Clinton's defeat in historical perspective: Dmitry Shlapentokh comments on Hillary Clinton's failed presidential bid and compares her to Marie Antoinette.

• Author: Shlapentokh, Dmitry

The recent US presidential campaign was notable for the violence, implied or explicit, that was at times apparent during Donald Trump's rallies. Much hatred was focused on Hillary Clinton, with calls to lock her up or worse. Clinton came to be seen by many TVump supporters as the embodiment of evil, with unfounded allegations of sexual and other improprieties. For students of history, this unfair disparagement of Clinton seemed similar to the hatred that developed in the last days of France's ancient regime towards the queen, Marie Antoinette, who came to be seen as the cause of the country's ills because of her profligate spending.

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Writing on recent history is often much harder than writing about the distant past. As Hegel noted some time ago, 'the owl of Minerva flew only in twilight, in that the meaning of events, and their longtime repercussions, could be understood well only after the events became the distant past. The problem of assessing the recent past is also complicated by the fact that events are in flux, and could change direction or accelerate dramatically, even as the piece goes to print.

However, some assessments can be made even when events are just a few months old. And this applies to the recent US election campaign. The aftermath of Trumps election was marked not just by widespread protests and demonstrations but also by outbreaks of violence, like the anti-Trump demonstrations at the University of California at Berkeley.

Anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of America's recent history is aware of violent outbreaks in the United States. In the 1960s, American campuses were awash with violent protests. Black ghettos in major American cities periodically exploded and transformed parts of these cities into war zones. Some parts of these cities are actually war zones in a certain permanent way, due to high levels of violent crime. In the last year, almost 900 people were killed in Chicago. However, most of them were killed in a few areas of the city, which have an extremely high level of violence.

So what is so unusual about Trump's America and the events that immediately preceded it? The point here is that in the past cases of violence were isolated phenomena mostly involving racial minorities. Students might be very noisy, but in most cases they try not to harm anyone. Those who engaged in brutal violence in urban ghettos were black Americans. The racial characteristics of those engaged in violent crime have been practically avoided in American public discourse, so as not to be accused of racism. But it is a common fact. Deeply...