white lies us tour

Country/region

• Åland Islands GBP £
• Albania GBP £
• Andorra GBP £
• Argentina GBP £
• Australia GBP £
• Austria EUR €
• Belarus GBP £
• Belgium EUR €
• Bosnia & Herzegovina GBP £
• Brazil GBP £
• Bulgaria GBP £
• Canada GBP £
• Croatia GBP £
• Cyprus GBP £
• Czechia GBP £
• Denmark GBP £
• Estonia GBP £
• Faroe Islands GBP £
• Finland GBP £
• France EUR €
• Germany EUR €
• Gibraltar GBP £
• Greece GBP £
• Guernsey GBP £
• Hong Kong SAR GBP £
• Hungary GBP £
• Iceland GBP £
• Ireland EUR €
• Isle of Man GBP £
• Israel GBP £
• Italy EUR €
• Japan GBP £
• Jersey GBP £
• Kosovo GBP £
• Latvia GBP £
• Liechtenstein GBP £
• Lithuania GBP £
• Luxembourg GBP £
• Malaysia GBP £
• Malta GBP £
• Mexico GBP £
• Moldova GBP £
• Monaco GBP £
• Montenegro GBP £
• Netherlands GBP £
• New Zealand GBP £
• North Macedonia GBP £
• Norway GBP £
• Poland GBP £
• Portugal GBP £
• Romania GBP £
• San Marino GBP £
• Serbia GBP £
• Singapore GBP £
• Slovakia GBP £
• Slovenia GBP £
• South Korea GBP £
• Spain EUR €
• Svalbard & Jan Mayen GBP £
• Sweden GBP £
• Switzerland GBP £
• United Arab Emirates GBP £
• United Kingdom GBP £
• United States USD $
• Vatican City GBP £

Item added to your cart

Coloured vinyl bundle, big tv | vinyl bundle, ritual | vinyl bundle, sign up to our mailing list.

• Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
• Opens in a new window.

• Moscow concerts Moscow concerts Moscow concerts See all Moscow concerts ( Change location ) Today · Next 7 days · Next 30 days
• Most popular artists worldwide
• Trending artists worldwide

• Tourbox for artists

Search for events or artists

• Sign up Log in

• Get the app
• Moscow concerts
• Change location
• Popular Artists
• Live streams
• Popular artists

White Lies tour dates 2024

White Lies is currently touring across 2 countries and has 6 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at Gorilla in Manchester, after that they'll be at Gorilla again in Manchester.

Currently touring across

Upcoming concerts (6) See nearest concert

Pstereo Festival

Past concerts

TivoliVredenburg Pandora

View all past concerts

Recent tour reviews

Saw this band at a wonderful club, the Music Box, in San Diego. The crowd was very appreciative of the band & the band responded. They played from their new CD and great backlist songs. Band has been around for over a decade and seem so comfortable with themselves. Great sound (vocals/instruments), solid work & steady. Everyone sang along and all had a great time. I'm an old fart but have all their cds and really love their sound. Absolutely recommend a hear at a local club near you.

Report as inappropriate

ABSOLUTELY STUNNING!! A VERY EMOTUONALLY CHARGED EXPERIENCE!! STANDING FOUR FEET AWAY FROM THE BAND, LISTENING TO TRACKS RANGING FROM ALL FIVE ALBUMS, YELLING LYRICS TO WVERY SONG, PUNCHING FISTS IN THE AIR TO THE DRUMBEAT, AND DELICIOUS BASS!! THE CROWD SATURATED IN THEIR ADORATION OF MUSICALITY. INTIMATE, SOULFUL, TIMELESS, AND THE CRESCENDO OF THE FINAL SONG SET TEARS IN MOTION WHILE TRIPPING OVER THE LYRICS RETURNED BACK TO THE PASSIONATE PERFORMERS!! THANK YOU, I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS EXPERIENCE!! SO GLAD TO SEE THEM LIVE!! XXX

I came to the show with high expectations, since White Lies is one of my favorite bands. I really enjoy many of their songs and was expecting that they would be even better live. But honestly, they were worse. They only had a person playing piano, apart from the band members, and the result was worse versions of their songs. The singer Harry McVeigh seemed unsure, he was playing the wrong chord here and there and mostly his guitar didnt sound at all. The base player didnt show any charisma during the whole concert. The drummer was the only one who was really good. The others were trash honsetly. The whole concert just seemed unproffesional, they just played their songs poorly and nothing inbetween, no smooth transitions, just bad. Really bad. Im really dissapointed honestly.

