When a lone assassin attempted to assassinate Donald Trump this past Saturday, Trump supporters were enraged and threw blame for the attempt at Joe Biden, the Democrats, and “the radical left.” Millions of others, whether they said it aloud or not, wished the assassin had succeeded, believing that Trump deserves that end, and hoping desperately that his absence would lead to changes for the better. Moreover, many people are questioning the bizarre circumstances that seemingly enabled a 20-year old gunman to come so close to assassinating a presidential candidate.
Trump is certainly a heinous, narcissistic, sociopath who built a lavish lifestyle by exploiting the labor of the poor and working class. He absolutely deserves to pay a price for turning working people against one another, stoking hatred towards immigrants and others, and lying and attacking people for his own personal and political gain.
However, his death at the hands of an assassin would not make things better. Assassinations, terrorist attacks and other similar expressions of rage or vengeance carried out by individuals or conspiratorial groups rarely have any positive effect, and often have the exact opposite effect from what was intended. Think of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. They didn’t weaken or stop the U.S. from conducting its deadly global imperialist policies. Quite the opposite. The U.S. military was put on steroids, invaded first Afghanistan and then Iraq and initiated a “war on terror” with two long term occupations that killed hundreds of thousands and cost trillions.
Already, the assassination attempt has riled up Trump’s reactionary base and reinforced his campaign. Imagine if he had been killed. Then he would have been a true martyr for his deluded followers, and the rage over his death might trigger yet more violence. And, even if he himself was killed, that wouldn’t change the system and its structures that allow a vicious person like Trump to develop in the first place. There is no shortage of reactionary politicians who will eagerly try to take his place if he was off the stage, and working people are still being screwed by the capitalists and their system. It would just be managed by Biden, or Vance, or Harris, or another.
The way to stop Trump is not with bullets. It’s with a mass workers movement that can show angry, misled workers that their interest isn’t with either political party. Only a mass movement of the working class – the clear majority of the population and the group that keeps society running day in and day out – can silence the anti-worker reactionaries like Trump and give working people the confidence in our own power. If that were to happen, it wouldn’t matter if Trump were dead or alive. We’d be in control, and he’d be an afterthought on our journey to a different world.
