My Response to the Assassination of Melissa Hortman

As a political philosopher and a Minnesotan

(Source: Piqsels)

I’ve returned home from my four-week trip to the US. I wrote five articles about my observations while in the country where I grew up: Preview. Part one. Part two. Part three. Part four. In the articles, I was quite critical of American culture, but I didn’t mention the American strain of gun violence. I should have.

I also didn’t mention that during the last part of my trip I was staying in Maple Grove, Minnesota, the suburb in which I grew up. That’s mentionable only because a few days later, Vance Boelter assassinated state legislator Melissa Hortman in her home in Brooklyn Park, MN, and attempted to assassinate state legislator John Hoffman in his home in Champlin, MN. The legislators’ spouses were also targeted. Evidence indicated that Boelter also attempted to attack at least two other state legislators in their homes.

I know Brooklyn Park and Champlin because they are adjacent to Maple Grove. Decades ago, the land was carved up into municipalities delineated by arbitrary straight lines, but in real-life terms, Maple Grove, Brooklyn Park, and Champlin are an extended community. When I was a kid, my parents and I shopped in Brooklyn Park and Champlin. My public library was in Brooklyn Park. The houses of the Hortman and Hoffman families were not much different than my childhood house. It’s where I grew up. These are my people.

Political violence here? Unthinkable!

That was then. This is now. America, the half-dead land of simulacra; social divisions; and, worst of all, a refusal to acknowledge much less discuss its social divisions, is now also (again) a land of political violence.

Are Americans finally ready to discuss its social divisions and the threats of political violence? I hope so, because literally, if it can happen in the bedroom suburbs in Minnesota, it can happen anywhere in the US.

Let’s get past the bothsidesisms and whatboutery and malinformation of blaming only the other side. Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong. America has a problem—a problem that didn’t start last year or a few years ago but is deeply and long-embedded in the American political environment. I’ve been writing about this for a while now, trying to frame the underlying problem and offer some paths out of it.

In 2022, I wrote this about antagonistic politics, informed by my research in recognition theory.

Agonistic versus Antagonistic Politics
By its nature, politics is agonistic — a process of contention among people — but today it is an antagonistic process.

American politics is inherently antagonistic. We can debate the many causes of this antagonism, but we can see a significant uptick of it beginning in the mid-1990s. It has been escalating ever since, fed by a number of factors. We can’t put all of the blame for the hatred and erosion of constructive dialogue on the media or technology. People are responsible for their actions.

In my 2024 book, Why rump? I offered this as a path toward a politics beyond antagonism.

Chantal Mouffe defines the difference between antagonistic and agonistic forms of politics as the difference between the categories of enemy and adversary:

“This means that within the ‘we’ that constitutes the political community, the opponent is not considered an enemy to be destroyed but an adversary whose existence is legitimate. His ideas will be fought with vigour but his right to defend them will never be questioned. The category of enemy does not disappear, however, for it remains pertinent with regard to those who, by questioning the very principles of pluralist democracy, cannot form part of the agonistic space.” [1]

We can disagree without seeing politics as a holy crusade requiring a scorched-earth policy. The British Parliament long referred to minority parties as “the loyal opposition” — loyal to the country but in opposition to the majority party currently in power. This value of combining loyalty with principled disagreement is essential to a peaceful, functioning democratic government. [2]

. . .

To understand antagonistic politics, and the alternative, Mouffe’s distinction between the categories of enemy and adversary is useful when combined with the concept of recognition. To view someone as an enemy is to remove that person from recognition and ethical consideration. Calvinism’s dualistic worldview of good and evil, Elect and damned, is an example — a worldview that became ingrained in American culture. It is an attitude that creates the conditions for abuses of other people because to misrecognize (deny) their human rights and even their humanity is ethically required by the dualistic recognition norms. For example, in reactionism’s dualism, calling immigrants “vermin” becomes ethically good behavior and should be applauded. Condemning immigrants and anyone friendly to them as corruption that needs to be “drained” away or destroyed becomes a sign of moral purity.

What’s the alternative? Recognizing the humanity of others. Everyone. That means recognizing our opponents as adversaries rather than as enemies and being willing to oppose the injustices inflicted by those who see others as enemies. It’s a tricky balance of meaningful opposition without descending into antagonism, but a better society is possible if we can achieve that balance.

This doesn’t mean rolling over and not opposing injustice and those who inflict injustices on others. Just as we can disagree without being disagreeable, we can oppose evil without becoming evil, if “evil” is even the proper term. Where there are disputes, we can defend what we see as the good without declaring our adversaries to be criminals, evil, and enemies to be destroyed.

We can firmly say, “my opponent does not agree with me on issues A, B, and C, and I believe that their disagreement on issues A, B, and C is harmful to the social welfare of our country.” That’s perfectly legitimate.

(Giles Why Trump?, 107–108, 112.)

[1] Chantal Mouffe, “Agonistic Democracy and Radical Politics,” Pavillion Journal of Politics and Culture, December 29, 2014, https://www.pavilionmagazine.org/chantal-mouffe-agonistic-democracy-and-radical-politics/.

[2] George Anastaplo, “Loyal Opposition in a Modern Democracy,” Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, Volume 35, Issue 4, Summer 2004, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268429712.pdf.

We need to get past the childish, bullshit attitude that everyone who disagrees with us is an enemy. Vance Boelter saw Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman as enemies who needed to be destroyed. He then tried to destroy them and other people he didn’t like.

We don’t need hand-wringing. We don’t need thoughts and expressions of concern. We need Americans to grow the fuck up. That includes standing against injustice without joining in it.