查理·柯克的杀戮与美国"沙拉吧极端主义"时代

二十一世纪伊始，好莱坞推出了一系列大胆、娱乐性强且绝对不容错过的电影。诸如《第25小时》、《魅力四射》、《十二宫》、《老无所依》等作品。它们诞生于小布什时代——美国的一个动荡时期。想想9/11事件、卡特里娜飓风、次贷危机。经过布什执政年代，这个国家再也不同往日，好莱坞亦是如此。

As the twenty first century was getting underway, Hollywood released a series of films that were daring, entertaining, and absolutely unmissable. Films like twenty fifth Hour, Bring It On, Zodiac, and No Country for Old Men. They arrived during the George w Bush era, a chaotic time in America. Think 09/11, Katrina, the mortgage crisis. After the Bush years, the country would never be the same and neither would Hollywood.

我是布莱恩·拉夫特里，在我的新限定系列《使命达成》中，我们将深入探讨布什年代的一些重磅电影，审视它们对国家现状的诠释。我们将与电影制作人和专家一起揭秘幕后故事，重温二十一世纪初您喜爱的影片，从《死亡幻觉》到《迈克尔·克莱顿》，从《王牌播音员》到《钢铁侠》。所以，穿上您的斯凯奇鞋，翻出旧诺基亚手机，8月12日起在Big Picture频道加入我的《使命达成》之旅。

I'm Brian Raftery, and in my new limited series, Mission Accomplished, we're gonna dive into some of the biggest movies of the Bush years and look at what they said about the state of the nation. We'll go behind the scenes with filmmakers and experts, and relive some of your favorite movies from the early two thousands, from Donnie Darko to Michael Clayton, from Anchorman to Iron Man. So slip on your sketchers, dig out your old Nokia, and join me for Mission Accomplished, starting August 12 on the Big Picture Feed.

今天的话题：查理·柯克与美国的政治暴力。和大多数人一样，我是在电脑前工作时得知查理·柯克遭枪击的。先是看到传言，然后目睹那些可怕、令人难忘的视频，最后得到确认。查理·柯克颈部中弹，31岁离世。我对这起杀害、这起暗杀的反应，比我预想的要情绪化得多。

Today, Charlie Kirk and political violence in America. Like most people, I learned that Charlie Kirk had been shot while at work on my computer. First, I read the rumors, then I saw the videos, the horrible, unforgettable videos, and then confirmation. Charlie Kirk, shot in the neck, dead at 31. My reaction to his killing, his assassination, was more emotional than I was prepared for.

回到家后，妻子注意到我恍恍惚惚地踱步，完全沉浸在自己的思绪中。我不认识查理·柯克，而且据我了解，他的政治立场几乎与我的截然相反。但当我以如今那种诡异的方式——在信息流中夹杂着无厘头梗的视频和图像间——目睹他的谋杀时，我心中所想的并非他的政治。相反，我不断思索的是他最后的时刻。他在犹他州， surrounded by 他激励过的年轻大学生，妻子在观众席中，正与批评者就观点交锋时，一颗从200码外射来的子弹击中了他的颈部。

When I came home, my wife noticed that I was walking around as if in a daze, completely lost in my thoughts. I didn't know Charlie Kirk, and from what I could gather, his politics were very close to the exact opposite of my own. But his politics weren't on my mind when I witnessed his murder in that uncanny way that one witnesses murders these days in videos and images sandwiched between non sequitur memes on news feeds. What I found myself thinking about instead were his final moments. Here he was in Utah, surrounded by young college students whom he had inspired, his wife in the audience, engaged in a back and forth with critics over his views when from 200 yards away, a bullet entered his neck.

他在辩论中途、在句子中间、在对话之中、在家人和粉丝面前被暗杀，这一点在多个层面上让我感到无比震撼。在最高层面上，能够公开表达异议而不必担心暴力，更不用说处决，必须是自由民主的基石原则。一个体面的道德社会不可能建立在公众异议会招致人身暴力恐惧的基础上。在个人层面上，进行对话，甚至是艰难的政治对话，是我的工作。就在一周前，我还在华盛顿特区的一个舞台上谈论政治分歧的话题。

That he died in the middle of a debate, that he was assassinated mid sentence, mid conversation before his family and fans was incredibly haunting to me on several levels. At the highest level, the ability to disagree in public without fear of violence, much less execution, has to be a bedrock principle of liberal democracy. You cannot have anything like a decent moral society where public disagreement is subjected to the fear of physical violence. At a personal level, having conversations, even hard political conversations, is my job. Just a week ago, I spoke on a stage in Washington DC about the subject of political disagreement.

