Rising violence against politicians is an attack on democracy itself

The response of Mette Frederiksen, Denmark's centre-left prime minister, to being physically assaulted in a Copenhagen street was dignified and very human. "I'm not doing great, and I'm not really myself yet," she admitted last week. The attack had left her feeling shocked and intimidated, she said.

- Simon Tisdall

Frederiksen suggested her experience was the culmination of some broadly familiar trends: proliferating social media threats, increasingly aggressive political discourse, a divisive Middle East war. "As a human being, it feels like an attack on me. But I have no doubt it was the prime minister that was hit. In this way, it becomes a kind of attack on all of us."

This idea that elected politicians - and the democracies they represent - are everywhere endangered by rising personalised violence is backed by plenty of evidence.

With contentious elections fast approaching in France, the UK and the US, it seems only too probable that there will be more outrages and more victims, some possibly high profile. The root causes of this phenomenon include anger at and distrust of "ruling elites", deliberate polarisation and fearmongering, antimigrant racism, sectarian bigotry, economic distress and digital provocations by malign state actors. Yet there is no obvious pattern. Political violence, mostly random, is coming from both right and left.

Robert Fico, Slovakia's hard-right prime minister, was shot several times last month and was fortunate to survive. He believes he was attacked because of his views, and blames the influence of political opponents on the left. "It's evident he [Fico's assailant] was only a messenger of evil and political hatred," he said.