Yes.

Is that a universal truth? Maybe not. If, in 1939, you found yourself in rifle range of Hitler, and there was no opportunity to steal him away, imprison him, or humiliate him in such a way as to defang his power - the only option to is to assassinate him and thus likely end or quicken the end of the suffering of millions (tens of millions if we count the generational suffering he wrought), or at the very least bring some measure of justice to those who had already suffered under his regime, is there an moral alternative other than taking the shot?

The liberal will probably say yes, we must leave opportunity to vote out fascism, or whatever other nonsense. I say no, and I think even the most pacifist of anarchists would agree. Certainly I consider myself a pacifist anarchist. Sometimes, when there’s simply no alternative due to system and circumstance, killing a human is more moral than not - as an absolute, utter last resort, in only the most dire of circumstances.

Liberals will say, no, we must have a white line rule of “murder bad.” If we all just follow this white line rule, then we won’t have murder, the world will be better. Maybe there’ll still be suffering, but at least we’ll have removed one of the worse crimes. We’ll have ended genocide!

Except, fascists exist, and fascists don’t believe that murder is bad. They love murder. Not just fascists, many sorts of people love murder: religious fundamentalists, capitalists, tankies, racial supremacists, etc. Did liberalism and its virtues prevent the rise of these people and the murders and genocides they committed?

“But, MLK! But, Gandhi! Their pacifist movements wrought incredible change, ended racial and imperialist violence!” Did they?

MLK has been defanged by white liberals. He wasn’t a pacifist, and the civil rights movement wasn’t a pacifist one. Read his famous letter :

freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor

Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

He criticized the white liberal directly:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

Or from a speech

“But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.”

He points out that the violence is the last resort and the natural result of the social conditions and injustice. Some liberals might argue that the agitation creates the violence, when in fact it’s the opposite - injustice naturally leads itself to violence from the oppressed.

And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

As for Gandhi, he too saw violence as a valid weapon to be wielded in the name of justice or the defense of others. When asked by a general, “What do I do in Kashmir?” He responded:

You’re going in to protect innocent people, and to save them from suffering and their property from destruction. To achieve that you must naturally make full use of every means at your disposal.

(Slender Was The Thread: Kashmir Confrontation 1947-48)

A liberal might argue, political violence is wrong, it makes the situation worse, it creates more strife. Perhaps, but, if it’s happening, it’s not happening in a vacuum, and in the case of what this article is obviously about - the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson - the violence is a pre-existing condition to the assassination itself.

Americans are famously ill-treated by their abysmal healthcare system, and the parasitic health insurance companies are the vampires throwing their weight and lobbyists around to maintain the exploitative system that leads to American suffering. Americans pay more for healthcare than the rest of the western world, only to have worse health outcomes, wait in line longer, and get lower quality treatment less often. If Americans try to improve their lot, it reduces the profit margins of health insurance companies, an intolerable outcome, and so they spend their ill-gotten profits on leveraging the government to protect their profits.

When unelected, unaccountable corporations and their leaders determine your healthcare outcomes, what options do you have left? You can’t vote them out, you can’t possibly challenge their lobbying budgets, you aren’t friends with a senator, what can you do?

A riot is the language of the unheard and violence is the language of the hopeless. October 7th, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Nicholas Kelly, time and time again throughout history, when people are left with no recourse, they choose violence.

Should we blame them? Perhaps. Perhaps we even maintain the illusion of institutional sanctity by bringing upon them the full force of the “justice” system. This changes nothing about the conditions that led to the violence - where there was one, there will be another. Nicholas Kelly didn’t lead the only slave rebellion. Oct 7, horrifying as it was, wasn’t the first act of anti-imperialist violence in the region and if Israel continues to randomly blow up civilians in neighboring countries it obviously won’t be the last. What better way to radicalize a population than killing all of its women and children?

If liberals are truly interested in preventing political violence, the only option is to do what leftists have been saying since forever: seek the improvement of material conditions.

As the material conditions of Americans degrade further, the natural end state of a country with more guns than people will make itself known.

Personally I find this very sad. I wish Americans can find a path to justice and peace that doesn’t involve random assassinations and bloodshed. I’m cynical that it’ll happen in my lifetime, but it’s what I hope for.

For those like me that want to engage in direct action but don’t want to engage in violence against humans, I strongly recommend looking into the efforts of organizations like Food Not Bombs. In particular, the new “Anarchist Cookbook” by Keith McHenry , available to read for free, is an excellent analysis on the effectiveness of peaceful direct action. An alternative analysis on the effectiveness of targeted violence is “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” by Andreas Malm.