Note: Because it is the Friday of the first long weekend of the summer, I am putting aside the Crayola and recycling some material from behind the green door so I can get outside and take care of a project before the rains come. There will be fresh content throughout the weekend behind the green door. Otherwise, have a wonderful weekend and I will be back on Monday.

The attempted assassination this week of the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, did not get much attention in American media. Slovakia is a tiny country tucked away in the eastern most part of what people consider Europe. Most Americans have no reason to care, but a century ago few Americans had a reason to care about Sarajevo either. A lot of history can happen in a small country sometimes.

The reason this could be the case is Slovakia is one of the countries that exists in the gray zone between East and West. It is part of the Visegrád Group, a political and cultural alliance of former Soviet client states. Like Orbán of Hungary, Fico is a nationalist who won office in the teeth of American efforts. There has been whispers that he could get regime changed due to his stance on Project Ukraine.

Like Orbán, Fico is an old school anti-communist, which means he is an anti-ideologue and that means he sees American liberalism with suspicion. In the Visegrád countries, it has been noted that most of the leading pro-American liberals used to be communists, with many having been part of the communist regime. They quickly changed out of their worker costumes and put on expensive suits.

The guy who tried to kill Fico is described as a leftist, but in the context of this part of the world that means he is pro-Western. Since winning election, Fico has been subjected to relentless media campaigns from American NGO’s criticizing him for his stance on Project Ukraine. There has been a lot of talk about getting rid of Fico by any means necessary, a dog whistle for the liberal fanatics.

The reason this may be a foreshadowing of what lies ahead is the reaction in Western media to the news of the assassination attempt. Instead of condemning the use of political violence, which would make sense from the perspective of people wielding power, the popinjays of the chattering skull circuit smugly suggested that Fico deserved to get shot and that maybe it was not a terrible thing.

Keep in mind that the people who turn up on regime platforms are repeating the opinions they hear on the cocktail circuit. This is even more so with Europe as these are all client states, so much of what makes up their politics is the solon culture where pretentious people compete to see who can stake out the cleverest pro-American position while making it sound European.

The reason this matters is the rhetoric aimed at guys like Orbán and Fico is the same we hear directed at Trump or any other skeptic of the liberal project. The first bullet out of the gun, so to speak, is to label them pro-Putin. Both Orbán and Fico have been given the “Russian collusion” treatment by the chattering classes. Both are called threats to “our democracy” for having won elections.

Now think about the situation with Trump. The regime has thrown everything at the guy over the last two years, but he keeps chugging along. Not only that, but his popularity is also probably higher now, and more intense, than when he ran in 2016 or 2020. At the same time, the liberal hatred for the man is now soul defining. If any means necessary was justified in 2020, it is even more true in 2024.

This is the dynamic of political violence. We tend to think of political violence as organized bands of politically motivated actors. Maybe they are sponsored by the ruling class or opposed to the ruling class, but they are organized. In reality, most political violence is the result of disorganized partisans who are set off by inflammatory rhetoric, as we saw with Black Lives Matter.

The other ingredient to political violence is that the people in charge become comfortable with it, justifying it when it serves their interests and overreacting to it when they need an excuse to use power outside the moral limits. The reaction to the Fico shooting is an example of the former and the ongoing suppression of J6 protestors is an example of the latter.

Probably the most important piece of the puzzle is disconfirmation. Political violence comes from the side that thinks the forces of good are at risk of losing, so something must be done to turn the tide. Trump was never supposed to win, so they created the conspiracy theory about Russian collusion to explain it and when that did not solve the problem, they resorted to violence.

In the fullness of time, we will look back at the shooting of Republican politicians at a pickup baseball game in 2017 as the start of the political violence cycle. James Hodgkinson was an anti-Trump kook, but the anti-Trump kooks were not shamed by his actions into toning down their rhetoric. Instead, they shrugged it off and ratcheted up their attacks on Trump and Trump supporters.

This is why the Fico shooting could be important. We are about to enter the summer of hate when the regime pulls out all the stops to defeat Trump. There are hundreds of potential James Hodgkinson types thinking they could be a hero to their cause by taking their shot. The FBI is always working up plans to create a green flag event in case the regime needs to use violence. This could be the kick-off to a wild summer.

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