A thought experiment illuminates a persistent problem in how some respond to acts of political violence. Suppose a reporter had pressed Abraham Lincoln to explain John Wilkes Booth's rationale for assassination, as if the president bore responsibility for articulating his killer's ideology.
The premise is absurd on its face. Yet it mirrors a pattern that resurfaces whenever political violence occurs. Rather than treating violent acts as breakdowns that demand investigation and accountability, some commentators shift focus to the perpetrator's stated grievances, implicitly asking targets of violence to justify themselves against accusations their attackers have made.
This inversion muddles accountability. When someone commits violence, their motivations belong to them, not to those they target. A victim cannot reasonably be expected to defend against charges lodged by force.
The risk compounds when prominent voices normalize this framework. It suggests that sufficient anger or perceived injury can justify violence, or at minimum, that leaders should answer charges from those who resort to it. Neither proposition holds in a functioning democratic system.
Responding to political violence requires clarity about where responsibility lies. Violence originates with the person who commits it. Their stated reasons may deserve analysis for security and prevention purposes, but they are not legitimate grounds for interrogating the target about their governance, character, or choices.
A healthier response acknowledges that disagreement, even fierce disagreement, belongs in debate spaces. Violence belongs nowhere. Conflating the two, or suggesting they operate on the same spectrum, erodes the basic separation between speech and force that sustains democratic order.
Author James Rodriguez: "The moment we start asking assassination targets to explain why their attackers felt wronged, we've surrendered the fundamental distinction between politics and terror."
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