Political violence has been in the air as far back as I can remember. I was born after the JFK assassination but before the murders of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King and the students at Kent State. I was a kid in Europe when left-wing radicals were kidnapping and murdering politicians and CEOs. I remember walking to school past walls spraypainted with the names of terrorist organizations, and adults whispering about who might be next.
In this country, I covered the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, and Ruby Ridge as a young reporter. I worked with the journalists, like the Village Voice’s James Ridgeway, who had valiantly tried to expose the rise of a violent extreme-right movement. Police violence against ordinary people, mostly people of color, was also a constant, and those crimes were often seen as political—by those who perpetrated them, and by those who fought to stop them.
Fast-forward through the 2010s, the rise of the Oath Keepers in response to a Black president, the nonstop drumbeat of violent rhetoric (and actual violence) from Donald Trump and his allies, and the emergence of anti-Trump violence (including the two would-be assassins). And now Charlie Kirk, assassinated on a college campus in Utah.
I don’t know how to process it all, and I suspect you don’t either. And that’s okay. The hot takes on TV, the online comments, the over-the-top emails and videos that try to tell you that this makes sense somehow, that we know whom to blame, that it proves whatever—they are mostly wrong, and they’ve been wrong as long as this kind of thing has been happening.
One thing I know is that violence against people because of their politics leads to more violence against people because of their politics. Assassins, terrorists, and those who want to scare us with violent rhetoric—they all want us to stop speaking up, stop fighting for the ideas we believe in, stop showing up in public. They always have.
But we don’t have to do what they want.
I’m a journalist, so for me the best way to confront those who want to stop us from speaking is to speak—to report, tell the truth, try to figure out what’s really going on. When the news of the Kirk shooting ricocheted across the internet, I watched my colleagues sprint into action. They sifted through the chaos, the vile online comments, the gut-wrenching videos. They reached out to real people for real thoughts. They focused more on getting it right than getting it first, and they looked for the stories everyone else wasn’t covering—such as the rise, almost immediately, of voices trying to weaponize Kirk’s murder to call for civil war. That’s a story we will continue covering, because it’s vital for the future of the country.
We don’t pretend that we have all the answers, but come what may, we pledge to keep bringing you the facts and standing up for the truth. If you have thoughts or questions, I’d love to hear from you. And thank you so much for everything you do to make Mother Jones what it is.
Respectfully,
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