![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2025\/10\/ben-banner.avif\")
<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLet\u2019s talk about the common factors here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFirst, ideologies and ideas that lead to violence typically share an evidence-free conspiratorial view of the universe. Shadowy forces of powerful people are responsible for all of your failures and shortcomings, and arguments to the contrary are just facades for power.<\/span><\/p>\nAccording to this view, there\u2019s a group of people who are victimizing you. They are shadowy, and they are nefarious, conspiratorial, and able to get away with truly horrific crimes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSecond, ideologies and ideas that lead to violence share a belief that you and your group, the people that you care about, are being targeted for destruction by this shadowy cabal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd if that\u2019s true, then third, violence is a form of self-defense.<\/span><\/p>\nTo take a couple of examples, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, it was obvious almost immediately that the ideology that was driving the shooting was a left-wing, radical trans ideology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhy? Because there\u2019s an ideology that says that if I argue a man is not a woman, that is a form of \u201ctrans genocide,\u201d of \u201ctrans erasure.\u201d If you believe a shadowy group of people is trying to destroy you and your family, you\u2019re likely to justify violence in response.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat is why somebody shot Charlie. They believed in that bag of nonsense.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnother example: There\u2019s an ideology that is quite prominent in the United States, which argues that President Trump is responsible for the collapse of America. The crux for these ideologues is not that they disagree with his policies, but because they believe he is actually involved in crimes such as pedophilia, starving children, blowing kids up, and that if you don\u2019t stop him, no one will.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat Trump tyrannically controls all aspects of media, that he tyrannically controls all aspects of government, and that the only answer is a form of violence. That\u2019s the same sort of ideology that led to the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO. As Hasan Piker put it in an interview with the New York Times five days ago, the United Healthcare CEO was engaged in \u201csocial violence.\u201d He was part of a predatory group of people who were literally killing people for profit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cYou can understand why somebody might want to shoot the guy, I mean, it\u2019s totally understandable,\u201d these leftists might say.<\/span><\/p>\nThat<\/span><\/i> is a permission structure for violence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen it comes to President Trump, it is one thing to oppose his policies. I\u2019ve opposed many of President Trump\u2019s policies, but nobody is shooting the president over a set of policies.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s another thing to say that he is a pedophile, that he is the Antichrist, that he is a child murderer, that he is Hitler. These are <\/span>not the same sorts of things<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe sort of language that has been truly routine on the Left is a permission structure for violence.<\/span><\/p>\nFor example, take Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who says that Republican policies do violence to the American people. It\u2019s not just that the Republican policies are wrong; they\u2019re malign. They\u2019re <\/span>designed <\/span><\/i>to be malign.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis approach to politics has harsh consequences. The permission structure for the violence of the congressional baseball shooting in 2017 was the Bernie Sanders line that people who disagreed with him about Obamacare or nationalized health care wanted 50,000 people to die, that they were killing grandma, and wanted grandma to die.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat sort of approach to politics is dangerous.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhat politics should be about in the United States is ironing out our differences. We may not always agree with one another, but that doesn\u2019t mean you wish for them to die. They simply disagree with you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAn obvious case is the Left fully embracing Hasan Piker. Last week, he was given the royal treatment by The New York Times. He once lauded the \u201cgreat video\u201d by Taylor Lorenz that discussed the meme that someone had to \u201cdo it,\u201d which was a tacit suggestion to kill Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen people are pushing such a meme, that is a potential for revolutionary activity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPiker has endorsed violence over and over and over again, and yet has been embraced by the Democratic mainstream. You have people who are supposed moderates, like Ezra Klein, pushing Hasan Piker as a legitimate voice inside the Democratic Party.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou can\u2019t do this and then pretend you hate political violence.<\/span><\/p>\nThe permission structures for violence are also skewing young because everyone in the younger demographic is constantly online, where the incentive structure is to be passionate and crazy. The echo chamber that facilitates violent and charged language tends to draw higher numbers. Period.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis is always true. Not every word is created equal. When people curse, it goes directly to your limbic system. The same thing is true if they use passionate language.<\/span><\/p>\nSo if you\u2019re 18 through 29 and you\u2019re imbibing from that well over and over and over, and if mainstream political parties that are trying to channel that passion into votes start justifying that sort of stuff, you should not be surprised when political violence becomes more common.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s not just true in the United States. It\u2019s true everywhere. Every violent, radical revolution begins with young people. It always begins with young people who start acting and speaking violently. And then there is always a group of moderates who decide that they need to <\/span>work<\/span><\/i> with the young, violent people, to use their rage and channel it toward political change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd that\u2019s how political violence becomes incredibly common. That\u2019s how street battles happen.<\/span><\/p>\nWe are playing with fire as a society if we continue to pretend that all ideologies and permission structures are created the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThey are not.<\/span><\/p>\nConspiracism is bad. It is not just bad in terms of utilitarianism. It is wrong. It is evil.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nConspiracism unbacked by evidence generates violence, mental illness, and stupidity.<\/span><\/p>\nIt wrecks our politics.<\/span><\/p>\nBut most importantly, it wrecks our civilization.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Left has created permission structures for violence. The violence is not going to stop. It\u2019s not going to stop because the Left has decided to mainstream it. You cannot hug Luigi Mangione and pretend you hate political violence. You cannot celebrate and hug Hasan Piker and claim to oppose political violence. You can\u2019t spread […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-current-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}