Hilary Mantel and the assassination of Charlie Kirk: how bien pensant leftists valorise political violence

It sometimes seems that a whole load of socialists think they’d be on the barricades fighting the fascists were it not for their job as a lawyer, professor or journalist

Hilary Mantel, author of some popular historical fiction, was a terrible and unpleasant bigot. But Mantel’s hideous bigotry was the right sort of hideous bigotry, so she got away with it. The BBC even selected some of her hideous bigotry to read out on its ‘Book at Bedtime’ on the radio. A decade ago, when I first encountered Mantel’s unpleasantness, I wrote this:

“In the end all this is fine - I've read the story and it's filled with the sort of bien pensant hatred we've come to expect from the UK's literary elite. It gives us a sort of stage Scouse Irishman as a suitable mirror to Mantel's personal hatreds, a kind of justification for her carefully crafted bigotry:

''It's the fake femininity I can't stand, and the counterfeit voice. The way she boasts about her dad the grocer and what he taught her, but you know she would change it all if she could, and be born to rich people. It's the way she loves the rich, the way she worships them. It's her philistinism, her ignorance, and the way she revels in her ignorance. It's her lack of pity. Why does she need an eye operation? Is it because she can't cry?''

As an analysis of Margaret Thatcher this is useless but as a revealing insight into Hilary Mantel's hateful bigotry it is really valuable. Everything about the paragraph resonates with the dismissal of an inferior (Thatcher) by her superior (Mantel). Just as the working class man in Ms Mantel's little story is shallow, cardboard, a thing to be patronised, Margaret Thatcher is provincial, suburban, a little bit ordinary. In both cases unlike Hilary Mantel. But the working-class terrorist is portrayed as a victim whereas the lower middle-class shopkeeper's daughter who became prime minister is the villain.

Speaking personally, I find it hard to contemplate creating a false history purely from blind - and ignorant - hatred. Not the fictional vehicle of a conversation between a terrorist and a woman whose home he'd barged into - that's a fine basis for a short story. The blind and ignorant hatred is the caricature of Margaret Thatcher, the view that this is the sort of woman - indeed Ms Mantel can barely call her a woman - who is so unlike me as to be a monster. Ms Mantel goes on and on about how Margaret Thatcher wouldn't like her hair, how she doesn't like the way Thatcher walks, her handbag - she casts herself as some sort of Anti-Thatcher, as a thing entirely built from the PM's disapproval.”

Many on the left are ready to indulge fantasies of political violence and, as we’ve seen in reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, to exonerate murderers because their victim held views that the left believe shouldn’t be heard in polite society. In an article about why the ‘abundence’ agenda is something of a leftist delusion, Mike Solana provides a description for the modern socialist fantasists, inheritors of Hilary Mantel’s bigotry:

“Back in July, following an eight-month fetishization of Luigi Mangione on the far left, another gunman in New York City killed several people, including a mother of two school-age kids who happened to work at—uh-oh—Blackstone. It was, unambiguously, a horrifying tragedy. But on the Luigi Left, reaction to the gruesome murders was not only neutral, or ambivalent, but celebratory, and explicitly supportive of the killer. (One prototypical post featured the woman’s image with the word LUIGI’D stamped over her face, along with the caption “Death is not always tragic.”) This was no small group of crazies, either. Some version of the reaction was shared thousands of times across X, Threads, and Bluesky on the grounds that cartoonish caricatures of “the rich” were, in a sense, physically harming the poor. Therefore, killing the rich was an act of self-defense.”

While not everyone on the left was dancing in the streets or cracking open some fizz on hearing of Kirk’s assassination, a great many were and, worse, many of the leftist people who were genuinely shocked still found space to temper their shock with caveats about Kirk’s opinions. For every piece of honest anger, there were a hundred sneering posts or arguments that, like the rape victim in a short skirt, Kirk brought his murder upon himself by holding the wrong views.

The reason the left has a problem, however, is that people like Hilary Mantel who write beautifully crafted bigotry are celebrated even when they are offering a wet dream about a political assassination. When the BBC chose 'The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher' as a story to read out they did so because they thought this celebration of political violence and hatred would appeal to the Radio 4 audience:

“Book at Bedtime offers the best of modern and classic literature and, in doing so, presents a wide range of perspectives from around the world. The work of Hilary Mantel – a double Booker prize-winning author – is of significant interest to the public and we will not shy away from the controversial subject matter that features in one of the four stories read across the week.”

For as long as I can recall the socialist left has valorised political violence. From wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt through to writing long articles in the London Review of Books justifying communist terror, the educated left provides a constant rationale for violence even while talking endlessly about peace, love and understanding. People like Hilary Mantel and the editors of the LRB are not seen as far left but as more-or-less the political mainstream, people who hold the sort of views held by most educated, intelligent people. But this isn’t true, such bien pensant bigotry is a minority sport and by indulging such opinions we provide the basis for those Luigi Left apologists for muder and political violence. Plus of course the terrible, often crazy, people who do the shooting, stabbing and bombing get to believe that they are undertaking some noble task.

In writing this I appreciate that people will point to terrible violence from the far right. But, and this is important, there are no voices on the moderate right valorising the actions of Anders Breivik or the Bologna station bombers, no genuine conservative voices express anything more radical than sorrow at this sort of political violence. And there are no moderate right wing voices using the ‘she asked for it’ argument over shootings of Democrat politicians. I’m sure there are some on the nativist and populist right who celebrate violence against their political opponents but none who are themselves celebrated as Hilary Mantel was or as respected and influential as Jean McNicol and Alice Spawls, the LRB’s editors.

There are many good people on the left as Bernie Sanders response to the Kirk assassination shows, but there are also far too many who seem to endorse violent activism. It sometimes seems that a whole load of socialists think they’d be on the barricades fighting the fascists were it not for their job as a lawyer, professor or journalist (plus the mortgage and plans for a three week holiday next August). So instead they simper at each other about the brave people who attack security guards with sledgehammers or worse shoot insurance company bosses in the street. As long as this persists we will see people who like a bit of violence using socialism, just as Che Guevara did, as a validation for torture and murder.