Below is my column in the Hill on the rising political violence on the left. Many have found an irresistible release from both reason and responsibility in rage. A new study found more people embracing political violence. Joel Finkelstein, the lead author of the report, stated that “what was formerly taboo culturally has become acceptable… We are seeing a clear shift – glorification, increased attempts and changing norms – all converging into what we define as ‘assassination culture.’” Roughly 40 percent reportedly found it somewhat justifiable to burn a Tesla or even to kill Donald Trump.
Here is the column:
“We should replace our piece of crap Constitution.”
Those words from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.”
But Mystal’s radical rhetoric is becoming mainstream on the left, as shown by his best-selling books and popular media appearances.
There is a counter-constitutional movement building in law schools and across the country. And although Mystal has not advocated violence, some on the left are turning to political violence and criminal acts. It is part of the “righteous rage” that many of them see as absolving them from the basic demands not only of civility but of legality.
They are part of a rising class of American Jacobins — bourgeois revolutionaries increasingly prepared to trash everything, from cars to the Constitution.
The Jacobins were a radical group in France that propelled that country into the worst excesses of the French Revolution. They were largely affluent citizens, including journalists, professors, lawyers, and others who shredded existing laws and destroyed property. It would ultimately lead not only to the blood-soaked “Reign of Terror” but also to the demise of the Jacobins themselves as more radical groups turned against them.
Of course, it is not revolution on the minds of most of these individuals. It is rage.
Rage is the ultimate drug. It offers a release from longstanding social norms — a license to do those things long repressed by individuals who viewed themselves as decent, law-abiding citizens.
Across the country, liberals are destroying Tesla cars, torching dealerships and charging stations, and even allegedly hitting political dissenters with their cars.
Last week, affluent liberal shoppers admitted that they are shoplifting from Whole Foods to strike back at Jeff Bezos for working with the Trump administration and moving the Washington Post back to the political center. They are also enraged at Mark Zuckerberg for restoring free speech protections at Meta.
One “20-something communications professional” in Washington explained “If a billionaire can steal from me, I can scrape a little off the top, too.” These affluent shoplifters portrayed themselves as Robin Hoods.
Of course, that is assuming Robin Hood was stealing organic fruit from the rich and giving it to himself.
On college campuses, affluent students and even professors are engaging in political violence.
Just this week, University of Wisconsin Professor José Felipe Alvergue, head of the English Department, turned over the table of College Republicans supporting a conservative for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He reportedly declared, “The time for this is over!”
Likewise, a mob this week attacked a conservative display and tent on the campus of the University of California-Davis as campus police passively watched. The Antifa protesters, carrying a large banner with the slogan “ACAB” or “all cops are bastards,” trashed the tent and carried it off.
Antifa is a violent and vehemently anti-free speech group that thrives on U.S. college campuses. In his book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” Mark Bray explains that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists. … From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”
Of course, many of the American Jacobins are themselves bourgeois or even affluent figures. And they are finding a host of enablers telling them that the Constitution itself is a threat and that the legal system has been corrupted by oligarchs, white supremacists, or reactionaries.
This includes leading academics and commentators who are denouncing the Constitution and core American values. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, is the author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
In a New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Commentator Jennifer Szalai has scoffed at what she called “Constitution worship.” “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us,” she wrote. “A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”
As intellectuals knock down our laws and Constitution, radicals are pouring into the breach. Political violence and rage rhetoric are becoming more common. Some liberals embraced groups like Antifa, while others shrugged off property damage and violent threats against political opponents. It is the very type of incitement or rage rhetoric that Democrats once accused Trump of fostering in groups like the Proud Boys.
Members of Congress such as Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) have called for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to be “taken down” and said that Democrats have to be “OK with punching.”
Some take such words as a justification to violently attack a system supposedly advancing the white supremacy or fascism. Fortunately, such violence has been confined so far to a minority of radicalized individuals, but there is an undeniable increase in such violent, threatening speech and in actual violence.
The one thing the American Jacobins will not admit is that they like the rage and the release that it brings them. From shoplifting to arson to attempted assassination, the rejection of our legal system brings them freedom to act outside of morality and to take whatever they want.
Democratic leaders see these “protests” as needed popularism to combat Trump — to make followers “strike ready” and “to stand up and fight back.”
For a politician, a mob can become irresistible if you can steer it against your opponents. The problem is controlling the mob once it has broken free of the bounds of legal and personal accountability.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
JT, You are an F-en idiot. The Demos are a threat to free speech? When did the FCC under a Demo threaten the license of broadcast news?
