Opinion | Will Trump finally see what toxic political messaging leads to?

For all of the blood that flowed on July 13, when Thomas Matthew Crooks pulled the trigger on a shot that grazed former president Donald Trump’s ear, killed a bystander and critically wounded two others, much more might have followed.

As is often the case when the smoke clears after one of the country’s acts of gun violence – a ritual that’s now more American than baseball and apple pie – progressives will clench their teeth as they wait for details about the shooter. If the killer is not white, they think – and rightly so – we risk an outpouring of violence against whatever minority community the killer was a part of.

Are they Muslim, Hispanic, Black, Chinese or trans? Within extremist corners of Republican discourse, these groups have become symbols for everything that threatens America. They have become Christ-haters, illegals, #BlackLivesMatter thugs, “kung-flu” virus vectors or perverted freaks.

The American left is not blameless when it comes to the demonisation of their political enemies. Cancel culture has run amok in many corners of the progressive camp, particularly those that assail people for misgendering even when the mistake is unintentional.

Someone hopped up on non-stop social media rants about “illegals” can let loose with an AK-47 in a busy intersection in Spanish Harlem and be sure to hit the racial group that they’re convinced is ruining the country, like Patrick Crusius did in El Paso in 2019, when he gunned down 23 people in an attempt to ward off what he called a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”.