No one could have guessed that when they started saying "words are violence" in the mid-2010s that the left meant it as a warning of their intent. Words are now sticks and stones that justify violent self defense. It does not matter how factually correct the words are. If the words create a negative resonance for the left, that discomfort acts as a device, which creates the permission structure that justifies the exercise of political violence. While there is an impulse to spin this political violence as an issue of both the left and right, this particular strain of violence based on memeification is unique to the left. It is based on a constructed narrative completely independent of the facts. It reflects a groupthink of the entire left with regard to President Trump and the right as a whole. To the degree there is violence from the right, the reasons are personal to the individual. The difference matters in how we choose to address the violence. While I remain unable to fully articulate my thoughts around the assassination of Charlie Kirk, that act, the acts of violence occurring closely to it, and more importantly, the response to the violence has left me with an unavoidable feeling. The violence will only get worse.
There are three trends that gained strength in the mid-2010s, capped by the violence of the Summer of 2020, which precipitate the current moment of leftwing political violence. The first trend, as mentioned, is the promotion of words as violence. Along with this notion comes the concept that some ideas are so dangerous that people may need to protect themselves from them. One obvious example of this is the insistence for content warnings in college classes exploring what could be considered darker aspects of humanity. It promotes intellectual fragility as an expected norm. The second trend is the externalization of personal self concept or identity. Initially focused on race, the concept has become central to transgenderism and gender identity ideology. It allows for an aspect of the individual which supersedes the objective and concrete for an unfalsifiable preferred manifestation of self. Along with this trend comes the enforced expectation that others, including strangers, should see you as you prefer if you identify yourself as trans. It is a form of authoritarian subjectivity imposed under threat of social censure and violence. To refuse to see a man as the woman he sees himself to be is to erase him from existence. In other words, recognizing that sex is immutable is considered a form of violence equal to murder that justifies a violent response.
The third trend is the redefinition of commonly understood words and the invention of new words for well established concepts. For example, knowing that there are two immutable sexes, a concept at the heart of human existence, is now called transphobia. Refusing to pretend to believe that some men are actually women is a form of hatred for the left and, as mentioned, erasure. Similarly, acknowledging that black men perform a majority of acts of violence disproportionate to our percentage of the population and wanting to address that violence is called racism. Currently, top to bottom, Democrats are opposed to enforcing immigration law and criminal law in blue cities where the president has considered a federal response to violence and violent protest. To portray themselves as protectors of the public good they claim that federal agents are a modern day gestapo and equate deporting illegal aliens to the extermination of Jewish citizens in Nazi Germany. This follows 10 years of comparing Trump to Hitler despite a platform that resembles that of a 90s Democrat. This trend is the most significant in constructing the permission structure for political violence. It allows the speaker to frame their opponent in the most dehumanizing way possible that makes violence not just acceptable, but inevitable. As seen in studies like the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science analysis, such rhetoric correlates with increased left-wing violence, where opponents are redefined as existential threats. It started with "punch a nazi" and Richard Spencer being attacked on video during a street interview in 2017. It is arguable that it led to two assassination attempts on the president prior to the election. After all, how much justification does one need for eliminating Hitler?
The left no longer uses language to explain and convince. They use it mostly to craft manipulative narratives designed to weaponize empathy. They do this because there is no good faith argument for anything for which they advocate. This allows them to convince themselves that everything they advocate for is inherently good. Every topic exists on a binary of the correct belief, which they profess or a belief in fascism. Their positions are acquired, rather than reasoned and are largely unfalsifiable, like religious beliefs, even when countered by facts. This is evidence by polls like YouGov's, where the left show higher acceptance of violence tied to unfalsifiable narratives on identity and oppression. And like religious beliefs, many on the left view counterarguments for those beliefs as personal attacks because they over-identify with those positions, which signify personal goodness. The benefit of their acquired secular quasi-religious beliefs is that they never need account for the consequences of their advocacy. "Gender affirming care" saves lives as long as you don't have to account for the increased risk of suicide and guaranteed medical complications. Illegal immigrants are a net positive as long as you don't have to account for the impact on services, wages, and the cost of housing.
