On the 8th of May 1985, Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States delivered a speech at a Special Session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, in which he famously stated about the end of the Second World War: “And by this day 40 years ago, over 40 million lay dead, and the survivors — they composed a continent of victims. And to this day we wonder: How did this happen? How did civilization take such a terrible turn? After all the books and documentaries, after all the histories and studies, we still wonder: How?”[1]. On the 30th of March 1981, 3 years earlier and 2 months after he took office on the 20th of January 1981, Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt on his life, courageously surviving it. The same question bothers me today: after the world was severely crushed by 2 world wars, why are we repeating the same mistake? More accurately, do the people never learn from history? Even though Reagan asked himself within the context of the Cold War, the same pattern seems to repeat itself again and again and again…
According to Statista, from 1835 to 2024, there were 14 attempts at the lives of American presidents, in which 4 of them were, unfortunately, successful and 3 of them attacked the target but, fortunately, were unsuccessful[2]. After reading the statistics, one thing kept drilling into my head: the year 2024. This means 21st century… Why does Gunpowder have such an important role even in the 21st century and under what circumstances it is used against US presidential candidates in 2024? It happened on the 13th of July 2024, approximately one month ago, against Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate for the 2024 US Presidential elections.
One week later, another crucial event happened: Joe Biden, the current US President and the former candidate for the 2024 US elections stepped down from the presidential race. At the beginning of August 2024, the official candidate for the Democratic party in the US 2024 Presidential elections became Kamala Harris, who served as Vice-President within the Biden administration.
Within the second part of my article, I would like to tackle these 3 major events that will decisively shape international politics not only because the period between these events is between 2 and 3 weeks, but also because it produced more balanced opinion polls within the political landscape of the United States. Moreover, I will underline the most important connections between Kamala Harris and the interventionist and Marxist political views throughout the years in significant areas of her life: professional life and political career. It is very interesting how she would introduce these extreme left political views not only in terms of political ideology and political campaigns but also in terms of her relations throughout the years.
The Gunpowder: The assassination attempt against Donald J. Trump
On the 13th of July 2024, there was an attempt of political assassination against Donald J. Trump, who represents the republican candidate for the US elections of 2024. On the next day, there was a statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stating that: “While the investigation to date indicates the shooter acted alone, the FBI continues to conduct logical investigative activity to determine if there were any co-conspirators associated with this attack”[3]. Moreover, the FBI stated that there was no discovery of the motives of the actions of the shooter[4]. On the 15th of July 2024, the FBI issued another statement, saying that the “FBI has conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, event attendees, and other witnesses”, analyzing at the same time the phone and other devices of the attacker. The name of the assassin was Thomas Matthew Crook, 20 years of age, with a two-year degree in engineering, present at the Trump rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, where he shot Trump with an AR-15-Style Riffle, luckily not succeeding in his mission to kill the Republican candidate. During the attack, one person was killed and the other 2 persons were injured: “His shooting position was approximately 443ft (135m) from Trump”[5]. According to Reuters, “A review of Crooks’ phone by the Federal Bureau of Investigation found he had searched for images of both President Joe Biden and Trump, as well as other famous figures, in the days before the shooting”[6].
Another point that I want to make is the fact that the bullet was extremely close to murdering the former president, creating a 2-centimeter-wide wound near his ear. The gunman fired 8 shots in 6 seconds before he was shot by the Secret Service[7]. The question that can be put is why the Secret Service did not take action sooner because several people already warned about the possible attacker on the roof: “By 17:52 – 19 minutes before the shooting – the Secret Service was made aware that Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder, and disseminated that information to other officers on site”[8]. One of the effects of the almost assassination of Donald J. Trump was the fact that, on the 23rd of July 2024, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned from office.
The Snowball Effect: Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy
On the 21st of July 2024, the President of the US withdrew from the presidential race, issuing an official statement, stating: “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term”[9]. At the same time, he thanked the Vice-President, Kamala Harris, for “being an extraordinary partner in all this work”[10].
This withdrawal came approximately one month after the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which was held on the 27th of June 2024 in Atlanta, hosted by CNN. Public opinion thought that Trump was the obvious winner of the debate: “Debate watchers say, 67% to 33%, that Trump turned in a better performance Thursday”[11]. However, there was only a slight change in the thinking pattern of the voters approximately 5%: “An 81% majority of registered voters who watched the debate say it had no effect on their choice for president, with another 14% saying that it made them reconsider but didn’t change their mind. Just 5% say it changed their minds about whom to vote for”[12]. These pieces of information triggered a powerful snowball effect against the current president in office, even from people from his own party.
