2026年4月28日 / 美国东部时间下午6:28 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
作者：丹尼尔·克莱德曼
丹尼尔·克莱德曼是驻纽约的调查记者，曾任雅虎新闻总编辑、《新闻周刊》副主编，拥有超过20年报道政治、外交、国家安全与法律的经验。
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罗伯特·F·肯尼迪 Jr. 正在白宫记者协会年度晚宴上与宾客亲切交谈时，枪声突然响起。晚宴宾客纷纷躲避，现场陷入混乱，肯尼迪的安保团队迅速冲向他的餐桌。一名特工用身体护住肯尼迪，其他人则簇拥着卫生与公众服务部部长冲出华盛顿希尔顿酒店宴会厅，穿过蜿蜒的服务走廊抵达安全区域。
2026年4月25日，华盛顿特区，华盛顿希尔顿酒店，白宫记者晚宴枪击事件中，安保人员将卫生与公众服务部部长罗伯特·F·肯尼迪 Jr. 带离宴会厅。安德鲁·哈尼克 / 盖蒂图片社
肯尼迪的父亲罗伯特·F·肯尼迪于1968年在洛杉矶一家酒店宴会厅遇刺身亡。这起事件与另一段政治暴力时期的回响清晰可闻。对于本已处于紧绷状态的美国来说，这一令人毛骨悚然的场景宛如一座桥梁，将人们带回到另一个动荡的时代——当时政治暗杀和暴力事件屡屡击碎美国的秩序感，也就是20世纪60年代末和70年代。
关于涉嫌枪手科尔·托马斯·艾伦的动机，我们仍有许多未知。他像19世纪的阴谋家一样，乘火车横跨美国全境，据称策划暗杀特朗普总统及其内阁成员。法庭文件显示，艾伦可能属于一类怀有政治不满的失意男性，以孤狼式行动，试图攻击国家的根本根基。
2026年4月25日，华盛顿特区华盛顿希尔顿酒店宴会厅外传出枪声后，特朗普总统被安保人员带离白宫记者协会晚宴。博·埃里克森 / 路透社
特朗普如今已成为三名未遂刺客的目标——这一数量据信超过了历任总统遭遇的暗杀企图次数。仅此一点，就至少应引发全国范围内对当前频发的政治暴力现象的反思。这提出了一个令人不安的问题：当暴力被正常化，极端分子在动荡时代采取行动时，会发生什么？
“自共和国诞生以来，暴力与政治一直是美国经历的核心部分，”纽约大学历史学教授史蒂文·哈恩说道，他的最新著作《不自由的美国》探讨了美国历史上的极端主义冲动。
对历史学家而言，20世纪60年代和70年代与当下有着尤其令人不安的相似之处。两个时代都充斥着激烈的政治分歧，以及美国社会结构正在被撕裂的不安感。在越南战争和水门事件的双重创伤之后，公众对体制的信任普遍丧失，人们感到政府反应迟钝，政治体系已然失效。经济困境进一步加剧了国家迷失方向的感觉。70年代的问题是“滞胀”、能源危机以及一场极不受欢迎的战争。如今则是持续顽固的通胀、飙升的油价以及一场解释不清的伊朗战争。无论过去还是现在，美国人都曾在登月任务中寻求慰藉。
1974年8月9日，尼克松辞职后，反越战反尼克松示威者举着“将总统关进监狱”的标语站在白宫后方。欧文·弗兰肯 – 考比斯图片社，盖蒂图片社供图
如今许多美国人正经历着类似的信任危机，对政府机构几乎毫无信心，这种深刻的疏离感再次开始恶化，演变为暴力行为。
“纵观美国历史，总有一些时期紧张局势达到顶峰，整个国家都将焦点集中在这些紧张关系上，从而爆发针对政治领袖的暴力事件，”普林斯顿大学历史学家朱利安·泽利泽说道，他与他人合著了《断层线》一书，该书认为当今美国政治的极端党派对立根源在于20世纪70年代。
“我们在60年代末到70年代中期经历过这样的时期，如今我们正再次经历这样的时期，”他说道。
相似之处十分显著，但不同之处也颇具启发性。在60年代和70年代，暴力的规模更大。
暴力始于1963年约翰·F·肯尼迪遇刺，随后五年内，马尔科姆·X、马丁·路德·金和鲍比·肯尼迪相继遇害。
很快，暴力倾向蔓延至各类激进团体，他们推动着从种族战争到激进环保主义等各种事业。在1975年夏天这个尤其动荡的时期，曾有两次针对杰拉尔德·福特总统的暗杀企图。
1975年9月5日，加利福尼亚州萨克拉门托，当杰拉尔德·福特从酒店走向州议会大厦时，林内特·“吱吱”·弗罗姆姆在距他仅数英尺的地方举枪瞄准，但其科尔特.45手枪因弹膛内没有子弹而未能击发。美联社照片
林内特·“吱吱”·弗罗姆姆是曼森家族成员，同时也是极端环保组织成员，她在距福特仅数英尺的地方举枪射击，但手枪因弹膛内没有子弹而未能击发。三周后，与旧金山激进地下组织有联系的萨拉·简·摩尔在福特离开圣弗朗西斯酒店时开了一枪。子弹未命中，人群中的一名海军陆战队队员扑向摩尔，阻止她再次开枪。
仅在1970年至1971年间，美国就发生了约2500起爆炸事件，实施者包括“气象员”组织和共生解放军等激进团体，后者因绑架报业女继承人帕特里夏·赫斯特而臭名昭著。
1974年3月13日，共生解放军被监禁的成员约瑟夫·雷米罗（27岁，前景）和拉塞尔·利特尔（26岁）被手铐押离法院。贝德曼通过盖蒂图片社供图
1968年至1972年间，有超过100起劫机事件，实施者包括黑人解放组织和波多黎各民族主义团体等。
这些恐怖主义行为中的许多并非旨在造成死亡，当然也有部分确实如此。“气象员”组织常常袭击他们认为是美国不公正或压迫象征的空建筑。该时期的学者表示，大多数美国人认为肇事者处于美国文化的极端边缘。政治暴力并未被正常化，阴谋论思维也未被主流接受。
1970年3月6日，三名“气象员”组织成员在格林威治村一栋联排别墅的地下室制造炸弹时爆炸身亡。贝德曼/考比斯图片社，联邦调查局供图
当时的政治建制派仍在努力维系国家统一。
“在70年代，大多数当选官员仍在对抗国家的分裂，”泽利泽说道，“或许这是无望的，但仍有一种心态：总统试图呼吁广泛的多数派支持，而大多数国会议员不会迎合美国极端分子的声音。”
