The door to reassessments and reflections on violence was opened wide immediately after the failed attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. The history of the United States, as we well know, is brimming with violence, particularly against the "red" indigenous population and the Afro-American “blacks.” It is a place where owning a firearm is a central theme of national politics. TV programs, Hollywood movies, and games can be placed in the same category, to say nothing about the role of social media and fake news, which are not exclusive to the United States. Following the latest assassination attempt, the media reminded us that even American presidents are not out of criminality’s reach. Indeed, the last one to be assassinated was John Kennedy, who was killed in 1963, while Ronald Reagan was the target of the latest presidential assassination attempt in 1981.
Writers and commentators did not forget to discuss the history of populism, of both the right and left, there. Populism’s pocket was reinflated with Trump's election in 2016. Since then, we have seen the notion of "enemies of the people" become a prominent feature of political and cultural exchange. This notion legitimizes violence by tasking the "friends of the people" with cleansing the population of their "enemies." While "the elite" was equated with "enemies of the people" in the eyes of Trump’s supporters, the "white trash" who support Trump were equated with "enemies of the people" in the eyes of those among his detractors who fell under the way of defamatory discourse.
With that, a refrain was repeated in every condemnation of the recent assassination attempt, by both American and European politicians. Assassination and violence, this refrain stressed, are antithetical to democracy, which cannot coexist alongside them, or they reiterated that democracy grants us political means for expressing our disagreements instead...
However, when this refrain is merely echoed rhetorically, it could potentially become a mantra that creates more risks than it wards off. For this reason, various aspects of Western intellectual and cultural life are being revised, from the frameworks and modes of representation to the state of equality and social justice, from foreign policy to military spending, from managing the tension between the nation-state and globalization to the new conditions of technology and isolated labor...
Nonetheless, even as a mantra, democracy remains a standard for governance and assessment, including the assessment of democracy itself. Those who voiced their condemnations of the assassination attempt did not claim that such actions go against “the customs of our people" “Western customs,” “our traditions," “our values,” or "our religion” ... If they had, they would be racist or bordering on racism. Indeed, they have classified the world based on the ways of life and doing politics that people choose and develop, not on inherited traits or traits that are said to be inherited. They thereby draw a theoretical line between democracy and violence that cannot be crossed. In a democratic system, or rather in democratic life, there should be no "enemies of the people" or "friends of the people,” and therefore, no political violence or political crimes either. On the other hand, it is precisely because political violence and crime exist in reality that the democratic system and democratic life are undergoing a major crisis that calls for a remedy. Moreover, because democracy- not nationalism, religion, "our traditions" or "our virtues-" is the foundation upon which this society’s "civilization" stands, violence makes the "civilization" itself severely ill.
This interpretation is totally antithetical to the authoritarian, nihilistic, and totalitarian theories that all claim democracy is the disease. This conclusion, in turn, drives the proponents of these theories to shut the public sphere, dissolve political parties, and prohibit divergent opinions. According to this approach, democracy is spared the ordeal by preventing the existence of democracy. However, in this case, violence becomes the foundation of life itself. Worse still, it becomes glorified because it is founded on violence. Killing, fighting, martyrdom, martyrs, assassination, kidnapping, and civil wars of all kinds are the building blocks of our societies. This foundation comes with astonishing audacity in leveling accusations of treason and collaboration against "enemies of the people" who have a different view on matters tied to their lives and deaths.
Here, we could perhaps find an explanation for the astonishing insatiability of violence in our region, with war becoming such a constant feature of our lives that predicting the next one is the only interval between one war and another. This, in turn, is what justifies our peoples’ constant fear of the eruption of new indefatigable violent energies that cannot live without it. We have individual hardships caused by violence, and individuals who groan because of the violence they have endured. Individuals voice their pain by writing articles, appearing on television, or when they are filmed lamenting their tragedies, be it the loss of their children, the destruction of their homes, or their permanent displacement. Despite this, we have no literature that advocates peace, rejects violence, and condemns pain, to say nothing about our lacking any alternative to violence, in the way that Westerners have made democracy an alternative to violence.
Those among us who dare to question this criminal mindset, having already paid the costs for it with their lives and the lives of their children, are honored with the title of cowards.