• Most popular charts
• Campaigns for promoters
• API information
• Brand guidelines
• Community guidelines
• Terms of use
• Privacy policy
• Cookies settings
• Cookies policy

Get your tour dates seen everywhere.

White Lies Verified

Concerts and tour dates.

Live Photos of White Lies

Fan Reviews

Fans Also Follow

About white lies.

or continue with

​White Lies tour dates: 6 concerts in 2 countries

About white lies.

White Lies are an English post-punk band from Ealing, London. Formerly known as Fear of Flying, the core band members are Harry McVeigh (lead vocals, guitar), Charles Cave (bass guitar and backing vocals), and Jack Lawrence-Brown (drums). The band performs live as a five-piece, when sidemen Tommy Bowen and Rob Lee join the line up. White Lies' musical style has been described as dark yet uplifting by the media, drawing comparisons to Editors, Interpol, Joy Division, and The Killers.

© MyRockShows 2017-2024

Sign up to MyRockShows, subscribe to your favorite artists and bands and get the updates you need.

or log in with social networks

White Lies tour dates

• On tour: Yes
• Concertful ranking: #1239
• Category: Punk / Garage Rock

White Lies upcoming concerts (5)

Similar artists on tour, white lies past concerts.

Top Tours · Just Announced · USA · Europe · 2025 Tours

Terms of Service · Privacy and Cookie Policy · Contact © Concertful

5 Minutes With White Lies

Posted: 31st January 2022

Returning in 2022 with a brand new album and a coinciding tour, indie icons White Lies are one of the most loved live acts of the 21st century.

Since the release of their legendary debut album, 'To Lose My Life', in 2009, the band have established themselves globally with sold out tours in Europe and beyond.

We caught up with the trio to find out what to expect from their sixth studio LP, how they've used their time off to focus on a stellar return, and what's on the horizon moving forward.

Your new album, ‘ As I Try Not To Fall Apart ’, is released next month – how are you feeling ahead of it?

It is so different these days with albums - once it's out that's kind of it. Everything is in the prep these days. Whereas before, even on our first record, you'd release it and then keep making new videos and releasing new singles. Whereas now, everything comes before you drop the album - and then you go on tour and that's it.

Your last album, ‘ FIVE ’, was released three years ago, but we lost a couple of those years, so does it feel so long ago from your perspective?

I think I think we were actually very lucky - well not lucky with Coronavirus because no one was lucky with that - but lucky with the timing of it because we had a big year in 2019. Obviously, we released ‘FIVE’ at the beginning of the year and did a full tour for that. We then had the 10 year anniversary of ‘ To Lose My Life ’, which we played in full and toured Europe with it, then finished off with two nights at Brixton, which was amazing.

Because we had a very busy year, we were planning a pretty quiet year anyway and then the whole Coronavirus thing kicked off. We had tours booked in across 2021 which we moved to the autumn and then obviously moved again to spring 2022 .

As a band, what was the situation like internally in terms of rescheduling the tour and the release of ‘As I Try Not To Fall Apart’?

I feel like the delay has only really been like a year for us. That's what it feels like – it hasn’t felt like three years of inactivity. We’d have probably released the album at the beginning of last year had nothing happened, so I don't really feel like we've missed out on too much. But at the same time, making an album during the pandemic was pretty tricky in parts and it definitely had an effect on all of us like in one way or another.

Your discography is fairly expansive now, do you feel like there’s an expectation to balance keeping your fan base loyal and try to bring in a new wave of fans with every release?

Yeah, it's still that way and that’s kind of great because what you don't really want is a constant ebb and flow of fan base, like people really like one album and then the next one they don't so you lose fans. We have an extremely loyal fan base across the world, but especially across Europe and sort of Mexico and we’ve realised it's not even an age thing. A lot of these people were 14 or 15 when they first started listening to us, so they're now in their mid-20s. Plus we have loads of fans that are in their 40s and 50s that started in their 30s.

