I would urge you all to read this Twatter post. It’s a tad long, but what I say below the fold will make a great deal more sense if you do.
“I thank Nirit for doing this important detective work because it is not easy to meticulously track and report daily on the increasingly deranged rhetoric and actions of lunatics hell-bent on destroying modern civilization.”
Any student of history will recognize this phenomenon appearing as early as the late 19th century with the rise of the Anarchist movement. Specifically, what emerged was the Ego Anarchist, someone who felt as though they had been “dispossessed” by society, and struck out at a well-known figure of the ruling class. It didn’t matter that the victim had nothing to do with the assassin’s situation; they were symbols, and therefore targets. Here’s a short list, to illustrate the point:
- 1894: French President Carnot stabbed to death by Santo Cesario, an Italian baker’s apprentice;
- 1897: Spanish Premier Antonio Canovas shot to death by Michel Angiollilo, an ex-convict jailed for printing subversive literature;
- 1898: Empress Elizabeth of Austria murdered by Luigi Lucheni, a vagrant;
- 1899 King Humbert of Italy shot to death by Gaetano Bresci (despite his Italian name, an American from New Jersey);
- 1901: U.S. president William McKinley shot to death by Leon Szolgosz, an unemployed Polish worker;
- 1905: Russian Grand Duke Sergei (and everyone in his coach) blown up by a bomb thrown by Vassili Kaliaev, an anarchist;
- 1912: Spanish Premier Jose Canalejas shot dead by Manuel Pardinas, Anarchist;
- …and there were countless other mass murders (almost all by bombs): in the French Parlement, restaurants, stations and streets, and others during failed attempts at assassination (where the intended victim survived but the people around him didn’t).
All these “Ego” Anarchists had responded to the principle of Anarchy — “The Idea”, as Barbara Tuchman described it in the Proud Tower — and its primary focus was on destruction of a state or institution, perpetrated by a lone individual guided by near-insanity or else a mind infused with hatred for “the System” and its leaders.
We’re seeing it now, all over again: Charlie Kirk of Turning Point, assassinated by Tyler Robinson; Brian Thompson of United Healthcare, assassinated by Luigi Mangione, and various other such attempted assassinations.
In the case of the 19th-century anarchists, their actions were fueled and endorsed by radical publications, and today’s merry little crop of heroes don’t need actual printed publications because they have the Internet and social media. Likewise, 19th-century Anarchism moved away from individual acts towards collective acts (such as the Terror Brigade of the Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia, who assassinated over half a dozen Russian political officials). It’s only a question of time before the BLM/Antifa organizations start doing the same.
You heard it here first.
Besides the attacks on individuals by these scurrilous nutbags, there have been dozens of attacks in Europe by bombs, guns and cars that murdered hundreds of random victims just between 1970 to 2025.
I had a close encounter with one of them in Bologna Italy, where I worked from 1978-1980. While I was there, the Brigate Rosse kidnapped and murdered former premier Aldo Moro, and I was stopped several times by carabinieri on my way to and from work while they were searching for him. The hotel where I stayed catered primarily to businessmen, and one rainy evening the bomb squad disposed of a suitcase bomb left in the semicircular driveway in front of the main entrance. The Rosse also kneecapped several business men in Bologna during that time, and I quickly changed from my business dress to the blue pants and workman’s smock of the hourly workforce.
When the Brigate Rosse were finally run to ground, cornered in a house, the leader’s girlfriend fought to the death in a gunfight, but the leader fell on his knees before the police, blubbering and begging for his life. Most of Moro’s killers were out of prison in 11-15 years, which makes me think anarchism/terrorism doesn’t have sufficient disincentives in too many court systems. We need more of these cowardly scum going to places like Supermax Florence for life when they murder someone, and surely, since we are all equal, hmmm? the likes of BLM and their financiers should never have been given a race card pass for their wanton destruction and terror.
Back to Bologna –
My hotel was a short way from the train station, and I walked over every Thursday to get an English language magazine or newspaper, and more Saturdays than not, being fascinated with the antiquities of Europe and curious, caught a train from the Bologna station to somewhere else for the weekend. The factory where I was working and most of Bologna always shut down for August holidays, the resort areas were mobbed, (the locals joked the beaches were so full of Germans you didn’t know where the water was until you felt wet) so I went home for that month. I left on Wednesday, and the following Saturday, August 2, 1980, a bomb went off in the Bologna Railway Station, killing 88 people and wounding hundreds. More often than not, while in Bologna, I would have been in that station on Saturday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_massacre
The thing that disturbs me most about recent troubles is that unlike in past times it is not simply eco-whacko-type groups fomenting and praising violence. It’s much of the Democrat Party and most of legacy media.
