Assassination Chic Surges on the Left

You have to be awfully smart to believe something this stupid. In a Manhattan Institute survey of Democratic voters, 46 percent said they believed it was definitely or probably true that “the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July 2024 was orchestrated by his supporters to increase sympathy for him.”That’s a startlingly high number for a party whose members are increasingly drawn from the ranks of college graduates and those with graduate school degrees. And for a party whose articulate leaders are prone to dismissing Republican talking points as “conspiracy theories.”It’s uncomfortably akin to the finding of CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, who reported, after an examination of 4,700 social media posts from the accused White House Correspondents’ Association dinner assailant, Cole Allen, that “he shared a lot of posts claiming the Butler assassination attempt was staged.” Mr. Allen, a registered Democrat and small Vice President Harris contributor, evidently shared the view of roughly half of his fellow partisans.This third assassination attempt on President Trump within the past two years is not the only example of violent assaults by leftist or progressive Democrats. There’s the 2017 wounding of Representative Steve Scalise — then the House majority whip — by a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders aiming to kill Republicans practicing for a two-party congressional baseball game, the 2018 would-be assassin stalking the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the killing of the head of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, in September.There’s been violence directed at Democrats as well, some of it perhaps motivated by political disagreement. The arson of Governor Josh Shapiro’s official residence was motivated by anti-Israel grievances. Other attacks have been by apparently delusional assailants (the killing of Minnesota’s state House speaker, the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband).After Kirk’s death, a YouGov survey found that 25 percent of those describing themselves as very liberal, and 17 percent of liberals, said that “political violence can sometimes be justified.” Only 9 percent of self-described moderates and 6 percent of conservatives agreed.Interestingly, higher education is not an effective antidote to this view. A Skeptic Research Center survey asking whether “violence is often necessary to create social change” found 40 percent of those with graduate or professional degrees in agreement, far above the 23 percent of those with a high school diploma or less.It may be worth noting that graduate degree holders include not just physicians and lawyers but also teachers and social workers seeking the higher pay that advanced degree holders receive under public employee union contracts — just the people taxpayers pay to teach and counsel the young and needy.Among young people, there’s something Tom Wolfe might have called assassination chic, focusing on 27-year-old Luigi Mangione. He’s a graduate degree recipient from the University of Pennsylvania and is accused of shooting a health insurance chief executive at Midtown Manhattan in December 2024.According to the author of “Socialism Before Sanders,” Jake Altman, Democratic Party leaders in Michigan regularly wear pro-Mangione T-shirts. The New York Times hosted Hasan “America deserved 9/11” Piker to explain why Mr. Mangione’s alleged act was “not so negative.” And the New Yorker called the Manhattan chief executive’s killing “an effective act of political consciousness-raising.” Meanwhile, Times columnist Ezra Klein has explained why he would include Mr. Piker on his platform.All of which provides support for the talk radio host Erick Erickson’s conclusion: “The fundamental difference, again, between left-wing and right-wing violence is that right-wing violence is roundly and loudly condemned and, more and more often, left-wing violence is excused, justified or explained away by the American press corps and Democrats.”America is not yet at the stage reached by the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920s or among Japan’s military rulers in the 1930s, in which the assassination of politicians became almost routine, a means to remove talented individuals from power and to discourage opposing views from being voiced.Yet when putatively respectable individuals and institutions on one side of the political spectrum give voice to approval of violence and murder, the Weimar experience comes into view. When one side’s leaders’ rhetoric constantly portrays the opposition leader as another Hitler, it’s not surprising that some of its followers take it on themselves to kill him.In his manifesto, the would-be Washington Hilton shooter said he was acting against “a pedophile, rapist, and traitor.” Those are charges made by many Democrats even though there is no evidence linking Mr. Trump with Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, even though Mr. Trump was found not guilty of rape by a New York jury, and even though special counsel Robert Mueller admitted there was no evidence of Mr. Trump colluding with Russia.Electoral politics is inherently adversarial, and there are plenty of reasonable bases for opposing Mr. Trump. Yet it’s disturbing when large segments of the population, especially the young and educated, find violence and murder unproblematic. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”Better advice came from their elders. Mr. Trump said immediately after the attack: “I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts in resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences.” Mr. Sanders, writing the next day, added, “A functioning democracy relies on the premise that people can express their political views without fear of being attacked or assassinated. Political violence is political cowardice. It is unacceptable in all forms.”Creators.com

Assassination Chic Surges on the Left

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