Political Violence: History, Purpose, and Future ~ Rudolf J. Siebert

On July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks, a twenty-year-old Pennsylvania man, attempted to assassinate the former president, Donald Trump, as Trump addressed a small open-air rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. With only a slight injury to his right ear, Trump attempted to capitalize on his newly found near-martyr status, dawning an overly large bandage on his ear during the Republic National Convention – reminding everyone that he was nearly killed for the MAGA movement. This attack on Trump, which many thought was staged, brought about discussions of political violence in American history, including the assassination of President Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and the 1981 attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan and the 2005 attempt on George W. Bush in Tbilisi, Georgia. Political violence has also extended well beyond the framework of state actors in the U.S.: In the 1960s, Black leaders, such as Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fred Hampton, just to name a few, were all targeted for the threat they posed to the status quo. Before them, leaders of slave revolts, such as Gabriel Prosser (1800), Denmark Vesey (1822), and Nat Turner (1831), were brutally executed, along with anyone that sympathized with their struggle for freedom.

Outside of America’s borders: Priests, influenced by Liberation Theology were brutally assassinated in Central American by graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA), often called the “School of Assassins,” including the conservative Bishop Óscar Romero in El Salvador. The Argentinian revolutionary, Che Guevara, was assassinated in Bolivia in 1967; hundreds of assassination attempts were made on Fidel Castro; President Diem of Vietnam was murdered in 1963; The Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961; the communist Leon Trotsky was murdered in Mexico on the orders of Stalin in 1940. Prior to that other high-profile murders for political reasons have occurred: The assassination of Tsar Nicholas II, the Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children, including the Tsarovich Alexi, the “mad monk” Rasputin himself was assassinated, and countless leaders and monarchs before them, including the 1793 execution of Louis XVI, the King of France, which ended the monarchy. In the ancient world, four of the most high-profile politically-motivated murders include: the execution of Socrates, the execution of Spartacus and the thousands of slaves that joined his revolt, the murder of Julius Caesar by Roman Senators, and of course, the execution of Jesus of Nazareth – whose titulus – read: Jesus Nazareth, the King of the Jews – a statement that indicates a political crime.

Political violence has been with humanity since humanity began to organize itself politically. In some cases, political violence is motivated to expand political, economic, and social emancipation. In other circumstances, it is used to make sure such an expansion does not occur. Revolutions engage in political violence; counterrevolutions engage in political violence. Rival monarchs and leaders engage in political violence for their own personal reasons. Of course, war itself is “politics by other means,” as said by Carl von Clausewitz. Terrorism is often defined as the use of violence or the threat of violence against civilian populations for political purposes.

To talk about these and other related issues, we have Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert, who is Professor Emeritus of Religion and Society at Western Michigan University. Dr. Siebert has written over thirty books and over five hundred articles on a variety of topics, including political philosophy, political theology, critical theory of religion, the Frankfurt School in general, fascism, etc. Dr. Siebert grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. During World War II, he was drafted as a teenager into the Luftwaffe and later the Wehrmacht. He was eventually captured by Allied forces after the 1945 Battle of Aschaffenburg, he spent time as POW in the U.S., and eventually was sent back to Germany to help with the democratization process. After starting his family and completing his university education, he returned to the U.S., where in 1965 he accepted a position in the Comparative Religion department at Western Michigan University – having only just recently retired after 50+ years of teaching. He continues to write and lecture on a variety of topics, many of which can be found on the Rudolf J. Siebert Audio-Visual Archive on YouTube.

For more information on Rudolf J. Siebert:
https://www.dialectical-religion.org

For more information on Dustin J. Byrd:
https://www.dustinjbyrd.org

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