New York City comptroller Brad Lander has been attending immigration court in an effort to do oversight on ICE agents. He’s been arrested several times. He’s also witnessed some brutal behavior by ICE officers. On Bluesky, he shared a video clip of an ICE agent assaulting a woman without provocation and throwing her to the ground. She had to go to the hospital.
Lander explained that just before the incident, the woman’s husband had been “abducted by masked ICE agents who did not identify themselves, did not present a warrant, did not give any lawful grounds for his detention.”
Lander then condemned political violence—but by “political violence,” he wasnot referring to the attack on the woman, nor to the abduction of her husband. Instead, he was talking about the shooting at an ICE facility in Texas. Initially, MAGA-bot head of Homeland Security Kristy Noem and other apparatchiks claimed that that shooting was intended as an attack on ICE guards. But the shooter killed one detainee and injured two others; no ICE officers were harmed. It’s quite possible he wanted to murder immigrants, not ICE personnel.
Lander acknowledged the uncertainty by saying, “Regardless of motive or targets, we must condemn political violence.” Still, it’s clear that he chose to condemn “political violence” to make sure that people understand that he is not calling for assaults on or violence against ICE. The political violence that must be condemned is the (possible) attack on the armed agents of the state. The attack committed by the armed agent of the state right in front of Lander in the name of a violent anti immigrant ideology, is also wrong, and Lander vehemently condemns it. But it is somehow not political violence.
Who is entitled to kill
Lander has been engaged in extremely admirable direct action in an effort to protect his constituents and hold this lawless regime accountable. He’s been a moral beacon and deserves a great deal of praise.
I think, though, it’s notable that even someone who is, again, in many ways a moral beacon has trouble seeing “political violence” when it is committed by the state and by those in power against marginalized populations.
“Political violence” is a term that is generally used in reference to individuals committing violence motivated by political ideology—especially violence against politicians or political figures. The Charlie Kirk assassination is the most obvious recent example (though the motive there is still murky.) Following that murder, people across the political spectrum (rightly) denounced political violence (though of course Republicans didn’t exactly ramp down their rhetoric.)
In contrast, the words “political violence” have not been used to describe the attack on Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, a 38 year old cook who was shot and murdered by ICE agents after dropping off his two children at elementary school in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park. ICE agents claim Gonzalez attacked them or tried to run them over when they pulled him over. But the available evidence suggests that that is bullshit.
We don’t know the exact details yet (in large part because ICE is hiding them), but we do know that ICE is targeting and harassing people based on their identities as Latinos and immigrants. In this case, they terrorized a man who was just trying to drop off his kids and then murdered him because he panicked, because he didn’t comply, and/or because he fit the profile of people who our president has decided are rightless and disposable.
The fact is that the most dangerous, most horrific political violence is committed, not by lone shooters, and not even by organized vigilante groups. It’s committed by the state. The assassination attempts on Hitler were political violence. But they were neither as effective, nor as dangerous, nor as fatal, as the Shoah, and anyone who says they were is a Holocaust denier and should be exiled from polite society (or any society.)
The murder of Villegas Gonzalez has prompted a lot of protest and a lot of anger, as it should. It did not, though, lead to a national conversation about political violence, largely because the national political violence conversation people didn’t see it as important. Ezra Klein did not write a high profile essay about how Villegas Gonzalez was doing democracy the right way by working hard and taking care of his kids. There wasn’t a nationally televised memorial service for Villegas Gonzalez, either.
There are always people who protest police violence, and very infrequently, as with George Floyd, a murder by the state will cause widespread protests (always with massive pushback from the right). But in general, political violence committed by those in power isn’t seen as political violence. It’s seen as maybe regrettable, maybe sometimes questionable, but ultimately as just a part of how society is supposed to function. State violence isn’t chaotic or dangerous or a threat to democracy. It’s just…state violence, you know. It’s how things are supposed to be.
Political violence (by the state) is a huge threat to democracy
Ezra Klein and those like him seem to understand viscerally why violent attacks on elites are harmful to the fabric of democratic institutions. People in a democracy need to be committed to a peaceful resolution of disputes; they need to be willing to agree to disagree. Otherwise the whole thing fall apart. That’s a reasonable argument, and one that I even agree with.
But the same people who are very concerned about that one kind of political violence often seem oblivious to the corrosive long term (and short term!) effects of coercive, endless, state violence are treated as trivial. The US has incarcerated millions and millions of people in an ever-expanding gulag; people inside have few rights to speech and are often beaten or assaulted or raped with impunity. As Andrea Ritchie and Mariame Kaba have said, “police are violence workers.” How does it affect our democratic institutions when this kind of vast unfreedom is normalized? When armed agents of the state can shoot people without any consequences, what happens to democratic rights to protest, to dissent, to due process? Might our current authoritarian nightmare have some roots in this long-term escalation of and justification of state violence?
Terrorist political violence is ugly and threatens democracy. But state violence is arguably even uglier, and even more of a threat, not least because it is systematic and backed by the vast resources of the government.
The murder of Charlie Kirk is a sign that the US is sliding away from a democratic consensus against violence. That is chilling. But just as chilling is the fact that the government has unleashed a masked gestapo throughout the country to terrorize and intimidate those of our neighbors who have been marked as undesirable or expendable.
We should denounce political violence—but those denunciations are useless if they carve out exceptions for ICE or police or prisons, or if they designate certain identities and certain marginalized people as fair game for assault or murder. Brad Lander is very honorably standing against that kind of thinking. It’s a sign of how thoroughly our rhetoric and democracy have gone off the rails that even he has trouble recognizing that an ICE officer assaulting a grieving wife is not just shocking and unconscionable, but is political violence, too.