Western Standard - The shock of political violence warns of historical amnesia

00:00:00.000 Hello, my name is Leah Mushed. I'm a reporter here at the Western Standard, and today I have with me

00:00:04.660 Rob Henderson, best-selling author of the book Troubled, a memoir on the foster care system

00:00:09.420 in the social class. He is currently a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing

00:00:15.640 editor at the City Journal. Also, he recently wrote an article on his encounter with Charlie

00:00:21.220 Kirk on Charlie Kirk's podcast and about people's amnesia about the pattern of political violence

00:00:26.840 that plagues history, which he will discuss with me today. Okay, so thank you again for being here

00:00:33.700 with me today, Rob. And my first question, jumping straight into it, is you were talking about how

00:00:41.920 basically political violence in history is very common until we adopted like Enlightenment views

00:00:48.100 in the West. So I guess I wanted you to just like tell me why you think it is that we're currently

00:00:56.280 kind of the ideals of Enlightenment is currently diminishing, as well as just like why you think

00:01:05.620 we're becoming a bit careless about it. Well, yeah, thanks, Leah. It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:13.260 You know, I'm reserving like everyone else the reaction to Charlie Kirk's death and this sense

00:01:22.160 that political violence seems to be growing more acceptable. If you look at survey data, it seems

00:01:27.680 like a growing number of people, especially young people under 30, believe that political violence

00:01:34.980 is sometimes necessary to achieve your goals or that it's permissible to celebrate political violence

00:01:43.520 against your perceived opponents. And, you know, those survey data in combination with the response to

00:01:51.720 Charlie Kirk's murder. You know, I heard that article I wanted to write about this topic because a lot of

00:02:00.260 people forget how much struggle and how much bloodshed and debate and conflict took place historically

00:02:15.140 before we arrived at this implicit agreement that we could settle our disputes about important issues with words

00:02:25.220 rather than violence. Historically, it's been the norm that if powerful people hear things that you disagree with,

00:02:34.540 that they will attempt to imprison you or murder you or take you out. There's no shortage of stories

00:02:44.220 stories and information from historians who cover the religious conflicts of Europe up until the last

00:02:53.900 couple of centuries. And I tell this story about Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, who himself was

00:03:03.100 a devoted Christian, but he wrote a series of books in which he attempted to logically prove the existence of

00:03:12.380 God. And in response, the Catholic Church banned his books. Even though he came down on the, you know, in air quotes,

00:03:20.940 the correct side of the debate, he came to the conclusion that God does exist. But the Church banned his books

00:03:26.140 anyway, because he treated the existence of God as something that was worthy of debate and scrutiny. And this was to the

00:03:33.740 Church considered a threat. And you can see parallels today that, you know, even if you come down on the correct side of

00:03:42.060 of an opinion, that people still don't want you to express your views or believe that your idea

00:03:49.740 shouldn't be platformed or countenanced because, you know, the very idea that that you would debate

00:03:56.540 something is is offensive, challenging sacred norms, sacred ideas. And I think, you know, Charlie

00:04:04.700 correct it regardless of whether you agree with his actual opinions, he did attempt to persuade his

00:04:11.900 opinion or persuade his opponents with words, with debate, with communication. And, you know,

00:04:21.980 people were uncomfortable by that. I think there was this grim irony that he was killed on college campus

00:04:27.500 because college campuses are where this idea that words are violence was born. And so, you know,

00:04:34.060 Charlie comes onto these campuses, and he's saying things that a lot of students agree with,

00:04:38.780 many students disagree with, make people feel uncomfortable. And in response, eventually,

00:04:45.180 this gave rise to this fear, this anxiety, and then this desire to take him out. And it's a very dark

00:04:54.380 path to go down that if you think that words are the equivalent of violence, then you can use violence

00:05:00.620 to silence people. But then if you inflict violence on someone, then you can also, by that same logic,

00:05:07.580 inflict violence back. And this is a very dark path, a dark trajectory. If one side believes words are

00:05:15.500 violence, the other and then decides to use violence against those words. And then the other side says,

00:05:20.620 well, you inflicted actual violence on me, so now I get to inflict it back. That is, you know,

00:05:26.620 recipe for catastrophe. Hmm. Yeah, I was also wanting to know more about the 2023 study that you also

00:05:37.180 mentioned in the article about liberals and conservatives on the topic of, like, how they are perceived by one

00:05:46.700 another versus, like, how they think they're perceived by one another. I think I said that right. Yeah.

00:05:52.380 So, go ahead.