我的妻子当时坐在观众席的第二排。想到尽管我的观点与查理·柯克的观点相距千里，我的政治立场与他的政治立场截然不同，但他在某种程度上和我从事着类似的工作——论证、说服、为一系列理念积累人气——这真的让我感到害怕。想到我们正在变成一个让这类工作因恐惧氛围和日益增长的政治暴力现象而受到威胁的国家，这真的、真的让我恐惧。但同样让我惊恐的是社交媒体对他谋杀的反应。我看到了庆祝或嘲笑柯克之死的帖子， often from the left。

My wife was in the second row in the audience. And it scared me to think that for the thousands of miles that separated my views from Charlie Kirk's views, and my politics from his politics, he and I were engaged at some level in a similar kind of work arguing, persuading, building popularity for a set of ideas. It really, really frightened me to think that we are becoming a country in which that kind of work is endangered by a climate of fear and a phenomenon of rising political violence. But what terrified me as well was the social media reaction to his murder. I saw posts celebrating or jeering Kirk's death, often from the left.

我看到了许多来自右翼的帖子，呼吁全面开战并彻底镇压左翼政治，必须说，这其中包括媒体和政治界的著名保守派人物，甚至包括总统。鉴于社交媒体作为放大人类最恶劣一面机器的本质，我确信绝大多数左右翼美国人都认为谋杀是可憎的，并且不希望美国进行类似纳粹德国国会纵火案后的政治镇压。但即使知道这一点，即使一再告诉自己我明白这一点，我仍然发现自己盯着手机，担心事情即将滑向一个非常黑暗的境地。两天内，一名嫌疑人被抓获。截至录制时，我们对其动机知之甚少。

I saw many posts calling for outright war and a total crackdown on left wing politics from the right, including, it has to be said, from prominent conservative figures in media and politics and even the president. Now social media being what it is, a machine for amplifying the worst of humanity, I'm sure that the vast majority of left and right Americans both find murder abhorrent and do not want America conducting a political crackdown akin to Nazi Germany post Reichstag fire. But even knowing this, even telling myself over and over that I knew it, I still found myself gazing into my phone and worrying that things were about to veer into a very dark place. Within two days, a suspect was apprehended. As of this recording, we don't know much about his motives.

据报道，子弹上刻有游戏梗和留言板笑话的暗示。如果他与最近的刺客和政治恐怖分子类似，他的政治观点将无法整齐地归入任何广为人知的意识形态类别。杀害他人是一种极端行为。政治恐怖主义是一种极端行为。而政治刺客的心态往往也极为极端。

The bullets were reportedly engraved with allusions to gaming memes and message board jokes. If he's anything like recent assassins and political terrorists, his politics will not fit neatly into any well understood category of ideology. Killing another person is an extreme act. Political terrorism is an extreme act. And the minds of political assassins tend to be extreme as well.

但尽管凶手的政治观点可能晦涩难懂，不幸的是，这种暴力行为却有不少同类。过去几年，我们目睹了柯克被暗杀、医疗保健高管布莱恩·汤普森被暗杀、明尼苏达州众议院议长及其丈夫被暗杀、一名明尼苏达州参议员及其妻子遭枪击、唐纳德·特朗普遇刺未遂（子弹擦过他的耳朵）、南希·佩洛西家及其丈夫遭袭击、密歇根州州长格雷琴·惠特默遭绑架杀害的阴谋，然后是1月6日事件，袭击者叫嚣要绞死副总统迈克·彭斯。正如《大西洋月刊》的阿德里安·拉弗朗斯所写，这似乎正成为一个暗杀时代。而这并非首次。六十年前，1960年代发生了异常多的高调杀戮事件：肯尼迪总统、罗伯特·肯尼迪、马尔科姆·X、马丁·路德·金。

But while the killer's politics might be esoteric, this act of violence, unfortunately, has plenty of company. In the last few years, we've seen the assassination of Kirk, the assassination of Brian Thompson, the health care executive, the assassination of Minnesota house speaker and her husband, the shooting of a Minnesota state senator and his wife, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump whose bullet tore through a piece of his ear, the attack on Nancy Pelosi's home and her husband, a plot to kidnap and kill the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, and then January 6, when assailants called for the lynching of vice president Mike Pence. As The Atlantic's Adrian LaFrance writes, this is coming to seem like an age of assassinations. And it would not be the first. Sixty years ago, the 1960s saw an extraordinary number of high profile killings JFK, RFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr.

再往前六十年，一名无政府主义者在布法罗与威廉·麦金利总统握手时，朝他的腹部开了两枪，将其杀害。几年后，对《洛杉矶时报》的炸药袭击导致21人死亡。不久之后，在一个刺杀约翰·D·洛克菲勒的阴谋中，无政府主义者在纽约市一间公寓楼内提前引爆炸弹，炸死四人。暴力持续升级，直至1910年代末，最终在1919和1920年通过一系列协同攻击爆发，造成数十人死亡。

Sixty years before that, an anarchist killed president William McKinley, shooting him twice in the stomach while shaking his hand in Buffalo. And a few years later, a dynamite attack on the Los Angeles Times killed 21 people. Soon after that, in a plot to kill John D. Rockefeller, anarchists prematurely exploded a bomb in a New York City tenement, killing four people. Violence continued to swell into the late 1910s until it exploded in the year 1919 and 1920, in a set of coordinated attacks that killed dozens of people.

