You don’t know what happens next
Understanding the Cycle of Violence and Normalization of Extremism
Were you one of those whose immediate reaction after you heard about last Saturday’s failed attempt to assassinate Donald Trump was, “Oh. I know how this will end!”?
You were not alone. In the wake of the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the killing of one of his supporters, there were many political figures and commentators who were quick to voice their opinions on its potential impact on the country’s political landscape. Social media buzzed with predictions from both sides, claiming that “the election is over” and that Trump was now certain to win by a landslide. “That’s the whole fucking election,” a Democratic House member told Semafor.
Another senior House Democrat told Axios on Sunday, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” Journalists also warned of an impending rise in violence and chaos. “We should all be terrified about what comes next,” wrote Vox’s Zach Beauchamp. The New York Times’ front page featured Peter Baker’s assertion that the assassination attempt was “likely to tear America further apart.”
I am neither a political commentator nor an analyst, but an average American voter who does not treat elections as an intellectual exercise or a two year long show meant to entertain me. For me elections have real consequences on real human lives, and often, even if they do not affect me directly, I try to become more and more aware everyday, of how they affect the lives of people around me — known and unknown.
So, let me offer another interpretation of Saturday’s shocking event: Nobody knows anything. Anyone who claims to have already figured out precisely how Trump’s bloody ear will influence the 2024 election or strain the nation’s civic bonds is lying to you and to themselves. The history of failed assassination attempts in the United States and abroad offers only the murkiest indication of the path forward.
“Would-be assassins are chaos agents more than agents that direct the course of history,” says Benjamin Jones, an economist at Northwestern University who has studied the effects of political assassination attempts over the past 150 years. These liminal figures — light-years from fame, yet inches from infamy — tend to change the world in minuscule ways, if they change anything at all.
Historical Precedence of Failed Assassination Attempts
It is unfortunately inaccurate to claim, as many do, including President Biden, that political violence “has no place” in American society. Assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have marred every chapter of American political history. The history of failed presidential assassination attempts in the U.S. should temper expectations that this past weekend was an unprecedented or a world-historical event.
Theodore Roosevelt was shot in 1912 campaigning for president in Milwaukee and, with Paul Bunyan heroism, continued his speech after being struck; he still lost.
During a three-week span in 1975, two women tried and failed to shoot Gerald Ford. He lost his upcoming election, too.
When Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, a brief spike in his approval rating disappeared within a matter of months. It is hard to say that any of these failed attempts had a lasting effect on polls or politics in general.
Michael Powell, a seasoned political analyst, suggests that the worst is not inevitable. The actions of a chaotic individual are unlikely to change the broader course of history in a meaningful way. True, none of those presidents campaigned during the age of social media, and none of the attempts on their lives produced an image as striking as that of a bloodied, defiant Trump pumping his fist to the crowd — an image that could “change America forever,” as one Washington Post writer put it. (Side note: What kind of a sociopath one has to be to indulge in grandstanding after being hit by shards of glass?)
Like I said, I am not an expert. So maybe American history has taken a wild turn down some chaotic path in the multiverse and like all those commentators who can predict how this will end, let us, for the sake of having an argument, accept that this election has been totally influenced by the event.
But let’s also consider that nothing has really changed. This presidential election is remarkable for its stability, despite historic events on both sides, including Donald Trump’s felony conviction and widespread calls from Democratic elites for Joe Biden to drop out of the race. Most of the electorate seems to have made up its mind, as the race is as tight as ever (what with an archaic and undemocratic electoral college system faithfully doing its heavy-lifting for Republican candidates as always), and for a few months now, Donald Trump has maintained a narrow lead over Joe Biden in two or three critical battleground states, which may decide the fate of the candidates eventually.
Fascism Feasts on Violence
Fascism thrives on violence and martyrdom. It turns chaos into a rallying cry and uses fear as a weapon. For years, Trump and his allies have used violent rhetoric and actions to galvanize support. The recent assassination attempt on Trump, though horrifying, fits into a broader narrative that the far-right has been crafting — a narrative where they are the oppressed heroes fighting against a corrupt system. This incident, if not addressed correctly, could further entrench these dangerous ideologies.
The Illusion of Predictability
The bloodied-Trump photo will surely thrill his supporters — but his supporters already supported him. In a more staid political environment, the incident might be expected to durably colonize voters’ attention, but it has already begun to be displaced by two new huge political stories — the dismissal of the stolen-documents case and the selection of J. D. Vance as Trump’s running mate — which will themselves be supplanted in due time. Within a month or two, the basic contours of the presidential election may well be the exact same as they were on Saturday morning, with both Biden and Trump having a moderate but not overwhelming chance to win their respective second term.