相比之下，如今美国政治深陷两极分化，催生了保守派和自由派双方的暴力言论，以及一种日益盛行的观念：我们的政治对手是必须被摧毁的敌人。
日益党派化的信息生态系统和在线文化将这一态势进一步激化，这些平台将愤怒置于共情和建设性对话之上。尽管如今绝大多数实施政治暴力行为的人并非隶属于有组织的极端团体或颠覆细胞，但他们往往与在线运动有关，这些运动肯定他们的极端观点，并提供了被视为允许其在现实世界中采取暴力行动的框架。
“如今我们几乎已经预料到暴力会成为这个高度极化时代的一部分，”泽利泽说道，“这些事件发生后，甚至不再有全国性的对话，不再有办公室茶水间的交流。暴力已经被正常化了。”
白宫记者晚宴的既定目标之一，便是聚集华盛顿的政治精英，在平庸葡萄酒的助兴下，抛开一年中其余364天定义双方的部落主义。
在某种程度上，暴力闯入这场本应喜庆的晚宴，确实成功地让敌对的政治对手产生了一种同僚情谊。在一片混乱中，他们得以见到两党同僚——这些人自己也曾是政治暴力的受害者，再次遭受了创伤。
众议院多数党领袖史蒂夫·斯卡利斯便是其中之一，他的安保团队将他带离宴会厅，他略显蹒跚的跛行正是2017年国会年度棒球比赛练习场枪击事件留下的直接后果。斯卡赛斯帮助了民主党众议员贾里德·莫斯科维茨，后者本人在2024年末也曾成为暗杀阴谋的目标。
还有令人揪心的一幕：埃丽卡·柯克的丈夫、政治活动家、特朗普亲信查理·柯克去年遇刺身亡。她身着拖地晚礼服被护送离开宴会厅，当时可以听到她含泪说道：“我只想回家。”
Analysis: Unstable people in unsettled times – America revisits the political violence of the ’60s and ’70s
April 28, 2026 / 6:28 PM EDT / CBS News
By Daniel Klaidman
Daniel Klaidman, an investigative reporter based in New York, is the former editor-in-chief of Yahoo News and former managing editor of Newsweek. He has over two decades of experience covering politics, foreign affairs, national security and law.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was amiably chatting with guests at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when shots rang out. Amid the ensuing chaos as dinner attendees took cover, Kennedy’s security detail rushed his table. One agent shielded Kennedy with his body while others hustled the secretary of health and human services out of the Washington Hilton ballroom and through a maze of service corridors to safety.
File: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taken out of ballroom by security agents during shooting incident at White House Correspondents Dinner, Washington Hilton, April 25, 2026, Washington, DC. Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968 in a hotel ballroom in Los Angeles. The echoes of another period of political violence were unmistakable. For a country already on edge, the harrowing scene served as a bridge back to another volatile era when political assassinations and violence regularly shattered the American sense of order – the late 1960s and ’70s.
There’s much we still don’t know about the motives of alleged shooter Cole Tomas Allen, who traveled across the country by train, like some 19th century conspirator in an alleged plot to assassinate President Trump and other members of his Cabinet. Court documents suggest that Allen may fall into a pattern of disaffected men with political grievances, acting as lone wolves and looking to strike out against the very foundation of the state.
