“The United States has avoided a successful high-profile assassination during the recent escalation in domestic political violence, but not for the lack of trying,” Ware writes, citing plots targeting former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at their homes.
“Of note, these incidents underscore that assassination threats are not reserved by any one political ideology.” Rather, “they are weaponized by extremists of all stripes.”
Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says it’s hard to diagnosis the precise cause of the apparent rise in assassination attempts. To be sure, norms of civility have frayed, and our political rhetoric has become increasingly violent.
Whatever the cause, “politicians must be prepared to spend greater resources on their protection.”
But Ware ends on an optimistic note, asserting that because “assassinations are typically chosen by ‘accelerationist’ extremists who are particularly desperate to change the course of history,” they should “be interpreted precisely as a reflection of the strength of liberal democratic order.”
“The most critical counterterrorism measure, then, is to continue reinforcing democratic institutions, including free elections and the free press, that isolate extremism to the fringes of society.”
Read the op-ed at TheHill.com.
