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Many tie assassination attempt to increasing polarization
Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., takes part in a reenactment of her swearing-in, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011 when an assailant opened fire outside a grocery store during a meeting with constituents, killing at least five people and wounding several others in a rampage that rattled the nation.
Associated Press
BOGOTA, Colombia
The assassination attempt on a U.S. congresswoman seems tragically familiar to people in countries where political violence has been routine, and many expressed concern Monday that America’s increasingly polarized politics will lead to more bloodshed.
Politicians, intellectuals and columnists — including people personally scarred by political violence — said it matters little that evidence so far indicates the accused gunman, a 22-year-old social outcast, was mentally disturbed and acted alone. They see him as moved to action by a climate of heated rhetoric.
Zeev Sternhell, a prominent Israeli academic and peace activist, called the shooter’s mental state immaterial. “The argument that someone is not entirely sane does not absolve those whose incitement created the atmosphere for someone less stable to pull the trigger,” he told The Associated Press.
Saturday’s rampage, which critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and claimed six lives, “indicates just how dangerous it has become to practice politics — true politics that effects change” in the United States generally and in Arizona in particular, said Colombian columnist Maria Jimena Duzan.
The shooting, as well as widely hostile international views of Arizona’s effort to clamp down on illegal immigration, has created a grim image of the state abroad.
Giffords, a Democrat whose district borders Mexico, is an outspoken proponent of immigration reform and has opposed vigorously an Arizona law that would let police demand identification papers from anyone they suspect of being in the United States illegally.
It remains unclear whether the shooter, who wielded a Glock 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol that police say he bought at a gun store in November, targeted Giffords because of her politics.
In Paris, the newspaper Le Monde said the attack seemed to confirm “an alarming premonition that has been gaining momentum for a long time: that the verbal and symbolic violence that the most radical right-wing opponents have used in their clash with the Obama administration would at some point lead to tragic physical violence.”