On Saturday 13 July, a lone gunman fired shots at presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, killing one audience member and wounding two others. Trump himself walked away after a bullet grazed his right ear, raising a fist as security escorted him off the stage. This illustrates the big divisions and polarisation which exist in US society today.
The attempted shooting highlights the tension in current US politics as the 2024 election approaches. Many workers and youth, disillusioned by the main candidates on the ballot, have been hoping that a freak accident, illness, or succumbing to old age might provide a shortcut out of the dismal prospects for the next four years.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties have increased attacks on working people – degrading wages and making workers’ lives increasingly precarious – which creates the conditions for the far right to recruit.
Neither removing Trump and Biden as candidates nor voting for the “lesser evil” will change the fundamental situation for the working class. What we need is to build an independent left alternative to the corporate politics of the Democrats and Republicans, as a step towards taking on the capitalist system as a whole.
Individual Terrorism Will Not Stop “Project 2025” and the Far Right’s Platform
Federal investigators identified 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident Thomas Matthew Crooks as the shooter but his motives remain unclear. Records show Crooks was a registered Republican and interested in firearms, demolition, and marksmanship. He donated once to Act Blue in high school, the Democratic Party’s primary fundraising web service. While he may have had a political motive for targeting the rally, nothing suggests a left-wing association targeting Trumpism. It is just as plausible, given frequent descriptions from classmates and neighbours as a ‘quiet loner’, that he was an alienated youth with no overt political reason for the shooting.
No matter the motive, socialists must point out that political assassinations and terrorism are not the way to defeat the far right or the capitalist system. Like others throughout history, the attempt has galvanized his supporters and provided a public relations win.
Even if the bullet hit, the support for right-wing populism would remain intact. Numerous Republicans have built a brand of right-wing vitriol and demagoguery on Trump’s coattails. Even if the movement scattered into disarray for a time, the smaller capitalists and upper-middle-class “professionals”, and a section of workers who see no alternative at this stage, that make up Trump’s core supporters would regroup with time as the capitalist system dives further into crisis between international, environmental, and economic pressures.
In fact, the Republican programme of massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations, severely weakening regulations on big business, slashing public services, attacking unions, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people, and disenfranchising US voters, predates Trump by decades. The Nixon, Reagan, and Bush-Cheney administrations all worked to popularise the “Unified Executive Theory” currently cited by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 publication to justify a future Republican president superseding Congress and unilaterally implementing horrific, conservative policies.
The Project 2025 document, while associated with Trump by connections with its authors, is also general enough to be a platform for any future Republican presidential candidate. Given Trump’s past headbutting with the Heritage Foundation on foreign policy issues, Trump may not even be their ideal candidate.
Still, like Reagan, Ford, and Ted Kennedy, it is possible the attempted assassination may have little to no effect on the upcoming election. At this stage it has given a boost to Trump and points to a Trump victory. However, this is not certain and could change. November is four months away and a lot can happen. While the shooting may sway some “undecided” voters for the moment, it is unlikely to win over anti-Trump Democrats or independents. Its main legacy may be an escalation of state surveillance and persecution of “extremists” and “domestic terrorists” which the FBI uses against the left. It may also encourage the more militant far-right to call open and armed demonstrations and other actions as shows of strength as happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin during Black Lives Matter protests.
Politicians Condemn Political Violence in US, Export it Abroad
Numerous US politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, condemned the shooting specifically, and political violence generally. A tweet from former president Barack Obama stated we should “use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.” Yet Obama escalated the use of drone strikes across the Middle East during his presidency, hitting political, military, and civilian targets alike. In 2011, a drone strike ordered under Obama’s policy killed 16-year-old US citizen Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi at a wedding in Yemen, a country the US was not even at war with.
Trump himself was happy to cheerlead coups, also examples of political violence, against the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia during his time in office, and ordered his share of drone strikes and assassinations in the Middle East. Not to mention his role encouraging white supremacists to mobilise in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 and rioters at the Capitol in 2020.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties and their nominees support the state of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed an estimated 38,000 people according to the local health ministry. A recent letter in the Lancet, a medical journal, estimates the death toll could reach 186,000 even if the assault stopped today, between uncounted bodies lost under the rubble and the effects of starvation, dehydration, and epidemic on the Palestinian people.
At home, the same politicians are quick to condemn violence against their fellow members of the capitalist class but order police to violently disperse peaceful protesters, as seen in the recent university encampments, the protests against the ‘Cop City’ police training facility in Atlanta, and the BLM protests of the last decade. US politicians from both capitalist parties hold a double standard for violence, political or otherwise, and socialists must continue to point this out and condemn them for it.
Independent, Working Class Struggle Needed to Secure Democratic Rights
The ongoing cost-of-living and environmental crises, coupled with the alienation stemming from capitalist exploitation and oppression, leaves workers and youth with no hope for the future. This can lead to violence or suicide, whether personal or political, like the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell in protest against US policy on Israel and Palestine.
A different world is possible and the working class has the power to build it. We can leverage our role in making society run to shut things down and demand a ceasefire, healthcare, housing, a clean environment, an end to discrimination, and much more. We can organise our workplaces, strike for good contracts, and run and campaign for independent, pro-labor candidates today. Workers, youth, unions, and community organisations coordinating protests, strikes, and electoral campaigns can lead toward the formation of an independent, working-class party – based on the power of organised labor – that can pose a real alternative to the two parties of war, imperialism, and capitalism.
A workers’ party should not put its faith in abstract pacifism, but be willing to defend its members against the state and far-right militias which the capitalist class will employ against it. By fighting for the needs of the working class, it can break off large sections of both the Republican and Democratic voting base and organise mass class struggle as an alternative to individualistic action. We can build a working-class movement to take out the whole system that produces Trumps, Bidens, and all corporate politicians and greedy capitalists, to create a socialist world run democratically to meet the needs of people and the environment.
For more on how we can defeat the right and build an alternative to the two parties of capitalism, check out these articles from ISG:
The Working Class and the 2024 Presidential Election – Independent Socialist Group
Why Labor Unions and the Working Class Need a Workers’ Party – Independent Socialist Group
