Forces on the middle-class left, echoed by the liberal media, are increasingly infatuated with the use of violence against political opponents, as shown by their fascination with Luigi Mangione’s alleged slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Their sugarcoating of such killings was thrown into sharp relief following the third attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump in the last two years.
Cole Allen sprinted past a security checkpoint in the hotel where the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner was being held in Washington, D.C., April 25. He carried a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and a pistol. Allen fired one shot toward the ballroom where Trump was due to speak, before being caught. He is charged with attempting to assassinate the president.
Although the aim of the assault seems obvious, the New York Times April 27 said investigators are still “searching for a motive,” describing Allen as a “completely average guy.”
But an email from Allen explaining his goals had been released the day before. “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, racist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” Allen wrote, speaking of the president. He said he was targeting administration officials, but would try not to kill hotel security “if at all possible.” He added, he “would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets,” claiming all participants in the event are “complicit.”
Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California, contributed to Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign. He took part in a “No Kings” anti-Trump march and previously denounced Trump as a “fascist convicted felon.”
In the following days, Democrats and Republicans issued perfunctory condemnations of Allen, before quickly moving on to blame each other for the increase in political violence.
This latest attempt by a politically motivated radical to settle differences with a gun reflects a growing trend on the left.
A debate over the use of violence for political ends was featured in a Times podcast April 22 titled, “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I? Why petty theft might be the new political protest.” One participant was Hasan Piker, a supporter of Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Mao’s regime had nothing to do with Marxism or advancing the interests of the working class. Instead, it orchestrated the bloody repression of the toilers and its political opponents on a massive scale.
The left’s love of political violence
Piker says he’s opposed to the murder of Thompson, but added, “many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.” He pointed his finger at the “for-profit, paywalled system of health care,” in effect providing a justification for Mangione’s attack.
Piker claims to be a Marxist and says no less than Frederick Engels, Karl Marx’s key collaborator, backs up his view. “Engels wrote about the concept of social murder,” Piker says, and CEO Thompson “was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder.”
What Engels was referring to in his 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, was the death of workers from starvation. The “working-men call this ‘social murder,’” Engels wrote, “and accuse our whole society of perpetrating this crime.”
Later in the book Engels explains a Marxist outlook. “It does not occur to any Communist to wish to revenge himself upon individuals, or to believe that, in general, the single bourgeois can act otherwise, under existing circumstances, than he does act.”
“The more the English workers absorb communistic ideas, the more superfluous becomes their present bitterness, which, should it continue so violent as at present, could accomplish nothing.”
What Engels actually wrote refutes any idea that the cold-blooded killing of Thompson should be “understood” by working people.
Piker’s response to the killing of Thompson is consistent with the views of Stalinist-trained groups that express extreme intolerance toward political opponents and glorify violence against those they label “oppressors.”
Piker is on record declaring his support for Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom against Jews in Israel. “It doesn’t matter if rape happened on Oct. 7,” Piker said. “It doesn’t change the dynamic for me.” The fact that he and other radicals identify with Hamas and its murderous Jew-hating assaults points to the fact that these forces can easily find themselves allied with fascist thugs in the future. That’s what happened to similar Stalinist forces in Hitler’s Germany.
Side by side with the left’s backing of political violence, is its deepening involvement in one of the bosses’ two main parties, the Democrats. Piker is speaking on platforms to promote anti-billionaire Democrats in the 2026 elections and has spoken at tax-the-rich rallies alongside Bernie Sanders.
Others who identify with Mangione also seek to emulate him. “Luigi popped that motherf—-r,” Chamel Abdulkarim said proudly after he filmed himself setting fire to and destroying a 1.2 million square foot warehouse in Ontario, California, April 7. Some 20 people were inside at the time, but none were injured. The six-alarm fire took 175 firefighters to extinguish. Abdulkarim is charged with arson.
In statements afterward, he denounced the “1%,” the middle-class left’s term for the capitalist ruling class. “All you had to do was pay us enough to live,” he said.
Such destructive acts set back the struggles for better wages and conditions and provide a pretext for the government to accelerate its use of cops and spies against working people. The left’s use of violence against political opponents is also aimed at silencing exactly the kind of discussion working people need in order to chart a road forward. It should be unequivocally condemned.