The language of the left is increasingly detached from reality. Because they work from narratives instead of facts, the left's narratives remain unchanged even in the face of new facts. Thus, many on the left still speak of January 6 as an insurrection despite the growing body of facts that insinuate that the narrative of insurrection was created before the event occurred. This detachment from reality reflects the current most sacred victim caste who become victims without any victimization based entirely on self-declaration that reflects the opposite of reality. Their beliefs lack any bounding principles, such as, what is objectively true. This may, at least in part, help to explain why Trump has been able to take on so many positions formerly central to the Democrats. The party had long viewed itself relative to its former most sacred victim caste, black Americans. For black Americans there were arguable claims relative to the legal and economic history of the nation that tied Democrats to objective facts as well as narrative. With the new sacred victim caste objective truth becomes either irrelevant or hostile. As a result, everything becomes catastrophic because the left is unable to distinguish between things they dislike or disagree with and things which cause actual harm.
Everything that President Trump does will destroy the nation or Constitution, no matter how common sense, centrist or popular. Mass deportation of illegal immigrants has the support of 56% of voters, 78% if they are criminal. Yet, there are people on the left firing on and attempting to run over federal agents for enforcing immigration law. Despite the extreme response from some on the left, the majority see immigration law enforcement as a basic function of governance. This helps to explain why I an so sure that this mode of political violence will continue. There are a number of voices on the left and in the center who say that the president has a role to play in lowering the temperature in the partisan divide. I would suggest that he has done all that he can. He has little power to influence those accusing half the country, including him, of being fascists to legitimate violent opposition. The people who might have influence, Democrat leadership, have no interest in using it, because they too largely see half the country as fascists. The other reason the president has little influence is the lesson learned from the summer of 2020, recently reinforced by the Virginia Attorney General race. As shown in analysis like The Center for Strategic & International Studies' 2025 report on surging left-wing violence, which Democrats often downplay compared to right-wing threats, the left is largely fine with violence from the left.
The current Democrat candidate for Virginia Attorney General, Jay Jones, has admitted to sending a series of texts wishing for the death of a former Republican Speaker of the VA house, as well as his wife and children. This should be instantly disqualifying for a candidate wishing to hold the position of the commonwealth's chief law officer. It is not, if the person is a Democrat. Wishing for the deaths of children has had little impact on the number of Democrat endorsements he's received, including from Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat candidate for governor. The Democrats are banking on the the left's willingness to ignore violence from the left. The inversion of words from the right being violence, is that violence from the left is just words. Violence from the left is so ubiquitous they can't see it. Physically confronting ICE agents is just exercising the First Amendment right to speech. A few hours of rioting in a limited location set off by a lack of security and the direct provocation of a peaceful crowd is like a modern day domestic Pearl Harbor. Months of rioting resulting in destroyed black neighborhoods, at least two dozen deaths, and approximately $2 billion in damage is hardly worth remembering for the left. Remembering comes with accountability, and there is little interest in that. Jones' gamble may pay off with voters on the left. The degree to which he is punished by the right and center speaks to how much worse the political violence may get. If there is no consequence for speech promoting violence, there is an increased possibility of that speech precipitating violence.
As these three trends-- words as violence, externalized identity as sacred, and redefined language as a weapon-- converge in the left's echo chamber, they create the permission structure for political violence. Detached from facts and driven by unfalsifiable beliefs, this creates the blueprint for its inevitability. Unlike somewhat rare right-wing acts with personal motives, left-wing groupthink normalizes attacks on truth-tellers as self defense-- from "punch a nazi" to assassination attempts on perceived fascists. The left's apathy toward their own violence, seen in the muted response to the Summer of 2020 and Jones' death wishes, ensures escalation without accountability. In the end, if words are violence, silence on this hypocrisy is complicity. It is time for those still with principles on the left-- supported by the center and right-- to demand the introspection on the left they swear everyone else lacks.
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