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America is no stranger to political violence. It has raised its ugly head with almost frightening regularity at times of extreme polarisation throughout the country’s history.
But for the most part, incidents of assassinations, or attempted assassinations, trigger such shock across the political spectrum that all sides step back from the precipice and cooler heads prevail. Will that be the case in 2024?
The mood on both sides of the political aisle does not lend itself to cool heads or calm nerves. Both Democrats and Republicans have used fear to motivate their bases over the course of the 2024 campaign, and both have warned that a victory in November by their rival presidential candidate will spell the end of America as we know it. It is not an atmosphere conducive to a return to electoral normality.
But there is precedent, within the lifetimes of many still involved in American politics, where a startling wave of political bloodletting at an equally polarised time was cauterised — and not because of any strong leadership by US government officialdom, but rather by the reassertion of the forces of moderation in American society, which wrested back the national conversation from the extremes.
It is still shocking to list the series of shootings and assassinations that occurred on the American political scene over the four years starting in 1968. Not only was Martin Luther King assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and Robert Kennedy murdered after the California Democratic primary, but four student protesters were shot and killed by the Ohio National Guard just two years later and the segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace was wounded by a gunman on the 1972 Democratic campaign trail.
In retrospect, it is astonishing that the country did not tear itself apart. Radicals on the left were staging large and angry protests against the Vietnam war, and extreme anti-war groups like the Weathermen carried out bombings intended to spark revolution. On the right, the King assassination was just the most significant in a decade-long orgy of violence against African-Americans and civil rights advocates.
But by 1976, national politics had become boring again. A decent if uninspiring ex-football hero in Gerald Ford ran for re-election against Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian who used to run a peanut farm. A deranged gunman tried to shoot Ronald Reagan in 1981, but not for political reasons.
The lesson is that American democracy has proven itself resilient. In our current hyperbolic age, it is easy to forget the US experienced a bloody civil war on its own soil, followed by a shocking presidential assassination — but within a generation had emerged into a gilded age, becoming the most important economic power on the global stage.
If the past is prologue, Saturday’s apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump will produce a shock for the American political system, allowing for voices of reason to reassert themselves.
But much that has occurred in the US since Trump has appeared on the political scene has been so unprecedented that even the lessons of American history may no longer provide a reliable guide. Let us hope that the voices of American moderation, who have been cowed by extremes on both sides of the political spectrum, use this as a time to step back into the arena. The country’s future may rely on it.
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