Campaign Violence and Donald Trump: Hardly Surprising, Entirely Predictable
In many ways, Trump is the continuation of a long line of political figures who have played on the emotions of the crowd, often by using racial cues or outright statements to enrage their followers and outrage their opponents. This form of demagoguery has been particularly dangerous in the days of the civil rights movement and beyond, and in times of economic difficulty.
In 1968, running a third-party candidacy for the presidency, the former Democratic governor of Alabama, George Wallace, campaigned with the veneer of race and violence ever present. He blamed "anarchists" for demonstrating at his events and encouraged cameras to focus on them, thus feeding his campaign’s argument that the nation was beset by anarchy. He insisted that right-thinking Americans should "do away" with the demonstrators.
Wallace did not overtly talk about race, but he didn’t have to: He had been a public segregationist as governor. He also repeatedly brought up issues such as fair housing laws — initiated to protect minorities — as topics of concern. By the time he finished riling up the crowds, Washington Post political writer David Broder once wrote, they resembled “a lynch mob.”[...]
Trump has openly pined for "the old days," when, he says, noisy demonstrators would be carried out of a political rally on stretchers.
"I’d like to punch him in the face," he told a Las Vegas casino rally crowd last month when one protester was ejected.
His suggestion came true Wednesday when a white Trump supporter named John McGraw punched a black protester in Fayetteville, N.C., and declared to "Inside Edition" that "next time we see him, we might have to kill him." (McGraw was charged with assault and disorderly conduct.)