Europe’s populists use Trump shooting to slam the left

After former U.S. President Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally on Saturday, Europe’s own populist politicians wasted no time blaming the left.

Little is known about the shooter’s background, and his motives are still being investigated. Yet hours after the deadly incident, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico — who survived an attempt on his own life in May — hit out at Trump’s “political opponents” for fomenting hatred against him.

The former American leader’s critics “are trying to shut him down and when they don’t succeed, they piss off the public so much that some loser picks up a gun,” Fico wrote in a post on social media.

Blaming liberals and the mainstream media for the shooting, long-time Trump ally and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said he was “upset” but “not shocked” by the attack.

“The narrative that is put out there about Trump by these liberals that oppose him is so nasty, so unpleasant, and I think it almost encourages this type of behavior,” he said.

The Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, who leads the Dutch ruling-coalition far-right Freedom Party, said “the hate rhetoric from many leftish politicians and media, who label right-wing politicians as racists and Nazis,” amounts to “playing with fire.”

The Netherlands’ Geert Wilders said “the hate rhetoric from many leftish politicians and media, who label right-wing politicians as racists and Nazis,” amounts to “playing with fire.” | Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images

Some European political figures alluded to a malevolent global plot, casting the media and left-wing parties as co-conspirators.

The leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, the third-largest force in the country’s parliament, said the attempt on Trump’s life had been orchestrated by “the globalist left that is spreading hatred, ruin and war.”

Santiago Abascal accused Spain’s left-wing coalition government of being allied with that same globalist cabal, adding that Spain’s leaders were likely “regretting that the murderer has failed.” Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the attack within hours of its occurrence.

Likewise, in Italy, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini blamed the shooting on “certain violent tones of the left.”

“It happened in the USA, it also happened in Italy against Berlusconi,” he said, referring to an assault on former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 2009 that left him bloodied.

France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who last week compared the left-wing New Popular Front alliance to the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington in 2021, said the attempted assassination was “a warning for all of us,” adding that “France is not safe from this violence.”

Elsewhere, the shooting was turned into a rallying cry. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić described Trump’s survival as a “miracle” and called for “the libertarian forces of the world to rise up.”

“This is all the madness of the demonization that they carry out every day in which there is only one acceptable truth and no one has the right to a different opinion,” he told reporters Sunday.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin said the shooting was “an expression of permitted and encouraged hatred” and warned that Vučić’s life was also at risk.

Belgian far-right leader Tom Van Grieken accused the media of “dehumanizing” and “demonizing” Trump, and seemed to draw a parallel between Trump and murdered far-right Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn.

Eva Hartog, Elena Giordano, Ketrin Jochecová and Victor Goury-Laffont contributed reporting.