{"id":1463,"date":"2025-06-27T15:35:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T15:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/06\/27\/political-violence-is-quintessentially-american\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T15:35:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T15:35:16","slug":"political-violence-is-quintessentially-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/06\/27\/political-violence-is-quintessentially-american\/","title":{"rendered":"Political violence is quintessentially American"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Violence begets violence, so many religions say. Americans should know. After all, the United States \u2013 a nation founded on Indigenous genocide, African enslavement and open rebellion against an imperial power to protect its wealthiest citizens \u2013 cannot help but be violent. What\u2019s more, violence in the US is political, and the violence the country has carried out overseas over the generations has always been connected to its imperialist ambitions and racism. From the US bombing of Iran\u2019s nuclear sites on June 21 to the everyday violence in rhetoric and reality within the US, the likes of President Donald Trump continue to stoke the violent impulses of a violence\u2011prone nation.<\/p>\n

The US news cycle serves as continual confirmation. In June alone, there have been several high\u2011profile shootings and murders. On June 14, Vance Boelter, a white male vigilante, shot and killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, after critically wounding State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. That same day, at a No Kings mass protest in Salt Lake City, Utah, peacekeepers with the 50501 Movement accidentally shot and killed Samoan fashion designer Arthur Folasa Ah Loo while attempting to take down Arturo Gamboa, who was allegedly armed with an AR\u201115.<\/p>\n

On June 1, the start of Pride Month, Sigfredo Ceja\u202fAlvarez allegedly shot and murdered gay Indigenous actor Jonathan Joss in San Antonio, Texas. On\u202fJune 12, Secret Service agents forcibly detained and handcuffed US Senator Alex Padilla during Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem\u2019s news conference in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Mass shootings, white vigilante violence, police brutality, and domestic terrorism are all normal occurrences in the United States \u2013 and all are political. Yet US leaders still react with hollow platitudes that reveal an elitist and narcissistic detachment from the nation\u2019s violent history. \u201cSuch horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God bless the great people of Minnesota\u2026\u201d said Governor Tim Walz after Boelter\u2019s June 14 shootings. On X, Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden wrote: \u201cPolitical violence has no place in America. I fully condemn this attack\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite these weak condemnations, the US often tolerates \u2013 and sometimes celebrates \u2013 political violence. Van Orden also tweeted, \u201cWith one horrible governor that appoints political assassins to boards. Good job, stupid,\u201d in response to Walz\u2019s message. Senator Mike Lee referred to the incident as \u201cNightmare on Waltz Street\u201d before deleting the post.<\/p>\n

Political violence in the US is commonplace. President Trump has long fostered it \u2013 such as during a presidential debate in Philadelphia, when he falsely claimed Haitian immigrants \u201ceat their neighbours\u2019 pets\u201d. This led to weeks of threats against the roughly 15,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. On\u202fJune 9, Trump posted on Truth Social: \u201cIF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT\u2026 harder than they have ever been hit before.\u201d<\/p>\n

That led to a federally-sanctioned wave of violence against protesters in Los Angeles attempting to end Trump\u2019s immigration crackdowns, including Trump\u2019s takeover and deployment of California\u2019s National Guard in the nation\u2019s second-largest city.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just that Trump may have a lust for political violence and is stoking such violence. The US has always been a powder keg for violence, a nation-state that cannot help itself.<\/p>\n

Political violence against elected officials in the US is too extensive to list fully. Assassins murdered Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley, and John F Kennedy. In 1804, Vice\u2011President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Populist candidate Huey Long was assassinated in 1935; Robert F Kennedy in 1968; Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was wounded in 2011.<\/p>\n

Many assassins and vigilantes have targeted those fighting for social justice: Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Marsha P. Johnson, and civil\u2011rights activists like Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Viola Liuzzo, and Fred Hampton. Jonathan Joss and Arthur Folasa Ah Loo are more recent examples of marginalised people struck down in a white\u2011supremacist society.<\/p>\n

The most chilling truth of all is that, because of the violent nature of the US, there is no end in sight \u2013 domestically or overseas. The recent US bomb mission over Iran is merely the latest unprovoked preemptive attack the superpower has conducted on another nation. Trump\u2019s unilateral use of military force was done, presumably, in support of Israel\u2019s attacks on Iran, allegedly because of the threat Iran poses if it ever arms itself with nuclear weapons. But these are mere excuses that could also be violations of international law.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be the first time the US has sought to start a war based on questionable intelligence or reasons, however. The most recent example, of course, is the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a part of George W Bush\u2019s \u201cpreemptive war\u201d doctrine, attacking Iraq because they supposedly had a stockpile of WMDs that they could use against the US in the future. There was never any evidence of any stockpile of chemical or biological weapons. As many as 2.4 million Iraqis have died from the resulting violence, statelessness, and civil war that the initial 2003 US invasion created. It has not gone unnoticed that the US mostly bombs and invades nation-states with majority people of colour and non-Christian populations.<\/p>\n

Malcolm X said it best, a week after Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F Kennedy in 1963: \u201cBeing an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they\u2019ve always made me glad.\u201d Given that Americans consume nine billion chickens a year, that is a huge amount of retribution to consider for the nation\u2019s history of violence. Short of repealing the Second Amendment\u2019s right-to-bear-guns clause in the US Constitution and a real commitment towards eliminating the threat of white male supremacist terrorism, this violence will continue unabated, with repercussions that will include terrorism and revenge, domestically and internationally. A country with a history of violence, elitism, and narcissism like the US \u2013 and an individual like Trump \u2013 cannot divorce themselves from their own violent DNA, a violence that could one day consume this nation-state.<\/p>\n

The views expressed in this article are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera\u2019s editorial stance.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Violence begets violence, so many religions say. Americans should know. After all, the United States \u2013 a nation founded on Indigenous genocide, African enslavement and open rebellion against an imperial power to protect its wealthiest citizens \u2013 cannot help but be violent. What\u2019s more, violence in the US is political, and the violence the country … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}