Trump is an authoritarian who must not win. Saying that is not inciting violence | Jan-Werner Mueller

The horrific attempt to assassinate Donald Trump – and reactions to it – created a kind of X-ray of our body politic. It demonstrates how, contrary to the conventional wisdom about “polarization” – which suggests some kind of symmetry between the parties moving towards extreme poles – US politics is fundamentally asymmetrical. Democrats, from Biden to AOC, have been statesmanlike and stateswomanlike, condemning political violence in unison. Republicans, by contrast, have immediately blamed the attack on Biden. Worse, they have used the attack for a novel form of blackmail: stop warning about Trump’s authoritarianism or be accused of inciting violence. Of course, Trump must be protected on the campaign trail and beyond; at the same time, US democracy must be protected from Trump.

Democrats were right to repeat the civics textbook wisdom that democracy is about processing conflicts – including deep moral disagreements – in a peaceful manner. Meanwhile, commentators, out of naivety or noble idealism, did not always choose to remain faithful to the historical record: political violence might, in theory, be “ un-American ;” in practice it is, alas, as American as apple pie. If anything, the recent period – both in the US and European democracies – has been somewhat exceptional in not featuring many high-profile attempts on politician’s lives (which is not to deny the continuity of racist domestic terrorism in the US).

Democrats also resisted the temptation to point out that Trump’s rhetoric since 2015 has encouraged violence – not a subjective impression, but a question of social scientific findings. There are specific incidents when perpetrators invoked his name; what’s more, large numbers of citizens who identify as Republicans profess their willingness to countenance violence in defense of “their way of life.” Like other right-wing populists around the globe, Trump has been instilling fear that somehow the country is being taken away from what he regularly calls “the real people.” As in so many instances of terror, it is those willing to commit violence who see themselves as victims, convinced that others, not they, engaged in evil first.

Plenty of Republicans have shown no restraint in their reactions to the events in Pennsylvania. It’s the reverse of what happens after mass shootings: Democrats ask why civilians should have the right to carry assault weapons; conservatives, offering thoughts and prayers, warns against “politicizing” mass killings. Now, in the absence of real information on the shooter, leading Republicans have not hesitated a second to “politicize” the assassination attempt, which is to say: turn it to partisan advantage. Trump’s running mate JD Vance blamed those who dare to call Trump authoritarian (after having, before his Maga conversion, warned of Trump as “America’s Hitler”); Greg Abbott pointed to a “they” who first tried to put Trump in jail and how attempted to kill him; Mike Lee demanded that all federal charges against the former president be dropped (by that logic, the possible guilt of any defendant dissolves if they are attacked by some random person).

Whether such bad-faith claims succeed depends on professional observers: pundits and journalists. Will they adopt a framing according to which “all sides” have to “lower the political temperature”, and somehow “come together”, as the kitschy communitarian rhetoric of many commentators has it? Or can they accept two things as true at the same time: that political violence is wrong, and that the Republican party, transformed into a Trumpist personality cult (with new narrative elements and iconography after Saturday) poses an existential danger to American democracy.

Under relentless assault from the right for supposedly being “biased,” plenty of media professionals seek refuge rather than truth, as journalism professor Jay Rosen has memorably put it . Refuge-seeking can take different forms: one is to deploy euphemisms; instead of calling a second Trump term potentially authoritarian, call it “ disruptive ”. Another is use of passive voice (a blogger opined on Sunday that norms of peaceful transfer of power have been “ strained ” – as if some impersonal force, or force majeure, was to blame); and, most of all, there is the seemingly unassailable descriptive claim that the two parties live in “ two realities ”.

Most damaging, perhaps, is false equivalence. This past weekend, observers could point to deeply irresponsible, if not outright crazy, claims on the left and the right. But the crucial difference remains that such claims were made by highly influential office holders only on the right. It’s one thing to have conspiracy theories advanced by some leftie internet personality; it’s another to have an ominous “they” invoked by the governor of Texas.

If all else fails, horse race analysis of elections can provide refuge, since it requires only speculation, not political judgment: is the assassination attempt good or bad for Trump’s campaign? Of course, there’s nothing wrong with asking the question – especially in light of the fact that the attempt to kill far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 appears to have helped the Brazilian aspiring autocrat at the time. But it’s hardly the most important one.

No one should give in to blackmail based on the notion that criticizing politicians’ authoritarian aspirations is equal to incitement to violence. Aspiring authoritarians do want to control speech; before they have reached power, they cannot do so – unless the fearful or the ignorant become their accomplices.

• Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist