The True Nature of Political Crime

Does violent speech really provoke violent action? Stephen Sondheim’s darkly political musical Assassins offers a few insights.

The recent events in Tucson, Arizona have prompted a vitriolic debate regarding the use of violent metaphor in current political speech, particularly speech that emanates from right-wing talk-show hosts and Tea Party leaders and supporters. Certainly such speech cultivates a climate of social division and reduces the possibility of finding fruitful solutions to impasses on policy and legislature, but does it actually promote violence?

The situation reminds me of a statistics class that I took as an undergrad, in which a rather groovy west-coast professor undermined the premise of the “gateway theory” surrounding the discussion of marijuana consumption. Media at the time often reported that 99 per cent of heroin users began their drug-taking careers by smoking marijuana. My professor chastised those who cited such statistics, saying they were asking the wrong question altogether. What they should have been considering, he suggested, was how many marijuana users had never tried anything else. After all, probably 100 per cent of heroin users started their drug-taking careers with a glass of milk or a sore-throat lozenge. Correlation is not causation.

The current debate strikes me as peculiar for two reasons. First, focusing on what Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin say on their shows or online seems like an odd surrogate for considering what really needs to be discussed, which is the fact that the U.S. is awash in small arms. (Let’s agree to call a spade a spade here; we’re not just talking about shotguns being used to take out farm-ravaging coyotes.)

Why is free expression the culprit here? Overheated rhetoric aside, surely the unbelievable ease with which one can obtain a Glock semi-automatic pistol (or an Uzi or an AK-47, for that matter) ought to raise a few eyebrows?

This is certainly not a problem for Glock. The company reports that sales increased by 60 per cent in the week following Jared Loughner’s attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Loughner has become an unlikely salesman for the handgun industry.

Second, one is dangerously tempted to wonder why, in the current political climate of fear, exaggerated threat assessment, and lack of effective gun control in most states, there have not been more political assassinations. Especially if the logic that violent speech provokes violent action holds any weight whatsoever.

Stephen Sondheim’s masterful and politically dark musical Assassins, now onstage at the Theatre Centre in Toronto, offers a few insights. Assassinations, for Sondheim, are political and public acts, even when orchestrated by crazed individuals. Whether failed or successful, assassins represent the tawdry flipside of the American dream. In the opening number of Assassins, the “proprietor” of the onstage musical “revue” lures society’s losers to seek fame by moving in a different direction: “No job? Cupboard bare?/One room, no one there?/Hey, pal, don’t despair –/You wanna shoot a president?/C’mon and shoot a president …”

Yet if Sondheim’s proprietor was on the money, it would suggest that there really ought to be more assassinations – or at least more dramatic attempts. But recall that assassinations are distinct from ordinary murder in American parlance and law because the crime is directed at a public figure – usually an official elected to high office. After all, such an event takes political grievance to a whole new level of commitment, for an assassination is no mere effort to off a business associate or consolidate criminal holdings, no matter how spectacular or violent.

And yet passionate political commitment is often what is lacking in the current, critical 18-30 demographic. Politics takes energy and requires a larger and more selfless view of the common good – something that German sociologist Max Weber called “an ethic of responsibility.” Perhaps the same reasons that serve to animate voter apathy also mitigate the motivation of potential assassins.

At the same time, violent crime is largely the province of the young. An aging population is perhaps less likely to yield a crop of assassins, because the older and more educated we are, the more likely we are to achieve some small measure of success that binds our loyalty to the current regime. Or, if found on the have-not side of the wealth divide, we’re trained to internalize the factors contributing to our failure. Not without reason does Sondheim evoke the character of Willy Loman, the salesman whose death commands that “attention must be paid.”

In ancient Greece, Plato worried that poetry and theatre were inherently subversive, because such activity inevitably led to the seductive inflammation of our passions. Moreover, he warned that such aroused passions might provoke dangerous imitation. These concerns form the basis for the authoritarian logic behind censorship, which is usually implemented in the name of our supposed betterment. However, as Sondheim’s musical ably attests, Plato was wrong on both accounts. Indeed, on a cold January evening, huddled together with fellow audience members in an intimate space, and teased into reflection by great music, sharply satirical lyrics, and a tight and talented ensemble cast, I found greater insight into the nature of political crime. And I certainly had more fun than I would have had listening to another round of whining talking heads pontificating about the dangers of violent speech.