Washington: Alongside the shock and outrage expressed at the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, another message ran through the many statements by world leaders: That something has to change.
From Abraham Lincoln to Shinzo Abe, political assassinations are nothing new: The 1960s in the US alone saw the slayings of two Kennedys, civil rights champion Martin Luther King and Black activist Malcolm X. But there’s also no denying that the rising polarisation witnessed globally today is reaching its ultimate conclusion in the form of acts of violence.
Several leaders warned that Saturday’s shooting in Pennsylvania represented a wider problem facing democracies around the globe. Extreme rhetoric amplified by social media is increasingly leading to real-world attacks.
“It’s a phenomenon that’s not unique to the United States,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Sunday.
“We must lower the temperature of debate. There is nothing to be served by some of the escalation of rhetoric that we see in some of our political debate, political discourse in the democratic world.”
The troubles of western-style democracy, with the US a glaring example, is a point often made by the Communist authorities in China.
Asia in particular has seen a raft of violence against political leaders in recent years, most evident in the killing of Abe, Japan’s former prime minister, in July 2022.
Even though Japan has strict gun-control laws, an assailant used a home-made weapon to shoot Abe twice at a campaign event, targeting the high-profile leader due to his links to a church that the suspect said bankrupted his family by asking for excessive donations.
A few months later, former Pakistan leader Imran Khan was shot in the leg at a public event, an attack that he blamed on his political opponents. Then in January of this year, South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was stabbed in the neck at a public appearance. The perpetrator was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the attack on Lee, who is considered a leading candidate ahead of the next presidential vote in 2027.
In Latin America, Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead while leaving a campaign rally in August last year. His running mate, Andrea Gonzalez, is now standing for the February election in his place.
“We’re a generation that values liberty, the freedom to step into the street without being shot,” she said in a recent interview.
Brazil meanwhile witnessed its own version of the January 6 US Capitol riot in January 2023, when supporters of defeated President Jair Bolsonaro rampaged through the capital, Brasilia, despoiling the presidential palace and other national institutions in protest at Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s election victory.
Escalation of political violence
In Europe, too, the stain of violence has seeped into an increasingly embittered politics as the nationalist right makes inroads from France to Finland.
In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico, himself a polarizing political figure, was shot in an attempted assassination in May. In his response to the attempt on Trump, the country’s president, Peter Pellegrini, warned of the escalation of political violence around the world, saying that politics should be decided “in the polling stations and not by shooting on the streets.”
Violence must be condemned in the strongest terms and justice delivered, Pellegrini said, “so that people don’t lose confidence in democracy and democratic state institutions and don’t start to take ‘justice’ into their own hands.”
It’s hard to know whether anyone is listening to such pleas. The shock of the moment is certainly raw, but political ambition has its own momentum.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, a Trump ally, described the assassination attempt as “a shocking moment” for the world, while his political nemesis, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, said that violence “is never the answer” to political differences. “I am sure this is one thing we can all agree on,” Tusk added.
It’s also probably too soon to say what this means for Trump’s efforts to recapture the White House, although gamblers already see the shooting as bolstering his chances, with bets on a Trump victory in November surging.
What is clear is that the image of a defiant candidate, bloodied yet unbowed, is a potent contrast to the hesitant and at times apparently confused Joe Biden, whose age has become the defining factor of his campaign for a second term.
Playing with fire
In their reactions, some leaders echoed the Trump camp’s defiance after the shooting, likening the US incident to their domestic political situation. Geert Wilders, the anti-immigration leader of the largest governing party in the Netherlands, was among the most pointed.
“What happened in the US can also happen in the Netherlands,” he posted on X. “Don’t underestimate it.” While Wilders didn’t mention specific incidents, he may have been referring to Pim Fortuyn, the libertarian, anti-Islam politician who was assassinated by a left-wing radical in 2002.
The “hatred” targeting right-wing politicians is “unprecedented,” said Wilders. “The hate rhetoric from many leftish politicians and media, who label right-wing politicians as racists and Nazis is not without consequences. They are playing with fire.”
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who at one time had courted Trump, knows a thing or two about political violence in her own country, which in the 1970s saw a crippling wave of far-left and far-right terrorism. The killing of anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino three decades ago was seen as a turning point in Italian politics - except it led to the rise of Silvio Berlusconi, who is seen as an early blue-print for Trump.
“In political debate, all over the world, there are limits that should never be crossed,” she said on X. “It is a warning to everyone, regardless of political affiliation, to restore dignity and honor to politics, against all forms of hatred and violence, and for the good of our democracies.”
Among the most polarizing political events of recent times was witnessed in the UK over the country’s membership in the European Union. The shock decision to quit the EU in the Brexit referendum of June 2016 went against prevailing economic and political logic and was a defining moment of voter defiance that presaged Trump’s victory later that same year.
One week before the referendum, pro-European Labour Member of Parliament Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death in her district by a far-right assailant. Cox’s sister, Kim Leadbeater, now also a Labour lawmaker, made among the most personal contributions to the debate about a way forward, telling the BBC on Sunday that not enough had been done to counter political violence.
Violence, threats, abuse and intimidation have “a deeply worrying impact on our democracy,” she said. “We have got to have that conversation about what a civilized democracy looks like. I’ve been having it since Jo was killed. I sadly feel that we’re not making huge amounts of progress.”
