Cobbett's Snuff

 The New Yorker ran a piece yesterday about the age of political assassination we seem to have entered—represented by the multiple attempts that have been made on Trump's life; the killing of Charlie Kirk; and the murder of the United Health CEO Brian Thompson just over a year ago. 

The author of the article rightly criticizes the "cult of personality" that has sprung up around the alleged Brian Thompson assassin, Luigi Mangione; but it appears that cult is here to stay regardless.

Mangione—the piece notes—still regularly receives fan mail. Frequent panegyrics to him still appear on social media (and will likely increase in volume when his trial begins next month). A reported 70% of Americans believe that, in some way, the health insurance industry brought the killing on themselves. And so on. 

Of course, most of the sophisticated Left does not come out and endorse the murder outright, in the manner of various online posters. Instead, they express a more oily version of the same sentiment. They say things like: "maybe political violence is the wrong approach, but—" and whatever follows the "but" ends up sounding an awful lot like an endorsement. 

I think it's pretty disgraceful that the Left still insists on glamorizing the craven act of shooting an unarmed father of two on a city street. I also think that attributing some larger meaning to this murder—or suggesting that Thompson somehow deserved it or bears responsibility for it—amounts practically to an apologia for it, regardless of what disclaimers people provide. 

That doesn't mean I support over-charging this murder as an act of "terrorism," or seeking the death penalty in the case. I don't believe in the death penalty for anyone. But of course, you can criticize prosecutorial excesses in any case without approving of the underlying alleged crimes. 

Yet, many on the Left continue to fail to make this elementary distinction. 

I suspect the reason for this lies in the online attention economy, and its constant rewarding of the most provocative and "radical" takes on any subject. 

(Though I think it's interesting to note that no equivalent cult of personality has sprung up around the would-be assassins of Trump. I suspect this is because the instincts of the sort of mob that celebrates a public murder are always fundamentally cowardly; and there is perhaps a craven sense on their part that "if you aim for a king you best not miss.")

I wish that the Left would not always confuse mere outrageousness with genuine radicalism though. We would do well to recall, in these times, the noble example of Shelley. Surely, no one could have been more radical than he. Shelley endorsed every provocative left-wing opinion of his day. But he was also unswerving in his moral commitment to nonviolence. 

Indeed, so convinced was Shelley of the need for pacifist means, that he actually regarded some radical figures like William Cobbett as even worse enemies to the popular cause than the government—because they encouraged the people to take violent revenge. 

Sometimes the poor are damned indeed

  To take, -- not means for being blessed, --

But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed

From which the worms that it doth feed   

  Squeeze less than they before possessed, wrote Shelley. 

So many of the people who applaud the murder of Brian Thompson do so by invoking that same "weed"—"Cobbett's snuff." They say: well, what about all the people whom the big health insurance companies have sentenced to death by denying them coverage? What about all the people who die because they can't afford health care? Isn't this just an eye for an eye? 

Shelley acknowledged that people may indeed feel that such logic of retaliation is justified. In his poem in response to the Peterloo Massacre in 1819—when the government opened fire on protesting workers in Manchester—Shelley acknowledged that, in the wake of these murders, people would no doubt be:

Fiercely thirsting to exchange

Blood for blood -- and wrong for wrong --

Yet, he pleaded with the people: 

Do not thus when ye are strong.

In his poem "Peter Bell the Third"—in which the line about "Cobbett's snuff" appears—Shelley appends a note in which he compares the arch-conservative Peter Bell of the poem (a stand-in for Wordsworth and similar political turncoats—Southey, e.g.) to the radical William Cobbett. Indeed, the latter—Shelley argues—is perhaps even worse than the conservatives: 

"Cobbett is [...] more mischievous than Peter," writes Shelley, "because he pollutes a holy and now unconquerable cause with the principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one ridiculous and odious."

So too—far from lauding the political assassins of our time—we should be condemning them as worse enemies to the Left than even the bought propagandists for the right. All these people claiming to take powers of life and death into their hands on behalf of a supposed progressive cause are in fact its worst opponents—for they "pollute" a noble cause "with the principles of legitimate murder." 

Let us think on this—before we go around penning any more panegyrics to accused murderers.