Political Violence

Writing in the Free Press, Charles Fain Lehman asks why we are seeing an outbreak of political violence. And also, why at other times in the past people were prone to violent political actions.

He points out that democratic institutions are designed to tamp down violence. They promote deliberation and negotiation, to allow one and all to participate in the political process and to have his or her voice heard.

Those who lose the argument are committed to accept the democratic outcome. The infantile practice of throwing a tantrum when you do not get your way is precluded by democratic institutions.

Lehman writes:

… political violence cannot coexist with a functioning democracy. Democracy depends on peaceful liberation, allowing each person to have her say, while violence replaces the ballot box with the bullet. If we want the former, we must be unambiguous in our condemnation of the latter.

Lehman argues that political violence becomes legal tender when the society accepts it as legitimate. As happened with the case of Luigi Mangione, people pay lip service to democratic deliberation and add that the violent few have a good reason to do what they did.  

As the political scientist and gadfly Edward Banfield observed, the riots of the ’60s and ’70s eventually went away, even without massive social reform. Banfield argued that rioting—or any goal-directed violence—is a product of opportunity, as much or more than structural conditions. In other words, if people can get away with it, they will do it. Excusing political violence turns it into a bargaining tactic, making it a more attractive option.

Even if fewer people want to do it, and those who do fear getting caught, they can still be motivated by a sense that the violence’s message will be taken seriously, even respected.

People commit acts of political violence when they believe that it will be respected. It is a useful point. Mangione was not looking to be an outlaw. He was trying to gain a certain measure of respect.

But then, why does a society arrive at a state where people accept that violence is legitimate? I speculate that one reason might be that people feel morally numb.The more numb they are the more they will seek out more violent stimuli. When you cannot feel much of anything, you will accept violent acts that stimulate. It is better than not feeling anything at all. And it is better than suffering from social alienation, not feeling like you belong.

Numbness, as in the inability to feel pleasure, belongs to the nexus of qualities that define depression. Among the signs of depression is anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. Add to that the absence of desire, as in loss of appetite, for food and also for sex. 

Does violence stimulate? Does it produce pleasure? Does violence make a depressed individual believe that he can experience desire? In truth, it does not provoke desire; it produces a maniacal compulsion to consume-- which is evidently a pathological form of appetite. 

You sate your normal appetite by participating in group dinners. You manifest your compulsion to consume by scarfing down the Twinkies, alone. 

Of course, we are not dealing with individual depressive states. We are dealing with a situation where large numbers of people feel detached and unmoored. They do not just feel like they do not belong, but that belonging to the nation is a bad idea. They have been so completely brainwashed into thinking that the nation is an organized criminal conspiracy that they cannot feel pride in it.

One agrees with New York’s mayor Eric Adams, who stated that Luigi Mangione learned how to hate the country, how to feel like he did not belong to the country, at his ivy league school. And that he was not alone in this category.

Alienated from the nation, not feeling any pride in the nation’s achievement, groups of people suffer from depression. And once enough people become depressed, then some maniac might well take it upon himself to offer group therapy by committing an act of political violence. 

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