceptionalism help to explain this reaction, but both social science and comparative historical scholarship suggest that some of these forms may become violent.