Presidents Biden, Trump and Political Violence: A Horse Long Bolted

 

I have a good deal of respect for President Joe Biden, despite the speculation about his fitness for the office of President. The recent assassination attempt on his rival, Donald Trump, was a truly shocking event and Biden, to his immense credit, speedily condemned the attack. Following the attack, however, Biden addressed his people and made a statement that I found odd. After acknowledging past political shootings and assaults, he said: 

“In America we resolve our differences at the ballot box," he said. "At the ballot box. Not with bullets."

Thankfully, of course, that applies to the majority of the American people, but the USA has a long history of political violence, dating back to the American Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. This is well known, but the first attempted  event happened in 1835, when one Richard Lawrence tried and failed to kill President Andrew Jackson. In 1865,Lincoln was the first US president to die by assassination. He was followed by James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley (1901) and, of course, John F. Kennedy in 1963. Three presidents have been injured in attempted killings: Theodore Roosevelt (1912), Ronald Reagan (1981) and, as of this year, Donald Trump. And, of course, there have been many other incidents, lethal and non-lethal, such as the vicious attack on the husband of Nancy Pelosi and the notorious January 6 attack on the US Capitol building in 2021. 

All these occurrences seem to point to one thing: political violence is an American tradition. As the 60s radical, H. Rap Brown said :

"Violence is a part of American culture.  Violence is as American as cherry pie."

Brown ought to know. He is now a Muslim convert with the name of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin and serving time for the murder of two police officers. If he is right, he has embraced that culture. A penetrating article by Time magazine has focussed on the problem of US political violence and come up with some disturbing statistics:

"In a December 2021 survey by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland, 1 in 3 respondents said they thought violent action against the government can be justified, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in the 1990s. In an April PBS/Marist poll, 28% of Republicans and 12% of Democrats said they believe Americans may “have to resort to violence to get the country back on track.”

The article goes on to say:

"More people are bringing guns to demonstrations. Every politically charged event, from Supreme Court decisions to Trump’s trials to congressional hearings, elicits menacing warnings and talk of “civil war.” The last presidential election ended in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by an angry mob that left five people dead and 140 injured. The vibes feel even darker this time,.."

The young man who tried to assassinate Trump was only 20 years old. During his short lifetime, Thomas Crooks grew up in a nation where high-profile attacks against elected officials became increasingly common. He was 7 when Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords was shot, meeting with constituents in a supermarket car park in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011. He was 13 when Representative Steve Scalise was shot by a left-wing extremist during a GOP congressional baseball team practice in Virginia in 2017. When Crooks was 17, federal authorities foiled a plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer that was hatched by a right-wing militia group that posted violent anti-government pamphlets online. Crooks was in high school when America was shocked by the attack on the U.S. Capitol building. Even if we do not believe that political violence is an American tradition (and I don't), we can see that Crooks might have believed that attempting to kill a major political figure was entirely normal.

As I said, I do not believe that political violence is an American tradition. If it is, then it is a British tradition also. Spencer Perceval, pictured above, was our Prime Minister when he was killed in 1812 by John Bellingham. Including Perceval, eight British MPs have been murdered, the most recent being Jo Cox (2016) and Sir David Amess in 2021. There have been targeted killings by foreign intelligence services - Georgi Markov, Alexander Litvinienko and Dawn Sturgess are examples of this. There was the murder in the street of the soldier, Lee Rigby, together with the 7/7 bombing  the murderous attacks on London and Westminster Bridges and the Manchester Arena Bombing by Jihadi fanatics. We, it would appear, are not immune to political violence. But perhaps we in Britain, and the USA, should remember, as The Hill comments:

"Any decent citizen abhors violence and its presence in the political system. But can we ever eradicate it? No major European country can boast a history free of assassination or attempts. Heads of government have actually been killed in Serbia, Israel, Lebanon, Sweden, India, Egypt and South Korea just in the last 50 years."

That is a very good point and a question that no-one seems to want to answer. Presidents Biden and Trump have called for all Americans to unite. Similar calls are made here for people of strongly differing views to engage in dialogue and learn to tolerate each other. Sadly, dialogue and debate do not achieve much when people who hold views antagonistic to others return to those views once the dialogue is over. When at university, I attended debates between Jewish and Palestinian students. The debates were lively, but resolved nothing. No-one from either side of the debates changed, or even modified, their views. I do not hold out much hope for such approaches. Anyone keyed up to carry out an assassination is not going be dissuaded by a chat and a cup of tea. Political violence is an international plague, always has been and is unlikely to improve. There's no point in closing the stable door for a horse that has long since bolted.

A Reflection on the Election

 

To a limited extent, it's possible to feel sorry for Rishi Sunak, our ex-Prime Minister. He began the election campaign by getting soaked in the London rain, and ended it yesterday with his wife watching him, while she held an umbrella. As The Mirror noted with amusement: 

"The emergency umbrella caught the attention of viewers online who took to social media to share their reactions. One person wrote on site X, formerly Twitter: "Rishi Sunak's wife waiting in the wings holding an umbrella is killing me," while another said: "Rishi Sunak leaving Downing Street. Note the umbrella. Not making that mistake again, so he has learned SOMETHING."

