Elucidating. Political Violence:
We learn that violence that starts on one corner of the far right often ricochets. We find that the important threshold is the enabling of the violence. And we realize is what we do afterwards that counts the most.
None of this makes the outcome of a horrid act completely predictable. But it does help us to see how some things that will predictably be said might be unhelpful and untrue.
Some of Donald Trump’s supporters, including one right-radical senator and one right-radical congressman, were quick to blame the Democrats. (This is also, of course, Moscow’s line).
Their reasoning might seem intuitive, and clearly did seem intuitive to many people. If a radical-right politician such as Donald Trump is the victim of an assassination attempt, should we not presume that the perpetrator is on the radical left?
No, we should not.
That sort of presumption, based on us-and-them thinking, is dangerous. It begins a chain of thinking that can lead to more violence. We are the victims, and they are the aggressors. We have been hurt, so it must have been them. No one thinking this way ever asks about the violence on one’s own side.
And this way of thinking is also very often erroneous. The history of the far right tells a different story, one in which violence often refracts within and around a political movement that endorses it.
