July marked the 110th Anniversary of the start of the first world war, although few noticed it. The West is distracted. The US is in the middle of a tight presidential election campaign. In the UK, there were nationwide race riots in which the new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, placed the blame entirely on one side – the ‘far right’ – and proposed a clamp down on social media companies and the introduction of live facial recognition technology. In Australia, our Prime Minister announced that the terrorist threat level has been increased, again with hints that the blame lies with ‘online radicalisation’.
It is worth reflecting on what a fork in the road moment the start of the first world war was, because the above events suggest we stand at a similar crossroads today. The war was started by an assassination, which historian Niall Ferguson has labelled ‘the single most effective act of terrorism in history’. It set off a chain reaction that directly led to two world wars, the rise of communism and fascism and, as the assassin intended, the collapse of the old European empires.
The recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, in which a bullet grazed his ear, might have been a similar epoch-defining moment, if the bullet had been an inch or two to the right. Indeed, it might still prove to be.
That assassination attempt likely triggered two key developments: Trump choosing JD Vance as his vice-presidential running mate, and Joe Biden choosing to bail out of the race, to be replaced by Vice-President Kamala Harris. The sympathy of nearly being killed and his iconic reaction seemed to give Trump’s campaign a huge boost. With Biden’s campaign languishing after his disastrous debate performance, Trump seemed unassailable. It was in that context that he chose Vance as his running mate.
Vance appeals to a similar audience as Trump. This bucks the trend of choosing a running mate in the hope of broadening the appeal of the person on top of the ticket. If Trump loses, no doubt the decision to choose Vance will be seen as an act of hubris when Trump was riding high after surviving the attempt on his life.
We might never know if Trump would have chosen otherwise if it were not for the failed assassination attempt, or if he knew that his opponent would actually be Kamala Harris.
We will also never know if Biden would have held on and stayed in the race if it were not for the assassination attempt. Despite his debate performance, he seemed determined to fight on. But the assassination attempt changed everything and made it clear Biden could not win. Instead, we now have Harris who, fueled by unprecedented media cheer-leading, seems to have completely turned around the fortunes of the Democrats.
A Trump victory over Biden looks radically different from a Harris victory over Trump. Harris is a Californian progressive Democrat. On almost every imaginable issue she is far to the left of Trump or even Biden. She totally embraces the full cornucopia of Woke progressivism: DEI, anti-racism, open borders. So does her chosen running mate, Tim Walz.
Walz is a choice much like Vance, more an appeal to the Democrats’ progressive base than to the centre. As governor, his state of Minnesota was ground zero for the BLM riots in 2020, which he condoned and blamed on a lack of ‘equity and inclusion’.
The choice for Americans in November will now be a stark one, as both sides double down and appeal to their base. The outcome might have profound consequences.
The Anglosphere is currently in the grip of leaders who fully embrace extreme methods in order to promote and protect their Woke progressive agenda. Justin Trudeau in Canada seized the bank accounts of pro-freedom protesters. Australia’s Anthony Albanese wants new internet censorship laws. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is using the lawlessness that his own rhetoric has inflamed as an excuse to implement movement tracking technology.
A Trump presidency would disrupt this. He is not only hostile to the agenda of these leaders, but strongly opposes these censorious methods. If Harris wins, Starmer and co will have a powerful ally in Washington who believes in the same things and condones the same methods. Walz even set up a ‘snitch line’ so neighbours could denounce their fellow Minnesotans for failure to comply with Covid restrictions. No doubt Starmer and Trudeau would approve.
In the 1980s there was a fortuitous rise to power of Ronald Regan in the US, Margaret Thatcher in the UK, and Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, all three of whom were foes of international communism. This helped end the Cold War and usher in decades of freedom and prosperity. In November, if Harris wins, there will also be an alliance of Western leaders, but instead of being fearless defenders of Western values, they will be censorious ideologues embracing the technologies of totalitarian control.
The world might look very different after four or more years of this Harris-led alliance, just as the world was transformed by the war that started in 1914. In both cases, an assassin’s bullet may have played a part.
John Storey is the Director of Law and Policy at the Institute of Public Affairs