Our music does seem to kind of transcend age gaps or demographics in terms of age, and people now end up coming to shows bringing their kids. We've met fans that are like, ‘me and my partner met in college when we were 16 and discovered your music - we're now in our 20s and this is our daughter, and she listens to your music in the car.’ It's amazing to know there's a ton of people that are still interested in what we do.

Do you feel that the time between an artist bringing out new material is becoming shorter, and does this prevent the listener being able to digest and wholly enjoy what they’re listening to?

I think it depends what sort of music you're making, and the same would go for TV and film. There's a lot of music, TV and film that is deliberately made to be digested very quickly and then tossed to the side. That doesn't mean it's not good. That's the function of it - it's a quick fix. There’s pop music that mostly deals in singles and it's like ‘I need to put a track out here, a track out x weeks later then another track out’ and there's not a huge emphasis on evolution.

I think for a band like us that are still basically album centric, we need a lot of time in between just as a film director needs a ton of time between trying to make great films. There's a lot of, I'm not going to call it research, but time where you’re living your life, listening to other music, going about things and experiencing things. I guess in a way that's like the ‘research’ part. Then it just takes a long time to write an album - at least in our world it does. We've never been a singles band and that's been great for us because our mindset is always that the reason we've done well in the past is because we have really solid albums from start to finish and fans really liked them.

Do you think it would be tougher now to be a ‘breakthrough artist’ than when you started in the 2000s?

I feel so sorry for artists who were trying to release debuts during the pandemic. It would have had to happen at some point because you can't sit on an album forever. They will have missed out on everyone knowing the songs because there's no touring to back it up, no promos, no TV, or performances or anything. Because of the pandemic, artists only really had one shot and that was literally when it landed in front of people and when they listened to it for the first time.

I feel very fortunate that we had 10 years before the pandemic started because if we hadn't, we might have just disappeared over the past couple of years.

What has changed in terms of the ‘promo trail’ for an artist? For example, would you agree platforms such as TikTok add an extra pressure when writing material?

We're still encouraged - even as a band that are in our mid 30s and have a solid fan base that can sell quite a lot of tickets around Europe and UK or whatever - to try and do that stuff. To our shame, we are on TikTok, but a big part of my personality is that if we're doing it, then I want it to work.

I don't I really give a shit, but I still there's a part of me that is like we're going to have a huge viral moment on TikTok and will be one of those bands like you can find them all over Spotify now, where they've got one song with 100 million streams and all the other songs have a combined half a million streams.

It 's nice to not have the pressure where we need to have this viral moment where 11 seconds of a song blows up and then disappears again the next day, which is kind of how TikTok seems to work. Being a band releasing music in the modern world means people will push you to do a bit of that, but people like White Lies for very different reason. If we're able to achieve some random new fanbase of very young kids who suddenly decide they actually really love our band through one of these bonkers platforms like TikTok, then I'm not going to knock it - but you know, our fans are generally music lovers, and they like long albums, which have taken some time and taken some thought. They they don't need it to be an instant hit for our fans.

What does the rest of 2022 hold for White Lies ?

I think any artist that has released music recently, or is planning to release music, will probably give you the same answer: which is that they're just hoping to absolutely cane it ! I'm not saying I feel totally prepped for that because we have all had two years of floating around with very weird schedules, sleeping habits, and God knows what – so getting back to what is essentially full-on work when you're on tour is a bit daunting. At the same time it's our lifeblood and we've deeply missed it.

I think for things like events and rock concerts, it's going to be great. We had a little taste of it last year when we did three sold-out nights at Powerhaus FKA Dingwalls in London . The venue had just reopened and I we were all so nervous about what to expect because it was quite risky that it's even happening. We hadn’t played a show in ages, people haven't been to a show in ages, and I was really expecting people to be sort of stood distance from each other, or clutching a beer to their chest with a mask on.

But it was like a full on mosh pit rock concert from the first song and I think people are just ready to go to shows again . It might take a little while to settle into it, but I think it could be an amazing year for us. We've got so many shows lined up and more keep getting suggested and added for later on in the year in different territories, so I'm hoping to travel for the whole year and just play this record to death.

Buy your tickets to see White Lies on tour now! Find Tickets

Keep up to date with your favourite artists, priority bookings and exclusive offers from See Tickets :

Facebook Twitter Instagram Newsletter

Callum Thornhill-Wood

There are no comments

Comments are closed.

