SEPTEMBER 26, 2025 | OPINION | By Leo Saunders
My high school career was marked by my growing disillusionment with the American political and legal system, and even more so with some of its underlying values. As I read about past government injustices sometimes perpetrated in the name of liberty, I felt forced to question the very framework I had been raised in, culminating in a dramatic political shift. I abandoned my youth’s pacifism and came to believe violence was an effective tool for social change.
I parroted revolutionary slogans to my classmates. When debates turned to gun control, I repeated the phrase, “under no pretext,” a shortened version of Karl Marx’s warning against disarming the working class. I became enchanted with the writings of political philosopher Frantz Fanon, who espoused a radical form of liberation, sure that nonviolent progress was unrealistic in America—that the system was irreparably broken.
My opinions only began to change when I was finally confronted with the dangers and reductionism of my own thinking. In March 2022, while biking through my neighborhood on my way to school, I noticed a series of posters plastered to street signs warning of a “killer” in the neighborhood and the threat she posed. I needed only moments to realize who the signs were referring to: my mother, an abortion provider.
I called my father to tell him about the signs, and he soon texted back to let me know he had security camera footage of the posters, a small group milling around, glancing up towards the camera.
Later that day, my mother called me. After telling me she was okay, she went on to describe how some people had entered her clinic illegally, chanting her name and saying they knew what she did. She managed to slip out, but I wondered what might have happened had they seen her. Rationally or not, I feared the worst.
With a morbid sense of curiosity, I Googled her name to see what might appear. After some digging, I found several message boards that mentioned her personal details, with posts describing her as a participant in genocide. The boards were littered with casual threats against her life and wishes for her death. The only way to stop her work, they believed, was to kill her.
Although my mother remained remarkably calm despite the clinic invasion, my father was outraged. I won’t deny that I, too, wondered what I might have done had the visit to our house included an attempted entry. After the events, we were provided with a budget to improve our house’s security features. My mother, who describes biking to work as her primary form of exercise, began driving instead to mitigate the concerns of her coworkers. In a visceral way I had never experienced before, I began to live in fear.
I worried that the clinic break-in might represent only the first in a series of escalations. Rationally or not, I was reminded of the assassination of George Tiller, a provider of high-risk later abortions and a personal friend of my mother’s. In 2009, while attending a church service, Dr. Tiller was gunned down at point-blank range by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist. Roeder stood by his actions, claiming the killing was a necessary defense to protect “preborn children.”
I don’t mean to equate the invasion of my mother’s clinic with the assassination of George Tiller. To do so would be unfair, but I was unable to avoid comparisons. I told my parents I wasn’t affected by what had happened, but privately, I was tormented by thoughts of what might come next. The narratives of righteous defense presented by anti-abortion activists struck me as absurd. How could they believe that they were saving some lives as they actively sought to end others? The violent language they used seemed so dishonest to me, and on some level, it forced me to look in the mirror.
Although I still hesitated to outright condemn political violence, I began to hold some private doubts. At times, I convinced myself that if the other side used political violence, the political left should not feel the need to rise above it. Most of the time, though, I was shaken by the fear that the threat of violence had instilled in me. Still, I saw no better option – what choice was there to change the inequities of our system but violence?
It took until late 2024 for me to fully disavow political violence. The language used by my classmates following the alleged assassination of Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione revealed the irony of my own beliefs. The callous words of my classmates and friends echoed the rhetoric I had read about my mother on the anti-abortion message boards. No doubt, the healthcare insurance industry is riddled with problems, and I was as quick to condemn it as anybody, but the ability by my peers to readily accept violence disgusted me in a way it never had before. Celebrating an assassination felt foreign, not as a matter of politics but one of humanity. Although I agree great harm was done at the hands of Thompson’s corporation, the certainty with which my peers condemned him as an individual shocked me. The willingness to discard the rule of law entirely seemed like a dangerous line to cross.
Although most Americans understand the inherent threat posed by political violence, celebrating these deaths has become more acceptable. A YouGov poll found that liberals are far more likely to celebrate the deaths of political figures than conservatives, with younger Americans more likely to celebrate than older ones. The same pattern holds true in regards to the justification of political violence. Those opinions are still far from the majority, but any rise towards the mainstream strikes me as a dangerous trend.
According to the same poll, both conservatives and liberals are less likely to condemn violence which aligns with their goals. It is far easier to dismiss tragedies when they can be justified. I do not believe that the men and women who invaded my mother’s clinic did so out of hate for her. In fact, they strongly believed they were doing the right thing. Likewise, Roeder was certain that his murder of Tiller was the right thing. In his Goodreads review of Ted Kaczynski’s “Industrial Society and Its Future,” Luigi Mangione included a quote: “‘Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.”
I believe all these stances on violence are wrong in an essential sense: it is not within the purview of citizens to personally arbitrate the guilt of their fellow countrymen, nor to punctuate their conclusions with a death sentence.
On Sept. 10, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I am not interested in sorting through his many opinions here, because they are irrelevant to the question at hand. Whether Kirk viewed gun deaths as a worthwhile sacrifice for the preservation of the Second Amendment has nothing to do with whether he deserved to die. Finally, I should say I am opposed to any effort made to suppress speech celebrating Kirk’s death.
My question to Colorado College’s students is this: even if we hated Charlie Kirk’s beliefs, do we want to live in the kind of society where the terror of bodily harm defines the boundaries of what we feel comfortable saying? Do we want to live in a society where abortion doctors are killed for doing their jobs because somebody is sure of their guilt?
The next time you open YikYak to celebrate Kirk’s death or wish death upon somebody else, think about the kind of ideology you are engaging in. You may think your cause is righteous—and for all I know, it may be – but your blithe, casual and deadly certainty feels all too similar to the certainty that has made me fear for my mother’s life.