We Need To Talk About The Radical Left’s Political Violence And Mental Health Crisis

Why a mix of political violence and poor mental health on the radical left poses a danger to all of us.

Slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk speaks at America Fest 2024. Source: charliekirk1776 / Instagram.

Many of us, myself included, are still reeling from the gruesome political assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Kirk, a 31-year-old husband and father of two, was shot in the neck. His supposed “crime”? Being a conservative willing to have conversations. To debate. To challenge ideas openly.

In the wake of this tragedy, parts of the radical left have not responded with grief, but with celebration. This is horrifying, yet sadly unsurprising.

This left-wing reaction confirms a troubling pattern many on the right have noticed for years: the radical left is gripped by a dangerous mix of political violence and poor mental health.

The Radical Left’s Political Violence

The left constantly warns about “far-right extremism” and right-wing “threats to democracy.” They also claim that words are violence, and that recognizing basic biological realities amounts to “genocide.”

But, in the past two years, we’ve seen assassination attempts against U.S. President Donald Trump. We’ve seen school shootings at Christian schools. We’ve seen Israeli embassy staff murdered in Washington, D.C. We’ve seen the cold-blooded assassination of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

And now, we have the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

None of these acts appear to be committed by “far-right” individuals.

And in the face of such atrocities, radical left activists have justified and even celebrated them.

They called the October 7th attacks on Israel “necessary and justified resistance.” They expressed disappointment that Trump survived his assassination attempts. They glorified Thompson’s murder, praising his killer Luigi Mangione, fawning over his looks and drooling over his abs.

And now, just scroll through X account Libs of TikTok and you’ll see American teachers, social workers, professors, and nurses openly cheering Kirk’s death.

Polling shows this mindset is not limited to some online fringe radicals.

A YouGov poll found that only 38 percent of Democrats believe it is “always unacceptable” to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose. By contrast, 77 percent of Republicans believe it is “always unacceptable” to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose. Another survey by the Network Contagion Research Institute also revealed something chilling: 55 percent of left-of-centre respondents said an assassination of Donald Trump would be justified, while 48 percent said the same about Elon Musk.

In Canada, the same sickness is on display.

A University of Toronto professor said, “Shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist cunts.” Manitoba’s Minister of Families Nahanni Fontaine declared she had “no empathy” for Kirk, smearing him as a “racist, xenophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, sexist, white nationalist mouthpiece.” She has since apologized. In my university ethics class Thursday, young female students openly discussed how Kirk “deserved it” because he was supposedly a “fascist” and a “racist.”

Now, it should be noted that there have also been several heartening condemnations of Kirk’s assassination from prominent figures on the left, including Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur of the left-wing media outlet The Young Turks, and Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew.

This is also not to say there is no right-wing political violence. There have been examples of right-wing extremists becoming violent, and sadly, people have died from that.

But when rare cases of violence do occur on the right, there is universal condemnation. You simply don’t see conservatives celebrating or trying to justify it the way so many on the radical left have over the past few days.

And one also can’t help but notice that there have not been right-wing riots since the killing of Kirk.

The Radical Left’s Culture Of Death

Part of the reason for this shocking justification and celebration of murder is that the radical left operates under a worldview of “oppressors versus oppressed,” where “the end justifies the means.” Life is framed as a battle between good people and evil people, with woke left-wingers casting themselves as righteous anti-oppression liberators and conservatives as irredeemable villains. Once you brand your opponents not merely as wrong but as evil, violence against them becomes easier to justify.

It is also worth noting that influential far-left thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Herbert Marcuse have defended the use of violence for political ends.

But there’s an even darker current running beneath this: a culture of death.

Too many on the radical left do not believe in the sanctity of life. To them, human life is meaningless, and even viewed as a scourge on the planet.

When you celebrate murder, the killing of a husband and father to young children, without caring that a precious life has been extinguished or that unimaginable trauma inflicted on his family, you reveal you do not believe in the sanctity of life.

Combine that with political fanaticism and a refusal to engage in dialogue, violence becomes tragically foreseeable. And political assassination ceases to be unthinkable.

And in that case, you have a culture of death.

The Radical Left’s Mental Health

We also need to talk about mental health.

You sometimes see click-baity right-wing influencers claim that “liberalism is a mental illness.” I’ve always disagreed with that rhetoric, because simply holding a different political view is not a mental illness.

That said, there is undeniably a strain of mental illness present on the radical left, and it can no longer be ignored.

A Pew Research survey found that those on the left are significantly more likely to report mental health issues than conservatives, especially among young, white leftists. According to the data, 38 percent of white “very liberal” respondents and 26 percent of white “liberal” respondents said they had been told by a doctor or healthcare professional they had a mental health condition. By contrast, only 11 percent of white “conservative” respondents and 14 percent of white “very conservative” respondents reported the same. Among young liberals, over 50 percent of women and more than 30 percent of men reported having been told they had a mental health condition.

Yet instead of dealing with these conditions appropriately, liberal society has normalized many of them. Individuals who would have once been viewed as unwell are now mainstreamed, platformed by legacy media, and in some cases, even allowed to influence government policy.

We need to be honest: when the radical left says insane things, we must call them insane.

I am not saying everyone on the left is mentally ill, nor that we need to be uncompassionate towards those struggling. People on all sides struggle with mental health. And we must have empathy for those struggling.

But true empathy doesn’t mean normalizing problematic behaviour. It means recognizing when people are hurting and ensuring they the help they need.

Luigi Mangione is mentally ill. The man who murdered Israeli embassy staffers was mentally ill. Both individuals who attempted to assassinate President Trump are mentally ill. And Kirk’s killer is mentally ill.

And anyone on the radical left cheering on these people and/or their actions is also mentally unwell.

This Is A Threat to Us All

A friend texted me yesterday. She said, “The same people cheering for Charlie’s death would sooner let people like me bleed out rather than hear a different opinion.”

That is true.

First members of the radical left justified the targeting of cops and the riots in 2020. Then they justified attacks on churches in 2021. Then they justified assaults on pregnancy care centres in 2022. By 2023, they were justifying violence against Jews in the West. Then came cheering on the two assassination attempts against Trump. Then the cheering on of the killing of Thompson. And now, the celebration of Charlie Kirk’s murder.

So what’s to stop them from cheering our deaths too, and calling those justified?

Anyone who is not a woke radical left militant now stands at risk. The same logic the radical left uses to excuse Charlie Kirk’s killing, and other acts of violence, can just as easily be used against us.

This is why it is so imperative that we call this out and change the status quo. We need to do something about the crisis of left-wing political violence. We need to do something about the mental health crisis.

I am not calling for civil liberties to be curtailed, as the left so often demands for the right. But what I am calling for is a transformation of our culture.

The last remnants of wokeness must be eradicated. We must no longer permit the labeling of mainstream individuals and views as “far-right",” “racist,” or “extremist.” We must stop teaching vulnerable kids that the world is divided into oppressors and oppressed. We must also have zero tolerance for ideologies that justify violence. Above all, we need to return to universal standards of right and wrong.

When someone acts in ways that are deranged, violent, and hateful, they must face full accountability. They should lose their jobs. They should be condemned and chastised.

And when a media outlet smears a mainstream individual as “far-right,” they should be called out and boycotted until they pledge to do better.

We must also invest in mental health resources and seriously consider the idea of reopening mental health institutions to give people, no matter their political leanings, the compassionate care they need.

People are suffering and in need of real help.

This crisis of political violence and mental health cannot continue unchecked. Because if it does, we open the door to more extremism, more violence, and more killings.

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