Michelle Goldberg has a column up today under the headline "Trump Is Lying About Left-Wing Terrorism." With a headline that stark, you might expect she has some pretty clear cut arguments to make. Instead, we get a muddle.
Over the last 10 months or so, a frightening new pattern has emerged. First, in December, Luigi Mangione became an internet icon after allegedly assassinating the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare in New York City. Messages left on the bullet casings seemingly alluded to the way insurance companies refuse coverage. The sniper who murdered Kirk left messages on his bullet casings as well, though in his case they appear to have been a macabre sort of trolling. Joshua Jahn, the 29-year-old who staged a sniper attack on an ICE field office in Dallas this week — killing a migrant detainee and injuring two others — reportedly wrote “Anti ICE” on his bullet casing.
And here comes the turn. These killers expressing left-wing political views aren't really left-wing according to Goldberg, they just look that way. [emphasis added]
Violence that at least looks left-wing really does appear to be on the rise. In The Atlantic, Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe wrote that “2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right.” Yet the men committing the highest-profile left-coded killings have little discernible connection to progressive politics, on or offline. Neither Mangione nor Tyler Robinson nor Jahn was a registered Democrat or, as far as we know, was involved in activism of any kind. They’re less men of the left than men of the internet.
I'll have a lot more to say about this but first, Goldberg cites a recent essay by Chris Rufo as proof of her thesis.
Since I’m a liberal, I imagine that this might seem like a rationalization. But no less a Republican partisan than Chris Rufo, a man who rarely misses an opportunity to demonize progressives, appears to see something similar. This week he wrote an essay called “Radical Normie Terrorism,” about both Robinson and Robin Westman, who killed two children at a Minneapolis Catholic school in August. Looking at the online spaces they inhabited, Rufo described not hubs of political radicalism, but of “memes, attitudes, copycatting, in-jokes and irony.” Jahn seems to have dwelled in a similar milieu.
Rufo's argument is worth reading but I think ultimately only partly convincing. First, here's Rufo's own thesis which I think is really the argument Goldberg is trying to make.
In recent years, a new form of terror has emerged: decentralized, digitally driven violence organized not around coherent ideologies but around memes, fantasies, and nihilistic impulses. The perpetrators of this low-grade terror campaign do not belong to hierarchical organizations or pursue concrete political aims. More often, they come from ordinary families and lash out in acts of violence without discernible purpose.
He goes on to focus on two recent attacks to make his case:
[Robin] Westman, the alleged Annunciation shooter, left a diary detailing fantasies and inner turmoil related to his transgender identity. While he decorated his weapons with pithy slogans, including “Kill Donald Trump,” “Burn Israel,” and “Nuke India,” these were memes and ironies, designed to give the appearance of ideology, concealing a potentially more disturbing motive. He was in the throes of a transgender identity crisis and had fantasized about being a demon and wanting to watch children suffer. The ideology was a brittle shell around a deeper emptiness that could only be satisfied with horror.
Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, reportedly spent thousands of hours playing video games, had an account on sexual fetish websites, and played a “dating simulator” game involving “furries,” muscular cartoon characters that are half-animal and half-man. Officials claim that Robinson had moved in with a boyfriend who identified as transgender and to whom he confessed the crime. Like Westman, Robinson inscribed slogans on the shell casings he used in the assassination, including a message about noticing the “bulge” of male genitalia through women’s clothing. The fact that Robinson waited until Kirk began to answer a question about transgender mass shootings seems to reinforce the point.
There is something to what Rufo is saying here. These recent attacks seem far more personal and less based on a carefully argued ideology than the leftist violence of the 1960s and 70s. I'm willing to concede the point.
What I think both Rufo and Goldberg are missing is that the organizing principle of the left, especially the young, online left, has changed a lot in the last 55 years. Both Rufo and Goldberg have spent time writing about wokeism and how it is different, and often more extreme, than traditional liberalism. I would suggest that this new form of terror they see emerging is merely the natural outgrowth of that change.
At the core of wokeism is the concept of identity politics in which your identity is meant to become the foundation of your politics. And along with this is the idea that your identity is is constantly opposed and subjugated by a whole series of majoritarian identities that have existed since long before you were born. To put it bluntly, white straight males create a system of racial and sexual dominance which can be resisted through anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-sexist, etc. ideology.
Wokeness has often been compared to a religion in which racism (and other isms) are a form of original sin. But the difference with wokeism is that there is no lasting redemption. You can oppose the system and your own privilege, but you can never erase the stain of it. It presents the world as a constant battle among identities who have power and those who do not.
Wokeness, as we all know, also fudges the boundary between harsh language and actual violence. This is where we get the idea of "safe spaces" and deplatforming opponents. If speech is violence then stopping speech with violence is justifiable as self defense.
Getting back to the rash of recent killings, it's true that these shooters aren't organized militants like the 1960s Weather Underground, but wokeism makes that no longer necessary. Identity politics spreads everywhere people are online and especially in left-wing spaces. Those who adopt it learn to see themselves as part of a persecuted minority and their tormentors as part of a privileged majority that must be resisted.
Taking the two examples that Rufo mentions, Robin Westman did indeed seem like a broken person having an identity crisis. His desire to see children suffer was disturbing. But he also had absorbed enough woke identity politics that he knew he should never doubt himself. If he believed he was a woman, he was. If he believed he was a demon. He was.
Westman himself seems to have gotten closest to the truth of his situation when he wrote, "I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself." He added, "I can’t cut my hair now as it would be an embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported." He'd gone too far to turn back. Instead of admitting this and seeking help, he sunk even further into violent delusions.
As for Tyler Robinson, he seems far more lucid and easier to understand. He just needed enough grounding in identity politics to see himself as part of a persecuted minority (gay) and as an ally deeply committed to another persecuted minority (his trans boyfriend). From there it was a short hop to hating Charlie Kirk enough to want him dead. Robinson didn't need a Marxist screed to motivate him to become a killer, he just needed a firm conviction that violence against the right targets is justifiable. And again, I think identity politics provides that to some people.
We may hear more eventually about his motive, but I'll bet it wasn't much more complicated than Charlie Kirk hated trans people so I was doing the world a favor. That's not a very deep ideology compared to the 1960s when justifying murder required a lot more rambling about revolution, but it is very consistent with a modern left-wing ideology.
In the end, even Goldberg admits the motives behind these killings are identifiably leftist, though she still tries to suggest they aren't really left-wing themselves.
It’s important to acknowledge that Mangione, Robinson and Jahn all appear to have espoused leftish motives for their alleged crimes, and given their notoriety, others may try to follow in their footsteps. This is a disaster for both the victims and the broader culture. Fear and instability redound to the benefit of authoritarians, so violence done in the name of left-wing causes serves right-wing ends. Progressives should condemn these killers and do whatever is in their power to push back on the voices that lionize them, and the toxic social media algorithms that boost those voices. But it may not make a difference, because the suspects in these murders exist outside of recognizable political movements.
These suspects do not exist outside recognizable political movements. Identity politics is a recognizable left-wing political movement that provides all the foundation needed for some fringe figures to justify violent behavior against those they see as their oppressors.
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