The Pot Bubbles Over

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The recent assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, who is running again for the country’s top leadership post, is just the latest example of how the stew of political violence simmering throughout the world for years is now bubbling over.

Following the shooting on Saturday and condemnations for the act that poured in from leaders from across the globe, many politicians vowed to turn down the heat, and punish perpetrators.

One thing is clear – as lone actors and criminal gangs take violent action, political violence is rising across the globe, and it is not just a developed world problem anymore.

Recently, for example, an Ecuadoran court sentenced five people to prison – with two receiving sentences touching 35 years in length – for their involvement in the assassination of Ecuadoran presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio last August, reported the BBC.

Villavicencio, a former journalist, was an anticorruption campaigner who sought to fight drug gangs that have grown to hold tremendous power and influence in the South American country. As Al Jazeera explained, Ecuador sits between Colombia and Peru, two of the largest cocaine exporters in the world. Ecuadoran ports are key segments of their distribution networks to the rest of the world.

In Mexico, where Claudia Sheinbaum recently won the presidential election, violence against politicians increased 150 percent compared with elections in 2021, wrote CNBC, citing political consultancy Integralia. Drug gangs drove much of the killing and harassment, too.

Europe has seen an alarming rise in attacks on politicians over the past year.

During the recent high-stakes election in France, for example, where tensions were running high, there were more than 50 instances of people assaulting political candidates and campaigners, reported CNN. Deploying 30,000 police to deter disorder and violence, the government detained around 30 alleged assailants for questioning. A few candidates needed hospitalization.

In neighboring Germany, ahead of European parliamentary elections in June, saw a rise in attacks, particularly against politicians from the left-leaning Social Democrats and the Greens. German news magazine Der Spiegel commented that hundreds of “brutal” attacks “against politicians are shaking democracy.”

And in Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and seriously injured in May in a “politically motivated” attack.

Meanwhile, in Asia, physical attacks against political leaders are not uncommon. In one of the most devastating such incidents in the region in recent history, lawmaker and former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was gunned down in 2022 at a political event in a country where gun violence is exceedingly rare.

In South Korea in January this year, just months before the elections, South Korean Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, the country’s main opposition leader and former presidential candidate, was stabbed in the neck, the South China Morning Post wrote. That same month, Bae Hyun-jin, a conservative lawmaker was assaulted by a teen with a brick, suffering head injuries.

“Political terrorism is a threat to democracy and cannot be tolerated for any reason,” said Ho Jun Seok, a spokesperson for South Korea’s ruling People Power Party. “Political terrorism is the product of politics based on extremism and hatred, and politicians have a responsibility to unite society.”

After the assassination attempt on Trump, many world leaders said such an attack on a political leader should be unthinkable, Reuters noted. But British government expert on political violence John Woodcock, whose title is Lord Walney, has long warned of the threats posed by radical groups on the right and left in his country. Speaking to the Guardian, he said the assault on Trump was “a vivid reminder of the vulnerability of all politicians.”

Woodcock’s critics at left-wing British news outlet Novara Media, however, argued that Woodcock has advocated for silencing protests and dissent, compromising freedom of speech and assembly, surveilling organizations, communities and other supposed agitators more closely, and other repressive measures.

Some researchers say that political polarization has led to harsher rhetoric from politicians in Europe and a change in the norms of what is acceptable speech and behavior – and opened the door to violence.

“And that’s always been led to some extent by right-wing populist parties popping up (in Europe) and suddenly no longer obeying the rules of the game,” Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, told NPR. “No longer being polite and pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of discourse, pushing the boundaries in terms of very militant language that is being employed.”