Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt on the weekend, but it was another body-blow to a United States political system that’s in advanced stages of decay.
Security services killed shooter Thomas Crooks, one spectator was killed and another two injured at the rally in Pennsylvania.
It will be an adrenaline shot for Trump and far right and racist forces—in the US and internationally.
Trump will be anointed as the official Republican presidential candidate later this week.
And his supporters, aided by the calls for “national unity” from mainstream politicians, are already using the attempted assassination to silence criticism of his far right and racist agenda.
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, called on all sides to turn “the temperature down” in their rhetoric. But he blamed opponents of Trump who’ve “vilified” and “persecuted” Trump in the lead up to the attack.
Similarly Donald Trump Jr has posted on social media site X that Democrats and “their friends in the media knew exactly what they were doing” by implying Trump was “literally Hitler”.
Nigel Farage said he will attend the Republican Party’s convention in Milwaukee next week to support Trump. “He is the favourite to win—and after today’s heinous acts he will win,” the Reform UK leader gloated.
The assassination is a symptom of a wider, seemingly permanent state of instability.
That instability is rooted in how US society is rotting from within through economic, political, environmental and imperialist crises.
The US is finding it harder and harder to maintain its hegemony—its position as the leading capitalist state in the world. Abroad, the US faces a triple crisis—the rise of Chinese imperialism, the threat of wider war in the Middle East, a failing proxy war with Russian imperialism in Ukraine.
At home, it’s in the midst of social decay, economic malaise and political polarisation—which are exacerbated by the crisis abroad.
Centrist politics under President Joe Biden hasn’t resolved the problems fueling the instability. If anything, it has exacerbated them.
On the international stage, that’s summed up by the sense of uncertainty at the Nato warmongers’ summit in Washington this week. That was due to the challenges facing US imperialism and the possible re-election of Trump.
At home Biden’s big business agenda, with some crumbs for ordinary people, hasn’t alleviated the social crisis or even restored US capitalism to health. One survey earlier this year found that 42 percent of Americans felt Trump would be the best steward of the US economy, while only 31 percent chose Biden.
And Biden’s own presidential campaign is in crisis, after an awful debate performance against Trump and a series of gaffes sparked concerns about Biden.
On top of this, deep inequality marks the US. The top 1 percent had an average income of almost £650,000 a year in 2022. The top 20 percent of the population had an average income of approximately £220,000 a year while the bottom 20 percent survived on approximately £12,600, according to the US Tax Policy Centre.
Trump’s rise was underpinned by the death of the “American Dream”. He fed off the accumulated anger and grievances at 30 years of neoliberalism, which depressed working class people’s wages, destroyed decent jobs and fueled inequalities. He corralled a lot of that anger through whipping up racism, scapegoating migrants and deflecting anger onto “liberal elites” away from the real elite—billionaires, bosses and bankers—that he belongs to.
Biden and Trump represent different sections of the US ruling class, which have opposing views about how to stabilise the US amid the crises it’s facing.
These interlocking crises manifest themselves in the political institutions of the US, once held up as models of liberal democracy. The last four years have seen the far right assault on the Capitol building, Trump’s denials that he lost the 2020 presidential election and many Republicans continued belief in a “stolen election”.
Trump’s loss didn’t loosen his grip on the Republican party. It deepened a process of right wing radicalisation at the grassroots, and boosted far right Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate.
Remember when the US House of Representatives couldn’t choose a speaker for the first time in more than 100 years last January? The Republican nominee, who’d been a Trump supporter, wasn’t deemed right wing enough by a section of Republican lawmakers.
After several reruns of the vote, Kevin McCarthy got in but only to be removed last October—the first time in history that Congress has removed its speaker.
McCarthy had pushed for a more traditional approach of back room deals and horse-trading between Republicans and Democrats to get legislation through Congress.
Instead, Trump’s far right supporters were able effectively to paralyse the legislation process earlier this year.
This crisis doesn’t have to benefit the right. Powerful social movements have rocked US society—for example, Palestine on the campuses, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the mass opposition during Trump’s first term as president.
Millions of people looked to Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and the squad who called themselves democratic socialists. Unfortunately, they pulled that mood into the business as usual politics of the Democratic Party—and are rallying behind Biden as their presidential candidate.
Hope lies in the streets, on the campuses and workplaces and with a socialist politics that doesn’t look to the Democrats.
Farage under pressure from Restore Britain
Fascists could be in office for the first time since the war
Restore Britain comes out in support of masked thugs
