US President, Joe Biden, joined leaders across the Western World in condemning the shocking assassination attempt against former American President Donald Trump this Saturday. “We cannot condone this”, said Biden at an address to the nation, condemning political violence as unacceptable. Yet none of these leaders condemned an assassination attempt the day prior that murdered over 90 civilians, and almost all of those now taking the moral high-ground are in some way connected to similar political violence.
“It’s sick”, remarked President Joe Biden on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, who went on to state that there is “no place in America for this kind of violence.” European leaders even chimed in to condemn “political violence”, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying that the shooting is “tragedy for our democracies,” while European Commission President, Ursula Von Der Leyen, wrote on X [formerly Twitter] that “political violence has no place in a democracy”.
The immediate reaction from many supporters of the Trump campaign online was to point out the hypocrisy of many of those, especially politicians belonging to the Democratic Party, who were shortly before labelling Donald Trump the biggest threat to US democracy. However, despite the clear change in tone towards the Republican Party nominee, the true depths of hypocrisy here do not begin with anti-Trump rhetoric, but with real world assassinations that have spilt the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Some Political Assassinations Aren’t Equal To Others
Little known to much of the American public and underreported across the Western corporate media, was another assassination attempt that was carried out with US weapons and diplomatic cover less than 24-hours prior to the shooting at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Receiving no condemnation from Biden, Von Der Leyen or Marcon, Israel launched a series of missile strikes against Palestinian refugees sheltering in tents, located in what Israel calls a designated “safe zone”, murdering at least 90 civilians and injuring 300 others. That same day, Israel murdered a total of 141 Palestinians, half of whom were women and children. What was the official Israeli response to the massacre? It said that it was aware there would be civilian casualties, but justified the attack by claiming it had tried to assassinate Hamas leader, Mohammed al-Deif. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could not confirm whether the assassination was successful, as Hamas released a statement asserting that the attempt was unsuccessful and that al-Deif is alive.
The Israeli military’s Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, also conceded that it was “still too early to summarize the results of the attack,” which followed an Israeli army announcement about the attack which did not even mention the name Mohammed al-Deif and instead named another Hamas official. Mohammed al-Deif has survived 7 assassination attempts by Israel, the second latest killed his immediate family, including his wife, 7-month-old son and 3-year-old daughter in 2014.
The New York Times piece, which quoted unnamed Israeli security sources, was entitled ‘Close Surveillance Led to Israeli Attack on Hamas Compound‘, coldly focusing on how Israel allegedly concluded that the Hamas commander was at the site they struck and ridiculously alleging that al-Deif was estimated to be in that location partly due to Hamas’ belief that Israel wouldn’t strike such a densely population civilian zone — despite having done so repeatedly for the last nine months, and countless times before October 7. Other Western media outlets also chose to focus on the assassination attempt, without mentioning the fact that not only did Israel drop thousands of pounds worth of war heads at the location, but also bombed, and opened fire from drones at emergency crews and medical workers when they arrived to the scene in order to try and save the seriously injured. The location that was horrifically bombarded was located West of the city of Khan Younis, in an area called al-Mawasi, where tent cities house over a million refugees that are sheltering in the “safe zone”; after Israeli missile strikes destroyed their homes or force them to flee.
The US government still has not addressed the massacre that ensued and is permitting its ally to use its own weapons to commit continuous civilian massacres inside the Gaza Strip, based upon flimsy evidence of a supposed Hamas target. Apparently, this kind of political violence is fine, but the Trump assassination attempt that killed one and injured three was not.
Besides EU and US leaders, Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said of the Trump assassination attempt that he was “sickened by the shooting”, after remaining completely silent on the massacre in Gaza the day prior. This, as the UK’s newly elected Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said he was “appalled by the shocking scenes” at the rally, a comment coming from a man that not only did not comment on the massacre in Gaza, but had also said previously that Israel had “the right” to cut off electricity and water to the Palestinian civilian population there.
A Legacy Of Assassinations and Attempts
To go over the entire history of the hundreds of assassinations and assassination attempts on foreign leaders by the US government would be too steep of a task, however, the case of Joe Biden alone in his endorsement of political violence, by a self-proclaimed “democracy”, points to how utterly morally bankrupt his statements of the attempt of Trump’s life are.
Another major political figure who chose to chime in on this issue was former American President, Barack Obama, who tweeted that “there is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy“, perhaps forgetting his invasion of Libya, which led to the gruesome murder of Libyan President, Muammar Ghaddafi, with a sword that was used to repeatedly sodomize him to death.
