Douglas Murray Living in the Gray Zone of Political Violence The American Left has a long history of celebrating or excusing purveyors of mayhem.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/political-violence-left-charlie-kirk
In 2011, Martin McGuinness, the former leader of the Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army), ran for president of the Republic of Ireland. Over the four decades of his public life, McGuinness had moved from supporting terrorism, including assassination, for political ends to pursuing votes through the ballot box. Some now feted him as a “peacemaker.” But to many voters, his personal journey from the use of violence to the use of democratic means to achieve a united Ireland still seemed like a work in progress.
During one televised presidential debate, the moderator for the Irish public broadcaster RTÉ, Miriam O’Callaghan, asked the candidate: “How do you square, Martin McGuinness, with your God, the fact that you were involved in the murder of so many people?” McGuinness called it a “disgraceful comment.” But the blow landed. Worse for McGuinness was that, after the cameras turned off, he took O’Callaghan into a side-room, where she was seen leaving five minutes later “badly shaken.” The Irish electorate did not take well to the news that a broadcaster and mother of young children had been treated in such a way. McGuinness’s run for the presidency failed.
The episode mattered because McGuinness still lived in the gray zone of political violence: not fully condoning it, but not fully condemning it, either—especially when it served his cause or came from his supporters. Some Americans have now entered this same gray zone. Parts of the U.S. Left have inhabited it for years.
Many commentators have pointed to the difference in responses between the killing of George Floyd and that of Charlie Kirk. Floyd’s death led to a summer of violence, burnings, and lootings, behavior often excused by Democratic lawmakers. Groups like Antifa shut down American cities night after night with minimal official condemnation in the summer of 2020. By contrast, Kirk’s death, so far, has led to dignified and mournful prayer meetings. If the American Right were ever to erupt into violence, then it would face its own moment of challenge.
Meantime, the American Left has the bigger questions to answer. In recent days, portions of the Left have expressed greater outrage about Jimmy Kimmel’s brief absence from his late-night talk show on ABC than Kirk’s absence from life. Others—up to and including members of Congress—have suggested that Kirk’s words constituted violence, and that therefore condemnations of the violence directed against him require a certain caveat. Such slips became possible only because the American Left has been increasingly drawn to the gray zone.
We have seen this tendency already in the Left’s response to Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old accused of assassinating United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson last December on Sixth Avenue in New York City. Many have noted the gushing support for Mangione from some on the left, or Senator Elizabeth Warren’s comment after the murder that “people can only be pushed so far”—as though gunning down a husband and father could ever be a logical extension of a critique of the American health-care system.
In response to recent criticism of their rhetoric, some on the left have pointed to frivolous right-wing reactions to the 2022 hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in San Francisco. But such tit-for-tat arguments miss the larger point. The issue is not whether both sides can produce individuals willing to commit political violence—that much is undeniable. The real question is whether those individuals will find a supportive ecosystem or, instead, encounter a firm “no,” like the one the Irish electorate eventually delivered to McGuinness.
To answer this question in America today, we must ask another: Is there any scenario in which someone involved in political violence could expect preferment within American public life? For instance, can Pelosi’s attacker—a mentally disturbed man who cited right-coded motivations—ever expect a warm welcome in the conservative mainstream?
The answer is almost certainly no. By contrast, there are many cases of left-wing figures who have engaged in political violence and later found not just acceptance but veneration within sympathetic institutions.
An obvious case is that of Angela Davis. Then an assistant professor at UCLA, Davis purchased the guns used in the 1970 Marin County Courthouse attack that killed Judge Harold Joseph Haley and others. She denied responsibility, and a jury acquitted her of all charges. But her involvement did nothing to derail her career; if anything, it propelled it. Over the decades, Davis has become a celebrated “thinker,” her writings widely cited and her lectures in demand. Only a few months ago, she received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Cambridge University—not for the weight of her academic work, but because her association with political violence lends her a certain cachet rather than censure.
Davis is not the only person who remains a prominent symbol of “resistance” for the American Left. In addition to members of the Weather Underground like Bill Ayers, we might point to Leila Khaled, a woman whose opinion activists continue to seek out, not despite her involvement in political violence—two plane hijackings, among other operations on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—but rather because of it. Violence is part of her frisson.
Is it conceivable that the American Right could, at some juncture, feel that same frisson around violent figures? In theory, of course. But for the time being, it is hard to imagine anyone like—again, for the sake of argument—Paul Pelosi’s assailant being offered speaking gigs at American universities or receiving honorary degrees from conservative universities.
The difference between these two reactions is the gray zone.
It can be a distinct advantage to enter the arena of public debate with an undertow of violence on your side. From Irish Republican to radical leftist to Palestinian terrorism, the advantage lies not only in intimidating opponents but also in gaining political leverage by posing as the “moderate,” barely managing to hold back the men and women of violence. This is a mobster trick, at best, and it’s something I’ve witnessed many times from many political and religious directions in numerous countries. Its basic premise: “Agree to my demands—otherwise, I can’t promise that my friends won’t take a different route.”
The question is not whether men of violence exist, what political direction they come from, or who finds violence useful to their cause. The question is whether the mainstream of society can hold to a single standard when violence enters the fray. Can it condemn violence without qualification, or will it recognize, and even indulge, the temporary advantages that a touch of violence can bring?
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