The Brief – The Guy Fawkes conspiracy revisited

As the news of shots fired at former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to reverberate across the globe, a few tidbits from the not-so-distant past come to mind.

“I can stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa eight years ago, drawing boisterous laughs from his supporters.

It was Trump again who mocked Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul when Paul was brutally assaulted in their home in September 2023 by a Canadian far-right conspiracy theorist.

The Trump camp, or people who support him, has also been promoting physical violence against Joe Biden, as this video footage from a Republican fundraising event attests.

Last but not least, Donald Trump has been a staunch ally of the gun lobby, his power base, while the Biden administration has taken a number of steps to try to combat gun violence,

Trump has pledged to continue to defend the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms), which he claims is “under siege,” and has called himself “the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House”, even as the US faces record numbers of deaths due to mass shootings.

These elements of reflection come to mind after Trump himself was injured in what appears to be the most serious attempt to assassinate a US president or a presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot at in 1981.

Joe Biden and leaders of the world were fast to condemn the assassination attempt as an attack on democracy.

Reportedly Biden upended his strategy in the wake of the shooting, and his team was pulling down television ads and suspending other political communications, including those that had highlighted Trump’s May felony conviction in New York state court relating to hush money paid to a porn star to avert a sex scandal before the 2016 US election.

But Trump’s supporters, who include figures like Elon Musk, decried the lack of empathy in the liberal media, which they traditionally accuse of demonising their political enemy and creating an atmosphere of hate.

This is only the beginning.

A propaganda volcano is about to erupt, and we shall see conspiracy theories we won’t believe, but they are likely to be extremely effective with Trump’s electorate.

There are several directions of conspiracy narratives that can already be predicted: The sloppy work of the US Secret Service, the motivations and connections of the dead perpetrator, the rapprochement between efforts to bring Trump to justice and the attempt to kill him physically.

The list is not exhaustive.

It is safe to predict that Trump will make the most of it. His manly behaviour at the scene of the shooting, illustrated by the AP photos that are likely to become iconic, and the words “Fight, fight, fight!” he uttered as his bodyguards whisked him away, are going to play an important part in the narratives.

But more than anything else, Trump can be portrayed as a man of destiny and good fortune. Luck in politics is as important as in war. As Napoleon reportedly said, “I would rather have a general who’s lucky than one who is good”.

The narrative of the Trump camp is a winner, especially compared to the paltry attempts by the Biden camp to present the 81-year-old as fit for another four years in office.

The Biden camp will have its hands tied, because they can no longer attack Trump without being reminded that this type of aggression inspired his attempted murderer. This is likely to continue until the 5 November election.

By the way, 5 November is “Guy Fawkes Night” – the celebration of the failure to assassinate a king, albeit in the UK.

On that day in 1605, the protestant King James I survived an assassination attempt by Guy Fawkes and other Catholics.

Celebrating that the king had survived, people lit bonfires around London. Months later, the Observance of 5 November Act mandated an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure. Marches in which participants carry torches are still held on that day in the United Kingdom. “Remember, remember, the 5th of November,” children are taught at school.

The US far right co-opted Guy Fawkes years ago. As observed in videos from the Capitol Hill riot, a noteworthy staple of this far-right iconography is the infamous Guy Fawkes mask — in this case, worn by a man with a Trump/Pence 2020 campaign flag draped over his shoulders.

Ironically, in the 2024 remake, Trump was more in the role of King James I, and certainly not of Guy Fawkes. But who cares? Masks, torches, burning crosses are also part of American traditions, though not the best of them.

As we have previously argued, to avoid history becoming the caricature of itself, Democrats should waste no time in putting forward another candidate to face Trump on 5 November.

The Roundup

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas (Reform party, Renew) submitted her resignation to Estonian President Alar Karis on Monday (15 July) after being nominated as the next European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

Ursula von der Leyen’s speech on Thursday (18 July) at European Parliament will be crucial to ensure the majority she needs to be reelected as Commission president, but to convince all pro-EU coalition lawmakers, she will have to address some key EU policy issues.

NGO Pesticide Action Network Europe found that a ‘forever chemical’ present in 94% of surface water and 63% of bottled water samples far exceeds limits set in the revised drinking water directive.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD/NI), who recently survived a politically motivated shooting, drew parallels between his experience and the recent assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, suggesting that their political opponents are inciting public anger and pushing individuals to resort to violence.

Polish politicians reacted to Saturday’s attack on Donald Trump, with some opposition figures accusing the ruling coalition of fuelling political polarisation and linking Prime Minister Donald Tusk to the assassination attempt.

Look out for…

• Economic and Financial Affairs Council meeting
• Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (Social, Employment)
• Informal meeting of energy ministers
• European Commission Vice President Vĕra Jourová meets via video conference with Ms Catherine De Bolle, Executive Director of Europol
• European Commissioner Stella Kyriakides, in Strasbourg France; attends the European Parliament’s Plenary session
• European Commissioner Nicolas Schmit attends the meeting of employment and social affairs ministers (EPSCO Council) in Brussels
• European Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi meets with Minister of European Integration of Serbia, Tanja Miščević.
• European Commissioner Johannes Hahn meets Xavier Bettel, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and Minister for Cooperation of Luxembourg

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]