Look at the way stories are spun about Mangione, for example. And almost any violence can be condoned at worst, whitewashed at best by the legacy media as long as the perpetrators are “oppressed” and not “oppressors”. It’s like the Democrat Party, CNN, NYT, WAPO, et al, are lionizing the anarchists.
I know the old canard “this time it’s different” is frequently debunked … but this time it sure feels different. Way too much romanticizing of this kind of stuff in formerly respected institutions.
JC
Exactly. As I noted in the post, over time the individual actions are replaced by concerted efforts by organizations (mostly of the Socialist type), and always encouraged to do so by media, whether printed or (now) electronic.
Andy Ngo concurs!
1. There are two possibilities with AI. One is that it’s massively oversold, and AI will never reliably be anything but an overgrown calculator or search engine. I suspect this is the case; we will be told that the turning point to AI is “within sight” forever, as long as the investment money keeps poring in. At some point, the bubble will burst, and these “data centers” will either collapse into disuse or will be adapted to some other purpose. I believe there is far more to human intelligence and understanding than mere computing power wedded with masses of information. There is an undefinable spark to intelligence that comes from the divine that a machine cannot replicate.
Personally, I’d endorse simply destroying the internet entirely. And no, I’m not kidding. And yes, I know the contradictions there; don’t care. Being human means being in contradiction with oneself. It is inherent. It’s hard to argue that the internet, and all that has grown with it, is a net boon to humankind. The downsides far outweigh the upsides, IMHO.
That said, the second possibility, however unlikely, is that if indeed the computers become “sentient,” whatever that means, they will kill us all. That is not an unreasonable possibility. It is not an unreasonable position to believe that AI poses a potential existential threat to humanity.
2. However, as noted above, the bigger problem is that the left, and it’s cheerleaders in the media, have normalized and made acceptable the use of threats or actual violence in the pursuit of political goals. And that’s a problem that goes much deeper than AI. And I say that as a gunowner (I know, but it’s not like the feds don’t already know) and a deep believer in the deterrent/minuteman theory of the 2nd Amendment. If those of us who have those hundreds of millions of guns understand, if we actually have to use them for that purpose, the 2nd Am. has failed. It is our preparation and readiness to use them, as a LAST RESORT, that makes the deterrence effective.
The problem is that violence for the left is no longer a last resort; it is normal. And the mainstream democratic party excuses and embraces it, all while the say they condemn violence. Once that happens, it spreads; at some point, bombing, shooting, or beating your opponents for whatever issue will be seen – perhaps may already be seen – as acceptable and normal. If you claim Trump is “literally Hitler,” it is OK to shoot him or his supporters, or so the argument goes.
That’s not a new revelation; see the “dial/lightswitch” analogy.
Unless this is tendency to violence is restrained, this can’t end anyway but badly. Kim’s list of incidents regarding anarchists is quite real. But make no mistake, the modern left – the limp sycophants who currently control the democratic party and the even crazier base – are not anarchists, they are budding tyrants, who believe in their cause and want very much to require you to endorse their cause as well. If you don’t, they will happily jail you or kill you, and justify same in support of their cause. They say they are trying to save “democracy;” that could not be further from the truth. For them, it’s about power; they intend to take it, make sure they never lose it, and will use it to attempt to impose their version of an ideal society. Those who attempt to do so always are totalitarians, whether from the left or the right makes no difference.
That Tweet mentions If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I happen to know his father, who is extremely smart. I’m pretty sure Eliezer is too. I haven’t read the book (I don’t have the energy), but It’s been taken seriously, even by people who disagree strongly. And I can’t dismiss the idea out of hand.
Because this whole industrial/electronic/cyber civilization is being done for the first time. Nobody can know what will happen. We’ve already invented addictive drugs (an example of a very damaging self-inflicted process). We’ve made huge mistakes in policy (nutrition “expert” Ancel Keyes may have killed more people than Mao Tse-tung, and don’t get me started on “global warming”). Informational and decision-making processes have been massively infected with self-reinforcing distortions.
AI is immensely powerful, and therefore valuable – and potentially uncontrollable. That’s scary.
I do agree that the “normalization” of ego-driven “public” violence is a serious problem.