• News & Reviews
• Tours & Tickets

Red Light Management

Www.whitelies.com/.

Ask White Lies for their personal highlights of the 18-month world tour they undertook in support of 2009’s To Lose My LIfe and the answers come suitably fast, impassioned and diverse.

For drummer Jack Lawrence-Brown, he was reminded of his special memory a couple of months ago. “I found a t-shirt that we all got given when we went on the David Letterman show in New York. That was a huge moment for me. This is what real bands do: play to an international audience, millions of people, with one of the most famous men in the world. Being part of that was incredible. We were like little kids, running about the studio, sitting in his chair. Probably the most ‘big-time’ thing we got to do.”

Charles Cave, bass player, got his moment of thrilling validation by the side of a Polish motorway. “We’d never played Poland before, and our bus broke down four hours from a festival we were booked at. We sat there for ten hours. They sent cars out to get us. And we were thinking, we’ve got a 9pm slot in a tent in a country we’ve never played before. Is this all worth it? What are we stressing out for? But we got there, got changed, and walked on stage to probably the most insane crowd we’ve ever had. There must have been 20,000 people crammed into this tent. And when the first song started, it was obvious everyone knew every single word.”

“I felt a bit sick to be honest,” admits the band’s loquacious, thoughtful lyricist. “I’ve never felt quite so emotionally battered by a gig. And now Poland is one of our best places to go. And that show represents the hard work that we put in outside of the UK. A lot of bands that I suppose are our rivals, or our contemporaries, are doing a lot better than us statistically in the UK. But we have a fanbase around the world, places like Poland, Russia, Japan, Mexico…”

“The two nights at Brixton Academy were very special,” says Harry McVeigh, singer with the three-piece who formed in west London in 2006. “Kind of homecoming shows, but it just felt amazing to be in a venue we’d all grown up going to. And to bring in a huge production – we felt like a professional band,” he adds. “Suddenly it was this ‘huge’ thing.”

A huge thing indeed. To Lose My Life entered the UK charts at number one when released in January 2009 and went on to sell well over 750,000 copies around the world. New band of the year gongs at both the Q and Mojo awards alongside NME cover features and a coveted number 2 slot in the NME readers album of the year poll confirmed that 2009 had been some year for White Lies.

And so to late 2010. Recharged, excited and buoyed by a new-found self-belief, White Lies have taken the experiences they gleaned traveling the world and alchemised them into Ritual , their full-blooded, big-booted tech-rock second album.

The trio’s confidence, gung-ho vigour and ambition are on display in the moody, classically-framed electronica of Peace And Quiet , Lawrence-Brown’s favourite track. “It means a lot to me. It was the last one we did in the studio, so there was quite a lot of closure involved. But, for me, it’s the high point of the record. It felt different recording it – freer, much looser. It has the most organic feel, even though it has electronic drums at the start and end.”

And then there’s the band’s choice of Alan Moulder as producer. Alongside Max Dingel, who worked on To Lose My Life , the legendary man behind classic records by everyone from Them Crooked Vultures back to My Bloody Valentine, helped the band shape their ideas in his Assault And Battery studios in northwest London. “Alan’s the man we needed,” says Cave. “He’s older, wiser, a technical genius, and without a doubt he helped us realise everything we wanted to do but didn’t quite know how to get there.”

And those qualities are the foundation of Ritual – a record that was written in five quick-smart weeks and recorded in six. No messing around, no faffing or flailing in search of a “new direction” or “sure-hit singles”. Just a band of teenage friends, evolving into a tight, focused, imaginative, mutually supportive three-way unit.

“Initially we did have grand plans – we visited this really nice studio in Paris,” recalls Cave. “But this was three weeks into the writing process, and things were really going well. Two weeks later we were done. The vast difference in the writing this time was that Harry and I wrote it on his computer at home. Whereas last time we wrote it on a keyboard then translated it instantly into a three-piece set-up, recorded that, then added some more bits afterwards.”

But not that many bits – many elements of the demos for the songs on Ritual have survived. That’s how emboldened White Lies were. A development, they admit, that comes in part from the fact that their record collections have expanded “twenty-fold” since they made their first album.