Former US President, George W Bush, also condemned the assassination attempt and expressed his relief that Trump was safe. This is coming from the man who illegally invaded Iraq, resulting in the deaths of around a million people, culminating in the brutal execution of that nation’s former President Saddam Hussein.
Then of course we have Donald Trump himself, who has come out of this whole ordeal appearing to be a hero and has been praised for his strength under such circumstances. Yet, those who are currently lauding the former President should perhaps extend their memory to January of 2020 when Donald Trump ordered the illegal assassination of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, on Iraqi soil with a drone strike. Trump, who years prior was asked a question about the Quds Forces and told that it was headed by General Soleimani, responded by saying “I think the Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by us.” He clearly did not know who the man was and when bragging about his assassination in 2020, a clear violation of international law, also appeared to struggle to read his name correctly from a teleprompter.
Ultimately, this whole ordeal has been used as an exercise in vanity for Western leaders, who are projecting an image of superiority over the world and frequently alluding to their “democratic values”, which they discard everywhere else outside of Western nations, and often blatantly ignore them at home as well. When Joe Biden says there is “no place in America for this kind of violence”, perhaps this is an indicator that while assassinations on US soil are forbidden, such political violence is only acceptable elsewhere.
The Chickens Come Home To Roost
The very idea that political violence is unacceptable in the minds of US leaders is contradicted by their actions overseas. Under international law, there are two primary constraints placed upon extrajudicial assassinations that are pointed to most frequently in the contemporary political climate; one being the respect for territorial integrity and the other is the question of proportionality. You will see these two points referenced when a foreign nation carries out attacks on another territory. For instance, these parameters of the law are constantly brought up in relation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Yet over the years these lines have been blurred by the governments of the collective West. A great place to start are with the 600+ assassination attempts against former Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, many of which were carried out by the CIA and ended up becoming somewhat of a joke due to the bizarre nature. Then we have the more obvious examples of assassination attempts against foreign leaders and terrorist groups in the wake of 9/11, where the US and its allies decided to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, carrying out countless extrajudicial killings.
While the US assassination of former Al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, on Pakistani soil was lauded the world over, the corporate media then decided to liken other assassinations to this one, in a bid to make their actions appear plausible. All that they needed to do in this situation, was to liken their target to Bin Laden, call them a terrorist and carry out the assassination. The biggest example of this was the assassination of Qassem Soleimani in 2020, where the Trump administration called Soleimani a terrorist to justify its illegal action. In this case, the US violated the territorial integrity of Iraq in order to murder an Iranian official. As is obvious, there were never any legal repercussions for this action.
On the other hand, on the question of proportionality, this principle has been completely done away with by Western governments with the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. Despite the Israelis standing plausibly accused of committing a genocide by the World Court, the US, UK, and Germany continue to aid them with an endless supply of weapons, diplomatic cover and logistical support. This erosion of the so-called “rules based” order, did not begin in Gaza and evidently began much earlier, but the nature of Western acceptance of political violence has emerged ever more clear with the unprecedented warcrimes taking place in the Gaza Strip.
When you hear Western leaders employing the same language against their fellow politicians, as they do against foreign adversaries, combined with a well documented history of the US three-letter-agencies being involved in political assassinations both at home and abroad, it is no wonder why such violence could plausibly occur on American soil. Regardless of the details surrounding the Trump assassination attempt and what exactly happened that day, it is the US government and their allies that have fostered an environment in which political violence is plausible, so long as the enemy is considered to be a threat to their war of life, or at least presented as such.
While most will simply refuse to accept the connection between the rhetoric of their government and the media’s justifications offered for war crimes overseas, it is undeniable that this plays a crucial role in shaping the minds of the public towards what is acceptable. So when you hear Republicans and Democrats lambast their opponents, calling them threats to democracy and the US way of life, while later in that same speech justifying mass murder overseas, these two ideas become intermingled. This is especially the case when it comes to the issue of Palestine-Israel, where the Republican Party has worked overtime to connect the issue to identity politics and the culture war inside the United States. The effect it has, by justifying the slaughter of civilians in Gaza and linking fellow Americans to those innocent victims you justify killing, is deeper than meets the eye. At the end of the day, the likelihood of political violence is now high and this is directly linked to the actions of Western regimes overseas, the hypocrisy of politicians, the dire economic situation gripping Western populations, and the amped up rhetoric between major political parties.
