Ayers Dohrn’s childhood “in the revolutionary underground” mainly haunts the periphery of what is otherwise a very accomplished biography of his parents—Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young arrives just as the specter of political violence (by which we always mean vaguely left-wing political violence) once again haunts American editorial boards. The New York Times frets over “what can feel like a scary, chaotic moment.” The Washington Post bemoans “the drumbeat of violence against political figures,” one it claims “has been growing louder for years.” Nearly every Substack newsletter, subscription-based podcast, and self-identified centrist or “heterodox” pundit in the Anglophone world went apoplectic after Hasan Piker had the temerity to appear on a podcast and correctly conclude that many people cheered the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson because health insurance companies are gluttonous leeches profiting on American pain and death. The Free Press is so disturbed by the purportedly “mainstream” belief that “violence may even be justified to thwart” American capitalism that it pines for the days when “celebrated great industrialists” like the virulent and influential antisemite Henry Ford “were household names spoken with pride.” After one very close call during the summer of 2024, several people have even made cartoonishly inept attempts to murder the president of the United States. What disturbs the sensible center of American political discourse most is that, should somebody succeed, it is very likely that a huge number of Americans would only find fault with the assassin for provoking a potential backlash, if they found any fault at all. . . ."
A Better World Is Not Possible | Los Angeles Review of Books
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