Luigi Mangione. Rodney Hinton Jr. Elias Rodriguez. Tyler Robinson.

A health insurance CEO. A cop. A German IDF volunteer and Israeli diplomat. A violent far-right ideologue.

The last few years have been rife with political violence. The vast majority of it is carried out against the innocent—the genocide in Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of the United States, school shootings linked to right-wing death cults, seemingly random violence against queer people—but there is only ever outcry against “political violence” in the abstract when the target is powerful, and increasingly only when the target is right-wing.

It has been crazy-making to see the response to the death of Charlie Kirk. The insistence that the shooter must be one of the other guys is part of that, with increasingly sensational claims that he must be a leftist or must be a groyper based on, in either case, almost nothing. The fawning eulogies even by some socialists, uplifting a person who doxxed opponents and called for lynchings as a paragon of free speech and respectful debate. The complete drowning out of what appears to be another school shooting linked to right-wing death cults, although what kind of “online extremist network” was involved is just speculation.

In the end, if the evidence presented in the indictment is to be believed—who the hell knows—along with Klippenstein’s reporting the alleged shooter is a bisexual man with a transgender partner, the story is much simpler and maybe less satisfying. He was a random decent person who saw a popular figure calling for the lynching of him and his loved ones, and saw no way to combat that except to kill that figure. Who has not had exactly that thought? Maybe the answer is most people—but to me it is relatable.

We don’t know the motive for the killing of a United Healthcare CEO, but I think it is safe to assume it is the same reason we all celebrated it.

We can infer why someone who was just shown the footage of his son being murdered by an acquitted police officer would kill a cop.

We can understand why an opponent of Israel’s genocide would target its diplomats.

Mao wrote that war is simply politics with bloodshed. I would build on that and say that when there is no apparent political alternative, no apparent political means to oppose threats, the continuation of politics through bloodshed is inevitable. Democrats and Republicans alike kneel before health insurance money, back police unequivocally, violently protect Israel’s genocide, and—at least in the case of the presumptive Democratic frontrunner for President—agree with Kirk’s targeting of trans people.

Of course, these assassinations accomplish nothing in the long run. If for no other reason, this ineffectualness is why Marxists oppose individual terrorism. But we also should not view these actions as abstract moral failings and instead understand why they occur, that they are a damning indictment of the political system we exist in, and if we’re honest in part a measure of the marginality of socialist politics.

If we wish to end political violence, it is not enough to proclaim our opposition to it. We have to understand why it occurs—again that it is merely a continuation of politics through bloodshed—and provide an alternative. Both an alternative to politics that demand blood, and an alternative to bloodshed for those who oppose them.

-L.K.