For all of the blood that flowed on July 13, when Thomas Matthew Crooks pulled the trigger on a shot that grazed former president Donald Trump’s ear, killed a bystander and critically wounded two others, much more might have followed.
As is often the case when the smoke clears after one of the country’s acts of gun violence – a ritual that’s now more American than baseball and apple pie – progressives will clench their teeth as they wait for details about the shooter. If the killer is not white, they think – and rightly so – we risk an outpouring of violence against whatever minority community the killer was a part of.
Are they Muslim, Hispanic, Black, Chinese or trans? Within extremist corners of Republican discourse, these groups have become symbols for everything that threatens America. They have become Christ-haters, illegals, #BlackLivesMatter thugs, “kung-flu” virus vectors or perverted freaks.
The American left is not blameless when it comes to the demonisation of their political enemies. Cancel culture has run amok in many corners of the progressive camp, particularly those that assail people for misgendering even when the mistake is unintentional.
But many of the targets of right-wing rage are defined by colour or some characteristic that is easier to put within the cross hairs of a gun than many on what the left considers to be their enemies - the patriarchy or toxic masculinity.
Someone hopped up on non-stop social media rants about “illegals” can let loose with an AK-47 in a busy intersection in Spanish Harlem and be sure to hit the racial group that they’re convinced is ruining the country, like Patrick Crusius did in El Paso in 2019, when he gunned down 23 people in an attempt to ward off what he called a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”.
There are about 120 civilian guns for every 100 people living in America, which raises the likelihood of someone acting out violently in response to political messaging that targets a visible minority.
And yet, the Republican Party last week delivered the 2024 Republican platform, which includes 20 “promises that [they] will accomplish very quickly when we win the White House and Republican majorities in the House and Senate”. The first priority? “SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION”.
We were spared the worst on July 13, though. The 20-year-old Crooks was unmistakably white, registered as Republican and seemingly from a gun-loving household. Trump escaped with a flesh wound, thankfully, and a political base that is even thicker with those who see the Republican nominee as a presence delivered and protected by god.
And we will continue to hope that the anguish of people trying to find a job in America – usually one that many Americans refuse to do – and happy to pay whatever dues are required for the opportunity, won’t pick up an easily accessible gun and look for whatever right-wing podcaster is trying to portray them as a drug-running rapist.
Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance speaks at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 17. Photographer: Bloomberg
Trump and his new running mate, US senator J.D. Vance, have restrained themselves from joining in with the chorus of right-wing voices, who, deprived of the opportunity to unleash a pogrom upon whichever “other” tried to assassinate their leader, are insisting that Democrats and the media are to blame.
Let’s hope that perhaps they’ve realised that an America plunged into racial violence won’t benefit their campaigns, or a second Trump White House. Still, many of their most ardent supporters in the Republican Party have suggested that the left’s portrayal of Trump as a Nazi sympathiser pushed Crooks to climb onto the roof that gave him a clear shot at the man who might retake the White House.
They seem to forget that Trump pushed an armed and angry crowd to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, where they set up a noose for then-vice-president Mike Pence. For them, Trump’s pledge last year to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country” is nothing to be concerned about. How could journalists in a country that guarantees freedom of speech not make an issue of these acts?
When Trump uses Hitler’s vocabulary, how can Republicans think it’s a violation to call out the degree to which he appears to channel the 20th century’s most infamous leader? Doing so is an imperative. But the point has been made. In the interest of peace, let’s give it a rest, as long as Trump and Vance also show restraint.
Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief
