The attempted assassination of former U.S. president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump marks the latest incident in an ever-growing wave of political violence worldwide that analysts believe won’t subside any time soon.
The shooting came after attempted and completed assassinations of politicians in Slovakia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Ecuador, Brazil and other countries over the past few years. Although the motivations behind those violent acts differ, they came amid a shared global environment of political polarization and dissatisfaction with political institutions at a time of rising inequality.
“This may be a wave, but it’s a very long one and it doesn’t seem to be in decline,” said Arie Perliger, a criminology professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.
On Tuesday, the director of the U.S. Secret Service resigned amid intense scrutiny over how the agency failed to prevent the shooting at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Police services around the world charged with protecting politicians have been forced to re-evaluate their operations as threats increase.
The growing tide of online threats and acts of violence has prompted concern in Canada as well, including within the Canadian government.
Intelligence memos obtained by Global News note several high-profile incidents of political violence that have targeted elected officials abroad.
They include the June 2016 killing of British Labour MP Jo Cox, the October 2021 fatal stabbing of British Conservative MP David Amess and the July 2022 assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Abe’s assassination in particular highlighted a “continued threat to elected officials in Canada,” according to an intelligence brief prepared by the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC) in the week following the attack.
“Although the social and political forces that incite anti-government and anti-authority violence in Japan are unique, there are drivers of political violence in Canada, which could result in a domestic attack on an elected official,” according to ITAC’s July 2022 assessment.
At the time, ITAC described Abe’s assassination as “the most recent example of political violence in the democratic world,” noting that his assassin was a “lone actor motivated by personal grievances.”
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A later assessment, prepared in January 2023, notes that “an ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE) lone actor remains the primary terrorist threat to Canada.”
“An extremist attacker in a blind rage of hate or delusion could mobilize quickly and without warning,” another assessment prepared in April 2023 cautions.
“Threat actors who mobilize quickly or in isolation are likely to have basic capabilities and would likely engage in non-sophisticated violence, such as bladed weapons, lone gunman, vehicle ramming or crude explosive/arson attack. On the other hand, a more high-functioning threat actor could patiently train for, plan and plot their attack, thereby increasing capability,” ITAC said in its assessment.
There have since been several other high-profile incidents targeting politicians around the world, including the attempted assassination of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico this past May. The opposition leader in Ecuador, Fernando Villavicencio, was shot dead days before that country’s 2023 election. And in Mexico, more than three dozen candidates were assassinated in the leadup to its elections last month, making it that country’s bloodiest campaign in modern history.
The RCMP on Monday announced it had arrested and charged two Alberta men accused of threatening to kill federal politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Both Fico and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who survived a stabbing at a campaign rally during his 2018 election bid, have suggested without evidence that Trump’s political opponents incited 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to try and assassinate Trump. Many Republicans have also attempted to blame Crooks’ actions on Democrats’ warnings that Trump poses a threat to American democracy.
But some analysts argue that as populists like Trump, Fico, Bolsonaro and others rise in power using politics that tap into voter anger, their policies and rhetoric could also potentially inspire violence.
James Long, a political science professor at the University of Washington who studies election security and democracy, said some of the hardline immigration policies proposed by Trump as he campaigns for re-election — including the mass detention and deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants — may be seen by some as “a type of violence.”
He said that perceived violence can then lead someone to think they are justified to use violence themselves in order to stop it, leading to a spiralling effect.
“Once you erode the norms on your side, the other side is very likely to think it’s OK to do that too,” he said. “And where it typically ends up is where nobody intended for it to end up.”
Long added that the incitement and spiralling of violence through political rhetoric has been seen throughout history on both sides of the ideological spectrum, from the far-right fascist movements of Germany and Italy in the 1930s to the communist revolutions in Russia and China.
Abe’s assassin said he killed the former Japanese leader not because of his policies, but rather over Abe’s ties to a controversial religious movement that the killer blamed for bankrupting his mother. But Abe, like Trump and Fico now, was an outsized political figure who overshadowed and ultimately personified the party he led, Perliger said.
“They’re basically unicorns, in the sense that taking them out (through assassination) would really dramatically shift the status quo,” he told Global News.
As the threat of violence escalates, politicians in Canada and other countries have called for increased protection.
Former public safety minister Marco Mendicino — a Toronto Liberal MP who has received numerous death threats and was recently spat on by a man in Ottawa as he walked to his office — is calling for the creation of “protective zones” around political constituency offices to shield members of Parliament and their staff from abuse and threats.
RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme recently said he wanted the government to look at drafting a new law that would make it easier for police to pursue charges against people who threaten elected officials.
However, Justice Minister Arif Virani subsequently suggested existing Criminal Code provisions were sufficient.
In the U.S., lawmakers are hoping ongoing investigations into the Trump rally shooting can improve how agencies like the Secret Service secure campaign events and other situations where politicians can face violence.
“This is not an academic exercise,” Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York said at a U.S. House committee hearing on the assassination attempt Tuesday. “All of our safety is at risk, political violence has escalated, and we need to know these answers.”
Analysts say the widespread use of social media to incubate and spread violent rhetoric — and the easy availability of firearms in the U.S. in particular — may make those additional protections necessary, despite the danger of further insulating politicians from the public they are elected to serve.
In the meantime, Long said it’s critical that politicians of all stripes do what they can to lower the temperature of political discourse. Otherwise, he said, they may risk further violence.
“If candidates and elected politicians are increasingly the targets of assassination attempts, it does potentially serve to normalize it … because suddenly people will almost expect it to happen,” he said.
— with files from The Canadian Press