00:05:53.820 Yeah, I think study, where the idea of this, this 2023 study by a team of social psychologists,

00:06:00.780 they basically wanted to know about, you know, what they called meta representations of people's

00:06:08.380 political parties, political orientation. And so they basically wanted to know,

00:06:12.220 do conservatives accurately understand how liberals view them? You know, and then do liberals

00:06:20.380 accurately perceive how conservatives view them? You know, can you sort of get into the mind of your

00:06:25.420 political opponent and see how you look through their eyes? And one conclusion of that study was,

00:06:31.580 yes, basically, conservatives understand that liberals view them as, you know, self-centered and

00:06:39.820 unfeeling and, you know, approve of social hierarchies and that kind of thing, you know, with regard to,

00:06:48.060 you know, success and accomplishments. And then, on the other hand, liberals accurately perceived that

00:06:55.820 conservatives viewed them, meaning liberals, as, you know, a bit naive, a bit idealistic, you know,

00:07:03.260 disconnected from ground reality. So that was one interesting finding is that we generally understand

00:07:10.940 how the other side views us. The other interesting finding was the derogatory interpretation or

00:07:18.060 perception of your own party. And what they basically found is that liberals tended to view

00:07:25.820 conservatives as, uh, the researchers used the phrase savage. So, uh, you know, conservatives,

00:07:32.940 you know, the most negative characteristics of conservatives are, uh, aggressive, hostile,

00:07:37.980 confrontational, you know, I mentioned unfeeling, callous, um, you know, they have no empathy,

00:07:43.260 that kind of thing. And then, um, uh, on the other hand, conservatives tended to view liberals

00:07:49.820 as, uh, uh, immature, you know, kind of undeveloped, a bit naive, idealistic,

00:07:55.900 doesn't understand how the world really works, that kind of thing. And, um, the other interesting

00:08:02.140 finding is that, um, uh, conservatives, uh, overestimated how much liberals like them. If you ask a

00:08:10.300 conservative, how much do you think liberals like you? They know that liberals don't have a,

00:08:14.460 uh, a high opinion of them, but they still tended to overestimate, um, how much liberals like

00:08:19.420 conservatives. So when you ask liberals directly, how much do you like conservatives? It was very low.

00:08:23.820 If you ask conservatives, you know, how much do you think liberals like you? It was actually higher

00:08:27.020 than that. So they overestimated that perception. And then, um, uh, and so, you know, liberals had a

00:08:33.660 much lower opinion of conservatives than, than conservatives believed liberals had of them.

00:08:37.900 Whereas the opposite was true. Um, when you ask liberals, um, how much do you think conservatives

00:08:43.900 like you? Um, they, uh, actually underestimated how much conservatives like them. Conservatives

00:08:48.700 actually have a generally fairly warm opinion of liberals. I mean, not as warm as they have of

00:08:53.500 themselves. Conservatives like themselves the most, liberals like themselves the most,

00:08:56.540 but conservatives had like a moderately warm opinion of liberals. Um, uh, or, or they had,

00:09:01.420 yeah, a moderately warm opinion of liberals. But then you ask liberals, um, uh, they actually

00:09:05.740 underestimated that and they thought that conservatives didn't like them very much.

00:09:08.460 There's this interesting asymmetry where liberals really don't like conservatives and conservatives

00:09:12.540 don't understand this. And conservatives actually kind of like liberals, but liberals don't understand

00:09:16.860 that either. Hmm. Okay. Also on that note, because I know at least from what I've read that, uh,

00:09:25.420 conservatives tend to be more, uh, polite. So I'm wondering if that has anything to do with the

00:09:30.940 fact that they tend to like liberals more than liberals think they do. Uh, yeah, there's some

00:09:36.140 interesting research on, um, you know, these, uh, agreeableness, these big five personality traits.

00:09:43.420 And, uh, one of the big five personality traits, if you take a personality test, you get a score on

00:09:48.540 five different dimensions. One of those dimensions is agreeableness and agreeableness can be broken

00:09:52.540 down into compassion and politeness. Conservatives are a little bit more polite than liberals.

00:09:57.340 Liberals tend to be a bit more compassionate than conservatives on these measures. And so, yeah,

00:10:01.500 maybe there's a bit of that going on there where, uh, conservatives, um, you know, I think

00:10:08.220 counterintuitively to a lot of liberals, uh, conservatives tend to give their, uh, uh, political

00:10:14.380 opponents more of the benefit of the doubt that, um, you'll often hear this in right leading circles

00:10:19.820 that, yeah, liberals are a little unhinged or whatever, but I think their heart is in the right place.

00:10:24.700 You're hearing that less now, especially after the death of Charlie Kirk, but that was a common

00:10:29.020 thing you would hear in right leading circles was like, yeah, these liberals are a little,

00:10:32.380 you know, whatever. They're a little, uh, uh, misguided, but you know, they're trying to do

00:10:36.940 the right thing, but the way they're doing it is just completely, uh, uh, ineffective, uh, and

00:10:41.740 possibly destructive. Whereas the, you don't really hear that, uh, if you hang out in left

00:10:45.340 leaning circles, you sell them here like, oh, these conservatives, their hearts are in the right

00:10:49.420 place, but they're going about it the wrong way. It's more, so you're more likely to hear things like,

00:10:53.260 you know, these people really don't care about anyone else and we need to stop them.

00:10:58.300 That's also, um, what you mentioned in your article, like, so like what the sentiment, like,

00:11:03.900 what it motivates is like, um, for liberals, I don't know exactly what you said because I can't

00:11:09.580 quote you right now, but yeah, maybe explain more on like the gap between the two that you mentioned.

00:11:14.860 Go ahead. Uh, the, the, the gap in terms of what? Sorry. The gap you mentioned between, uh, the liberal

00:11:21.900 sentiments and conservative and like what that can lead to basically. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know,

00:11:28.380 if you, if you're, the conservatives tended to view the liberals as immature, you know, undeveloped,

00:11:34.940 you know, a little naive and, and that doesn't necessarily spark the desire for violence.

00:11:41.500 Um, you know, don't get me wrong, but there, there is right wing extremism and there is political

00:11:46.460 violence carried out by people on the right. Um, you know, these extremists, but broadly speaking,

00:11:51.580 um, you look at the general interpretation, the perceptions that the right has of the left. Oh,

00:11:56.140 you know, they're a little immature, but that doesn't spark this aggression and hostility.

00:11:59.900 But the other, um, direction when liberals view conservatives as, you know, it was the phrase

00:12:06.300 the researchers used as savage as, um, you know, aggressive and on feeling, and they don't care

00:12:12.860 about anyone. They're very selfish that this can spark this desire for retribution, this desire

00:12:19.100 for, um, extinguishing that person, uh, because you view them as a, as a threat. If you see someone

00:12:24.940 as immature and idealistic, they're not necessarily a threat to you, um, or you don't perceive them as

00:12:30.540 a threat. But if you view someone as a selfish and unfeeling and aggressive, and that does activate

00:12:36.060 this anxiety and this feeling like, Oh, I need to stop them because they might hurt me.

00:12:41.900 Right. Um, so also I kind of wanted to, cause I was thinking about like people were making like very

00:12:51.420 political and obviously you said there there's obviously like political sentiments can motivate

00:12:56.220 people. So I don't know. Cause like, obviously a person who's not, um, well, I feel like mentally

00:13:05.100 stable wouldn't, even if they're thinking these things, they're probably not going to act on it.

00:13:10.460 But I guess since it's like, if I don't know, maybe it's like, once it, they get like more motivated

00:13:16.460 and more motivated, like group wise, um, say like, Oh, we have to stop them and stuff. There's going to be

00:13:22.620 maybe one unstable type of person, like who has like these tendencies that are going to act because

00:13:28.940 they're taking it seriously kind of. Yes. Yeah. If you, you know, the vast majority of people are,

00:13:36.700 you know, we're all exposed. We're all swimming in the same toxic slime of social media and political

00:13:42.220 polarization and, you know, all of the, uh, charges level back and forth, uh, of, you know,

00:13:49.180 which side is worse or whatever. Um, and the, and the majority of people who are, who are in these,

00:13:54.860 you know, swimming in this slime, they're not going to carry out violence, but you know,

00:13:58.620 if you take a thousand people, um, uh, and you know, people are not all interchangeable in terms

00:14:03.820 of their attributes and levels of aggressiveness and hostility and willingness to, uh, carry out

00:14:09.980 extreme acts. So you take a thousand people and, you know, some handful of those people,

00:14:14.780 um, when they're exposed to a lot of toxic stuff online and their, um, hostility is raised and

00:14:23.740 applauded, you know, you see people posting horrible stuff online and they get a lot of likes

00:14:27.820 and they get applause. And some people might see that and say, okay, well, if this person's getting

00:14:32.460 applause for posting to this, uh, uh, aggressive content online, that how much applause might I get

00:14:38.780 if I carry out an actual aggressive act in real life? So, um, yeah, I think it's, uh, it's, it's good.

