Europe is no stranger to political violence like the recent attempt on Donald Trump’s life at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. More than 50 candidates and activists were physically assaulted during France’s recent parliamentary election – a painful reminder of a not-so-distant past when violence was part of the language of political discourse in several European countries.
But political violence in the United States is different, because it occurs in a society where civilians own more than 300mn firearms and mass shootings are tragically frequent. As ugly as it may sound, the attempt to assassinate Trump is somewhat normal, in the sense that it is consistent with a widespread pattern of recourse to brute force in American life.
Political violence in the US takes on ever-changing forms, but a constant feature is the vicious rhetorical battle that follows every incident. Each side passionately blames the other for inciting the shooter with inflammatory statements, suggesting that the victim’s political opponents bear moral responsibility for the violence. This is a rare area of bipartisan consensus among US politicians: the victim’s political party determines the culprit,
but the narrative’s structure
is always the same. The time frame for dispassionately condemning violence shortens with each episode.
The attempt on Trump’s life, which resulted in the death of one rally attendee and the 20-year-old shooter, had two immediate effects. First, it revitalised the martyrdom narrative of Trump’s “MAGA” campaign, and followers instantly began producing merchandise glorifying the surviving hero, who declared he would remain “defiant in the face of wickedness.” Trump’s tone in crediting God for “preventing the unthinkable from happening” fits perfectly with the MAGA narrative of a revered figure whom the world wants to kill.
The second, equally predictable effect is the accusation that Democrats are to blame for the attack. Senator JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential pick, argued that the incident was a direct consequence of President Joe Biden’s campaign portraying Trump as a threat to democracy, thus legitimising attempts to remove him by force. “That rhetoric led directly to (former) President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Vance claimed.
Similarly, US Representative Mike Collins suggested that the District Attorney’s Office in Butler County, Pennsylvania, “should immediately file charges against Joseph R Biden for inciting an assassination.” Even Representative Steve Scalise, a victim of a 2017 attack by a left-wing extremist that the FBI classified as domestic terrorism, pointed to the Democrats’ “incendiary rhetoric”.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign circulated clips of Democratic Representative Dan Goldman saying on live television that Trump needs to be “eliminated”, a statement echoed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And his operatives highlighted a now-ominous-sounding quote from a frustrated Biden, who, after his recent disastrous debate performance, said: “We’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”
Democrats and their supporters have been hastily condemning the incident, while reminding everyone that Trump openly incited a mob to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 – the most horrific episode of political violence in recent American history – with the aim of overturning his loss in the 2020 election.
This rhetorical skirmish is likely to solidify Trump’s lead over Biden in the polls, but the long-term implications are more devastating: a national conversation fuelled by hatred, victimhood, and resentment. In 2011, after the assassination attempt on Representative Gabby Giffords in Arizona, a Democratic-leaning news outlet popularised the term “stochastic terrorism”, which refers to political violence by lone actors motivated by a radicalising atmosphere. The stochastic terrorist was supposedly Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and then Tea Party leader, who had circulated a map marking congressional districts to be targeted in the next elections, including Giffords’ district, with what looked like crosshairs.
It later emerged that Giffords’ attacker was a deeply disturbed individual with no knowledge of Palin’s map, rallies, or political debate. Despite this, and despite the lack of evidence of a causal link between political rhetoric and such attacks, the term resurfaces after every attack and has entered specialised literature as if it described a valid concept.
Through shared tactics of manipulation, instrumentalisation, and self-victimisation, Democrats and Republicans have become trapped in a mire of circular reasoning that is as perverse as it is dangerous. Alleging a connection between violence and political rhetoric becomes a rhetorical weapon itself, fuelling the extreme polarisation that makes political violence more likely. — Project Syndicate
- Mattia Ferraresi is Managing Editor of the Italian newspaper Domani and a 2019 Harvard Nieman Fellow. He is the author of several books, including the first volume on Donald Trump to be published in Italy and the forthcoming I demoni della mente (The Demons of the Mind).
Misinformation narratives in wake of bid on Trump’s life
By Seana Davis,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Misinformation and conspiracy theories were spreading online after an assassination attempt on former US president Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was alleged to have shot at the Republican presidential candidate from a rooftop during the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wounding Trump’s right ear. One spectator died and two others were injured.
Reuters has fact-checked some of the most widely shared narratives online.
Misidentified shooters
Within hours of the shooting, an image surfaced online of a man dressed in a black sweatshirt, hat and black sunglasses. Social media posts said the man was “Antifa extremist” Mark Violets and that he was named by local police as the suspect in the assassination attempt.
However, the man in the photograph is Marco Violi, who had nothing to do with the shooting. Violi is an Italian sports writer who shares content on the Italian soccer team AC Roma.
In a statement emailed to Reuters and shared on his social media, Violi said he was in Rome and had awoken at 2am to numerous messages, adding that he “categorically denied any involvement in the situation.”
Violi was not the only individual to have been misidentified in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Viral posts also misidentified another man, Maxwell Yearick, as the shooter. In 2016, various media outlets reported that Yearick, who does not resemble Crooks, was arrested outside a Pittsburgh Trump rally after an altercation with police.
Altered images, false claims shooting was staged
Doctored images of Trump and Secret Service agents smiling on stage surfaced in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The fake images were shared to support claims that the assassination attempt had been “staged” as a ploy to boost Trump’s popularity in November’s election.
The original photographs were captured by an Associated Press photographer and show Trump and the agents with serious facial expressions.
The FBI on Sunday said Crooks acted alone and the agency had yet to identify a motive.
Predictive programming conspiracy theories
Predictive programming is a conspiracy theory, often revived in the aftermath of a major news event, that suggests governments and powerful groups provide indications of planned events to the public by embedding predictions in books, TV shows and movies.
Within an hour of the attempted assassination, a fabricated screenshot resurfaced of a cartoon of Trump in a casket and was described as a scene from the TV series *The Simpsons.
But this image has made the rounds on social media since at least 2017.
Matt Selman, an executive producer for the show, told Reuters in an email that the screenshot never appeared on the show, adding that it is “all too easy to create fake Simpsons ‘predictions’ like these for the purpose of misleading people.”
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. — Reuters
