The Fantasy of Assassination Culture

In political violence, Americans see a future of order and control.

- Sam Adler-Bell

AT A PRESS CONFERENCE on October 21, House Speaker Mike Johnson—appearing in his usual mien: bespectacled, boyishly coiffed, and vaguely offended, like a ninth-grader confronted with a pop quiz on picture day—confidently blamed the left for advancing an “assassination culture” that is endangering American public servants. The comment itself was unremarkable. Since the September 10 murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump and the GOP have labeled antifascist activists “domestic terrorists” and called on the FBI to investigate groups engaged in “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”

What was a bit surprising—galling, really—was the occasion for Johnson’s remark: A reporter had asked him about an upstate New York man charged with threatening the life of the Democratic House minority leader. “Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC. I cannot allow this terrorist to live," 34-year-old Christopher Moynihan allegedly texted an associate. “Even if I am hated he must be eliminated. I will kill him for the future.” It would not be Moynihan's first hostile act toward an emblem of U.S. democracy. On January 6, 2021, he was one of the first rioters to break the police line and breach the Senate chamber; later, he was one of the more than 1,500 pardoned by Trump on his first day in office.

Pointing out MAGA hypocrisy is a chump's game; likewise, looking for consistency, integrity, or the spark of human charity behind Speaker Johnson's tortoiseshell frames. For sanity's sake, I will state the plain facts: A man pardoned by the sitting president after engaging in a riot on his behalf was apprehended a second time, for allegedly threatening to kill a leading Democrat—and this, according to the Speaker of the House, is the fault of leftists. Here we have escaped the confines of syllogistic reason altogether; discerning the relationship of one event to another is merely a matter of whim and will.