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The unfounded theories and misinformation after the Trump shooting will be where the danger lies
A bloodied former president, fist in the air, defiantly standing up after being forced to the ground by gunshots at a political rally in the United States.
This disturbing and chilling image will remain seared in the collective memories of not only Americans but people across the world. It is vision that speaks to the deeply dangerous times we are facing as the US heads to an election in November.
Follow our live coverage of the attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump.
The temperature couldn’t be higher, the rhetoric is escalating day after day and relentlessly pushing people into entrenched camps and echo chambers that tears at who and what we are. It amplifies division.
The attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump has sent a chill through the Western democratic world — and reminded us all just how dangerous and febrile political polarisation can be.
We’ve seen it rise its ugly head before and we know how this violence ends. This is not the first attempt to assassinate a US presidential nominee or sitting president, but in the current political climate it represents a dramatic escalation.
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An attack on ‘the values we share, the freedom we treasure’
Within an hour of the news breaking, leaders across the world including Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, were condemning the violence.
Denouncing the attack on Trump was one thing that seems to have brought leaders on vastly different parts of the political spectrum together — left to right, populist to conservative.
Albanese expressed his relief that Trump was safe, describing the incident at former president Trump’s campaign event in Pennsylvania as “concerning and confronting”.
“There is no place for violence in the democratic process,” Albanese said.
Our prime minister warned that “we must lower the temperature of the debate” and blamed social media for escalating political division in a press conference on Sunday.
“There is nothing to be served by some of the escalation of rhetoric that we see in some of our political debate, political discourse, in the democratic world,” the prime minister said from Canberra. “It’s a phenomenon that’s not unique to the United States. There’s a lot of shouting going on. A point is not made more significant by being done in capital letters.”
Albanese said it was not the day for playing politics and warned against the spread of misinformation.
“One of the things I urge everyone to do is to exercise caution when reading unverified reports of the events and to seek out credible news sources,” he said. “We all need to be on guard against those seeking to use misinformation to create division. And this is a time for unity. It’s a time for calm. It’s a time for allowing the authorities in the United States to do their jobs.”
Albanese defended the right of people In Australia, as in the United States, to gather democratically to express their own political views and convictions.
Indeed it is the most foundational right we have — to exercise a view, and a vote, whatever it may be.
“The essence and the purpose of our democracies is that we can express our views, debate our disagreements and resolve our differences peacefully,” Albanese said.
“This was an inexcusable attack on the democratic values that Australians and Americans share and the freedom that we treasure. The basis of our alliance is those shared values between our peoples as great democratic nations and Australians stand with our friends in the United States.”
Conspiracy theories have gathered steam and that’s where the danger lives
In the US, political figures from the Democratic party denounced political violence. The attack on Trump represented one of the worst attacks on a presidential figure since the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Former US president Barack Obama urged people to “use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics”.
US Senator Bernie Sanders called the incident at the Pennsylvania rally “unacceptable” and wished Trump a speedy recovery.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, wrote that he was “horrified by what happened at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania and relieved that former president Trump is safe”.
“Political violence has no place in our county,” he said.
Across social media and the internet the conspiracy theories have been gathering steam — theories so devoid of evidence or fact it is irresponsible to give them any oxygen.
But that’s where the danger lives — in the unfounded theories — the amplification of information that threatens to accelerate hatred rather than dissipating it.
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As the story unfolded I had federal workplace minister Tony Burke with me on Insiders warning about the danger of misinformation spreading.
“To wait for the facts is something that’s often not there and misinformation, once it spreads, can be very difficult to undo. Every democracy, the starting point is that we have a shared set of facts,” he said. “The two principals for any democracy have to be you want a shared set of facts and you want people to be free from violence.”
And so we must focus in a concerted way on those words, a “shared set of facts”. We are all entitled to our views, as the saying goes, but not to our own facts — those must be free of manipulation and conjecture.
Political violence threatens to disenfranchise all citizens by sending fear through communities — it is menacing and dangerous.
The prime minister rightly described the misinformation on social media and the amplification of this as part of a growing problem not only in the United States — but also here.
We pride ourselves on creating a culture in Australia that is largely gun free — and while violence escalates when guns are more easy to access, aggression and violence are threats everywhere — including in countries like ours regardless of the tools to commit heinous crimes.
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Threats towards Australian political leaders are rising
The hyper partisanship we have seen in the United States is also hurting us here in Australia. What we are witnessing in the US may feel far away and be playing out in a different context but it’s a warning of what can come if politicians and activists don’t stay vigilant in their discourse.
Australian parliamentarians are facing a rising number of threats to their safety, too.
We know this because Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw has revealed that threats rose to 725 last financial year (when he last gave evidence), up from 279 in 2020-21.
In an appearance before senate estimates the commissioner said he was “concerned” by the rise in reported threats in recent years.
In the UK, where the political system has more similarities with ours in Australia, political violence has already wreaked tragedy.
MPs’ security increased significantly since 2016 in the UK (according to the BBC) an escalation that happened after Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right terrorist.
The debate over MP safety further ramped up following the murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess in 2021.
In more recent times, Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green Mike Freer announced he would be standing down from Parliament after receiving death threats.
I have seen some of the death threats sent to Australian politicians. Most choose to downplay the messages sent into their offices.
Some tell me they don’t want to give it oxygen — they don’t want to create unintended consequences by discussing it publicly.
There’s a fear of copy cats, and of inadvertently giving perpetrators of threatened violence what they want. There is reason to be cautious with this information.
We must intellectually wrestle with the rage we are witnessing — even if it’s largely at the fringes. Rage on its own is unpleasant but it is not illegal. The question is what happens when rage is inflamed, and what role does rhetoric play in firing people up?
The biggest mistake we can make as Australians is believing such rage is something happening way over there, somewhere else, somewhere distant — and treating it like a story playing out on our screens and devices with no connection to our own story.
Polarisation is an international phenomenon and the time has come for all of our leaders to find ways to bring us together — the premise is our shared humanity, founded on the right to express ourselves without the threat of retribution.
It is the least we can ask for.
Patricia Karvelas is the presenter of RN Breakfast and co-host of the Party Room podcast. She also hosts Q+A, which returns on ABC TV in August.
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