The Long-Term Implications
In a bygone age, historians and philosophers asserted that even successful assassinations were utterly inconsequential. The assassination of ancient rulers such as Julius Caesar may have been dramatic, but the different political view of the time saw history shaped more by structural forces like class, economic growth, military development, and geography. By comparison, a small knife, or a gust of wind that bends the trajectory of a bullet, was a trifle.
After the death of Abraham Lincoln, the British politician Benjamin Disraeli put it bluntly: “Assassination has never changed the history of the world.”
This assumption flipped in the 20th century. Almost every chronicle of World War I treats the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as its precipitating event. More recently, the killing of President Juvénal Habyarimana seems to have unleashed the Rwandan genocide, and historians have argued that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy may have prolonged the Vietnam War.
Successful assassinations are somewhat rare.
In the 2009 paper “Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War,” Jones and his fellow economist Benjamin Olken amassed a data set of 298 assassination attempts on world leaders from 1875 to 2004; only 59 resulted in a leader’s death. Significant as it is as a number, but from a percentage of success standpoint, it is only about 20%.
“When an authoritarian leader is killed, we see substantial moves toward democratization,” Jones said. “But when that would-be assassin fails, the evidence is a mild move in the other direction, which is toward authoritarianism, even if the effect size is smaller.”
When asked how their research applied to the failed attempt to assassinate Trump, Olken stressed that failed assassinations led to a “tightening of the screws” only in authoritarian countries. “In democracies, we do not see that at all,” Olken said. “In our historical data, the United States is very much a democracy.”
The question before us today is whether and for how long that will remain true. Trump, a man who not long ago attempted a coup by trying to overturn the results of an election that he had decisively lost, may be on the precipice of another four years as president of the United States, buoyed by a Supreme Court decision that expands the legal immunity of that office.
“We’re in a time in the United States where there is more talk around authoritarianism and an increase in presidential power, along with explicit concerns around Trump’s plans in terms of being contained by checks and balances,” Jones said. “If you think of the U.S. as a democracy, you’d think this assassination attempt would have little effect on our institutions and politics. But if you think we’re edging toward authoritarianism, you might have this concern.”
A successful assassination brings shock and mourning. A failed one brings a test of resolve.
Other societies have slid into authoritarianism during extraordinary crises — economic depression, hyperinflation, military defeat, or civil strife. In 2024, however, the U.S. is not engaged in any wars abroad. The American economy is thriving, offering remarkable and widely shared prosperity. A brief surge of mild post-pandemic inflation has been resolved. Social indicators have sharply improved since Trump left office, reversing years of decline during his presidency. Crime and fatal drug overdoses are decreasing, while marriages and births are on the rise. Even the nation’s challenges indirectly highlight its success: Migrants are crossing the border in large numbers because they recognize, even if Americans don’t, that the U.S. job market is among the most robust in the world.
Yet, despite this success, Americans are contemplating a form of self-sabotage that, in other countries, typically follows their darkest failures: allowing the leader of a failed coup attempt to return to office and try again.
One reason this self-destructive path is coming closer to reality is that American society is ill-equipped to understand and confront radical challenges once they gain significant traction. For nearly a century, “radical” in U.S. politics has usually meant “fringe” — Communists, Ku Klux Klan members, Black Panthers, Branch Davidians, Islamist jihadists.
But Trump is different. His actions have been validated by powerful constituencies. He has taken over one of the two major parties and has either defeated or is on the path to defeating every impeachment and prosecution aimed at holding him accountable for his crimes and frauds. His mass following is larger, more permanent, and more nationally widespread than any previous American demagogue. After dominating the political scene for nine years, he and his supporters hope to use recent events to extend the Trump era indefinitely.
The American political, social, and media systems struggle to treat such a figure as an outsider. They inevitably accommodate and normalize him. His advisors, including even the most unsavory characters such as felons, thugs, and convicted criminals, participate in high-level American elite discussions. Trump is the three-time nominee of the Republican Party, making it difficult and awkward to treat him as an insurrectionist against the American state — despite his clear actions in that direction. But we shouldn’t let that be.
We must stop pretending we know how this will end and acknowledge the complexities and uncertainties that lie ahead. More importantly, we must continue to remember and remind everyone around us on the dangers of a second Trump term including the dystopian Project 2025. We need to stop normalizing and platforming those who incite violence and undermine democratic values even in our everyday conversations. Only then can we hope to break the cycle of violence and safeguard our democratic institutions for future generations.
While we should all be relieved that Trump’s life was spared, Donald Trump’s reckoning should come through the legal system, not through the violence he once celebrated (and will continue to do in future) when it happened to others. He and his allies are poised to exploit the gunman’s brutal actions to absolve themselves of past and present crimes, and pave the way for new ones. Those who oppose Trump and his supporters must find the resolve and the right words to explain why these crimes — both committed and anticipated — are unacceptable and intolerable.
We must also however, make clear, how the gunman and Trump, despite being at opposite ends of a bullet’s path, are in troubling ways, united as adversaries of law and democracy.
