Trump Assassination Attempt: Impact on the Far Left
How does this affect violent social movements heading in November's elections?
Far Left reactions to the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump poured in over the weekend. It was about what you’d expect, mainly regret that the shooter missed.
But we haven’t yet hit the reflection stage on what it means for the future of the revolutionary Left.
In the coming weeks, I expect to see some updates from prominent revolutionary anarchist groups, especially the one who last summer published a 2024 election-year strategy.
This is my initial take.
Bottom Line Up Front: The assassination attempt makes a challenging task for the Far Left more difficult. The task for Far Left groups this year has been to turn up the social temperature and build support for and normalize street action, which can then be directed into revolutionary action against a possible Trump administration. This has not been working for them.
We’ve seen some attempts with three ongoing campaigns:
First, the campus occupation campaign, which is well off its peak, and unpopular. Campus administrators, law enforcement and politicians are entertaining them like they did Black Lives Matter in 2020.
The so-called “Summer of Heat” has primarily targeted Citibank and other companies over their involvement with Israel. Turnout has been limited despite frequent protests.
The third campaign is “Mask Off Maersk,” which is targeting the shipping giant for transporting weapons to the Israelis. Like the Summer of Heat, turnout has been limited.
According to polling around the peak of the campus occupations, just 16% of Americans sympathized with Palestinian cause. In short, you can’t build a revolutionary movement in the United States around Palestine.
Last summer, a prominent revolutionary anarchist collective published a strategy document detailing the need to create new social protest movements and/or inject anarchist or socialist ideals into existing movements, then combine them with the established revolutionary anarchist movement, and then collectively achieve what they failed to do in 2020. The plan was to build up a revolutionary militant culture within these movements, achieve mass mobilization, and then use strategic violence to cause a “revolutionary rupture.”
Back in April, I mentioned the underlying reason for disruptive protest events, such as the A15 Day of Action and others, is to turn up the social temperature because you don’t cold start mass mobilization protests in November.
Turning up the social temperature means agitation and escalation against Trump, his campaign, and his supporters. That may become an impossible task after what happened this weekend.
At least for now, I doubt Democrats who showed explicit approval for the direct action of 2016-2020 would entertain even low-level violence in the lead up to the election. To be sure, those politicians and organizers still harbor extremist anti-Trump views, which became politically unpalatable over the weekend. I think those same politicians also fear reprisals against themselves if political violence becomes normalized.
The general sense is that the assassination attempt on Trump strengthened him, and those politicians and political and social leaders likely still fear that even 2016-style low-level political violence would have the same effect. It’s political kryptonite right now, although it could change in the months to come.
Ultimately, I see the Far Left struggling right now to rekindle the environment they had in 2016, where low-scale political violence against Trump supporters was not uncommon. Late last year, I wrote that another 2020-style summer of rioting was unlikely this year, although possible closer to the election. The problem for the Far Left is that, at least for now, politicians who gave them top cover from 2016-2021 don’t have the same apetite. As a result, I think they’ll struggle to mobilize until after the election. - M.S.