Over at Compact, Leighton Woodhouse has a fascinating review essay looking at the extremisms of the 1990s in America, and he comes to the conclusion that political violence has lost any connection to political aims or a theory of political change.
It is as delusional to believe that meaningful change can come from guns and incendiary devices as from votes and campaign contributions. Government repression of radical groups from the Black Panthers to the ELF disabused the left of those illusions some time ago. The left-coded political violence of today, including Black Lives Matter riots and the assassinations of Charlie Kirk and of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, is purely nihilistic, unattached to any broader theory, however fantastical, of political change.
Last year, when I was reading Sean McMeekin’s excellent broad survey of communism, the point that stood out to me was that communism “succeeded” where other forms of socialism didn’t, precisely because it gave such a large role to violence in its inception and execution. This created a role for prisoners, thugs, the worst soldiers of World War I, to put themselves to work for capital-H History.
I expected more political violence in the last ten years than we have seen. Perhaps Woodhouse is right, that it has lost its connection to anything that sounds plausible.