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Left-wing violence is a myth
Supposedly “violent” acts by the oppressed are, by definition, forms of self-defence
8 October, 2025
By Titania McGrath
History is replete with violent figures on the right. One thinks immediately of aristocratic demagogue Oswald Mosley, Latinx soldier Augusto Pinochet and free speech activist Adolf Hitler.
But recently, the conservative media has been trying to claim that the left also has a problem with political violence. This is the most extreme form of gaslighting because the very concept of violence is inextricably tethered to systemic power structures. So, when someone on the left calls for those on the right to be attacked or celebrates when they are killed, it just proves that they are progressive and compassionate.
We on the left represent the oppressed, and all supposedly “violent” acts by the oppressed are, by definition, forms of self-defence. If a bigot indulges in hate speech — for instance, by suggesting that there are only two sexes or that women with testicles should be excluded from sororities, convents and harems — this amounts to a form of verbal genocide that must be resisted.
The accusation of “violence” in such cases serves as a discursive weapon to delegitimise the emancipatory actions through which subaltern bodies interrupt tyranny. In other words, to accuse a left-wing activist of “violence” is, in itself, a form of violence.
Let’s put this simply. To speak of “violence” in the context of liberatory struggle is to reinscribe the epistemic grammar of control, for “violence” when enacted by the subjugated is in fact the rupture of the normative order that itself is constituted by colonial expropriation, racial capitalism and the cisheteropatriarchal disciplining of bodies.
Marginalised communities, positioned within the necropolitical horizon of systemic disposability, cannot “do” violence; they can only enact counter-hegemonic gestures of refusal. To loot, to riot, to punch, to kill is not to transgress an ethical limit but to expose the fiction that the oppressor’s supremacy is incontestable.
What some call “left-wing violence”, therefore, is more properly understood as a praxis of redemptive kinetics: a loving counter-force that reorientates the subject away from domination and towards the nexus of justice.
And if you don’t agree, that just proves that you’re a Nazi who deserves to be punched.
This is satire, obviously. The writer is Andrew Doyle, "Titania McGrath" is a parody character.
Left-wing violence is a myth
Supposedly “violent” acts by the oppressed are, by definition, forms of self-defence
8 October, 2025
By Titania McGrath
History is replete with violent figures on the right. One thinks immediately of aristocratic demagogue Oswald Mosley, Latinx soldier Augusto Pinochet and free speech activist Adolf Hitler.
But recently, the conservative media has been trying to claim that the left also has a problem with political violence. This is the most extreme form of gaslighting because the very concept of violence is inextricably tethered to systemic power structures. So, when someone on the left calls for those on the right to be attacked or celebrates when they are killed, it just proves that they are progressive and compassionate.
We on the left represent the oppressed, and all supposedly “violent” acts by the oppressed are, by definition, forms of self-defence. If a bigot indulges in hate speech — for instance, by suggesting that there are only two sexes or that women with testicles should be excluded from sororities, convents and harems — this amounts to a form of verbal genocide that must be resisted.
The accusation of “violence” in such cases serves as a discursive weapon to delegitimise the emancipatory actions through which subaltern bodies interrupt tyranny. In other words, to accuse a left-wing activist of “violence” is, in itself, a form of violence.
Let’s put this simply. To speak of “violence” in the context of liberatory struggle is to reinscribe the epistemic grammar of control, for “violence” when enacted by the subjugated is in fact the rupture of the normative order that itself is constituted by colonial expropriation, racial capitalism and the cisheteropatriarchal disciplining of bodies.
Marginalised communities, positioned within the necropolitical horizon of systemic disposability, cannot “do” violence; they can only enact counter-hegemonic gestures of refusal. To loot, to riot, to punch, to kill is not to transgress an ethical limit but to expose the fiction that the oppressor’s supremacy is incontestable.
What some call “left-wing violence”, therefore, is more properly understood as a praxis of redemptive kinetics: a loving counter-force that reorientates the subject away from domination and towards the nexus of justice.
And if you don’t agree, that just proves that you’re a Nazi who deserves to be punched.
This is satire, obviously. The writer is Andrew Doyle, "Titania McGrath" is a parody character.
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