The new assassination attempt on Donald Trump has shown how much, in the two months since the first attempted attack on the former president, tension has risen in the race for the White House. A race in which both candidates at rallies speak behind bulletproof glass mounted on the stage and federal authorities, mindful of the assault of January 6, 2021, are already strengthening security around Congress.
An atmosphere of alarm and violence that does not only involve the protagonists of this race. Just think of the alarms and evacuations, especially of schools and colleges, that are being recorded these days in Springfield, the Ohio town that has become the center and symbol of this poisoned election campaign, after Trump and other allies repeated the news, confirmed as false, of Haitian immigrants stealing dogs and cats from homes to eat them.
To complete the picture, the FBI has announced that it is investigating, together with the Postal Service, the sending of packages containing suspicious powder to the electoral offices of dozens of states. In no state has the powder proved to be dangerous.
The two opponents accuse each other of being at the root of this skyrocketing tension. After the new assassination attempt, last Sunday at his Palm Beach golf club, Trump did not hesitate to point the finger at Harris and Joe Biden, stating that "they shot me because of their violent rhetoric." And in doing so, the tycoon used his usual inflammatory language, describing his opponents as "the enemies among us." For their part, the Democrats recall how Trump incited his supporters to attack Congress and is now promising to pardon those convicted of the assault if re-elected.
Although recent American history has known violence during election periods, such as the riots and political assassinations in 1968, the assassination of a president, Jfk in 1963, and the attempted assassinations of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, this year's election campaign appears to be particularly fraught with tension.
"The United States has an undercurrent of political violence and periodically, for different reasons, it surfaces and explodes in riots, insurrections, murders and attempted murders," explains Barbara Perry, a historian at the University of Virginia, according to whom at this time the "undercurrent is on the surface, we have reached the rapids."
With episodes of violence and threats now becoming part of the political process, the risk is that voters will develop a kind of tolerance for these events. "Will it become the new normal? Are we careful with language or don't we care? Will we accept this kind of violence in our politics?", are the questions asked by Erik Nisbet, a professor at Northwestern University who studies violence in politics.
Another scholar of extremism in the US, Brian Levin, professor emeritus at California State University, San Bernardino, believes that "targeted violence" has "worsened in recent years" and that the internet and the wide availability of weapons are among the factors in this new path toward radicalization. "We often see that the most aggressive messages are the ones that go viral, whether they are true or not," says Levin.
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