After the attack against Trump, political violence has once again rocked the United States

The problem, as President Joe Biden will soon confirm in a solemn address to the nation from the Oval Office, is that the first modern democracy was shaken once again Another episode of political violencea problem not entirely new. Not only was Kennedy assassinated in Dallas in 1963 and his brother Bobby in Los Angeles five years later, while he was running for president. Ronald Reagan was nearly shot in a Washington hotel in 1981, Puerto Rican terrorists nearly killed Harry Truman outside the White House in 1950, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was nearly shot in Miami in 1933.

President Biden said that “there is no place for this type of violence, or any type of violence, in America. No place. Without exception. We cannot allow this violence to become normalised.». The problem, according to many experts, is that political violence in the United States is not an exception but a reality, although it is not constant. repeats itself with worrying regularity. Since the death of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, four of the 46 presidents have been assassinated in office by gunfire, at the hands of slaveholders, anarchists, and madmen. Everyone has easy and unrestricted access to small and large caliber weapons because of the freedoms granted in this regard by the Constitution.

It is not only those episodes, and there are others, such as the Civil War, that have tested and threatened to derail one of the greatest democratic projects in history. President Biden acknowledged this in his speech: political violence has reached epidemic levels. Deputy Gabby Giffords was seriously injured In 2011, six people were killed in a shooting in Tucson, Arizona. Republican Rep. Steve Scalise was left in critical condition During a shooting at baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2017. The 2021 looting of the Capitol resulted in five deaths. Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked and seriously injured In 2022 his home was broken into by an intruder with a hammer.

This has been said in a recent study by the prestigious American University of Berkeley Incidents of political violence have increased significantly since Trump entered politics. This does not mean that the former president, who is now suffering, is the cause of these problems. Rather, it is attributed to factors contemporaneous to his presidency, such as The rise of intense partisanshipThe rise of identitarianism and populist nationalism, Fake news and a tendency to blame other groups for one’s own ills. In addition, the study points to Ease of purchasing and storing firearmsThat includes the assault rifles used in the attack on the Trump rally.

Escalating rhetoric

In fact, there are many experts who believe this recent case, in which Trump survived a bullet by a miraculous turn of his head, exonerates him from blame. Little is known about the motives of the killer, who killed yet another innocent man. But free speech and political rhetoric experts such as George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley believe that “for months, politicians, the press, and pundits have ramped up reckless rhetoric on both sides in this campaign. This includes claims that Trump wanted to be executed.” end democracyDeploy death squads and make gays and journalists disappear.

“We are living in an age of anger,” Professor Turley writes in the Washington newspaper The Hill. “It is not the first, but it may be the most dangerous in our history.”

More than a few Republicans have accused Biden and Democrats of this Trump incited violence. This was done by his own candidate for the post of Vice President, J.D. Vance, who, in the last stages when he was being considered for the post, condemned it without waiting for a public statement from the police: “This is not an isolated incident. The central plank of the Biden campaign is the president Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist That must be stopped at all costs. “That rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.”

But this argument does not convince many analysts. Democrats did not call for Trump’s removal. They argue that what he did, such as when Biden said Trump would have to be “targeted”, was just rhetoric, just like when the former president said he could one day go out shooting from his window in New York and that he would have to do so with the support of his party; such as when he declared at the doors of the Capitol that his followers were the victims of the great “American carnage” that he was going to end, or when he called his opponents “dogs”, “crooks” or “thugs”.

Garren Wintemute, a professor at the University of California, Davis, believes that “for more than a decade, political figures (including Trump) have used it.” Rhetoric that appears to support and promote violencereferring to the need to set things right with the Second Amendment (which allows the possession of weapons to the Constitution) or the possibility of bloodshed if the election results are not to their liking.

Wintemute is the director of the California Gun Violence Research Center, which conducts surveys on the issue and its findings reveal two shocking realities. First, 25% of American adults think that Physical violence is justifiable to advance one’s political goals. A worrying 6% think a new civil war in the US could be imminent.

Between 1% and 2% of all respondents think it is very or extremely likely that at some point in the future they will have to shoot someone to achieve a political goal. Enough so that only one of them benefits Ease of holding weapons And security failures by police forces that can allow them to come within a few metres of a politician and shoot him without any problem, as happened with Trump.

Of course, Professor Wintemute, who writes for the Los Angeles Times, also says there is a demographic group among the entire population Political violence is more likely in the US. Those most inclined to resort to it are men, young people, those with prejudices and tendencies towards racism, sexism or homophobia, and also firearm owners. At least several of these categories include the 20-year-old boy who tried to kill Trump and failed because of a casual gesture from the former president.

Disillusionment

Another reason for the support of political violence by a part of this generation is presented by a documentary from the Frontline program of the PBS public channel, entitled ‘American Rebellion’ and broadcast with great success in 2022. In it, several analysts and experts stated that he Attack on the Capitol in 2021Which included attacks on police, threats to hang the vice president, and the destruction of offices and statues, it was carried out by young war veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, unemployed and disillusioned by those wars and keen to confront a perceived conspiracy at the heart of their nation.

Others were inspired by the military content of the war games they grew up with and still play in their middle years. As Elliot Ackerman, former Marine, United States intelligence officer, and columnist for The New York Times, said, “The excitement of the participants, the chaos of a historical event happening all around you, the latent presence of violence and madness; they reminded me of war.” That was in 2021. In 2024, they The same tensions and divisions still existDriven by growing distrust in democratic institutions. Political violence not only continues but also threatens to continue to be a part of the country’s landscape,