We allow the social stigma around murderous violence to atrophy at our peril.
It would not be unreasonable to conclude that America is incubating a generation that will mature into a horde of marauding barbarians eager to throw their civic inheritance away in a spasm of murderous rage. At least, that’s what the polling is telling us.
“Most voters (68%) think the actions of the killer against Thompson were unacceptable, while 17% found them acceptable,” read an Axios report on Emerson College’s latest survey. The results dovetail with other survey results, which confirm that the taboo against the cold-blooded slaughter of an innocent man in observance of addlebrained theories about capitalism is still operative. But like those other results, Emerson also found that young people are far more inclined toward the catharsis they find in human sacrifice.
“Young voters were far more split,” Axios continued. Forty-one percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 — a plurality — told the college’s pollsters they “find the killer’s actions acceptable.” Just 40 percent of this age cohort said Brian Thompson’s murderer’s bloodletting was either “somewhat” or “completely unacceptable.” Nineteen percent described their outlook toward the killing as “neutral.”
We can infer a fair bit of overlap in these results with the young adults who reacted to the October 7 massacre by siding with Hamas’s executioners and rapists. Surely, this generation’s proximity to educational institutions also contributes to its nihilism. Terrorism is the language of the affluent, comfortable, and bored. But we can also deduce that these young people are liars — at least, insofar as their provocative and transgressive replies to pollsters don’t correspond with an outbreak of ideologically motivated killings.
Social scientists have long been vexed by poll respondents’ penchant for dishonesty when probed with leading inquiries into controversial issues. People lie to pollsters all the time, usually to align themselves with the most socially desirable outlook regardless of their personal beliefs. Still, even if half of America’s young people are not about to mount a campaign of anarchistic terrorism, it’s hardly a comfort that they are responding to social incentives that romanticize killing.
This response from America’s youngest adults may be less anti-social than it is anti-conventional — an incendiary pose to shock their elders. The performance has had its intended effect. Even if that explains what motivates some of these young people, it’s not harmless. For the better part of a year, a small minority within this age group rioted and vandalized, blocked bridges, menaced air traffic, and generally terrorized their fellow citizens in protest against the consequences associated with mass murder.
They did so while operating under the assumption that their goals and methods were popular among their peers. The polling said as much, after all, even if more methodologically sound studies found that the number of young people (to say nothing of everyone else) who genuinely support partisan violence is vanishingly small. And yet, even if that polling was an outgrowth of that generation’s affinity for cheap shock, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. We allow the social stigma around murderous violence to atrophy at our peril.