Political violence is a central part of leftist ideology, Hillsdale politics professors said in a panel discussion hosted by Pi Sigma Alpha, the politics honorary, Nov. 17.
Professor of Politics Kevin Portteus pointed to a YouGov poll taken right after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“Twenty-five percent of self identified, very liberal people believe that political violence is justified at least some of the time,” he said. “Now, the other side, on the very conservative side, it’s 3%.”
The panel, titled “Political Violence in America,” consisted of Associate Professors of Politics John Grant and Kevin Slack, Assistant Professor of Politics Daniel O’Toole, and Professors of Politics Portteus and Thomas West.
O’Toole, the faculty adviser for Pi Sigma Alpha, said students chose the topic in light of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the rise of political violence in America today.
“After the Kirk assassination, a number of students said to me things like, ‘You know, we have a target on our backs. We know that they want us dead, or they would kill us if they knew that they could get away with it,’” O’Toole said. “Now, maybe that’s an exaggeration or not, we’ll see what the panelists think, but certainly that sentiment is alive on campus, and I think for some good reason, so I’ve asked some of my colleagues to come and address this topic.”
Grant said the dominant view in the West used to be that the job of the state is to limit violence, and the only legitimate violence is used in war against existential enemies.
However, World War I and Russia’s communist Bolshevik Revolution destroyed this view, according to Grant.
“A lot of this political violence is driven by not communism, so much, anymore, but by the leftward drift of world politics,” Grant said.
The new view is that a world without injustice is possible, and total, unlimited war should be waged against the bad, or those preventing this world, according to Grant.
“Domestic political violence is driven by this mindset,” Grant said. “Get rid of the designated evil, using code words, especially fascist, but it could be racist and what have you. Designate the evil, get rid of the evil. And the idea is, if you do this long enough and hard enough and thoroughly enough, the lion will lay down with the lamb and everything will be wonderful.”
Violence is deeply embedded in the politics of the left, going as far back as the French Revolution, according to Portteus.
Portteus said the terms “right” and “left” originated during the French Revolution based on where different parties sat in the political assembly building.
Maximilien Robespierre, a man influential in the French Reign of Terror and the use of the guillotine, and his party sat high up in the left of the assembly, according to Portteus.
“Violence is not just a lamentable necessity, it’s the wellspring of their ideology. Violence is inseparable from their ideology,” Portteus said.
Slack said the rise of the non-violent movement led to an increase in political violence in America. As an example, Slack said Martin Luther King Jr. needed violence, such as riots or aggression against Civil Rights protestors, for media attention.
“You have this constant escalation,” Slack said. “It’s called militant nonviolence. Here’s a quote from King: Rather than ‘tender supplications for justice,’ he recommended ‘militant nonviolence that is massive enough, that is attention getting enough to dramatize the problems.’”
The left admires people like Assata Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army who was involved in a gunfight that killed a police officer who pulled her and others over in 1973, according to Slack.
“The leftists who sensationalized violence are now heralded today as romantic revolutionaries,” Slack said.
West referenced American historian and Senior Fellow at the Brooking’s Institution Robert Kagan’s book “The Jungle Grows Back,” in which Kagan contrasts the good “garden” of the Enlightenment principles, universal human rights, that inspired the Declaration of Independence, which is in opposition to an evil “jungle” of white nationalism.
“What Kagan is setting up then is an opposition between the good, universal principles that are supposed to govern the entire world, and the evil, particular nationalistic principles of racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on,” West said.
This leads to America divided into two camps that view each other as existential enemies, according to West. Kagan says the left is inherently good and the right is inherently evil.
“A big problem with this particular setup that we now have, is it’s really only one side that understands the other to be its existential enemy,” West said. “The problem is people who are on the side of trying to preserve what’s left of the old America don’t understand that what they’re dealing with is Robespierre. And, if he could set up that guillotine again, he’d do it.”