President Trump is rushed out of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner after shots were fired outside the ballroom at the Washington Hilton on April 25, 2026. Bo Erickson / REUTERS
Trump has now been the target of three would-be assassins – a number believed to exceed the attempts on any previous president’s life. That fact alone should inspire at least a degree of national soul searching about the current spree of political violence. It raises the uncomfortable question of what happens when violence becomes normalized – and unstable people act out during unsettled times.
“Violence and politics have been central to the American experience since the birth of the republic,” said Steven Hahn, a New York University history professor whose latest book “Illiberal America” examines extremist impulses in U.S. history.
For historians, the 1960s and 1970s provide particularly eerie parallels to the present. Both eras were marked by bitter political divides and the unsettling feeling that America’s social fabric was being ripped apart. Following the twin traumas of Vietnam and Watergate, a widespread loss of faith in institutions took hold, creating a sense that government was unresponsive and politics was broken. Economic pain furthered the sense of a country losing its moorings. In the ’70s it was “stagflation” and the energy shock and a deeply unpopular war. Today it’s stubbornly persistent inflation, skyrocketing gas prices and a poorly explained war in Iran. Then and now, Americans sought solace in missions to the moon.
File: Anti-Vietnam War anti-Nixon Demonstrators holding a Jail to the Chief sign behind the White House just after Nixon’s resignation, Aug. 9, 1974. Owen Franken – Corbis, via Getty Images
Many Americans today are experiencing a similar crisis of confidence, with little faith in government institutions, a deep alienation that has once again begun to curdle into violence.
“Throughout American history there have been periods where tensions became so great and as a nation, our focus on those tensions became so central that you have these bursts of violence against our political leaders,” said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton historian and co-author of the book “Fault Lines,” which argues that the hyperpartisanship in American politics today is rooted in the 1970s.
