American decency is drowning in a sea of rancor and hatred

As I drove through Washington to catch an early morning flight, the city was just about to wake. It appeared serene as I passed by all the iconic monuments on the way to the airport. However, a number of days of meetings and discussions had left me under no illusion: US society has not been so divided for a long time, possibly since the Civil War, and is led by a divisive and partisan political system.

The fault lines along Pennsylvania Avenue run not only between the White House and Congress, but also within Capitol Hill, and among think-tanks and NGOs. There is an air of deep social-political crisis, with no side willing to budge, regardless of the price this great nation may pay. Washington is at its partisan worst, no matter what it is doing to the rest of the country.

In my hotel room a few hours later, I followed my Pavlovian instinct and turned on the TV news to find that the serenity of the city I had just left was no more. The networks were in “breaking news” mode, reporting on packages containing explosives sent to 12 of President Trump’s high-profile critics. The list of targets was chilling: All had publicly expressed their concerns about the president’s policies and his general behavior. Even more worrying was that, without exception, all had been vilified by him in his inflammatory speeches and tweets.

If the bomb packages had remained undetected, they could have badly injured or even killed the two former Democrat Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former secretary of state and Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Other targets included politicians, former heads of the CIA and National Intelligence, and donors to the Democratic Party, including George Soros, who has become a target for ultra-right leaders from Washington to Budapest to Jerusalem. It was disturbing and scary; had this plot succeeded almost the entire former Democrat leadership would have been wiped out.

If that bomb plot alone were not enough to send a shiver down America’s spine, a reminder that this constant vitriolic political language is legitimizing violence, then a few days later came an even more chilling reminder. A lone shooter entered a Jewish synagogue and killed 11 worshippers. The killer, who regularly posted anti-Semitic comments on social media sites popular with the ultra-right, had stormed into the synagogue yelling: “All Jews must die.” In his distorted view they deserved to die for their “crime” of supporting the Jewish refugee advocacy group HIAS, an organization that he accused of bringing “invaders in that kill our people”. In fact HIAS, which was founded in the late 19th century to help Jewish refugees escape the pogroms in Russia, has for decades provided and expanded its help to refugees of all religions, ethnicities and nationalities, who in the eyes of a white supremacist terrorist are invaders and killers. How sick are those who can confuse humanitarian work for those in desperate need with treason?

But events such as this don’t happen in a vacuum. History has shown all too clearly that they occur when the language and discourse of the highest political echelons and a polemical media encourage them. Those in positions of authority and responsibility are quick to portray these terrorists as deranged individuals, washing their hands of their own direct contribution in using violent language against their political opponents and the media, while refusing to address the disastrous misinterpretation of the First and Second Amendments.

Even after these two horrific episodes, President Trump on his mid-term campaign trail continues to employ inflammatory language. One wonders if he really doesn’t understand the disastrous impact, especially in a country swamped by nearly 400 million guns held by civilians, or whether this is part of his grand scheme of holding on to power. In a country where there are more guns than people, hate speech is the trigger behind those who pull the trigger.

When a bomb package was sent to the offices of CNN, Trump tweeted: “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposefully false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News.” And he added, “Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!” He appeared to be doing his best to exacerbate an already explosive situation. Everyone knew that one of the media outlets he was referring to was CNN. He may or may not have intend to incite someone to harm them, but someone, somewhere will see this as a license to “clean up” on behalf of the government and the American people. Similarly, falsely accusing the Democrats of wishing to open the borders to every would-be migrant including murderers, rapists and drug dealers who will in turn destroy American society, is legitimizing the treatment of his political adversaries as traitors. We have seen too often in that past how this kind of hate speech has led to the violent overthrow of democratic societies.

In recent history there has never been such a continuous, flagrant distortion of both the First and Second Amendment of the American Constitution. Freedom of speech was never about inciting violence and hatred against political opponents and critics of government, and the right to bear arms has never meant that every citizen, including the mentally ill or politically deranged, should be allowed to stockpile weapons and use them for mass killings in schools, places of worship, or cinemas. It might be time to revise both amendments so that they reflect 21st-century American society and politics.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg