Dear Reader –– I read Kristin DuMez’ blog this morning and wanted to pass it along. It’s about the mean-spirited (and totally false) narrative promoted by many on the “right” that the recent political assassination of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Horton were motivated by radical left-wing hatred.
Quoting the assassin, Vance Boelter:
“I did it for love’s sake.”
DuMez writes:
“I’ve been horrified by a sense of the evil that seems to be overtaking us.
We know that the perpetrator, Vance Boelter, was a devout Christian. We have sermons on YouTube, we know that he went to Christ for the Nations Institute, that he was a committed anti-abortion activist (“pro-life” doesn’t seem quite right in this case), that he was steeped in the teachings of the New Apostolic Reformation, and that he seemed to friends and acquaintances like a pretty normal Christian guy.
We also know that he had a list of dozens of potential Democratic targets. Presumably, if he had his way, the death toll would be much higher.
Compounding the horror of this situation, we watched some of our nation’s leaders respond not with grief but with political propaganda. Here’s a glimpse, from CNN.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah repeatedly suggested that Boelter is is not just a leftist but a “Marxist” and linked him to Walz in an X post: “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” Lee also wrote: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”
Elon Musk also promoted a post linking the shooter to the left, writing, “The far left is murderously violent.”
Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio added in his own X post about the flyers: “The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying.”
Donald Trump Jr. on Monday wagered that that shooter “went after someone that didn’t just blindly follow Democrat radical leftist dogma.” He added: “It’s scary stuff, but it seems to all be coming from the left.”
Influencers went even further, with some of the most prominent and recognizable ones suggesting without any evidence that Walz was somehow involved in the attack. “Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?,” asked right-wing figure Mike Cernovich on X.
As we discussed on this week’s Convocation Unscripted, this rhetoric wasn’t just coming from leaders. Ordinary folks followed their lead, posting misinformation and then refusing to correct when it became clear that this man was not in fact a leftist, but rather a conservative Christian Trump supporter.
There are layers of tragedy here. There is the personal loss—the loss of parents, colleagues, friends, of good people. There is the national tragedy: politically motivated killings are a dangerous escalation of an already precarious political moment.
But there is also a moral tragedy. What struck me within the day was how we have already been conditioned to normalize a heinous act like this. Even if we didn’t wish to be. It wasn’t long ago that an event like this would have caused widespread soul-searching: How has it come to this? What can we do to reverse course? How can we deescalate? How can we bring goodness out of evil? Instead, we see the death of two people immediately spun into disinformation and propaganda. And few of us are surprised. We’ve come to expect this sort of thing. Where is our outrage? Our genuine and profound sense of outrage, our calling out evil, our refusal to allow something like this to be normalized?”
Political assassinations are, of course, illegal; the hate speech, gaslighting, and disinformation are not. If the U.S. and its people no longer care about facts, or finding the truth, it’s not at all clear how we can govern ourselves for the common good. Among the “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of gun violence, we should call on what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” “Honest Abe” would not countenance the kind of baseless blame so recklessly tossed about by Mike Lee, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and others.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports that over the past decade, right-wing extremists committed 76% of extremist-related murders, with left-wing extremists being responsible for only a small fraction. The ADL’s 2024 report confirms that, for the third consecutive year, all documented extremist murders were tied to right-wing extremism. A Reuters’ investigation also found that most deadly political violence since 2016 has come from the right, often targeting individuals rather than property.
The truth, uncomfortable though it may be, is that most of the political violence right now — unlike the 1960s — is coming from the so-called “right.” And it’s so very wrong for America.