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The Birth of a Folk Hero

Trump is no longer just his own property

by
Itxu Díaz
July 18, 2024

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The image of Donald Trump fist raised and bloodied, moments after being shot, is worth a campaign, and might even win him the presidency. The former president had no time to fake his behavior. It simply brought out the fighter—some might even say the leader—in him. Trump may wield that character for his own benefit, but he also clearly feels a responsibility toward a large part of the American citizenry.

The spontaneous response of those who attended the rally is the other side of the shared communion. Since the attack, Trump is no longer just his own property. He no longer belongs just to the Republicans. The former president is now a folk hero for the entire nation. Even those who will never vote for him have been able to empathize with or even admire him. He shared his own blood with the seriously injured and with the firefighter who was killed while protecting his family with his own body. That type of communion, of shared risk and shared courage, ennobles a society.

Heroism in difficult situations is a quality that is integral to the soul of the American nation. It was not so long ago that this was beyond the shadow of a doubt, on 9/11, when American civil society gave a demonstration of why it remains the backbone of the most important nation in the world. In the midst of danger, a fearless man emerges, a man who gives his life for others, a man who protects his own, a man who fulfills his moral duty even if he loses his life. Take that away, and you don’t have America.

Often, people believe that heroism is only an act of bravery. It is nothing of the sort. It is always, first and foremost, an act of generosity. Only those who are generous can risk their own lives for others. He who gives himself to others has no time to think about whether or not he should be more selfish, or more prudent, or more cowardly. He has no time to measure the risk to which he exposes his own skin. In the hero, there is therefore also something of the essence of love. The generosity of the hero who risks his life for others is intrinsically linked to love, for others, for God, for his nation.

Heroism cannot be faked. It is a condition of its own, a stroke of public sincerity.

Civil society, in order to be healthy and effective, needs heroes who are generous, capable of giving up part of their lives, their comfort, or their anonymity, to defend noble causes. One of the great evils of the contemporary West is the slow proscribing of heroes. There are fewer and fewer of them. Is it because we are becoming more and more selfish? Or simply because they occupy less and less space in the media and in public opinion? Nevertheless, it is comforting to think that, at the most dangerous moment, when real heroes emerge and the whole world is able to witness them in action with their own eyes, people know how to identify them, recognize them, and thank them.

There are plenty of examples in history of how heroism transforms ordinary people. I have even had the chance to experience it up close. In Spain, in the 1990s, the country was led by the Socialist President Felipe Gonzalez. The opposition was led by a man with no charisma named Jose Maria Aznar, who was among the main targets of the terrorist group ETA.

One morning in 1996, in the middle of the election campaign, ETA detonated a car bomb with 25 kg of ammonal as Aznar’s motorcade passed by. Aznar escaped unharmed. Without losing his cool, the politician walked away on his own feet, called his wife, and immediately afterward called his party headquarters: “I’m going to be a little late.” He was then taken to the hospital. In his next declarations he limited himself to saying that terrorism will never bend the Spanish nation.

Nobody looked at Aznar the same way from that day on. He was no longer that politician with no charisma. A year later, the Spaniards elected him president. As a result of that experience, Aznar further strengthened his anti-terrorist discourse, later signing crucial agreements with George Bush as president for the fight against terrorism that helped ensure the safety of the world.

A few months ago, I experienced at close range the attack against the former vice president of the European Parliament, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, who was shot by a hitman in the center of Madrid. It was an assassination attempt that Vidal-Quadras attributes to the Iranian regime, of which he is a well-known opponent. In broad daylight, a young man drew a gun, pointed it at his head at very close range and fired, but the politician, in a reflex action, turned his head, and saved his life: The bullet entered one side of his face and exited the other without damaging any vital organ. Stunned and bloodied, leaning on a dumpster, he somehow found the composure to shout to those who stopped to help him to leave the area: “They might come back!” Again, heroism is generous, heroism is noble. It is a way of being in the world.

Next to the United States, there is probably only one other country that so reveres its heroes, and that is Israel. Since childhood, Israelis are born into the need to defend themselves, the need to fight for what is theirs, to defend themselves from jihadist terrorism. Those conditions have forged a society in which heroes who are willing to give their blood for the nation are role models of the highest order. As of late, these values place Israel at odds with the rest of the West, especially Europe—places where personal heroism involving the shedding of blood and risking one’s own life has become a distant abstraction, and is therefore often depicted as meaningless or even inherently wrong.

But the history of Israel is replete with heroes who gave their lives for others, for their brothers, for their country, to protect their island of democracy in a region infected with Islamic radicalism and tyranny, and by neighbors bent on killing Jews. The cases of Colonel Roi Levy and Aharon Haimov, who were killed while trying to save the lives of their men, are well known. After the bombings of Oct. 7, reservists left their homes without being called up and went to fight the terrorists and save the lives of people they never met, without orders to do so, leaving the whole world astonished.

The obvious heroism displayed by Israelis on a daily basis also shines through in the way the soldiers fighting Palestinian terrorism try to juggle life as reservists and their lives as husbands and fathers. In the personal stories of each of them, the West finds a major inspiration, a great example: “‘You’re wearing your father costume, but your army boots are still on. Or you’re playing your husband role, but your army socks are showing. And there’s this constant fight inside,” one of them recalls in Tablet, sitting around a campfire in the heat of the war. Israel lives permanently in the obligation to fight to guarantee peace, first, in its own territory, and as a consequence, in the rest of the West.

The West of the 21st century needs the example of heroes more than ever. In part, we have replaced heroes with celebrities, and we even expect those new pop stars—from influencers to YouTubers of fleeting fame—to offer us a model of values inherited from heroes. But they can’t. Their success is just popularity, a momentary fame. Heroes are recognized and elevated after demonstrating values.

In the face of the frivolity of fame, it is urgent to vindicate the figure of the hero, who achieves heroism without seeking popularity, by conviction, by courage, by dedication to others, by doing the job no matter the consequences, by not looking out for number one, but acting for the good of others, even at the expense of his or her own life. All heroes have something of what Roger Scruton advised for a full life. “The main point, it seems to me,” he wrote, “is to maintain a life of active risk and affection, while helping the body along the path of decay, remembering always that the value of life does not consist in its length but in its depth.”

Trump’s heroism, symbolized in an image that is already a global icon, encapsulates all these things, and in the process destroys part of the caricature that Western media had formed of him. His return to the presidential race was portrayed as a personal revenge, fueled by base passions. After last week’s attack, though, his claim that he wants to return to the White House for the good of his country—not for his own good—has gained credibility. No campaign trickery or sum of money could provide this kind of benefit.

Once again: Heroism cannot be faked. It is a condition of its own, a stroke of public sincerity. Trump’s policies will continue to have opponents, and his ways and means of doing politics will continue to have detractors—and no doubt some of them will be right. But what is certain is that no one will see Trump in the same light from now on, after the American nation has narrowly escaped a political and social hecatomb of unpredictable consequences. From the political leader emerged a hero of the people.

Itxu Díaz is a Spanish journalist, political satirist, author, and columnist at several Spanish magazines and newspapers. His latest book, I Will Not Eat Crickets: An Angry Satirist Declares War on the Globalist Elite, was recently released in the U.S.