The assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, has reactivated the memory of a long history of political violence in the US. Four presidents have been assassinated there, starting with Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Civil War [in 1865], but 16 others have been the victims of assassination attempts. Not to mention that this violence has affected presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, mayors, political leaders and union leaders. So when Joe Biden declared, immediately after the attack, that "there's no place for this kind of violence in America," we'd like to agree with him, but that's not what the facts tell us.
The atmosphere of this unusual electoral campaign, with its two elderly candidates, unpopular with a large part of their electorate and with opposing visions of the direction the country should take, was conducive to the outbreak of violence.
Since the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the police, the army and the FBI have been on high alert fearing that a criminal conviction of the former president or new disputed election results could once again light a spark. This is one of the reasons behind the wave of arrests and sometimes heavy sentences handed down to the Capitol Hill rioters, with law enforcement preferring, for a while at least, to see the ringleaders away from their troops and the social media platforms that amplify their incendiary rhetoric.
Donald Trump himself, though he was the victim this time, is a figure who attracts and provokes violence. Accustomed to having his opponents booed at his rallies, he campaigned in 2016 on a promise to deport Mexican migrants, designated as criminals and rapists, and to put Hillary Clinton in prison. "Lock her up" became one of his favorite slogans, which he now uses against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other Democratic women in politics. In 2017, during clashes in Charlottesville between anti-fascist activists and White supremacists, he made a point of declaring that there were "very fine people on both sides."
In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, during the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, he sided with white neighborhood vigilante groups. Lawyer couple Mark and Patricia McCloskey, posing with guns in hand outside their home, ready to shoot participants in a Black Lives Matter march, became the darlings of the Republican convention in the summer of 2020. And while the insurrection on Capitol Hill had the appearance of a carnival, it left four people dead, while the sometimes heavily armed rioters, bearing Confederate flags, shouted "Hang Mike Pence!"
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