Gunfire in Pennsylvania directed at former U.S. President Donald Trump last Saturday was one extreme symptom of a climate of division, anger, and intolerance corroding democratic politics not just in the United States but in other countries as well.
The shooting added new urgency to questions preoccupying allied leaders, especially in the major democracies of western Europe, even before Mr. Trump’s narrow escape: how to make democratic government work in this increasingly toxic political environment, and how to revive it as an arena for competing visions.
Why We Wrote This
Across Europe, leaders are witnessing not only threatening rhetoric but also acts of violence. That’s focusing their attention anew on “turning down the volume” while working to counter a sense of alienation and loss of faith in democratic systems.
There was at least one encouraging sign for America’s democratic allies after last weekend: the emphasis by both President Joe Biden and Mr. Trump on trying to bring the country back together.
This effort to “lower the temperature” echoed the approach taken by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after his Labour Party’s election victory earlier this month. He vowed to be “especially” responsive to those who didn’t vote for him.
Yet Labour’s landslide left him in a far stronger position than the leaders of other European democracies. And even Mr. Starmer made it clear that a shift in approach and political culture at the top, while crucial, would not be sufficient to revive the healthy function of democratic government.
The messages of shock from America’s key overseas allies at the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and their relief that he had survived, came with an equally impassioned postscript: that political violence can have no place in democratic societies.
Yet its plaintive tone underlined a deeper concern. Leaders worry that the gunfire in Pennsylvania last Saturday was just one – extreme – symptom of a climate of division, anger, and intolerance corroding democratic politics not just in the United States but in other countries as well.
And the shooting added new urgency to questions preoccupying allied leaders, especially in the major democracies of western Europe, even before Mr. Trump’s narrow escape.
Why We Wrote This
Across Europe, leaders are witnessing not only threatening rhetoric but also acts of violence. That’s focusing their attention anew on “turning down the volume” while working to counter a sense of alienation and loss of faith in democratic systems.
Those include how to make democratic government work in this increasingly toxic political environment. How to revive it as an arena for competing visions, trusted by voters to respond to their concerns, and led by politicians who, however fiercely they might disagree, fundamentally respect the democratic process, democratic institutions, and one another.
There was at least one encouraging sign for America’s democratic allies after the shooting: the emphasis by both President Joe Biden and Mr. Trump on trying to bring the country back together.
This effort to “lower the temperature” echoed the approach taken by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after his Labour Party’s election victory this month. He vowed to be “especially” responsive to those who didn’t vote for him.
Yet Labour’s landslide left him in a far stronger position than leaders of other European democracies, like French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
And even Mr. Starmer made it clear that a shift in approach and political culture at the top, while crucial, would not be sufficient to revive the healthy function of democratic government.
That’s because of growing signs that European countries are facing challenges similar to those tearing at the fabric of America’s democracy.
Economically, large numbers of people have yet to recover from the multiple shocks of the world financial crash of 2007-2009, the pandemic, and the consumer price effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Politically, many feel frustrated by what they view as mainstream leaders’ failure to address not just that predicament but also other issues, especially immigration.
Socially, many feel disrespected, even unseen and unheard, by their governments.
As in the U.S., this has fueled the rise of populist leaders styling themselves less as traditional democratic politicians than as insurgents – voices of anger, sometimes outrage, against “establishment” leaders and institutions.
And critically, all of this has been amplified by an entirely altered information environment, in which past reliance on widely shared major media outlets has been replaced by use of X, Instagram, and tailored feeds on mobile phones.
Amid increasingly violent rhetoric, there’s been a rise in acts of violence, especially in the run-up to last month’s European Parliament elections across the 27 countries of the European Union.
In May, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, a Trump-style populist, was himself seriously wounded in an assassination attempt. In Germany, youths attacked and injured a Social Democrat candidate while he was out campaigning. In France and Italy, violent attacks on local officials have been on the rise.
Even in Britain’s election, despite an unerring show of mutual respect by almost all candidates, a number faced threats and intimidation while campaigning. Labour politicians, in particular, were targeted by groups accusing the party of being insufficiently strong in criticizing Israel over the war in Gaza.
Against the background of the killing of two sitting members of Parliament over the past decade, Britain’s top adviser on political violence saw the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life as underscoring the dangers of the current political climate.
“We have seen the growth in the UK of US-style politics of aggressive confrontation and intimidation, which is, unfortunately, exactly the toxic environment that could lead to another assassination attempt on a UK politician,” John Woodcock declared.
Still, “making democracy work” will mean surmounting a deeper challenge of finding some way, in our age of social media reliance, to reintegrate disaffected voters in the democratic process.
Nathan Howard/Reuters
And the latest digital media survey by the Reuters Institute pointed to the related potential obstacle of declining interest in news. Four in 10 people now say they engage in “selective news avoidance.”
Rupa Huq, a British Labour member of Parliament who is herself a strong supporter of Palestinian statehood, wrote of the harassment she faced in the recent campaign over the party’s Gaza stance. Most frustrating, she said, was the inability to get people to engage in any reasoned discussion of how best to relieve the plight of the Palestinians.
This challenge has been building since 2016, with the angry campaigns that took Britain out of the EU and won Mr. Trump the White House. Indeed, I wrote about the long-term implications for democratic government at the time.
Yet the hope among European allies will be that, as a first step toward reengagement, the new emphasis on unity by the two leading politicians in the world’s leading democracy helps revive one core democratic tenet.
It was championed by President Biden after winning the election in 2020, and he repeated it this week after the attack on Mr. Trump:
“Though we may disagree, we are not enemies.”