France maintains a civic floor that forces citizens to condemn political violence even when the victim is an opponent.
National institutions in France create a cultural baseline where the role of a public official is respected regardless of their politics. Citizens in the United States tend to view political violence through a strictly partisan lens that changes based on who was attacked. People often assume that polarization is a universal human trait that inevitably leads to tribalism during a tragedy. Statistical patterns in public discourse show that the way a country builds its legal and civic framework can override those partisan instincts. Strong institutional norms can protect a society from the cycle of revenge that happens when violence becomes a political tool.
Institutional Floors and Partisan Lenses: Cross-National Online Discourse on Political Violence in France and the United States
arXiv · 2604.26245
This paper studies how online discussion shapes and assesses political violence across different settings, particularly how moral evaluation, as a social perception, varies across institutional contexts. We take France and the United States as case studies, both democracies, and three incidents of political violence: the 2020 killing of Samuel Paty in France, the 2025 shooting of Charlie Kirk in the United States, and the 2026 murder of Quentin Deranque in France. Using publicly available posts