With an assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, the U.S. experienced another violent episode in its increasingly polarized politics. Former President Trump, who’s about to formally become the GOP nominee for president in the 2024 election, survived the attempted assassination when, initial reports said, a bullet grazed his ear. But one rally attendee was killed, more spectators were injured and the suspected gunman is also dead. The Conversation’s politics editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke with University of Massachusetts, Lowell, scholar Arie Perliger after the event. Perliger offered insight from his study of political violence and assassinations. Given the stark political polarization in the U.S., Perliger said, “it’s not a surprise that eventually people engage in violence.”
Schalit: When you heard the news, what was the first thing you thought?
Perliger: The first thing that I thought about is that we were basically one inch from a potential civil war. I think that if, indeed, Donald Trump would have suffered fatal injuries today, the level of violence that we witnessed so far will be nothing in comparison to what would have happened in the next couple of months. I think that would have unleashed a new level of anger, frustration, resentment, hostility that we haven’t seen for many, many years in the U.S.
This assassination attempt, at least at this early stage, may validate a strong sense among many Trump supporters and many people on the far right that they are being delegitimized, that they are on the defensive and that there are efforts to basically prevent them from a competing in the political process and prevent Trump from returning to the White House.
What we’ve just seen, for many of the people on the far right, fits very well into a narrative that they’ve already been constructing and disseminating for the last few months.
collaboration with the other side. That’s one thing. Second, people delegitimize leaders who are willing to collaborate with the other side, hence, presenting them as individuals who betrayed their values and political party.
The third part is that people are delegitimizing their political rivals. They transform a political disagreement into a war in which there is no space for working together to address the challenges they agree are facing the nation.
When you combine those three dynamics, you create basically a dysfunctional system where both sides are convinced that it’s a zero-sum game, that it’s the end of the country. It’s the end of democracy if the other side wins.
If both sides are hammering into people again and again that losing an election is the end of the world, then it’s not a surprise that eventually people are willing to take the law into their hands and to engage in violence.
Arie Perliger, Director of Security Studies and Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass Lowell
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