“We were living in one of those times in the late 60s till the mid ’70s and we are living through one of those today,” he said.
The commonalities are striking, but the differences are also instructive. In the ’60s and ’70s, the scale of violence was greater.
It began with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, followed by the killings of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy over the next five years.
Soon, the impulse toward violence was permeating through militant groups pushing all manner of causes, from race wars to radical environmentalism. During a particularly volatile time in the summer of 1975, there were two attempts on the life of President Gerald Ford.
File: U.S. Secret Service agents put handcuffs on Lynette Fromme after she allegedly pointed a gun at President Gerald Ford as he walked from his hotel to the State Capitol building in Sacramento, Ca., on Sept. 5, 1975. AP photo
Lynette Squeaky Fromme, a member of both the Manson family and an extremist environmental group, stood within feet of Ford and fired her Colt .45, but the gun failed to discharge because there was no bullet in the chamber. Three weeks later, Sarah Jane Moore, who had ties to San Francisco’s militant underground groups, managed to fire a shot as Ford was leaving the St. Francis Hotel. The shot missed and a Marine in the crowd lunged at Moore, preventing her from getting off another round.
Between 1970 and 1971 alone, there were some 2,500 bombings in the country perpetrated by radical groups including the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army, which was best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst.
File: Imprisoned members of the Symbionese Liberation army, Joseph Remiro, 27, (foreground) and Russell Little, 26, are led from courthouse in handcuffs here March 13, 1974. Bettmann via Getty Images
Between 1968 and 1972, there were more than 100 skyjackings carried out by groups like the Black Liberation Army and the Puerto Rican Nationalist Groups
Many of these acts of terrorism were not meant to be lethal, though some certainly were. The Weather Underground often struck empty buildings that they perceived as symbols of American injustice or oppression. Scholars of the period say most Americans saw the perpetrators as residing deep within the fringe of American culture. Political violence had not been normalized and nor had conspiratorial thinking been mainstreamed.
File: Three Weather Underground members were killed when a bomb they had built exploded in the basement of a townhouse in Greenwich Village on March 6, 1970. Bettmann/Corbis photo, via FBI
The political establishment was still trying to hold the country together.
“In the 70s, a majority of elected officials were still pushing against the divisions in the country,” said Zelizer. “Maybe it was hopeless, but there was still a mindset of a president trying to appeal to broad majorities, and most members of Congress didn’t appeal to voices on the American extremes.”
Today, by contrast, U.S. politics are in the grip of polarization that has fomented violent rhetoric from conservatives and liberals alike, as well as a growing ethos that our political opponents are enemies who must be destroyed.
That has been supercharged by an increasingly partisan information ecosystem and online culture that privileges anger over empathy and constructive dialogue. And while the vast majority of people carrying out acts of political violence today do not belong to organized extremist groups or subversive cells, they are often tied to online movements that affirm their extreme views and offer perceived permission structures that spur them to act out violently in the real world.
“Today we almost expect violence to be part of this highly polarized era,” said Zelizer. “When these events happen there isn’t even a national conversation anymore, there is no more water cooler. The violence has been normalized.”
One of the stated goals of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is to gather Washington’s political class, lubricated by mediocre wine, to put aside the tribalism that defines the other 364 days of the year.
In a way, the intrusion of violence into the otherwise festive dinner did manage to galvanize a sense of comity between bitter political rivals. Amid the mayhem, they were able to see colleagues from both sides of the aisle who had themselves had been victimized by political violence, traumatized again.
There was House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who was rushed out of the ballroom by his security detail, hampered a little by a heavy-gaited limp that was the direct result of a 2017 shooting at a practice for the annual congressional softball game. Scalise helped Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who himself was the target of an assassination plot in late 2024.
And then there was the wrenching sight of Erika Kirk whose husband, political activist and Trump confidant Charlie Kirk, was assassinated last year. She was escorted out of the ballroom in her floor-length evening gown and could be heard tearfully saying, “I just want to go home.”
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