“Carr has multiple probes in progress, and his investigation into CBS over the editing of an interview with Kamala Harris has drawn condemnations from both liberal and conservative advocacy groups that describe it as a threat to the Constitutional right to free speech. One plea to drop the investigation came in a March 19 letter from conservative groups including the Center for Individual Freedom, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.”
All you trump sycophant readers, wake up, he is coming for you next.
Biden tried to put a radical leftist in charge of the FCC, a woman that claimed to want to shut down Fox News. Obama attacked James Rosen of Fox News. Biden tried to bring Scary Poppins into an agency to lead the charge for censorship. Wake up you liar.
BS, FoxNews was not shut down or even a credible threat to shut it down.
There was no censorship under Biden, to argue otherwise is proof that their wasn’t.
Covid.
ROFL
HullBobby,
Well said and spot on.
Democrats are a threat not only to free speech, but to peace. The gist of Turley’s post that you ignore is that 55% of people who identify as Leftists – and Leftists are the base of the Democrat Party – say it is “somewhat” justifiable to assassinate Trump. 48% say it is somewhat justified to assassinate Musk. Many of your fellow comrades literally rejoiced and celebrated both the Hamas terrorist attack that killed over 1000 innocent Israeli citizens and the cold blooded assassination by shooting in the back a man peacefully walking down the street in NYC.
The actions, rhetoric and belief of the side you are aligned with suggests it wants revolutionary civil war. You may get one.
” When did the FCC under a Demo threaten the license of broadcast news?”
Actually quite frequently. There are even books about it.
Regardless, the problem is easily solved – eliminate the FCC.
The democraps have always censored speech, chump.
Abortive ideation exercised to relieve a “burden”. A wicked solution. Deja vu.
From the top down: first and foremost, we live in an action-reaction, cause and effect, stimulus-response universe with a set of laws and rules of it’s own. Next, we have more than two centuries of mostly rich politicians (as opposed to leaders) deliberately ignoring, misinterpreting, violating and usurping various provisions of the US Constitution for minority gain. More specifically, with the advent of the industrial revolution the industrialists flooded the country with alien ideologies for cheaper labor. Successful as some were, in the early 1900s John D. Rockefeller instigated a medical conspiracy to reorient mainstream medicine from prevention and cures to perpetual treatments for profit (e.g., “Murder by Injection,” Eustace Mullins, 1988) and the early 1930s discovery of a nearly subclinical non-IgE-mediated food (minimally) chronic illness causing allergy reaction by then renowned American immunologist Dr. Arthur F. Coca was suppressed. If those weren’t bad enough, by the late 1960s (e.g., soy) the US FDA started approving toxic food additives for more food manufacturing profits and the physical and mental health of the US began declines which continue into today, exacerbated primarily with the cooking oil preservative TBHQ (1972) and added MSG (1980). Now we have multiple epidemics of chronic and degenerative diseases that government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich keeps mainstream medicine creating new drugs and other treatments for, for more profits. It seems JT and most of his readers/commenters are simply too young to know the real basis of so much engineered turmoil and are too distracted by current events to bother to investigate it beyond headlines and related videos. Here again is a link to current statistics pertaining to increasing violence that precedes Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton and Bush, all the way back to at least Reagan and his tax cuts for the rich in 1986 and 1981: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
It’s not the US Constitution to blame it’s the deliberate ignoring, violating, misinterpreting, and usurping of it that is to blame, starting with ignoring the tenets of the Preamble so long ago. Today, to merely acknowledge the illusion of a disparate two major political party system is to encourage the unruly rich to further subjugate the rest of us, ultimately destroying themselves in the process; cause and effect.
What garbage.
I don’t know who coined the phrase but: “there are no so blind as those who refuse to see.” Have you even learned how to research an issue, independently?
The rich, the rich, the rich… it’s all that Democrat communists have, demanding their monthly soup kitchen in the form of a check in a brown government envelope.
“Mother Jones” and political analysis??????? Now there’s an appeal to an alleged authority that Gigi would be proud of. It would seem you think JT’s readers are too naive to realize how obsessively leftist the faux radical Marxist journalists at Mother Jones are and have always been. And… “that government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich”
Ah, The Evil Rich – the enemy of the patriotic American communist movement. Right up there with “The Rich Don’t Pay Their Fair Share” war cry (weird how they control the government but still end up paying the majority of income taxes collected).
If you want to claim those of us who are in our 70’s are too young to remember violence worse than the Democrats’ nation wide violence of the months in 2020 of Mostly Peaceful Election Season Rioting, Pillaging, Looting And Murder, tell us what we’ve forgotten that you claim to remember.
Yet most of the billionaires in this country support the Marxist democrats. Go figure.