“Touring we’d built a huge bank of influences, songs and artists that we really liked,” says McVeigh. “For the first time in our lives we had a bit of money and the first thing we did was spent it on a load of music. That had a big impact – we were soaking all this new music up.

Their new listening habits – Richie Hawtin, in his Plastikman guise and other nommes de bleep ; Swedish metal band Opeth; Danish producer Trentemøller – directly informed the techno throb of The Power & The Glory. “The glitchy sounding electronic percussion in that song is a direct homage to those things,” says Cave.

The first single is the towering, glowering, thumping Bigger Than Us .

“It has quite a big chorus,” grins McVeigh. “It’s a good song for radio. I know it sounds like we think about which songs will do well, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We’re a very ambitious band. We want the best for our record.”

The closing Come Down is another pivotal song. McVeigh’s voice, rich and resonant, floats over a minimal electronic beat-scape, both icy and warm, before… going somewhere else entirely.

“We started off wanting that to be like a stripped down Tears For Fears,” smiles Cave. “Within ten minutes that idea had gone. The middle section which is full-on gospel and very R&B – well, we sat listening to it, smiling to each other, but going: I dunno, is this cool, is this any good? But we’re really proud of that moment. We like the fact that some people are gonna go, what the fuck is this? ”

The album title, the lyricist adds, derives from the fact that “a lot of the songs deal with various rituals: daily rites of passage, things that all humans do which aren’t necessarily good for them. So a song like Holy Ghost is very literal, making observations on really extreme examples of fundamental religion. Whereas Strangers looks at the ritual of having a very unemotional, physical relationship with someone.

“And in a way the album links all these different things and draws them all to the same conclusion. Is doing this really just a way of killing time or trying to find some purpose in life? And is someone who gets up every morning and prays for three hours any different in the way that they view their life compared to someone who sleeps with a different person or drinks themselves silly every night?”

Adds McVeigh, “I like the title because it means everything but nothing all at the same time. It can refer to religion or love as the most important things in your life. Or it can refer to how every night you get back from work and watch TV, and that’s your ritual.”

And for their next highlights… Live, last time round, White Lies expanded to a four-piece. This time they will be five. “More space, more power, more back-up,” nods Jack Brown.

“I think we’ve just changed the intent. With the first record, while we might have denied it at the time, we were very much trying to be bombastic,” says Charles Cave with the brilliant, fierce honesty that informs everything White Lies do. “Quite overly dramatic. We were desperate to have a full string section! We wanted to be as big sounding as possible. I know that’s a loose, dangerous word that’s always thrown about by bands. But we did want that – and we possibly went a little too far.”

“And we received a bit of criticism for sounding a little sterile at some points, or un-genuine. But we’ve fixed that – for one, the lyrics on the first album concerned fictional stories, albeit influenced by real people and events. That always makes it quite hard to get emotionally involved. But this time we’ve been much more ambitious, but in a quite unconventional way. We wanted to see how many cracks we could leave in the final thing. There are less than perfect performances in there. Harry’s voice has been worked like a horse over the last two years, and after 18 months of touring and smoking and drinking, it’s not the young, angelic, clear voice it was before. Which for me is absolutely perfect.”

Power, glory, peace, quiet, sex, religion, mistakes, passion, cracks, heart, soul – Ritual offers all these. And sometimes more. And sometimes less.

• James Sandom

Agency: North America and Mexico

• High Road Touring
• Matt Hickey

Agency: World (excluding North America and Mexico)

• Russell Warby
• Jonny Greenfield

White Lies Release Sixth Studio Album “As I Try Not To Fall Apart”

With their sixth album, As I Try Not To Fall Apart out today via PIAS, White Lies have emphasis track "Blue Drift" in numerous playlists, and have released an extra format, a limited edition gold cassette…

WHITE LIES ANNOUNCE SIXTH STUDIO ALBUM “AS I TRY NOT TO FALL APART” & UK/EUROPEAN HEADLINE TOUR

White Lies Unveil New Studio Album Details "As I Try Not To Fall Apart, " Release Title Track, Announce 48-Date Headline Tour   White Lies have today announced details of…

White Lies Livestream – Sunday, May 10th!

“To Lose My Life” Listening Party Twitter : #timstwitterlisteningparty 2pm ET https://timstwitterlisteningparty.com/

Never Miss The Artists You Love!