00:14:46.860 You know, most political leaders have condemned, uh, the killing of Charlie Kirk. Um, but you know,

00:14:52.300 now we're in this increasingly fragmented media landscape and the incentives are skewed where,

00:15:00.140 you know, I think in the past it was an agreed upon social norm that you shouldn't celebrate the

00:15:04.220 death of your political, uh, uh, adversaries. Uh, even if you disagree with them, um, you know,

00:15:11.020 it's still wrong to celebrate the death of an innocent person. Uh, but now with social media,

00:15:15.980 it's, you know, it's a, it's a very alluring and enticing prospect to say something outrageous,

00:15:21.900 get likes, and then other people see that and potentially might motivate them to act in the real

00:15:26.060 world. Hmm. And like on that note as well, like you're saying, they might get applause and stuff.

00:15:32.220 Do you think also a contributing factor could be like loneliness as well? Like, so they get their

00:15:39.340 approval from online, obviously then they don't have maybe as many support in like their actual

00:15:47.260 social lives. That's probably true. Um, that some percentage of people, uh, you know, friendlessness is

00:15:56.380 rising rates of loneliness, uh, sexlessness, uh, relationship formation is declining. Uh, and a

00:16:03.740 lot of young people, you know, I think it's not a coincidence that the group that is the most, uh,

00:16:10.780 supportive or the least, um, apprehensive about political violence under 30, uh, young people,

00:16:18.460 that's also the group that reports the highest levels, uh, uh, at least in recent decades,

00:16:23.900 you know, the highest levels of loneliness and sexlessness, friendlessness, and all this stuff.

00:16:27.900 They're spending a lot more time online. They're spending a lot more time on screens where,

00:16:32.220 you know, back in the day, um, if you had a group of real life friends, you know, there's a,

00:16:39.100 there's a, a, a restriction in terms of the range of how extreme that friend group might be. If you have

00:16:44.300 six people, you know, there's not a lot of range in terms of how extreme they are, but if you have,

00:16:49.180 uh, you know, millions of people, uh, and they're all online and you're exposed to, um, their content

00:16:56.460 that tends to be a bit more exciting and dramatic and exhibitionistic. And that's, those are the groups

00:17:01.340 you're drawn to people who you would never meet in real life and who would probably not necessarily

00:17:05.580 behave that way in real life either, but online extremism can be rewarded. Um, and yeah, I think, uh,

00:17:13.500 you know, social media and the screens and all that stuff, it, it has, uh, supplanted a lot of

00:17:18.380 real life interaction, uh, and led to rising rates of loneliness. Hmm. Um, okay. So you said men

00:17:27.180 ages 18 to 24 are most likely to commit murder. And then usually their victims are older men, 25 to 34.

00:17:35.420 So I kind of wanted to know, like, why is that? And also like maybe a bit more about

00:17:41.260 the research on that as well. Yeah. This is a classic finding, um, going back to the 1980s,

00:17:48.460 Margo Wilson and Martin Daly. These were, uh, psychologists and they looked at, uh, the age

00:17:55.260 crime curve as they called it, the, um, you know, rates of violence and homicide, uh, across different

00:18:02.300 demographics and age groups and found that, yeah, young men, late teens, early twenties,

00:18:07.260 that is the group that's most likely to, uh, commit violent crimes and homicides. Um,

00:18:13.980 and, you know, a 20 year old man is 10 times more likely to commit a violent crime than a 60 year

00:18:20.700 old man. Uh, so it is that age group and the, uh, victims, uh, are most likely to be, or disproportionately,

00:18:29.420 uh, likely to be men who are slightly older. So as you mentioned, 25 to 34. And so, you know, that,

00:18:37.100 that fact stood out to me, came to mind when I saw the video that everyone else saw of the shooting.

00:18:45.260 And as the information was released about the assassin, uh, the alleged assassin who's 22 years

00:18:52.060 old and Charlie Kirk was 31 years old, and it matches that pattern of, you have a younger person,

00:18:57.980 a younger male who's killing a slightly older male and different reasons for that. But one is, um,

00:19:05.100 you know, this feeling of envy or resentment, you know, you, we, we tend to compare ourselves to those

00:19:10.460 who are doing slightly better than ourselves. Uh, I use one who's a little bit older, a bit more

00:19:15.180 successful and, you know, don't, there are probably plenty of motives and it's going to be impossible

00:19:20.780 to disentangle all of them. But one reason why you see that pattern carried out young men killing

00:19:25.180 slightly older men who are also quite young is that there's this envy directed at them that they're

00:19:30.140 older and doing slightly better and they want to take them out. Wow. That like, to me also,

00:19:36.780 yeah, I didn't even think about like the fact that it could be envy and also, um, maybe,

00:19:43.260 do you think it's also because there's, since it's envy, they're just seeing like what's directly in

00:19:48.460 front of them. Like they don't, they haven't attained whatever it is that they're envious about

00:19:53.260 and the older people. And so since maybe as well, their brains aren't as developed, but I'm thinking 0.98

00:19:59.980 it could also be. Oh, sure. I mean, it's, it's the thing is though, you know, there are millions of

00:20:07.420 men in their twenties, teens and twenties, and not all of them are going to do something like this.

