Similarly, the boxing match metaphor implies that there are rules to the contest and that participants are engaged in a well-structured competition between (relatively) similarly matched opponents. Historically, war imagery in campaigns has spoken to the concept of an orderly, sportsmanlike “gentleman’s war” and not guerrilla warfare. It’s important to recognize that these metaphors offer a highly stylized form of violence.
See also Meredith Conroy’s “Feminize your Opponent” in The Blue Review. Candidates are praised for their pugilistic stances and heavyweight status. Sports metaphors tend to relate political contests to violent sports for instance, presidential debates are often cast as boxing matches. Jackson Katz, author of Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity, notes that war metaphors are frequently intermingled with sports metaphors in media coverage of campaigns. The term campaign itself has its origins in military strategy, and references to the candidates’ war rooms, discussion of candidates air wars versus ground games, and an emphasis on battleground states all speak to how the war concept permeates public discussion of the modern political campaign. For example, the “political campaign as war” metaphor is ubiquitous. Violence is not a new feature of presidential campaigns, or political campaigns more generally, but it has typically been engaged through metaphor. This incident warns of the connection between extremist rhetoric and political violence. There are clear parallels between this kind of rhetoric and the murder of British MP Jo Cox by a white nationalist earlier this summer. Some have called Trump’s comments a dog whistle to violence against Clinton - a coded or ambiguous statement that will fly under the radar for many voters but register as a literal call to arms among a small, targeted group inclined to see gun violence as a legitimate form of political expression.
#Trump call to arms archive
The Gun Violence Archive reports 239 mass shootings in the first 227 days of 2016, and police shootings are on the rise. Second, Trump’s comments are hard to dismiss in light of the nation’s ongoing struggle with gun violence and domestic terrorism. In each of these cases, Trump has offered either tacit acceptance of this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric or outright praise. Michael Folk, a member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates, tweeted: You should be tried for treason, murder, and crimes against the US Constitution… then hung on the Mall in Washington, DC.” One of Trump’s own advisors, Al Baldasaro, called Clinton a “piece of garbage” and suggested that “Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.” Add to this New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s bizarre convention speech and Ben Carson’s attempts to link Clinton to Lucifer, and this rhetoric seems more reminiscent of the Salem Witch Trials than a modern Presidential contest. But these calls aren’t limited to attendees at rallies they also come from officeholders and high-ranking campaign advisers. Cries of “ Hang that Bitch” have become commonplace at Trump rallies. First, Trump’s comments are consistent with a trajectory of escalating calls for violence against Clinton among members of the GOP. Here’s why Trump’s comments were so easily construed as an attack on Clinton and so difficult to dismiss as a misunderstanding. While Trump and his campaign roundly denounced this interpretation - they wrote it off as another example of biased media coverage and explained it as a call to mobilize Second Amendment advocates - many saw this denunciation as just another attempt to walk back his intentional but inappropriate comments, one of many similar walk backs this election cycle. These remarks were widely interpreted by Trump’s critics as a call for violence against Hillary Clinton. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. 9 rally in Wilmington, N.C., Donald Trump warned his supporters of the inherent danger in allowing Hillary Clinton to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court: “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment… If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Beyond political metaphor, GOP candidate raises specter of violenceĪt an Aug.
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