Register for a See account here to import your Spotify library or ‘follow’ artists you find on our site to add them to your ‘favourites’. We will send you email alerts every time one of your favourite artists goes on tour.

In your user account, you can import your Spotify library or ‘follow’ artists you find on our site to add them to your ‘favourites’. We will send you email alerts every time one of your favourite artists goes on tour.

White Lies Tickets and Dates

More information about white lies.

Returning in 2022 with a brand new album and a coinciding tour, indie icons White Lies are one of the most loved live acts of the 21st century. Since the release of their legendary debut album, 'To Lose My Life', in 2009, the band have established themselves globally with sold out tours in Europe and beyond. We caught up with the trio to find out what to expect from their sixth studio LP, how they've used their time off to focus on a stellar return, and what's on the horizon moving forward.

Read more on the See Tickets Blog.

• Statistics Stats
• You are here:

White Lies Concert Setlists & Tour Dates

• White Lies ( UK post-punk band )
• White Lies ( 80s )
• White Lies ( 04-05 Devon indie rock band )

Upcoming Shows

• Date and Venue Doors Scheduled
• Jul 03 2024 Gorilla Manchester, England Add time Add time Add times
• Jul 04 2024 Gorilla Manchester, England Add time Add time Add times
• Jul 05 2024 EartH Theatre London, England Add time Add time Add times
• Jul 06 2024 Lafayette London, England Add time Add time Add times
• Jul 07 2024 Lafayette London, England Add time Add time Add times
• Aug 17 2024 PStereo 2024 Trondheim, Norway Add time  –  Scheduled: 7:40 PM Add time Add times 7:40 PM

White Lies at Cactus Club Bargeweg, Bruges, Belgium

• There Goes Our Love Again
• First Time Caller
• Mother Tongue
• Getting Even
• Be Your Man
• Tricky To Love
• Heaven Wait
• Edit setlist songs
• Edit venue & date
• Edit set times
• Add to festival
• Report setlist
• Bigger Than Us
• Peace & Quiet
• Streetlights
• Turn The Bells
• The Power & the Glory
• Farewell to the Fairground
• Hold Back Your Love

White Lies at TivoliVredenburg Pandora, Utrecht, Netherlands

White lies at tøjhuset, fredericia, denmark.

• Is My Love Enough
• Don't Want to Feel It All
• Step Outside
• Hurt My Heart
• Take It Out on Me

White Lies at Live at Leeds 2024

• I Don't Want to Go to Mars
• To Lose My Life

White Lies at The Exchange, North Shields, England

• Unfinished Business

White Lies at Guanamor Teatro Studio, Zapopan, Mexico

• Nothing To Give (M83 Remix)
• Am I Really Going to Die
• Breakdown Days
• Time to Give

White Lies at Auditorio Pabellón M, Monterrey, Mexico

White lies at pepsi center wtc, mexico city, mexico.

More from this Artist

• Artist Statistics
• Add setlist

Most played songs

• Farewell to the Fairground ( 586 )
• Death ( 583 )
• To Lose My Life ( 582 )
• Unfinished Business ( 544 )
• Bigger Than Us ( 484 )

More White Lies statistics

Hooverphonic The Keytone Cops Mumford & Sons La Roux

View covered by statistics

Artists covered

Lana Del Rey Portishead Prince Bruce Springsteen Talking Heads

View artists covered statistics

Gigs seen live by

4,604 people have seen White Lies live.

Cocozaure GinoB geraldinesanty Bowie2 neverturnaway Yokii908 YouXxX jdyrocker wearthesun zap210 ClaudioMuse Remond erikgen rocknronald isabelstnbergen Huubke731 Lars_Muziek JorisRaven gerwin ronald51 midnightcitizen Waxel fb:1175651988 BartvT bazziebas JaukoV reetsjel jwkrom schlhs_nl Starminx SBBengtsen BestLemongrab Lorretta1 JonF90 young_jonah D-nnyHill Bungle90815 MKirby the_harrisons Baillie4444 Karlosb14 BIGGREG Perfrifery HannahW1990 melissakaye johnpeace58 hjturner03 neyfrancov arcticmax AraceliHipolito

Showing only 50 most recent

White Lies on the web

Music links.