00:20:12.940 So, you know, they're all, you know, too, but, but yes, of the men who do carry out these acts of

00:20:21.340 violence, um, yeah, you know, because, because even men who don't commit those acts, you know,

00:20:25.500 the, uh, like recklessness and risky behavior, you just see it a lot, a lot more of it, even within

00:20:29.980 a given individual's lifetime. If you take the same individual at age 20 versus age 60, you're

00:20:34.220 going to see more recklessness and stupidity at age 20. And partially because, uh, you know, 1.00

00:20:39.180 and developed frontal lobes and peer effects and, you know, difficulties with impulse control and all

00:20:46.300 that kind of stuff. Um, but yeah, when you go into like the extremes and you see people, um,

00:20:52.060 who commit, commit violence, uh, you know, it's, uh, there are age-related patterns. Uh,

00:20:57.740 you know, when I saw that, and I'm sure many of the listeners and the viewers saw this too,

00:21:01.980 of the, uh, the older gentleman who was arrested initially after the shooting, 71 year old man.

00:21:08.380 Uh, as soon as I saw that, uh, immediately I thought, no way, uh, men that old do not commit

00:21:14.460 political assassinations. Uh, I mean, obviously anything is possible, but, um, you know,

00:21:19.980 I was immediately skeptical and that it turned out that that, uh, old man, um, you know, this was

00:21:26.300 reported recently, uh, the New York times that he, uh, was attempting to, uh, uh, fight, uh, the

00:21:32.940 assassin time by, by saying that he was the killer so that the police would be distracted so that the

00:21:38.060 assassin would be allowed to flee the scene. Um, and that's, you know, that, that matched, uh,

00:21:44.140 the data much more than, than a 70 year old man doing something like, uh, like carrying out a

00:21:48.060 political assassination. Okay. Let's see. Okay. Also, I was wondering, maybe you could talk a

00:21:59.900 little bit more about like, what do you think there's any other like really good examples

00:22:06.460 of like times in history when like, or maybe even recent other recent examples in history of

00:22:15.420 political violence and like, I guess people taking it, uh, taking it for granted, like ideals of free

00:22:23.260 speech? Uh, interesting. Hmm. You know, my, my sense is that at least, at least, uh, uh, the educated elites

00:22:34.140 of most, at least in recent history, they were aware of, of, you know, the, the dangers of violence. Um,

00:22:43.820 you know, I guess what comes to mind is the, the wave of political violence in the U S in the 1960s

00:22:48.620 and 1970s, um, where it did seem like there was this pension of, you know, you have these ideals of,

00:22:57.340 uh, dignity and equality and human worth and all this stuff. But now there were factions, uh, particularly

00:23:04.140 on the extreme political left who believe that we haven't achieved those things. The only way we

00:23:08.380 can acquire dignity and equality and all of the, these social ideals is, uh, to carry out violence.

00:23:15.580 Um, but you know, means tend to corrupt ends. If you have a noble goal in mind, but you do a bunch of

00:23:23.340 sorted and, uh, repulsive, um, acts to get there, then even if you do reach your goal, um, it will not

00:23:31.740 be satisfying and it will taint, uh, uh, uh, you know, the, the, whatever you, you built, if you had

00:23:38.540 to use what it means to get there. So anyway, uh, yeah, I, I just think, uh, in this moment,

00:23:44.380 it seems like more people than ever have forgotten, uh, history. Um, you know, it's kind of, uh, uh,

00:23:51.180 not, not taught well in schools and even educated people, political leaders and so on. There's just

00:23:58.060 this focus on, uh, what a friend of mine calls the never ending now that, uh, you know, we're only

00:24:04.460 focused on what happened within the last 10 minutes and saw them go back and look at, you know,

00:24:08.780 historical periods of instability and conflict and civil war and what are the factors that led to

00:24:13.820 those, um, those problems. Yeah. I think that's kind of all the questions I had for you today,

00:24:19.420 but I appreciate you coming on again. Um, yeah, it was great having you and very interesting responses.

00:24:25.340 So. Thanks Leah. Thank you.

00:24:34.460 Thank you.

Western Standard - September 27, 2025

The shock of political violence warns of historical amnesia

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