Consequently, several US officials from the Democratic party issued statements regarding the fact that Joe Biden should step down from the US elections. Some of the most important politicians that have “expressed concerns” over the candidacy of Joe Biden were Barack Obama (“Mr Obama was reported by the Washington Post to have privately stated Mr Biden’s chances were greatly diminished”[13]), Nancy Pelosi (the 52nd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives), and Senator Chuck Schummer, the Senate Majority Leader[14]. Even though there were more and more rumors about some Democrats pressing Biden to step down, on the 6th of July 2024, in an interview hosted by ABC News, Joe Biden told the interviewer that he was the most qualified person to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming elections and the fact that before the debate, he was having only a bad night: “Asked whether he would drop out if fellow Democrats in Congress said he was hurting their re-election chances in November, Biden said: <<If the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that I might do that>>”[15]. Well, apparently, it was not God who put pressure on Biden to step down, but people from his own party.
And with what solution did the Democrats have come up with? You guessed the answer: Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is one of the most controversial Democratic politicians given her strong ideological ties with interventionism and Marxism and her low competency regarding the office of the Vice-President.
Kamala Harris: The New (Interventionist) President?
Who is Kamala Harris and what are her proposals for the US elections of 2024? What defines the thinking pattern of Kamala Harris and what is her worldview in terms of politics and career? What are her interests, her “hobbies”?
At first glance, Kamala Harris was born on 20th October 1964 in Oakland, California. Her parents were Donald J. Harris and Shyamala Gopalan, both being part of a Black student group, called the Afro-American Association, which was one of the organizations that influenced the future Marxist Black Panther Party. When one looks at what was the mission of the Afro-American Association, one sees the fact that, officially, the “Afro-American Association’s central mission was to educate African Americans about their history”. Its co-founders were Donald Warden, Donald Hopkins, Otho Green, and Henry Ramsey and its ideology was influenced by Malcolm X. In a book written by Cedric Robinson named “Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition”, he listed Shyamala Gopalan, the mother of Kamala Harris, among his friends with whom he started the Black Radical Movement in the US[16]. In another book called “Living for the city: migration, education, and the rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California”, Donna Jean Murch writes in a book about the Black Panther Party: “By invoking Samora Machel in Mozambique, Fidel Castro in Cuba, and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, they tied their own vision of “intercommunalism” to anticolonial liberation movements across the globe”[17]. According to the FBI, the Black Panther Party represented “a black extremist organization founded in Oakland, California in 1966. It advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government”[18]. Its ideology encompassed Marxism-Leninism and Maoism.
In terms of her career, she graduated from Howard University and the University of California Hastings College of Law. In 2004, she was elected District Attorney of San Francisco, and in 2010, she was elected Attorney General of California, “where she oversaw the largest state justice department in the country”[19]. She is also an advocate for the cause of Black Lives Matter, whose leader, Patrisse Cullors, declared in 2015 that she and Alicia Garza, the founder of BLM, “are trained Marxists”[20]. When it comes to her ideological and political worldviews, interventionism is the best word to use.
According to the Mises Institute, interventionism represents “a system where a small political class uses government interventions in a market economy to coercively transfer wealth into their own pockets”[21]. Ludwig von Mises, one of the most important economists and philosophers regarding political and economic systems, regarded this system as a “middle-of-the-road policy” within the American system, one that, officially, takes the best from both capitalism and socialism[22]. Unofficially, interventionism also is a clear path toward socialism: “The State as an impartial arbiter should interfere, and should curb the greed of the capitalists and assign a part of the profits to the working classes. Thus it will be possible to dethrone the moloch capitalism without enthroning the moloch of totalitarian socialism”[23]. At the same time, “It is the duty of government to restrain, by orders and prohibitions, the greed of the propertied classes lest their acquisitiveness harm the poorer classes”[24].
Interventionism can be labeled as a clear path toward socialism because interventions in the economy will be a precedent to establish future and future interventions, leading to a more direct involvement of the government in the economic system. Ludwig von Mises uses the example of milk, which is the following: if the state intervenes in regulating the price of milk through a price ceiling, the marginal producers of milk will develop significant losses and, eventually, they will stop producing milk. So, the milk will be less and less available for the general population. His conclusion is: “It brings about a state of affairs, which — again from the point of view of the government — is even less desirable than the previous state of affairs which it was designed to improve”[25]. The story never ends because, if the government would want to maintain its policy its credibility, it would need to fix the “prices of the factors of production necessary for the production of milk”[26]. The article’s conclusion states that Kamala Harris being an interventionist in terms of her economic and political standpoint makes her even more dangerous because “today’s political class would never rally behind the policies a communist president would be most inclined to pursue”[27].
