KTAF NEWS

On the home stretch to victory? After the assassination, former President Donald Trump was chosen as presidential candidate at the Republican nomination convention to cheers. Has a triumph in the US elections in November become more likely?

“One thing is certain: the attack will bring him additional sympathy,” explains political researcher and Latin America expert Günther Maihold

in an interview with DW.  “This puts the person in a different sphere. The population sees him as particularly in need of protection, but at the same time as a savior. The same applies to Trump.”

“Mixture of victim and catharsis”

“I do believe that there is a kind of Bolsonaro effect,” explains Maihold. “The candidate becomes a symptom of the decline in his own society and at the same time a symbol of sympathy. It is a mixture of victimhood and catharsis. This constellation creates an additional element of charisma.”

Brazilian columnist Joel Pinheiro da Fonseca goes a step further: “Bolsonaro is not the only one who has won an election after an assassination attempt,” he writes in the daily newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. “US President Ronald Reagan was also re-elected with a large majority three years after the assassination attempt in March 1981.”

Pinheiro’s conclusion: “The two were already favorites, the attempted assassinations merely sealed their success. The same is likely to happen with Trump.”

Modi survives assassination attempt

This also applies to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He survived a bomb attack by the Islamist organizations “Indian Mujahideen” and “Students Islamic Movement of India” on October 27, 2013 in Patna, the capital of the Indian state of Bihar.

The assassination took place in the middle of the election campaign. In the vote from April 7 to May 12, 2014, Modi won the majority in the Indian parliament for his party BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) for the first time. He has now been in office for ten years.

Like all leading officials worldwide, Modi condemned the assassination attempt on Trump and called for peace. But beyond the official condemnation of political violence, blame dominates social media.

“Global left-wing networks”

India’s government spokesman Amit Malviya immediately blamed the “global left” for the attack on X, formerly Twitter. Shortly after the attack on Trump, he posted: “Shinzo Abe, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico and now Donald Trump. The threat is real. Global left-wing networks are at work.”

Bolsonaro’s son Flávio spreads the same narrative. “The extreme left demonizes and dehumanizes its opponents with lies – and does so with the support of the established media,” he writes on X. “And then a ‘lone wolf’ appears who must save the world from the ‘enemy of democracy’, the ‘genocide’ or the ‘militias’. This is the formula of hatred that has real and almost fatal consequences.”

Both are convinced that “assassinations are always directed against right-wing and conservative political leaders.” A look into the past, however, shows that this is not the case.

Political assassination in Quito

On October 14, 1912, the Democratic US President Theodore Roosevelt, who was running for re-election, was shot at close range.

The Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, brother of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, was assassinated during the 1968 primary campaign.

A particularly distressing example is the assassination of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio a year ago. The investigative journalist, who had reported on corruption and violence in his homeland, was shot dead at a campaign event in Quito on August 9, 2023.

Political violence from the right and the left

The list of assassinations of presidential candidates is long. The victims also include former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who was poisoned with dioxin in 2004.

And the Catholic priest and former President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was shot at in a car convoy on March 20, 2017, but remained unharmed.

“Whether the assassination came from the left or the right is irrelevant,” says political researcher Maihold. In Trump’s case, it also does not fit the pattern. After all, the assassin was a member of the Republican Party. “It’s more about the fact that we have reached a point where polarization is entering a new phase,” he says.

The use of violence is becoming more and more accepted. “This new level of escalation is particularly dramatic in a country with a density of weapons like the USA.”