Now an 81 year old lay American male who’s not just sitting around watching foolish ball games on TV, I’m still living with the horror I’ve been writing about to thousands of more qualified and resourceful professionals of various specialties for most of the last twenty years, mostly in-vain. Can you prove me wrong?
Just as France was destabilized by a politics based on a division between the affluent and the working classes, the same is happening here. The old division between conservatives and liberals that contained all classes has died and has been replaced with a political model based on social class. This is the path to social and political destabilization.
You really do believe that hogwash. You poor deluded soul.
Wholly incorrect naive one.
Ah, our poor, poor leftist friends. They are losing and they know it. Now they are resorting to more and more violence and even normalizing it. What they dont seem to understand is while a very small, minority of them embrace the rage, it only alienates the sane, normal moderate Democrats. They think they are fighting against . . . something. When all they are doing is losing even more. By all means, please do keep up the stupid, the crazy, the rage. Keep losing.
“ Those words from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.”
Turley seems to be suffering from selective amnesia. Even Trump has called for the abolition of the Constitution. Funny how quickly one forgets.
Jacobins were extreme, and they were the product of a runaway revolution that started with the fact that it was the elites were pushing the working class to the point where they would not tolerate the excesses of the filthy rich. We are seeing sort of the same thing now. Billionaires treat the economic hardships they are creating as mere speed bumps because they can weather any serious financial harm. Their attitude is “too bad for you.”
When you have a Billionaire unelected “special government employee” deliberately trashing government agencies and threatening people’s hard-earned Social Security benefits and Medicaid or Medicare while enjoying lucrative billion-dollar government contracts, it will get a few people angry enough to do something. Turley should understand. We did this when the English monarchy pushed people too far. We deemed it patriotic. Heck, many didn’t condone the violence and sabotage colonists engaged in back in those days.
Now that Trump’s disastrous tariffs are wrecking people’s retirement accounts and threatening their jobs, it’s not just the left that is angry. Trump supporters are starting to notice they are being affected, too. Janine Pirro recently declared, “ I don’t care about my 401(k),” when she furiously defended Trump’s cratering the markets due to his ill-advised tariffs. She essentially repeated a version of Marie Antoinette’s now famous line, “Let them eat cake.” The irony that Turley doesn’t get is astonishing and unsurprising.
Trump sought and continues to seek changes to the constitution.
That is difficult and unlikely.
He has not advocated to abolish the whole thing.
Regardless, that is not the point. Mystal compared South Africa and its new constitution to the US.
South Africa is a disaster.
As bad as Apartheid was – the country was doing better with a racist white regime than today.
South Africa is NOT something to be emulated and Mystal should know better.
Can we please get beyond rewriting history.
The american revolution did not degenerate into the bloodletting and pointless violence that ALL Class warfare based revolutions that have ever occured resulted in.
You can not blame the bloody mess created by one group of proto socialists on the wealthy – because all class warfare revolutions have been bloody, and lawless and their victims have always gone well beyond the wealthy.
All Socialists are responsible for their bloodshed, Not their victims.
I know this is hard for those of you on the left,
But few americans have great sympathy for government employees out of work. They have the oportunity to get an actually productive private job.
Few Americans have sympathy for illegal immigrants being deported – especially as the Trump administration has been wise to start with incredibly unpopular groups like TdA and MS13 and Pro-Hamas terrorists.
It is early to evaluate Tariffs – it is so early that the outcome could easily be an end to most global trade restrictions.
But thus far – this is NOT resulting in job losses – it is resulting in hiring anouncements.
It is moving capital from stock markets to bond markets resulting in lower interest rates, and much lower cost to refinance our debt.
It is resulting in lower oil prices, lower food prices and lower food future prices.
It is resulting in lower mortgages costs.
There is nothing that a president can do – including doing nothing, that does not result in harm to some.
The question is whether the harms of Trump’s current policies are outweighed by the benefits.
Given that we can not even know right now whether Trump’s tariffs will result in actual free trade, or universal protectionism,
given that we can not predict the next two days – predicting the harms and benefits of Trump policies in 6 months is impossible.
Context: Trump said yesterday he would love to send American citizens to the brutal El Salvadorian prison.
Context for what? You seem to have left part of your post in your mind, like most of your inane rabble rabble should.
Also, source?
Dear Mr. Turley, I will give a shout out to Diogenes. For the last 55 years or so, the radical left has resorted to violence to disrupt our society, so I am not surprised by this new round of it. This is the group who state that Republicans are a threat to democracy?! Who are they kidding…. Themselves.
so says anon diogenes. Clown.
