Politics of hatred only destroys democracy

Political circles need to reflect on whether they were only bent on using such attacks as a means to consolidate their support base and beyond.

Former U.S. President and Republic candidate Donald Trump was shot during a campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. The FBI has identified the man who attempted to assassinate Trump as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. Trump was bleeding from a wound on his ear, but was reportedly in a stable condition after being treated at a local hospital. He was then transferred to Washington. Doctors said he can attend the Republican National Convention on Monday, as he only received a minor injury.

We are dumbfounded that a leading presidential candidate in the United States can be shot by a weapon in broad daylight. In America, four incumbent presidents, including President Abraham Lincoln, lost their lives in assassinations. Such politics of hatred targeting a certain politician still continues. Because the suspect was immediately killed on the spot, the motives or background of the assassination attempt are not clear. But the resurgence of such attempts during presidential campaigns poses a serious challenge to democracy. Hatred against politicians — and assassinating them just because of political differences — signifies a retreat of democracy. But violence cannot be justified no matter what.

We have already seen such violence. This year alone, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot five times in an assassination attempt and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was attacked by a man in Copenhagen. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot to death by homemade bullets in 2022. In Korea, Democratic Party (DP) leader Lee Jae-myung and People Power Party (PPP) Rep. Bae Hyun-jin suffered serious attacks from opponents.

It is difficult to attribute such rare attacks on politicians in Korea to a lack of mature citizenship or a tendency of people to turn to more extreme violence. Political circles need to reflect on whether they were only bent on using such attacks as a means to consolidate their support base and beyond. In a rare move, both the PPP and the DP raised one voice by denouncing the attempt to assassinate Trump as a “political terror on democracy,” stressing the need to unify society with understanding and reconciliation.

But our government must check if its response to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was appropriate. The government expressed its hope for a quick recovery of the former U.S. president seven hours after the attack. Most governments, including Japan’s, released a statement or posted a message of consolation on social media shortly after the attack. A survey showed that U.S. voters’ support for Trump ascended to 70 percent after the incident. Our government still does not know that timing is everything.