If I was Donald Trump right now, I’d be wondering, “What the hell went wrong? They aren’t supposed to be targeting me!”
Because he has been making the same mistake that authoritarian right-wingers often make.
The Right-Wing Narrative
Members of the Right are authoritarian. Force is the ultimate solution to social problems. They know that this naturally leads to misuse of force by certain members of their society, and that this in turn leads to a certain number of violent and disturbed people wandering around. But they don’t really mind that, because they can use their Ultra-Right thugs to frighten the snowflakes into submission. Witness January 6 on Capitol Hill and the Ottawa Convoy Invasion in 2022.
Their Basic Mistake
What they’re missing, of course, is that these victims of violence are basically uncontrollable. The worst of them are not completely sane, and they may have their own objectives.
The Lesson from Prisons
Prison officials have long known that sexual offenders must, for their own safety, be kept separated from the rest of the prison population. The reason seems obvious; a large number of people are in prison as a result of an upbringing of abuse, some of it sexual.
Likewise on the Outside
It would not be unusual to find, when one of these abused personalities goes so far as to contemplate murder, that the offender is likely to choose a victim who exhibits bullying behaviour. A politician who stands in front of thousands of people and calls fellow legislators names, dehumanizes women, and laughs at the handicapped is setting himself up as a target.
And in the Rest of the Country
Unfortunately, politicians exhibiting or applauding abusive behaviour are giving permission to their violent allies to act out their will on other targets: school children, medical personnel, and other politicians.
The present situation on Parliament Hill in Canada, where MPs are being followed and heckled and assaulted, is directly a result of Pierre Poilievre’s bullying tactics in parliament, like making up derogatory names for his opponents and supporting the trucker protests.
The Bottom Line
I have often cautioned right wing orators that the perpetrator of the next atrocity is listening to them for approval. The lesson we learn from Trump’s attackers is that these loose cannons may not have the objectives the speaker wishes.