‘Once is an accident,’ wrote Ian Fleming in Goldfinger, ‘Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.’
That Cesar Sayoc, the Chippendale with a bomb in his pocket, mailed his pipe bombs to leading Democrats is no accident. That Robert Bowers, his paranoia fanned by online incitement, decided to massacre Jews at Philadelphia’s Tree of Life synagogue is not a coincidence. And who would be surprised if tomorrow there was a third action from these enemies of liberal democracy?
The violent actions of Sayoc and Bowers emerge from the long, digitally-enhanced continuum of the right. No president has been more reckless in his public speech than Donald Trump. And most Republicans have followed Trump in being very careless about how they speak, and the company they keep when it comes to winning elections. The paranoid style precedes the paranoid act.
Acts of political violence require targets of violence, targets are created by dehumanisation, and dehumanisation begins with the erosion of civility.
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