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The Left-Wing Terror Temple

Here's How The Nature Of Political Violence Works Now.

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.

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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.

Likewise, the Democratic Party has deployed these narratives in political campaigns, protest rallies, and social media messaging, 
arguing that the Right is on the verge of abolishing democracy and ushering in an authoritarian regime. None of these narratives is 
true, but each yields an emotional payout. Traditional liberals who donate to Democratic politicians and left-wing NGOs genuinely 
fear that President Trump desires to be a strongman and will do anything necessary to seize power. Politicians have always relied 
on heated rhetoric to solicit votes and donations. But the left-wing terror memeplex is different, in that the party's 
"progressive" faction deploys these carefully crafted narratives in part to activate the radical elements within the broader 
coalition, including, most notably, anti-fascist and transgender activists.

The second element is the radicalized memespace. The prestige media writes the metanarratives, which filter downward through 
Reddit, Discord, Steam, Twitch, and other web platforms. Because these digital spaces rely on user-generated discussion and lack 
the editorial guardrails of a traditional publication, individuals can plunge deep into the radicalization process and take the 
premises of left-wing narratives to their grim conclusions. Democratic politicians shout that Trump is a fascist; users on Reddit 
and Discord conclude that the proper response to fascism is political assassination.

These radicalized memespaces are also tailored to psychosexual themes that, while not overtly political, are built on highly 
ideological concepts, such as intersectional identities. Transgender activists, for example, have anchored their narratives in 
queer theory, a discipline that is deeply tied to the politics of the Left, particularly in its most radical forms. In the 
memespace, the personal is always political.

A spate of recent terror incidents illustrates the connection. The Annunciation Catholic Church shooter, for example, appears to 
have been radicalized into a transgender identity through radicalized memespaces. The alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk reportedly 
played a 'dating simulator" involving "furries." Audrey Hale, who killed three children and three adults at The Covenant School in 
Nashville, Tennessee, identified as a transgender man and, in her diaries, described a desire to "kill my own race" and to "kill 
all the white kids," showing how trans ideology can overlap with far-left racial politics.

The third element of the terror memeplex is the copycat model. Social scientists have long observed that spectacular acts of 
violence or terror can inspire others to engage in similar acts of violence and to view them as a competition: more blood, more 
spectacle, more death. Hale is typical, leaving behind more than a dozen notebooks that documented her fascination with school 
shootings, including the Columbine massacre, which remains the ur-event for this kind of violence.

More recently, Luigi Mangione's alleged assassination of health insurance executive Brian Thompson has sparked a desire for 
emulation. While most mainline Democratic politicians and prestige media outlets have been careful not to endorse the murder of 
Thompson, the radicalized memespace has celebrated Mangione, turning him into an icon, calling for copycats, and seeding the ground 
for future assassinations. Many memeworld leftists have latched on to Mangione's elite education and handsome appearance to give 
his nihilistic violence the patina of romanticism and celebrity. And their threats are not idle: the number of American executives 
who have sought security protection has increased, with many fearing that the C.E.O. assassination archetype, like the school 
shooting archetype, could replicate itself.

And finally, the fourth element of the left-wing terror memeplex: the disturbed individual. Since the French Revolution, left-wing 
movements have relied on psychotic, criminal, violent, and nihilistic people to cross the line into violence. In the past, left-
wing organizations would painstakingly recruit, train, manipulate, and drive disturbed individuals to political violence through 
repeated human-to-human interactions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government was able to infiltrate groups of this nature 
through wiretapping, confidential informants, and other human intelligence, which, over the years, led to those groups' 
destruction.

Human relationships are complex, and those involving disturbed individuals who want to commit violence are fundamentally unstable 
and can quickly blow up or burn out. The new left-wing terror memeplex transcends those limitations. The interactions that drive 
the new terror are not human-to-human in a direct sense, but rather, are mediated by digital technologies and decentralized at each 
link in the chain.

The psychological profile of these individuals has changed, too. The left-wing terror memeplex has sought to manipulate sexual 
ideologies and drive emotionally unstable loners and losers into violence. The alleged Kirk assassin, Annunciation school shooter, 
and Nashville school shooter all experienced sexual disorders, had troubled relationships with families, and spent an inordinate 
amount of time in the radicalized memespace, where they built the desire for death. Like in the film The Manchurian Candidate, the 
memeplex operates to remove "guilt and fear" through brainwashing and political conditioning-but, this time, in a totally 
decentralized and depersonalized manner.

It will not be easy to interrupt the left-wing terror memeplex. While I wholeheartedly support President Trump's recent designation 
of Antifa as a domestic terror group, the left-wing terror memeplex is mostly distinct from the masked "black bloc" protesters who 
have, for example, descended on federal buildings in Portland, Oregon. While dismantling these Antifa groups is noble and just, it 
might not have a discernible effect on the digitally mediated violence generated by the terror memeplex.

But adopting other proposals could, in the long term, reduce the threat of left-wing terrorism. First, we must mete out social 
punishment for politicians and media figures who promote irresponsible narratives about impending fascism and "trans genocide." 
They should be held accountable for their rhetoric and encouraged to moderate it-or to pay the political price. Those who 
romanticize, celebrate, and call for political violence should be met with social stigma.

In addition, law enforcement must develop a comprehensive strategy, within the confines of the First Amendment, to monitor radical 
left-wing memespaces and disrupt acts of violence. At a minimum, federal law enforcement agencies should develop the tools to track 
radical networks online, uncover illegal activity, and swiftly identify and arrest ringleaders, in the same way they target other 
criminal networks and conspiracies.

Eventually, we will also have to grapple with the proliferation of disturbed young Americans willing to commit themselves to 
nihilistic ideologies and engage in political violence. Our country is awash in DSM diagnoses, psychiatric drugs, and psychological 
decomposition. Not much can be done about these factors in the short term, but we should begin the conversation now, with no regard 
for political correctness or undue deference to the medical establishment.

The coming years will be a significant test for the left-wing terror memeplex. The Trump administration would do a great service to 
the country, and to the troubled young people caught in its web, if it took steps to dismantle it.


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"Trump Derangement Syndrome" Is a Real Mental Condition

All you need to know about "Trump Derangement Syndrome," or TDS.

"Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a mental condition in which a person has been driven effectively insane due to their dislike 
of Donald Trump, to the point at which they will abandon all logic and reason."

Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com, wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times in 2016 that broke TDS down into 
three distinct phases or stages:

"In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of proportion. The president-elect's every tweet provokes a firestorm, 
as if 140 characters were all it took to change the world."

"The mid-level stages of TDS have a profound effect on the victim's vocabulary: Sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting 
solely of hyperbole."

"As TDS progresses, the afflicted lose the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality."

The Point here is simple: TDS is, in the eyes of its adherents, the knee-jerk opposition from liberals to anything and everything 
Trump does. If Trump announced he was donating every dollar he's ever made, TDS sufferers would suggest he was up to something 
nefarious, according to the logic of TDS. There's nothing - not. one. thing. - that Trump could do or say that would be received 
positively by TDSers.

The history of Trump Derangement Syndrome actually goes back to the early 2000s - a time when the idea of Trump as president was a 
punch line for late-night comics and nothing more.

Wikipedia traces its roots to "Bush Derangement Syndrome" - a term first coined by the late conservative columnist Charles 
Krauthammer back in 2003. The condition, as Krauthammer defined it, was "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in 
reaction to the policies, the presidency - nay - the very existence of George W. Bush."