Political violence is quintessentially American | Donald Trump

Violence generates violence, say so many religions. Americans should know. After all, the United States – a nation based on indigenous genocide, African slavery and open rebellion against imperial power to protect its richest citizens – cannot help but be violent. In addition, violence in the United States is political, and the violence that the country has carried out abroad during generations has always been linked to its imperialist ambitions and racism. From the American bombing of Iranian nuclear sites on June 21 to daily violence in rhetoric and in reality in the United States, President Donald Trump continues to unravel the violent impulses of a nation of violence.

The American information cycle serves as a continuous confirmation. In June, there have been several high -level shootings and murders. On June 14, Vance Boelter, a white vigilante, killed the former president of Minnesota House, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, after seriously injuring Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. On the same day, during a mass demonstration of No Kings in Salt Lake City, Utah, the peacekeepers with the 50501 movement accidentally killed and killed the fashion designer Samoan Arthur Folasa Ah Loo while trying to remove Arturo Gamboa, who would have been armed with an AR-15.

On June 1, the beginning of the month of pride, the Ceja Alvarez de Sigfredo would have drawn and murdered the native actor Gay Jonathan Joss in San Antonio, Texas. On June 12, the secret service agents owned and forcibly handcuffed the American senator Alex Padilla during the press conference of the internal security secretary Kristi Noem in Los Angeles.

Mass shooting, white vigilant violence, police brutality and domestic terrorism are all normal events in the United States – and all are political. However, American leaders still react with hollow platitudes that reveal an elitist and narcissistic detachment of the violent history of the nation. “Such horrible violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. May God bless the great people of Minnesota… ”, said Governor Tim Walz after the June 14 shots of Boelter. On X, republican representative Derrick Van Orden wrote: “Political violence has no place in America. I fully condemn this attack …”

Despite these weak convictions, the United States often tolerates – and sometimes celebrate political violence. Van Orden also tweeted: “With a horrible governor who appoints political murderers to the councils. Good work, stupid ”, in response to Walz’s message. Senator Mike Lee called the “Nightmare on Waltz Street” incident before deleting the position.

Political violence in the United States is common. President Trump has long encouraged him – as in a presidential debate in Philadelphia, when he falsely said that Haitian immigrants “eat pets from their neighbors”. This led to weeks of threats to around 15,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. On June 9, Trump posted on Truth Social: “If they spit, we are going to hit … louder than they have never been hit before.”

This led to a wave of violence sanctioned by the federal government against the demonstrators in Los Angeles, trying to end the repression of Trump immigration, in particular the takeover and deployment of the California National Guard in the second largest city in the country.

But it is not only that Trump can have a thirst for political violence and attaches such violence. The United States has always been a barrel of violence powder, a nation state that cannot help itself.

Political violence against elected officials in the United States is too wide to be fully registered. The assassins murdered the presidents Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley and John F Kennedy. In 1804, vice-president Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. The populist candidate Huey Long was murdered in 1935; Robert F Kennedy in 1968; MP Gabby Giffords was injured in 2011.

Many assassins and vigilants have targeted those who fight for social justice: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, the Elijah Lovejoy parish, Marsha P. Johnson and civil rights activists like Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael ScWerner, Viola Liuzzo and Fred Hampton. Jonathan Joss and Arthur Folasa Ah Loo are more recent examples of marginalized people canceled in a Société Blanche-Supremaciste.

The most frightening truth of all is that because of the violent nature of the United States, there is no end in view – at the national level or abroad. The recent American bomb mission on Iran is only the last pre -emptive attack not caused that the superpower led to another nation. The unilateral use of the military force by Trump has been carried out, probably, in support of Israel’s attacks against Iran, allegedly due to the threat that Iran poses if it never creates nuclear weapons. But these are only simple apology that could also be violations of international law.

It would not be the first time that the United States has been trying to trigger a war based on intelligence or questionable reasons. The most recent example, of course, is the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, part of the doctrine of the “preemptive war of George W Bush, attacking Iraq because they would have a stock of WMD that they could use against the United States in the future. There has never been any proof of storage of chemical or organic weapons. Up to 2.4 million Iraqis died from violence, statelessness and civil war which resulted from it that the 2003 American invasion created. It has not gone unnoticed that the United States bombs and mainly invade nation states with majority in color and non-Christian populations.

Malcolm X said it better, a week after Lee Harvey Oswald murdered John F Kennedy in 1963: “Being an old farm boy myself, the chickens returning home to perch have never made me sad; they always pleased me.” Since Americans consume nine billion chickens per year, it is a huge amount of remuneration to consider for the history of the country’s violence. Unless the right clause is repealed to bring Guns to the American Constitution and a real commitment to eliminate the threat of white male supremacist terrorism, this violence will continue tirelessly, with repercussions which will include terrorism and revenge, nationally and international. A country with history of violence, elitism and narcissism like the United States – and an individual like Trump – cannot divorce himself from their own violent DNA, violence that could one day consume this nation state.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.