In conclusion, the gunpowder discovered in China in the 9th century still plays its part in shaping the events on the international arena, its presence being as clear as daylight in the assassination attempt against Donald J. Trump. At the same time, the snowball effect of the Russian aggression in Ukraine and the war in Israel still plays a key role on the other side of the Atlantic, producing consequences not only within public opinion but also when it comes to the policies that each party is presenting in order to rush a possible solution to both conflicts. Regarding the nominee of the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris proposes an interventionist economic system, where the state would intervene more and more within the economy at the expense of the free market. Therefore, I would like to end with a quote from Ludwig von Mises: “Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps. It is as such different from the endeavors of the communists to bring about socialism at one stroke. The difference does not refer to the ultimate end of the political movement; it refers mainly to the tactics to be resorted to for the attainment of an end that both groups are aiming at”[28].
[1] “Address to a Special Session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France”, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, accessed at https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-special-session-european-parliament-strasbourg-france on 18.08.2024
[2] Aaron O’NEILL, “Number of assassinations and assassinations attempts on U.S. presidents from 1835 to 2024, by outcome”, Statista.com, 7th August 2024, accessed at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123426/us-president-assassinations-attempts/ on 18.08.2024
[3] “Update on the FBI Investigation of the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump”, FBI National Press Office, accessed at https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/update-on-the-fbi-investigation-of-the-attempted-assassination-of-former-president-donald-trump on 24.08.2024
[4] Ibidem
[5] Bernd DEBUSMANN, Tom BATEMAN and Tom MCARTHUR, “What we know about the Trump attacker”, BBC, 19th July 2024, accessed at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gw58wv4e9o on 24.08.2024
[6] Gabriella BORTER, Peter EISLER and Joseph TANFANI, Reuters, 18th July 2024, accessed at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-gunman-thomas-crooks-leaves-behind-pile-mysteries-2024-07-18/ on 24.08.2024
[7] James LAPORTA, Laura DOAN & Joanne STOCKER, “Trump rally gunman fired 8 shots in under 6 seconds before he was killed, analysis shows”, CBS News, 25th July 2024, accessed at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-rally-gunman-fired-eight-shots-under-six-seconds-before-being-killed-by-secret-service-analysis-shows/ on 24.08.2024
[8] Max MATZA & Nadine YOUSIF, “Trump gunman flagged by Secret Service 20 minutes before shooting”, BBC, 18th July 2024, accessed at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51ydg792ggo on 24.08.2024
[9] 21st July 2024, p. 1, accessed at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/documents_with_attached_files/373603/165695.pdf on 18.08.2024
[10] Ibidem, p. 1
[11] Ariel-Edwards LEVY & Jennifer AGIESTA, “CNN Flash Poll: Majority of debate watchers say Trump outperformed Biden”, CNN, 28th June 2024, accessed at https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/28/politics/debate-poll-cnn-trump-biden/index.html on 25.08.2024
[12] Ibidem
[13] Sam CABRAL and Sarah SMITH, “Democratic mood darkens as Biden faces new pressure”, BBC, 20th July 2024, accessed at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51y2v4vv7ko on 25.08.2024
[14] Ibidem
[15] Andrea SHALAL, Stephanie KELLY & Kanishka SINGH, “Biden says only ‘Lord Almighty’ could oust him from race in ABC News interview”, Reuters, 6th July 2024, accessed at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-calls-debate-bad-episode-abc-news-interview-2024-07-05/ on 25.08.2024
[16] Cedric J. ROBINSON, “Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition”, University of North Carolina Press, 2020, p. XXI
[17] Donna Jean MARCH, “Living for the city: migration, education, and the rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California”, The University of North Carolina Press, US, 2010, p. 234
[18] “Black Panther Party”, FBI, accessed at https://vault.fbi.gov/Black%20Panther%20Party%20 on 26.08.2024
[19] “Kamala Harris”, The White House, accessed at https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/vice-president-harris/ on 26.08.2024
[20] Mike GONZALEZ & Andrew OLIVASTRO, “The Agenda of Black Lives Matter Is Far Different From the Slogan”, The Heritage Foundation, 3rd July 2020, accessed at https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-agenda-black-lives-matter-far-different-the-slogan on 26.08.2024
[21] Connor O’KEEFFE, “Kamala Harris Is Not a Radical Communist, but that Makes Her Even More Dangerous”, Mises Institute, accessed at https://mises.org/mises-wire/kamala-harris-not-radical-communist-makes-her-even-more-dangerous on 26.08.2024
[22] Ludwig von MISES, “The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism”, Mises Institute, 2018, p. 4, accessed at https://cdn.mises.org/middle_of_the_road_leads_to_socialism_mises.pdf on 26.08.2024
[23] Ibidem, p. 5
[24] Ibidem, p. 6
[25] Ibidem, p. 7
[26] Ibidem, p. 8
[27] Ibidem
[28] Ibidem, p. 12
