People hug after Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump was helped off the stage at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Everyone can support peace and democracy. Here’s how.
A healthy civic life, avoiding rumors and holding public officials to a high standard are key
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Jordan Wilkie/WITF
People hug after Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump was helped off the stage at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
The FBI says a lone actor tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Saturday. Law enforcement has not found a motive yet.
Even without the identification of motivation, an attack on a political figure is political violence, according to peacebuilding experts like Shannon Hiller, who tracks and mitigates such violence as the executive director of the Bridging Divides Initiative.
The country is in a volatile moment following years of heightened tension, but it’s not new, Hiller said.
“We really have been here before in terms of especially shootings and attempted assassinations of our leaders,” Hiller said. “This isn’t a dramatic departure from the last 50 years of our political history in the U.S., unfortunately.”
A man seriously wounded President Ronald Regan in 1981, a man shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in the head in 2011, and a man opened fire at a congressional baseball game in 2017.
Going back to the 1960s, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.
Peace is a long-term effort and it’s important to remember the U.S. and other countries have come back from more severe and significant political violence, Hiller said.
But it is a slow process, taking years and serious public investment.
Peacebuilding research shows political violence builds on itself with every iteration and escalation, but the practice of peace also creates a cultural habit. Actions each person can take include taking time to engage in civic life, be patient as facts are confirmed and shared by trusted sources, and be careful about sharing inaccurate information.
Reinvesting in civic life can include going to local government meetings, Hiller said. Just going to any type of community with the chance to interact with people you may disagree with on some level will help, too. That includes working at a soup kitchen, going to church or joining a sports league, Hiller said.
Pennsylvanians also can, and should, make it clear in their communities that violence isn’t acceptable, according to Will Fuller, the Pennsylvania state lead for Search for Common Ground, the world’s largest and oldest global peace building organization.
Fuller says it’s important for everyday people, as well as political figures, to do this.
“We know in situations like this, in instances of political violence, that the intent, in addition to causing harm, is to inflame tension and sow chaos, and that actually escalates more violence,” Fuller said. “You know, the cycle begets itself. But fortunately, peace is also a cycle that begets itself.”
Condemning violence is a key way to interrupt the cycle.
Leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties, in Pennsylvania and nationally, are rejecting political violence.
Even as an act of violence dominates news headlines, the vast majority of Americans — around 98 percent — do not support politically-motivated murder, according to the Partisan Animosity and America research from Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford.
While partisans in each party reject political murder, the parties overestimate partisans of the opposing groups’ acceptance of deadly political violence at over 20 times the rate of reality.
The separation between belief and reality makes it even more important to be vigilant about sharing information.
Racist rhetoric increases in times of stress, and the pattern has been particularly strong on less regulated social media sites like Telegram and X, formerly known as Twitter, according to Freddy Cruz, program manager for monitoring and training at the Western States Center, which tracks extremism and works with communities to resist it.
Monitoring information consumption and sharing is important in a moment when rumors and outright lies intended to hurt specific people or groups are swirling around largely unregulated internet information networks, Cruz said.
“We try to emphasize for people to be very careful about what they’re posting online and what they’re consuming, and in some cases, maybe even repeating, because a lot of it does tend to, at times, play into the agenda of anti-democracy groups,” Cruz said.
Each expert emphasizes the need for patience as details trickle out about the shooting and the person who pulled the trigger.
Hiller, who leads the Bridging Divides Initiative, also said the public needs to remember two forms of political accountability.
“It’s unacceptable that the former president was targeted for an assassination, and political violence has no place,” Hiller said. “The second thing is it’s absolutely essential that we protect the space to continue criticizing the former president on his policies and on his own rhetoric that itself may contribute to incitement or violence in other contexts.”
Trump, among other actions, has lied about fraud in the 2016 and 2020 elections, supports the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president, and has repeatedly called for retribution against his political opponents.
His campaign and rhetoric will be closely watched at the Republican National Convention this week.
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