COMMENTARY When Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other U.S. leaders hurl partisan blame for political violence like Colombia's, it only encourages reckless responses to violence like Minnesota's.
As Secretary of State, Marco Rubio should understand that the way America responds to political violence abroad can affect the way America responds to political violence at home.
Which is why, as Americans try to make sense of the senseless assassination of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband last Saturday, we’d do well to recall the horrific attempted assassination Colombians are trying to process.
Doctors say conservative Colombian Senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe remains in “extremely critical condition” after a 15-year-old kid allegedly shot him in the head at a political event in Bogotá on June 7.
Colombian police still haven’t said what motive or conspiracy was behind Uribe’s shooting. But that, of course, hasn't stopped conservative politicians there from hurling rash political blame.
READ MORE: Will Marco Rubio bring Marconsistency or Rubiocrisy to Latin America?
I’m no fan of Colombia’s feckless leftist president, Gustavo Petro; in the past I too have lambasted his erratic rhetoric.
Still, it was overt-the-top disgraceful when reactionary Sen. María Fernanda Cabal called the Uribe crime “a consequence of the atmosphere of hate that Petro has promoted.” It was deplorable when right-wing presidential candidate Vicky Dávila accused Petro of being “the instigator.”
But it was just as distressing — if not more so — when conservative U.S. politicians like Rubio politicized the Colombian tragedy.
Uribe had barely been wheeled into a Bogotá emergency room before the Secretary of State issued his own blame blast at Petro and Colombia’s left:
“This,” Rubio declared on X, “is ... the result of the violent leftist rhetoric coming from the highest levels of the Colombian government.”
Who’s to say Rubio’s sprint to assign partisan culpability in the Colombia shooting didn’t influence Lee's appalling tweets about the Minnesota shootings?
There are two things really wrong with Rubio’s knee jerk reaction — and they involve not just the Colombia shooting but the Minnesota murders, too.
First, I expected America’s top diplomat to have a more statesmanlike understanding of Colombia and its history.
The country’s been plagued by polarized, conservative-liberal political bloodshed ever since it became a republic in the 19th century. Anyone who’s watched One Hundred Years of Solitude on Netflix this year understands that. And both right and left have been responsible for it.
COVID conspiracies
Right-wingers spit just as much partisan venom around Colombia as left-wingers do. During the COVID pandemic, Cabal asserted the deadly virus was communist China’s scheme to help liberals undermine Colombia’s then conservative government. And just as many, if not more, liberal political candidates have been assassinated there through the years as conservative pols have.
So to single out “leftist rhetoric” as the sole villain of Colombia’s trauma — and to finger Petro for an attempted slaying — is as flawed as it is reckless.
What’s more, I don’t recall Rubio, when he was a Republican U.S. Senator, censuring violent right-wing rhetoric in Colombia amid an alarming wave of killings of liberal activists during the conservative presidency of Petro’s predecessor, Iván Duque. And that kind of hypocrisy — or Rubiocrisy — threatens to reduce America’s diplomatic credibility in the Americas.
But it sets a foul example inside America, too.
I don’t know if GOP Utah Sen. Mike Lee follows Latin American affairs. But who’s to say Rubio’s sprint to assign partisan culpability in the Colombia shooting didn’t influence Lee to take to X himself last weekend?
Lee falsely labeled the alleged Minnesota assassin a “radical leftist” (authorities say Vance Boelter is a far-right Christian nationalist) then glibly claimed: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”
Others, like billionaire Elon Musk, followed suit. Lee later deleted his appalling tweets about the murders in Minnesota and the two other non-fatal political shootings committed there on Saturday. But the damage of that toxic social media reflex was already done.
I’d say the same about any Democratic or liberal U.S. senator who calls the Hortman assassinations the fault of Republicans, conservatives or President Trump.
That wouldn’t be much different than howling that Democrats, liberals and former President Biden have to answer for, let’s say, last December’s murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly by Luigi Mangione, who was furious at healthcare industry injustices.
Statistically, America’s political violence isn’t as frightening as it is in countries like Colombia — last year’s two assassination attempts on Trump notwithstanding.
But where we’re matching places like Colombia is in our irresponsible reaction to it.
Which only risks ramping up the political violence itself.
