https://www.city-journal.org/article/left-wing-political-violence-terror
Many of us who work in politics have felt sickened since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We sense that a line has been crossed, perhaps permanently.
For years, the Left had accused conservative intellectuals of fomenting “stochastic terrorism”—incendiary rhetoric that inspires violence. This accusation was used to purge conservatives from social media, and, during the Biden administration, contributed to the F.B.I.’s decision to monitor conservatives, including parents who opposed critical race theory. The Left sought to use the stochastic terrorism construction as an all-purpose censorship tool.
This year, the tables have turned. Donald Trump is in power and left-wing violence has surged. Even The Atlantic, which previously seconded the idea of stochastic terrorism, has now conceded that political violence from the Left outstrips that from the Right.
After studying several recent incidents of left-wing terrorism, I want to articulate some initial thoughts about what I call the “left-wing terror memeplex.” This system, in which left-wing narratives inspire decentralized acts of violence, has four elements: prestige narratives, radicalized memespaces, copycat models, and disturbed individuals.
The memeplex is not organized like the older model of left-wing political terrorism, which relied on organized groups (such as the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army), decentralized cells, ideological formation, and meticulous planning. By contrast, the memeplex is decentralized, mediated through the Internet, and, on the surface, appears unorganized. Left-wing media and political figures peddle narratives through the digital sphere; an individual commits an act of terrorism inspired by those narratives; and the media and political figures pretend that the two are unrelated and that the terrorist was a “lone wolf.”
But if you dig beneath the surface, it becomes apparent that these dots are often connected and that the memeplex, though decentralized, is designed to radicalize disturbed individuals and generate bloodshed—with plausible deniability for political actors. In other words, the progressives who seed the memeplex are fomenting precisely the “stochastic terrorism” that they previously decried.
Let’s examine the elements one by one. First: the prestige narratives. For the past decade, the Left’s elite media and political figures have entrenched a series of hyperbolic and highly polemical narratives: that Donald Trump is analogous to Adolf Hitler; that America is about to fall to fascism; that conservatives are organizing a genocide of transgender people; that deportations are laying the groundwork for martial law. These narratives have taken root not only on the fringes of activism and academia, but are reflected in the headlines of the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, MSNBC, and other mainstream outlets.