• White Lies Lyrics (de)
• Wikipedia page
• Official Homepage

Tour Update

Marquee memories: pond.

• Jun 25, 2024
• Jun 24, 2024
• Jun 23, 2024
• Jun 22, 2024
• Jun 21, 2024
• Jun 20, 2024
• FAQ | Help | About
• Terms of Service
• Ad Choices | Privacy Policy
• Feature requests
• Songtexte.com

• Wed 3 Jul Manchester, Gorilla White Lies Performing Ritual View tickets
• Thu 4 Jul Manchester, Gorilla White Lies Performing Big TV Sold out
• Fri 5 Jul London, Lafayette White Lies Performing Ritual Moved
• Fri 5 Jul London, EartH (Hackney Arts Centre) White Lies Performing Ritual View tickets
• Sat 6 Jul London, Lafayette White Lies Performing Big TV Sold out
• Sun 7 Jul London, Lafayette White Lies Performing Big TV Sold out

Trump Is Inciting Violence as the Election Approaches

How his latest migrant bashing, lies about the fbi, and other verbal attacks could lead to bloodshed..

Mark Follman

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter

Samuel Corum/Getty

The public has long been accustomed to Donald Trump saying outrageous things, even when he appears to encourage political violence. It’s almost as if his aggrieved and menacing rhetoric has become a normal part of American politics.

This normalizing effect is no accident; research shows it’s the result of a strategy utilized by autocrats. Ever since Trump was president, his approach to messaging has included a method of incitement known to security experts as stochastic terrorism . He frequently uses inflammatory and dehumanizing language that elicits rage against political “enemies” among his extremist supporters—yet his rhetoric is always deliberately ambiguous enough to deny that he inspired any subsequent acts of violence.

Exhibit A for how this works: Demonize a political adversary as “sick” and “crazy” and responsible for national demise—as Trump and his allies long did to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—and eventually some troubled person may stalk her with a hammer and zip ties and brutally attack her husband . Republicans in thrall to Trump then help him dodge blame by dismissing the violence with conspiracy theories and mockery . Trump further reinforces these effects by telling a crowd of roaring fans he thinks Pelosi is an “animal.”

Demagoguery in politics is as old as the republic, but no president has ever engaged in a campaign of incitement against Americans like Trump has. It has worked on individuals and mobs, the latter most infamously when Trump paved the way for the January 6 insurrection. After the 2020 election, I was among the first to report on this campaign of terrorism by the freshly defeated president, about three weeks and then just a few hours before the attack on the US Capitol. Pelosi’s name was on the lips of the armed and violent Trump extremists there, too. (It’s also worth reiterating that use of the term terrorism in this context comes from a bipartisan group of leading national security experts , as I reported back then.)

With the 2024 election now entering the homestretch, the risk for political violence is once again heightened, according to threat experts I spoke with recently, who asked not be identified. Highest on the list of dangers, they say, is extremist violence stemming from white supremacist groups and Trump’s MAGA movement.

“It’s a top focus and has been for a while,” a senior federal law enforcement agent working in threat assessment and counterterrorism told me. “It’s been very busy, about as much as we’ve seen since after Mar-a-Lago,” he said, referring to the 2022 raid by the FBI to recover highly classified documents from Trump’s Florida estate, which was met with a wave of vitriol and disinformation from the ex-president and his allies. A state law enforcement official in counterterrorism I spoke with noted a heightened focus on far-left extremism in connection with the Israel-Hamas war, but concurred that domestic far-right extremism remains the top concern. (Both sources declined to comment specifically on the role of Trump’s rhetoric, though one observed that “it’s obviously not helpful.”)

“I’m very worried about what could happen in the next few months and around the election,” another security expert, who works in the private sector and consults for the federal government, told me.

Among Trump’s many targets over the years have been immigrants, journalists, judges, and law enforcement officials. Threats and violence have followed. Proving a direct connection is all but impossible—and that’s the point, the madness in the method, so to speak. But in various cases a connection also isn’t difficult to see: a mass shooter claiming to be motivated by a migrant “invasion,” after Trump and his Fox News allies hyped such fears. A sharp rise in death threats against journalists , after Trump and his advisers blasted the media as the “enemy of the American people.” A thwarted attack by a Trump supporter on an FBI field office , after Trump let loose over the Mar-a-Lago raid and after his ally Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona said, “We must destroy the FBI.”