Dingbat
100 years from now 2 +2 will still be 4. Objective truths will still be “objectively” true. Those who “get this” will be healthier, happier, and more prosperous. This rage is beyond the terrible illness of bipolar, for which there are great meds like Lithium, Depakote. These folks are heading into a very dark tunnel for which there may very well be no remedy.
I actually don’t care…except jail any violent offenders…and jail the local democrats who allow it!
I want DEMOCRATS defunded and let capitalism FIX them
end Federal Aid to cities, states, non-profits, colleges/students
also BAN public unions who are the political army of the Democrats
JFK allowed public unions…TRUMP unallow
Let me be the first to wish them a happy 9 Thermidor.
“A furious party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints, naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity. ” Joseph Addison, 1711
The problem in a nutshell: the globalist Left has become an existential threat to the West due to its built-in neuroticism, but increasingly, the Right’s only recourse is Caesarism. As young women and immigrants have indulged more and more in radicalism, we have now reached a Thucydides Trap in which both Left and Right are balanced in the in U.S. Due to things like the filibuster, this paralyzes Congress, and results in rule by Presidential decree–what I call “Caesarism Light.” The Left is now countering Trump with “Insurrection Light.” That’s ironic, since Biden behaved like Tiberius on the Potomac (and Obama started it). There’s our Age of Rage.
In Western Europe, the disease is even more advanced, with formerly center-right parties completely abandoning their principles, but this also produces weak, stupid coalitions that satisfy no one. Because those parliamentary systems are wholly dependent on coalitions, they are now adrift inside their own Thucydides Trap. The only way out is either for the Left to become outright tyrannical (they’re furiously working on it) or the Right to rebel against the majority and crush it–i.e., the full dose of Caesarism.
This is a perilous moment for the entire West, and I blame the globalists and the Left because as much as they have risen, they have become evil and incompetent. I could explain that, but it would take all day, so let me be succinct. The only good way out of this Thucydides Trap is for enough people to accept that the Left has become insane and globalism has gone too far. Vote accordingly.
To this end, we need free expression more than ever–a simple and obvious hope.
I cautiously share your hope but I have serious doubt that you can turn this leviathan around by rational discourse simply because the army of miseducated and indoctrinated tools of the far left CANNOT comprehend how to reason – they have been trained to ONLY react emotionally and that reminds me more of jihadis and kamakazis. Our only hope is that there remains enough people who can rationalize the extremely large picture and accept that both economically and culturally we are on a path to self-destruction if there is not a significant course correction at this moment
Whimsicalmama, I share your concern. Too many conservatives are acting like we won. All we got is a second chance, but there’s a lot of poison in the system, and the necessary antidotes are all painful. We need some luck here.
Win or not, it is a constant battle that takes place. A win is when Democrats start to pretend they voted for Trump, but that is only a short respite until they return to prior ways.
Yep, the fight against decadence and tyranny is eternal. No wonder I’m a cynic.
Yes you are, Diogenes. Yet, I wonder how many people recognize it.
The way I look at this possibly being an example of a Thucydides Trap is that the ebbing or weakening empire (the Democrats) sees the emerging empire (the Republicans) being ascendant and therefore attacks the enemy growing in strength vis a vis their own weakening power with any and any weapon available, i.e. the courts.
I enjoy any discussions and comparisons to the ancient world of Greece and Rome, but it is hard to imagine Caesar putting up with lawless jurists usurping his rightful powers.
it is hard to imagine Caesar putting up with lawless jurists usurping his rightful powers.
hullbobby, perhaps it’s obvious and I’ve just missed it, but what is the Judiciary’s enforcement mechanism? Doesn’t it come from the Executive branch? And if that fails, then the Legislative? At this point, President Trump should execute his agenda and ignore the orders until SCOTUS rules.
Olly, I don’t disagree with you but I think that Trump wants to avoid giving the left/media the chance to claim he is a dictator by ignoring the courts. He is hoping that Scotus will affirm his rightful powers and then he will execute all of the things that the vast majority of the people want.
Well, given the fact he even exists has been enough for the left/media to claim that, he should continue to act where he believes he has constitutional authority. The lower courts will be used to enter a case that challenges that authority and that’s well within their proper function. But the only court that should be able to prevail against the Chief Executive is SCOTUS. Allowing lower courts to stop the Executive branch effectively makes them SCOTUS.
He is hoping that Scotus will affirm his rightful powers and then he will execute all of the things that the vast majority of the people want.
That is precisely the mistake I believe he is making. And by mistake, I’m specifically referring to the word, then. He should continue to execute until SCOTUS rules otherwise.
