Trump Wasn’t the Only Populist Leader Shot this Year

A populist leader, notorious for his bombastic and belligerent rhetoric, is shot in public by a would-be assassin. He survives, by the skin of his teeth, but what the wider consequences of this terrible event will prove to be are unclear. His deeply partisan nation, far from being drawn together in solidarity by this violence, is left more divided than ever.

This is not an article about Donald Trump.

On May 15, 2024, Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, was in Handlová, a small coal mining town, to attend a meeting. The session passed by without incident, and, when it was all said and done, Fico decided to step outside to greet a crowd of people that had assembled to show him their support. Among them was Juraj Cintula.

An unassuming man of 71 years, Cintula was no fan of the prime minister. He was, in fact, there to murder him.

Fico, having dominated Slovak politics for the previous two decades, had made plenty of enemies by this point. He became prime minister for the first time in 2006, proceeding to repeatedly fall in and out of power throughout a political career marred by scandal and vulgarity. His present term as the Slovak leader, which began in 2023, is his fourth.

The head of the ostensibly left-wing Smer party, Fico has often relied on far-right support in power, which has surely influenced the development of his decidedly strange politics. Once a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, he now advocates for a sort of left-wing nationalism when it comes to the economy, while, on social issues, he has pivoted far to the right.

The prime minister’s xenophobia is hardly subtle — he once literally declared that “Islam has no place in Slovakia” — and he viciously opposes immigration into the country. He has mocked the Slovak Roma community, has characterized gay couples who adopt children as a “perversion,” and has emerged as a prominent anti-masker in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

Fico’s government recently failed to overhaul Slovakia’s criminal system, which, had they succeeded, would have softened penalties for corruption — a crime Fico himself has been charged with — and reduced the statute of limitations for major offenses such as rape. They are also set to reshape the country’s public broadcasting service, which, critics warn, will harm media freedom by giving the government control of the nation’s TV and radio broadcasts.

Fico’s evident taste for authoritarianism, not to mention his bellicose rhetorical style, has earned him the ire of liberals all across Europe, but it is his apparent support for Vladimir Putin which has created the most angst. He has been a vocal opponent of European sanctions on Russia, while, after entering office in 2023, he halted military aid for Ukraine, Slovakia’s eastern neighbor, though this policy has since been reversed.

Then there is Juraj Cintula, the man who tried to murder him, who at least on paper does not necessarily seem like Fico’s natural enemy.

Cintula, a literary type who has published several volumes of poetry, was once a supporter of a now defunct pro-Russia Slovak paramilitary group, while he has also attacked the Roma community in his writings. He and Fico may not agree on everything, but, clearly, they agree on some things. Yet it was Cintula, the founder of a political platform called Movement Against Violence, who stepped forward that day in Handlová and shot the prime minister several times. 

Fico was rushed to the hospital, and despite terrible injuries, his condition ultimately stabilized.  His allies, meanwhile, began to play the blame game, with several officials in his coalition publicly claiming that the “liberal media” and political opposition were responsible for driving Slovakia to the brink of civil war.

Meanwhile, as world leaders issued bland condemnations of the violence done to Fico, plenty of Western news outlets were quick to point out the prime minister’s own part in spreading hateful rhetoric throughout Slovakia.

Cintula’s actual motive has yet to be established. What we can say about Cintula’s crime — and the same is true of Thomas Matthew Crooks’ attempt on Trump’s life — is that, while the rationale behind it is uncertain, it took place within a period of profound degradation of political discourse and social unity.

While the assassination attempts of Trump and Fico may be eye-catching recent examples of political violence, they are far from unique. Political violence is on the rise all around the world, but, given the sheer number of crises we’re presently facing, that’s hardly a surprise.

In South Korea earlier this year, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung survived a stabbing to his neck, while this past election season in Mexico has been declared the bloodiest ever, with 37 candidates for office being murdered. In 2023 the Ecuadorian presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, was shot dead.

In 2022, the former Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan, survived an assassination attempt, as did the then vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who emerged with her life only because her would-be assassin’s gun jammed. The former prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, wasn’t so lucky and was shot dead on July 8th that same year.

Former Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, survived a stabbing in 2018, while he was campaigning for the presidency, and, in Britain, politicians Jo Cox and David Amess were murdered in 2016 and 2021 respectively.

The politicians targeted for assassination in recent years hold very different views. It is not ideology that binds them, but, rather, the fact that they exist within a period of profound and rapid social change. The climate crisis is really beginning to bite. Inequality has risen sharply, while living standards for most people have fallen. More and more wars are breaking out across the world, while pandemics are an ever-increasing threat to global health.

In the face of these genuinely existential crises, people are coming to realize that everyday politics cannot — or will not — do anything to help alleviate their suffering. Alienated, disenfranchised, and rightly scared for what the future threatens to bring, some will come to view radical violence as a legitimate course of action.

Populist leaders like Fico and Trump are popular precisely because they tap into the real and valid anxieties of people whose lives are disintegrating. While the solutions they posit in response are nonsensical and dangerous, their power comes from acknowledging and feeding those fears.

Progressives, too, must address the angst normal people experience, and they must do so substantively. It is not enough simply to call out populists for hypocrisy, nor to paper over the cracks appearing throughout society. Real change must be offered, because, if it isn’t, the norms that keep communities stitched together will continue to be ripped apart. Demagogues will rise, despair will reign, and political violence will come to seem entirely normal.