Trump has been told about the dangers of his rhetoric—they were highlighted for him by his own advisers.

Despite the fact that Trump has been out of office for almost four years and is now a convicted felon, his relentless campaign of incitement continues apace. In a speech last weekend, he further dehumanized migrants by floating the idea that they should be put into their own fighting league and then pitted against UFC champions. “I think the migrant guy might win, that’s how tough they are,” Trump said.

He played up the notion of their brutality also by repeating his unsubstantiated smear that undocumented immigrants are coming from “prisons and mental institutions.” Last year, Trump used Nazi-style rhetoric to declare that those he views as political enemies “live like vermin within the confines of our country” and that immigrants are “ poisoning the blood of our country .” As I’ve reported previously, behavioral research has shown that fueling political anger with disgust and contempt produces a potent hatred that increases the likelihood of violence.

Early this week, Judge Aileen Cannon held a hearing in federal court on special counsel Jack Smith’s request to stop Trump from continuing to intentionally inflame his supporters with verbal attacks against the FBI. That includes Trump’s recent false claim that the FBI was poised to kill him at President Joe Biden’s behest when agents raided Mar-a-Lago in 2022. Coverage of Monday’s proceedings suggested that Cannon was skeptical of the request, but as Smith argued in a court filing , “Comments like those create an immediate threat to the safety of law enforcement professionals.” Smith cited another recent example of a Trump supporter who he said posed danger: a Texas man who allegedly called and threatened an FBI agent associated with the federal gun case against Hunter Biden. The man allegedly accused the agent of covering up worse crimes by Biden and threatened to “hunt down” and “slaughter” FBI agents and their families.

Trump’s targeting of the judicial system, particularly in response to the criminal cases against him, has caused a surge in threats against judges and prosecutors, according to data from the US Marshals Service and a recent Reuters investigation . During the hush-money case against Trump in New York, he blasted away on social media at the district attorney and the judge in the case; both faced increased threats against them and their families and employees.

Trump’s intent is evident from the fact that he has been told about the dangers of his rhetoric—they were highlighted for him as president by his own counterterrorism advisers. Those advisers informed Trump that language from his speeches and campaign materials had been used “as justification for acts of violence,” according to Elizabeth Neumann, who served as an assistant secretary of homeland security for counterterrorism and threat prevention under Trump until April 2020. “The president has repeatedly been confronted with this fact,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed a few months after resigning.

Such pushback from people around Trump seems far less likely today, with so much of the GOP capitulating to his behavior, if not adopting his tactics of incitement themselves . The question now isn’t about whether Trump will continue to stoke political violence in this way through the election. It’s about when and to what extremes he might do so, and how much more that will boost the odds of further violence to come.

Finally, the American Climate Corps Is Getting Down to Business

Donald Trump, Stochastic Terrorist

Trump and the Republican Party Own the Attack on Paul and Nancy Pelosi

How Trump Spread Incitement of Violence Throughout the GOP

We recommend.

Supreme Court Looks Set to Avoid Deciding Whether Women Can Get Emergency Abortions

Rags to Riches

Maddie Oatman

The Utah Governor’s Lonely Crusade to Make Politics Nice Again

Stephanie Mencimer

Sponsored Post

The Looming Threat of Christian Nationalism

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

MAGA Candidate Loses Bid to Replace Mitt Romney

Rising Seas Will Disrupt Millions of US lives by 2050, Study Finds

Nina Lakhani

Jamaal Bowman Loses Primary to George Latimer—and a Lot of AIPAC Money

Sophie Hurwitz

US Surgeon General Declares Gun Violence a Public Health Crisis

Arianna Coghill

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use , and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones ' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Independent. In print. In your mailbox.

Inexpensive, too! Subscribe today and get a full year of Mother Jones for just $14.95.

Bold. Brave. Beautiful.

Award-winning photojournalism. Stunning video. Fearless conversations.

Looking for news you can trust?

We noticed you have an ad blocker on..

Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? We're a nonprofit (so it's tax-deductible), and reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget.

We noticed you have an ad blocker on. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism?

Don't let an algorithm decide what news you see.

Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.