On “Assassination Culture”: It’s Not You, It’s the Left

Original article here

Writing in City Journal, Zack Dulberg and Max Horder, senior fellows at the Network Contagion Research Institute, examined the results of a recent survey to determine why America has experienced a disturbing increase in political violence. The answer should surprise no objective observer: “Progressives increasingly support violence.”

We found that nearly one-third of Americans surveyed—and around half of those identifying as left-of-center—believe that the murder of certain public figures is at least somewhat justified. The figures are startling: 38 percent of respondents, and 55 percent of those left of center, said assassinating President Trump would be at least somewhat justified; 31 percent of respondents, and 48 percent of those left of center, said the same about Musk. Forty percent of respondents, and 58 percent of those left of center, deem it at least somewhat acceptable to “destroy a Tesla dealership” in protest.

Further, based upon their findings, Mr. Dulberg and Mr. Horder have identified the disease ravaging the body politic:

Our report also discovered an online “assassination culture,” found in predominantly left-leaning digital spaces, such as Bluesky and Reddit. This subculture justifies and glorifies political violence. Some of these networks’ users wield the name “Luigi” or use the Luigi video game character as coded endorsements of Brian Thompson’s alleged assassin, Luigi Mangione. These users cloak explicit calls for violence in stylized memes. Many believe that political murder and sabotage are acceptable forms of protest.

And again, as the authors stress, this is no longer a phenomenon on the fringe of the public square: “This ‘assassination culture’ incubated on social media has migrated from the margins of public life into the mainstream.”

Yet, in trying to divine a rationale for the unconscionable—namely, the left’s latest recrudescence into political violence—Misters Dulberg and Horder made a courageous attempt but fell short. The authors posit a trio of well-worn reasons: “left-wing authoritarianism (characterized by a willingness to use coercion and punishment for progressive aims), external locus of control (the extent to which individuals feel powerless in their lives), and use of the left-wing social media platform Bluesky.”

While I do not find fault with their research, I must dissent from their initial conclusions regarding the indicators of the left’s political violence. After all, during the four years of the Biden Administration, the right did not engage in a similar wave of violence, let alone have it ignored or condoned by the media. In fact, it was the federal government under a leftist president that used its police and surveillance powers to infringe upon the constitutional rights and civil liberties of its opponents.

Thus, what does motivate the latest rise in leftist violence? The same thing that motivates the left, whether in power or out of power. While sane people believe politics is part of life, the left believes politics is life.

Consequently, the left believes that if it is unable to impose its political ideology upon others, it is not a political failure but a personal tragedy for oneself and for humanity. Thus, with the stakes running the gamut from the personal to the national to the global, the left finds it easy to justify its illicit actions as “resistance,” and, especially when their beloved democracy votes them out of power, this political and personal affront must be rectified—by any means necessary.

And before one can engage in a lame bout of whataboutism, the right engages in the political arena to prevent the leftist ideologues from intruding into their private life and destroying all they love and cherish—in sum, everything the right believes gives life meaning. Politics becomes an unpleasant chore in the cause of self-defense of the permanent things. Bounding our hopes by the hearth of home rather than the abstractions of ideologies, the right and the center know that engaging in political violence will not protect what we hold dear—faith, family, community, and country. It will destroy it.

I do, however, concur with Mr. Dulberg and Mr. Horder’s solution to address the left’s political violence: “Confronting this contagion requires moral clarity and a renewed commitment to America’s founding principles. Civil disagreement must replace online hostility, and political leaders must denounce violence—without qualification—as incompatible with a constitutional republic.”

Of course, this will also require the cooperation of the left to succeed. But the very fact that the left believes politics is life makes them measure personal worth based on their ideology. This is why it is nearly impossible to have a political discussion with so many leftists. They view a disagreement with their policies as an attack on their person, which is ironically why they then personally attack those who disagree with them. The overarching sense of such encounters with such a leftist is their emotional immaturity and intellectual superficiality—ironic given the amount of time they spend thinking about “politics,” which is not the same as thinking about civics. Bluntly, it is like arguing with a spoiled teenager whose tantrums get increasingly more spastic.

Nevertheless, we must try, for it is hard to dismiss Mr. Dulberg and Mr. Horder’s concluding caution: “If we fail to hold that line, the future may echo the darkest chapters of our past.”

On that mordant note, let us recall the enduring wisdom expounded by a victim of political violence whose life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet:

It will then have been proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost… Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.

Amen, Mr. Lincoln. Amen.

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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003-2012, He served as chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a co-host of “John Batchelor: Eye on the World” on CBS radio, among sundry media appearances.