Individualism and the Violence of the Identitarian Left10/04/2025 • Mises Wire • Wanjiru Njoya
Many people were shocked to see the identitarian left erupting in ghoulish celebration when news broke that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated. Students who despised Kirk’s political views were seen chanting, “We got Charlie in the neck.” The British sociologist Frank Furedi argues that these students are not confined to a radical unhinged fringe, nor do they merely represent “the acts of a few morons” as many people suppose.
Rather, the celebrations reflect a broader “fetish of savagery” on the left, driven by academic theories that treat violence as “an act of self-care” for members of venerated identity groups. Furedi warns that, “reactions such as these are not merely the actions of a few infantile or radicalised individuals, it is baked into the modern Leftist world-view.” The left has become so preoccupied with its own sense of moral fervor that today “leftism – especially in its identitarian, post-colonial form – is an explicitly violent ideology.” It regards violence as a “cleansing force” that will help it to purge the wrongs of colonialism, capitalism, and all forms of historical injustice against which modern academics rail. Furedi explains:
They have internalised the sensibility of victimisation, and from this identitarian perspective the so-called victims of the system are thought thoroughly justified in embracing the politics of violence. Just look at their response to the callous cruelty of Kirk’s murder, and observe how the conservative activist has been cast into the role of a non-person and how others are fair game to be targeted.
As the ideological standard bearers of the left descend into openly endorsing the death of their opponents and the destruction of what they see as an oppressive civilization, it becomes increasingly difficult for libertarians to defend the doctrine of individual liberty without being cast into the same ideological camp as the identitarians. The individualism of the “me, me, me” left has helped to drive the poisonous identitarian philosophy in which “misgendering is violence,” “racism is violence,” and “silence is violence.”
The term “individualism” has in any case always been viewed with wariness by conservatives, due to its overtones implying selfishness and hubris, and its seeming disregard for social norms and traditional values, and this only gets worse when the self-obsessed left endorse violence against anyone they perceive as conservative. In this context, defending individual liberty seems to many conservative observers to be nothing short of suicidal, as it seems to require them to “tolerate” the values and lifestyles of the communists whose goal is to destroy Western civilization. Some conservatives are already expressing doubts as to the value of protecting free speech when it extends to the free speech of the ghouls rejoicing in Kirk’s assassination.
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Source:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/individualism-and-violence-identitarian-left