Sunak's conduct during the election campaign certainly indicates that he has a lot to learn. Besides making a fool of himself by getting soaked when he announced the election, there was his gaffe in leaving the D-Day commemoration events early. What he failed to see was that, besides upsetting the press and public, it gave ammunition to his enemies in the Conservative party itself. As The Guardian said in June: 

"Conservative candidates and aides have looked on aghast at the missteps of Rishi Sunak’s campaign over the last fortnight. Anger has been building over Sunak allies being parachuted into safe seats, including the party chair, Richard Holden, the lack of preparation for the snap campaign within Conservative party headquarters (CCHQ) and the avoidable row over Frank Hester’s donations. But nothing has come close to the fury within the party over the prime minister’s decision to skip part of the D-day ceremony in France, leaving the stage clear for Keir Starmer to show leadership and patriotism, as well as for Nigel Farage".

The Tory knives will be out for Sunak now; in fact, LBC are discussing his putative replacement as I type. And I know that many people will demur at my feeling sorry for him. He is a very rich man, as has been pointed out many times, and could leave the UK tomorrow for a lucrative future in California. However, I have sympathy for him over the recent insulting racist comments made about him on Channel 4 by a Reform UK activist (disowned by Farage) which must have been hurtful to Sunak and his family. I have no doubt that there are Tory Party members who share those vile views, and are sharpening their knives to stick in Sunak's back. 

Keir Starmer, naturally, has a lot to smile about - as have all of us who voted Labour on July 4th. It was a truly remarkable victory, whatever the causal factors. Yet, as some pundits have noted, there has been rejoicing without euphoria. We all know why - there is the crisis in the NHS, where the junior doctors' strike needs to be resolved and, says Sky News:

"The workforce is depleted and exhausted. And yet that same workforce will be asked to deliver an extra 40,000 appointments a week. Nobody, Labour assure us, will be forced to take on the extra work. Extra doctors, nurses and trained clinical staff can't be magicked out of thin air".

There is the matter of crime and punishment, for which Labour has promised a campaign of crime prevention. There is also the war in Ukraine, which Keir Starmer is committed to support by supplying aid to Ukraine. Clean energy is also going to be a thorny problem. International relations will be challenging, with the possible return of Donald Trump as US President and the growth of right-wing extremism in Europe. But extremism at home, of two kinds, could also be a problem...

The first type of extremism referred to above comes from activists who support the Palestinian cause in Gaza and feel that Labour is not doing enough to bring about a cease fire. The extremist elements who hold this view were seen on Election Night in Birmingham where Jess Phillips, MP (seen above) and Shabana Mahmood MP told in their victory speeches of the intimidation and harassment they faced during the general election campaign. Jess Phillips was heckled during her speech. As the BBC reported: 

"Jess Phillips spoke of party workers being filmed in the street and making regular calls to police, while Shabana Mahmood said masked men had disrupted a community meeting, "terrifying" people in attendance".

In areas where there is a large Muslim community, there has been intense activity on the Gaza issue, as is well known. This activity has come from the Workers' Party, led by George Galloway (who lost his seat in Rochdale) and independent candidates who stood on the Gaza issue. As Sky news reports" 

"A Gaza effect has seen Labour lose a handful of seats to independents who campaigned on the conflict in the Middle East. In total, five seats were won by candidates who had campaigned against the new government's stance on Palestine. This includes Jeremy Corbyn keeping his Islington North seat, as well as Shockat Adam winning in Leicester South, Ayoub Khan winning Birmingham Perry Barr, Adnan Hussain winning Blackburn and Iqbal Mohamed winning Dewsbury & Batley".

With the exception of Jeremy Corbyn, the four Muslim independents in the new parliament will surely lead extremist Islamophobes of the far right to complain about "the Muslim vote". And we know one of them already...

As if you hadn't guessed, I mean that indefatigable crusader for the far Right, Nigel Farage (NF). I have writtten about him more than I would have liked during this election campaign because I felt I had to. The election of NF, Richard Tice, 30p Lee and two other Reform UK candidates as MPs gives me no pleasure and I was shocked at the number of votes Reform UK gained nationwide - 14% of the total votes cast. As the BBC noted: 

"Reform UK candidates ... came second in 98 constituencies. In an early sign of Reform's success in winning over former Tory voters, the first two results of the night in north-east England - in Blyth and Ashington and in Houghton and Sunderland South - saw the party beat the Conservatives by more than 4,000 votes".

Significantly, NF received congratulations from the resurgent convicted criminal, Donald Trump:

"In a social media post, Mr Trump wrote: "Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success. Nigel is a man who truly loves his Country".

Sounding like certain other extremist orators of history - such as Oswald Moseley - NF has declared his intention to "change politics forever" and build a mass movement. Personally, I find this sinister. Mass movements of the far Right tend to be violent and intimidating, rather like Mussolini's Squadristi, the Nazi SA - and the thugs who tried to intimidate Labour Party workers in predominantly Muslim constituencies. We cannot afford to be complacent. And, as I hope I showed in my previous post, the extreme Right are using Reform UK as a Trojan Horse. It's not on the horizon, but Reform UK might develop their own paramilitary militia one day (only joking).

By this, I do not mean that a coup or a civil war is imminent, but, with five Reform MPs and five Independent MPs, extremist views that belong in a dustbin are going to become prominently publicised and, worse, be perceived as normal. NF will see to that.

We exercised our hallowed democratic right to vote on Thursday. If NF and his ilk do change our politics forever, the right to vote could become a thing of the past.

An image from Facebook. Surely an exaggeration?

Yeah, surely...