John Daniel Davidson of the Federalist explores the political left’s significant violence problem.
In the immediate aftermath of the fourth assassination attempt on President Trump this past weekend at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, we heard the familiar chorus of voices in the corporate media and political establishment calling for calm, for unity, for lowering the temperature, toning down the rhetoric. We heard the same thing after Charlie Kirk’s assassination last September, and after Trump was shot in the face by a would-be assassin on the campaign trail in July 2024.
As always, the people saying this pretend it’s a “both sides” problem, that the political left and right are both at risk of becoming dangerously violent, and that for the sake of our democracy we all need to calm down.
What nonsense. There is only one side in America today that has a persistent and very real-world problem with political violence, and everyone knows it’s the left.
It’s the left that has produced four would-be assassins of President Trump. It’s the left that produced Charlie Kirk’s assassin and the sneering online hordes who celebrated his murder. It’s the left that produced Luigi Mangione, who allegedly killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood, and overnight became a folk hero to his fellow travelers.
The left riots and burns down cities in a way that makes Jan. 6 look tame, and the corporate press justifies it as a form of political speech. The left regularly threatens conservative speakers and events, forcing organizers to provide a level of security that liberal events never need. The left foments violence not just by spreading false propaganda about conservatives but by funding the supposed right-wing extremists they warn about, as the recent federal criminal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center has shown.
Surveys consistently find a shocking tolerance for political violence among left-leaning Americans that simply is not present on the right.
