After the Trump shooting, outright denunciations of political violence only ignore the political order’s violent foundations

After the assassination attempt of former (and likely future) president of the US Donald Trump, we have seen a shift to the supposedly moderate centre ground by liberals and nominally democratic socialists in Western political discourse. Senators for the US Democrats, cabinet members of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and high profile left-wing journalists/activists have all come out to condemn not just this act of political violence, but political violence in its totality. This is a piece of hypocrisy which helps, in turn, to obscure the historical truth about the conduct of Western nation states. The violence of the American imperialist project, the violence of the European ones which are its forebears, and even the violence of the 19 mass-murderers active this year in Pennsylvania alone, seem to hold much less pertinence for neo-liberal and ostensibly leftist figures than the grazed ear of a neo-fascist presidential candidate.

Targeted assassination has a long history in the United States, largely due to the lacklustre restrictions on, and profound cultural influence of, firearms amongst the American citizenry, and the simultaneous repression of organized collective resistance in the country. Whether it’s the assassination of presidential figures, high-profile governors or activists, the lone gunman (a problematically romanticized image in American life) is nonetheless a prominent and frequently occurring one. When this political phenomenon occurs, it is almost unanimously condemned by members of the political classes, yet when it is, the ensuing discourse is oddly flavoured. The curious phrase often touted by these figures in the sociopolitical centre is that “violence has no place in politics”. But this is far from an accurate description of any public sphere that has ever existed. Violence in one form or another is dominant dominating place in every aspect of political life; the pretence that it holds none is either a lie motivated by thinly-veiled malice, or a blunder with incalculable consequences.

Political power, as it is understood by most theorists and researchers, is defined as the ability or capacity to get someone to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise. This capacity is, in the case of the State, always underwritten by violence. It means violence in daily life, violence in moments of catastrophe, violence in moments of triumph. Political power translates into violence in every political act aside from those incidents of persuasion, which, in the harsh daylight of political life, make up only a tiny portion of true power in our society.

So, how does this blatant hypocrisy show itself in the discourse surrounding the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania? Despite their support of an ideology that sees violence committed on a cataclysmic scale globally, liberals and conservatives merge to a condemnation of this particular kind of violence, in this particular space. They regard the genocides, massacres, and assassinations funded by their money and committed by their soldiers on foreign soil to be a mere “foreign” or “foreigner” problem. They minimise and trivialise that neocolonial violence in the Global South, whilst this incident is an egregious stain on the Euro-American democratic tradition.

Every thinking, feeling person accepts political violence of one kind or another; the choice of which violence is acceptable — and when — determines one’s political opinion. Nearly all accept the collection of taxes at the threat of imprisonment, many accept even the petty laws of the state threatening fines or jail time. Almost as many accept the practices of class war and climate catastrophe which fund their consumption and survival. Many still have become complacent in the face of the colonialism and imperialism which oxygenate the financial lifeblood of the West. All of this is accepted by a large number of actively and passively political people, but this single act provokes widespread condemnation. The contradiction from the centre is beyond comprehension or rationalisation. One even wonders whether a fearful consciousness has arisen amongst this class, many of whom are aware that the public view them in the same vein as Trump and his political cronies.

This act in particular smacks of blatant flagrant hypocrisy, as the man targetted is widely regarded by many as a threat to the American democratic system. His campaign in his first run at the executive office of this powerful government was riddled with controversy, and violent controversy at that. His loss after his second run was followed by an attempt at an insurrection, with his impromptu militia invading the Capitol Building on his stumbling orders, sniffing for blood down the corridors Abraham Lincoln once patrolled. And his continued funding of violent foreign regimes, whilst imprisoning immigrants on the southern border, show his track record of a neo-fascist approach to politics. The man who survived is a deeply violent and authoritarian man, who condoned the violent mobs in Charlottesville, at which a counter-protester was murdered with a vehicle. He excuses, encourages, and enjoys a particularly nasty kind of violence in his politics, and would not have shown the same level of tenderness should this have occurred on the campaign trail of a political opponent. Donald John Trump is a threatening phenomenon, whose lack of serious opposition makes him even more threatening. His victimhood at the hands of a would-be assassin is not any more valid and worthy of castigation than the victims of his murderous actions.

Does this point, made in full, justify or endorse the actions taken by that right-wing gunman? No; but what it demands is a level of ethical consistency from the political chatting classes in the West in regard to political violence. If one can rise to their feet in trembling indignation at the near miss of a former American President, then they ought to have a good word to say about Gaza. They ought to have a good word to say about the DRC, about Sudan, about Yemen, and about the fact that this is the 19th mass shooting to happen in the state of Pennsylvania so far this year. Shame on those who would coddle the man who brought the far-right back into American politics, but refuse to weep for those trapped under the rubble of Rafah, or buried in the graveyard of that historic US state. 

~ James Horton