When political rhetoric boils over

Outside military circles, the early 19th-century strategist Carl von Clausewitz is best remembered for having said that war is a continuation of politics by other means. The Prussian theorist evidently had foreign policy in mind, but the same is true on a less elevated plane. Even in the most democratic of countries politics entail conflict, so when passions overheat a minor discrepancy can quickly become a matter of life or death. This is why, in some parts of the world, many people avoid talking about political or religious matters with their friends or relatives; they know that what starts as a small difference of opinion could lead to decades of estrangement or worse.

In the United States, the idea, or slogan, “words are violence” that these days is endlessly repeated by university students, reflects the currently widespread belief that people who say things the enlightened would rather not hear are every bit as harmful as thugs who maim or kill those who get in their way and should therefore be silenced or at least “cancelled.” This attitude is behind the campaigns progressives are waging against what they call “hate speech,” by which they mean anything that can possibly be construed as a racial slur or, of late, as an unkind remark about transsexuals or even about the upholders of the up-to-date gender theories that are now fashionable in leading academic institutions.

It might be thought that the sensitive souls who treat words like dangerous weapons would go out of their way to make sure that the ones they use are inoffensive, but this is far from being the case. Few have any qualms when it comes to verbally skewering people they disagree with by calling them “fascists” and letting it be known that they want to see them dead. Many jumped for joy last year when Charlie Kirk, a well-known promoter of Christian values was murdered by a gunman who objected to his views which, by the standards of yesteryear, were hardly controversial. They also make no bones about their hope that, sooner rather than later, Donald Trump will suffer an identical fate.

The US president has already been the target of several assassination attempts. In July 2024, while on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, a bullet came within a centimetre of ending his life. And a few days ago, a would-be saviour of all that is good from the Trumpist tyranny charged like a berserker towards the banquet hall where the president was expected to say something jocular to the journalists and their guests who were already tucking into the annual White House correspondents’ dinner.

It soon became evident that the person responsible for what happened, a Californian academic named Cole Allen who had armed himself with guns and knives, shared widely-held views about the man many think is a disgusting creature that does not deserve to live. Before crossing the country by train to avoid coming within range of any metal detectors, Allen wrote a “manifesto” in which he said that, as a US citizen, he was “no longer willing to permit a paedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

In other words, it was Trump’s tangential association with the late Jeffrey Epstein that really got under Allen’s skin, though it is reasonable to assume that he also believes he really is “Hitler incarnate” as so many “progressives” not only in the US but also in Europe and elsewhere can be heard saying. For a considerable proportion of such people, the US president is a man so appallingly evil that a successful assassin would deserve the gratitude of most of humankind.

Though Trump and his supporters like to make out that “the left” is entirely responsible for the poisoning of public discourse, they themselves have long been doing much the same. Many seem convinced that the Democratic Party and “the legacy media” that support it have fallen into the hands of neo-Marxists, closet Islamists and an assortment of gender-bending freaks who have been brainwashed by the academic ideologues who dominate the educational sector. Expecting people on either side of the divide to come together and engage in a civilised dialogue is clearly futile. They have so little in common that they might as well belong to different species.

Even before the dust had finally settled at the Washington Hilton and it was reported that the US president was safe and that a lone attacker had been put under lock and key, people present understood that the security arrangements taken for the occasion had been decidedly inadequate. When crouching under the dinner tables, many attendees feared that they were on the verge of getting slaughtered by members of a suicidal hit squad like the ones that, not that long ago, massacred hundreds of people in Paris and Moscow. For those entrusted with protecting Trump and other dignitaries, stopping a Californian nut-job was all in a day’s work, but they would have been unable to do much to prevent a gang of well-trained Jihadists funded by Iran, say, from killing a great many infidels before they were dealt with.

Neither Trump nor any other politician wants to be made a prisoner of the security apparatus, but all must be uneasily aware that, in the current environment, every time they appear in public they could be putting themselves in someone’s line of fire. Equally worrying, if not more so, is the recent proliferation of inexpensive high-tech drones that can be programmed to hunt down not just enemy soldiers but also politicians and other miscreants.  Had a suitable one been available, there would have been no reason for Allen to cross the country to get close to the people he wanted to kill; with a drone, he could have done it far better and at far less risk to himself from his basement back in Los Angeles.

The US may not be heading towards a full-blown civil war, but unless its leaders, especially Trump, tone down their rhetoric, it could soon see a repeat of the 1960s when John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were murdered by gunmen who disliked their political views. When millions of people speak as though they truly believed that the world would be a much better place without those who disagree with them, a small spark would be more than enough to set off an all-consuming conflagration.