Hullbobby, you make a valid point. I’m not suggesting Trump is a perfect analog for Caesar. I’m saying that we over rely on Presidential powers because a cabal of RINOs and Democrats will lockup Congress to block reforms in the legislature. Caesar was not interested in reform; he was interested in power, and in that respect, Obama and Biden were closer analogs for Caesar.
Most likely, the EU will go full Caesar, not the US. The EU could, in an emergency yet to come, formally establish the Office of the Caesar to rule Europe and handle the emergency. There is ample historical precedent from the Roman Empire for appointing a Dictator in times of emergency, and in its current form, the EU is dysfunctional because most powers are still with State governments. They are likely to have a new emergency flowing from the Ukraine War, especially if they start sending armies to the front..
I agree. Western Europe is far gone. It’s tragic because there’s still a lot of decent, sensible patriots marooned there. They will be betrayed to the cannibals.
Masterful, Diogenes!
Rage is animal instinct unencumbered by learned social norms. Civility in the midst of conflict is counter-instinctual. It involves learned skills of impulse control, diplomacy, negotiation, reason over emotion….these don’t come naturally. Pushed far enough, every person has the potential to snap, and decades of socialization are suddenly overpowered by primitive inborn behavior.
It’s easy to be fooled by the media that our country has descended into primitivism, because journalists cherry-pick the most outrageous and zealous exemplars to compete for our attention. Looking around at my direct daily experience of Americans (not filtered by a reporter for my consumption), I don’t see rage — I see people are caring and cooperative, but spooked and chagrined by the media onslaught depicting a wholly different America that has lost its mind. It took me until I was 65 years old to separate these two disjoint experiences, and assign reality to that which comes before my eyes unfiltered — that which is not reported. Only then did I begin to downweigh the statistically-unrepresentative-of- reality dystopia that is chosen to show me as “news”. It’s just conflict theatrics packaged to push my buttons.
Here’s a piece of advice to make our country normal and productive (“great”) again. Ignore childish behavior from adults, or if you can’t, mock it. Whatever you do, don’t reflect it back. Pay attention to gravitas peppered with generous amounts of levity. Help children learn the skills of adulthood and clever ways to cope when conflict arises.
Steer them away from garbage behavior (shows of uninhibited primate instincts). Teach them how to be in charge of what they consume, and what to ignore as cheap infotainment.
We’re never going to get everyone to act civilly in every situation. That’s unrealistic. But let’s stop celebrating failures of civility by giving it ink. Treat incivility as undeserving of attention, and it will begin to fizzle out.
” because journalists cherry-pick the most outrageous and zealous exemplars to compete for our attention..” as does Turley, and you suckers fall for it every time.
Turley is playing you all for fools.
Just because of his credentials, doesn’t make him laudable.
” The problem is controlling the mob once it has broken free of the bounds of legal and personal accountability.”
That sums up the mob that comes here to rage against anyone they don’t like.
Mindless drones verbally attacking and threatening their anonymous opponents.
What a world we live in, decades ago newspapers screened comments, letters to the editor, nowadays, give a idiot a smart phone and you have wave of psychotics attacking everything for the sake of having that ability.
Turley sure knows how to bring out the worst of America.
Seems like you’re enjoying the anonymity this comment section affords you to rage against Prof. Turley and those you do not like.
In the words of Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), perhaps the Anonymous troll needs to be “taken down”. One would first have to find the address of his mommy’s basement, then politely knock on her door and ask of her misfit son can come out and play
hey anon, do you realize how utterly stupid you are… anon troll needs to be taken down… and you sign with “anonymous”.
against Turly? you silly, deluded fool. he’ s no god. he splaying you for a fool.
“anonymity “? So says anon mary; most likely a man.
It is but a small step from the Jacobins of the French Revolution to the Democrats of contemporary America. The French Revolution featured the guillotine; a future blowback on the Democrats could feature around 400 million privately-owned guns…, and more than twice that amount of ammunition.
Small step? Really? 234 years difference and you thinks there’s a revolution?
What the heck are you ingesting?
Turley mentions 5 people, who are obviously dealing with mental health issues and deformed egos, as threats to the Constitution. I don’t think so.
Turley is regurgitating old columns. Nothing new here folks, keep moving. Don’t block the aisles.
Luigi Mangione is another example of Jacobin rage.
Not at all. His issue is personal, not political.
It might appear personal, but his methodology is still the same as that of the prog/left. If you’ve ever witnessed a spoiled brat having a tantrum and throwing things and smashing things because he was told no – then you can begin to comprehend the minds of these self-possessed lefties who see their coddled lives being run through the reality grinder.
As is the support he garners from the leftist loons.
Rage, radicals, whatever words you choose, Professor, these are fascists and you should name them.
Name them? He just did.