Three incidents, three continents, one week. On Saturday, April 25, 2026, at the Washington Hilton, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, attempted to enter the ballroom of the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, where the President of the United States was dining, heavily armed. That same evening, on a road in the Cauca department of Colombia, an explosive device killed fourteen people just over a month before the presidential election. Fifteen days earlier, in Rome, a man fired a pistol at MEP Susanna Schlein during a campaign rally—without injuring her, but causing consternation throughout the Italian political class. Three acts committed by isolated individuals, three times in established democracies, and three times posing the same question: has the nature of political violence changed?

The Armed Individual Against the Protective State

In all three cases, the profile of the perpetrator is strikingly similar. A young man (between 25 and 40 years old), acting alone, without verified organizational affiliation, having published radical political messages on social media and acquired his weapons legally or semi-legally. This typology—that of the politicized 'lone wolf'—is not new: Theodore Kaczynski, Anders Breivik, Stephen Paddock embodied it. What has changed is its frequency. In the United States, the FBI recorded a 47% increase in direct threats against senior federal officials in the first quarter of 2026 compared to 2025. In Europe, Europol speaks of an 'unprecedented acceleration' of politically motivated individual acts. The profile is no longer marginal; it is becoming a structural feature of our societies.

Algorithms as Accelerators

A common thread runs through these three incidents: the digital ecosystem. Cole Allen was reportedly active on several alternative platforms. The suspect in the Schlein rally had accumulated hours of conspiracy videos on YouTube and Telegram. The Colombian attack, claimed by a FARC dissident group (the EMC of 'Iván Mordisco'), was preceded by an intense propaganda campaign on TikTok and X. Platforms do not create violence, but they amplify it—by aggregating isolated individuals around shared narratives, by valuing the extreme as engaging content, and by reducing the cost of radicalization to zero. The European Digital Services Act, fully implemented in 2024, shows its limitations in the face of this phenomenon. In the United States, the absence of federal regulation exacerbates the situation. Private moderation alone will not suffice.

The Democratic Theater Exposed

The weekend's events also revealed a vulnerability we are reluctant to confront: the public staging of democracy—rallies, institutional dinners, presidential processions, televised parliamentary debates—is precisely what exposes our institutions to risk. The correspondents' dinner, which brings together the president, his government, hundreds of journalists, and prestigious guests in one place, is a prime symbolic target. To abandon these rituals would be to abandon the transparency and accessibility that define democracy itself. But maintaining them now requires quasi-military security measures, whose political cost (the image of a besieged power) and financial cost (hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the US alone) continue to grow.

The Temptation of Authoritarianism in Ambush

The real danger is not so much the attack itself as the political response to it. Donald Trump immediately used the Hilton shooting to revive his project for an armored ballroom at the White House, a symbolic initiative representing a vision where security justifies centralization and distancing the public. In Colombia, the Suárez attack fuels the discourse of a vengeful right demanding the abandonment of Gustavo Petro's 'Paz Total' for a return to a militarized approach. In Italy, the attempt on Susanna Schlein prompted Giorgia Meloni to call for stricter legislation on public gatherings. Three times, the same reflex: political violence justifies the restriction of freedoms. This is precisely what threatens us. Democracies that have survived spectacular attacks (Israel, the United Kingdom, France) have often paid the price of prolonged states of emergency that have gradually become the norm.

Editorial Opinion

It would be easy at this point to conclude with a call for 'more security' or 'more online moderation.' This would miss the point entirely. The challenge posed by the weekend's attacks is not merely operational; it is civilizational. Our democracies are based on a minimal consensus: we accept losing an election because we will have the right to contest it again. This tacit contract is now frayed on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, nearly one in three Republicans believes that political violence can be justified depending on the circumstances (Pew poll, March 2026). In France, the figure is one in five according to Ifop. As long as these numbers do not decrease, no security cordon, no wall, no predictive artificial intelligence will be enough. The real work is political, educational, and media-related. It involves rebuilding the bare minimum of mutual respect, without which no democracy can endure. It is slow, unglamorous, and less spectacular than a 90,000-square-foot real estate project. But in the long run, it is the only worthwhile response.

Key Takeaways

• Three attacks in eight days: Washington (Cole Allen), Cauca (Colombia), Rome (Schlein).
• Recurring profile: young, isolated man, radicalized online, legally armed.
• +47% increase in threats against senior US federal officials in Q1 2026 (FBI).
• Main institutional risk: the security crackdown in response to violence.
• 32% of Republicans believe political violence can be justified (Pew, March 2026).