我们曾经历过这种情况。我们从未远离这些政治暴力的漩涡。可怕的是，重新陷入其中是如此容易，而摆脱它们又可能令人痛苦万分。今天的嘉宾是《大西洋月刊》的执行主编阿德里安·拉弗朗斯，她关于政治暴力主题已经撰写了数万字，包括为杂志撰写的封面故事。今天我们先讨论媒体对政治暴力的报道，然后再探讨最棘手的问题。

We have been here before. We are never very far from these whirlpools of political violence. It is terrifyingly easy to slip back into them, and it can be anguishing to get ourselves out of them. Today's guest is Adrienne LaFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic, who has written tens of thousands of words on the subject of political violence, including cover stories for the magazine. Today we talk about media coverage of political violence before getting into the hardest question.

美国如何在集体妄想和深度分裂的时期生存下来，而不看到维系我们的纽带永久瓦解？以往的文化和时代是如何在持续的政治暴力中坚持下来，最终却以民主和人性完好无损的方式走出困境的。我是德里克·汤普森，这里是《简明英语》。阿德里安·拉弗朗斯，欢迎来到节目。

How can America survive a period of mass delusion and deep division without seeing the permanent dissolution of the ties that bind us? And how have previous cultures and previous eras managed to endure sustained political violence and yet emerged with democracy and their humanity intact. I'm Derek Thompson. This is Plain English. Adrienne Lafrance, welcome to the show.

谢谢邀请。

Thanks for having me.

在我们开始讨论你关于美国政治暴力历史的研究之前，我对你个人对查理·柯克谋杀案的反应很感兴趣。你当时在哪里？看到了什么？接下来发生了什么？

Before we get started on your work on the history of political violence in America, I was interested in your human reaction to the Charlie Kirk murder. Where were you? What did you see? What happened next?

我当时在《大西洋月刊》位于华盛顿特区的新闻编辑室，当我们看到犹他州传来的早期报道说他可能遭到了枪击。当然，这令人震惊。各位编辑迅速互相提醒关注此事，想确认这是否属实。你在网上看到消息时永远无法确定。

I was in the Atlantic's newsroom in Washington DC when we saw the early reports coming out of Utah that he had maybe been shot. And, of course, was shocking. Various editors, you know, quickly asked one another to keep an eye on it to see, you know, did it is this real? You never know. You see something on the Internet.

你无法确定发生了什么。所以我们知道可能出事了，然后事情就这样展开了。这完全是一场恐怖事件。新闻编辑室的每个人都感到震惊和不安。真是可怕的消息。

You're not sure what's going on. So we we knew something might have happened, and then, of course, it unfolded the way it did. And it was just totally horrific. Just really, you know, every person in the newsroom was shocked and and really just disturbed. Just terrible news.

可怕的消息，以及如今可怕消息传播的那种诡异方式——你在Twitter或任何社交媒体平台上看到这些图像，总是夹杂着其他无关新闻，同时涌入的还有虚假或真实的信息。过去几天我一直在思考的是，报道这类突发新闻非常棘手，原因有几个。一是初步报道几乎总是错误的。就拿这件事来说，《华尔街日报》最初报道子弹上刻有支持跨性别的政治声明，结果被证明完全失实。但这也很难，因为我认为在描述灾难和助长灾难性思维之间存在张力。

Terrible news and this sort of uncanny way that terrible news breaks these days where you see these images on Twitter, on whatever social media platform, and it's always interspersed with other news that's irrelevant and news is coming in that's false or or that's real. Know, one thing that I'm I've been thinking about for the last few days is that reporting on breaking news like this is very tricky for several reasons. One is that initial reports are almost always wrong. And in this case, in fact, the initial Wall Street Journal report that the bullets were engraved with pro trans political statements turned out to be totally false. But it's also tricky because I think there's a tension between describing catastrophe and feeding catastrophic thinking.

就像现在，在你我交谈的这一刻，有些媒体声称我们正在目睹一场将摧毁民主的政治暴力连锁反应的开始。这是一种观点。而你的文章导语则走向了完全相反的方向。你说：‘美国人不想要内战。任何宣称内战的人应该停止。’

Like, right now today, at this very moment that you and I are talking, there are outlets saying that we are witnessing the beginning of a political violence cascade that will destroy democracy. That's one take. And then the deck of your essay goes in a totally opposite direction. You say, quote, Americans do not want civil war. Anyone who is declaring it should stop, end quote.

我想知道，作为一名记者和新闻编辑室的领导者，你如何看待这种张力——既要描述灾难性的现实，又要鼓励人们减少灾难性思维？

And I wonder, as as a journalist and leader of a newsroom, how do you feel about this tension between describing reality when it is catastrophic, but also encouraging people to be less catastrophic in their thinking?

这是个非常重要的问题，我认为记者们正在应对和摸索中。不仅仅是记者，普通公民、普通人也是如此。即使是你生活中发生的事情，你也试图弄清楚是怎么回事，不一定非得是可怕的突发新闻。但在新闻业，我们经常听到的问题是：为什么新闻必须这么负面？

It's such an important question, and it's something that I think journalists are dealing with and working their way through. And and not just journalists, just citizen people, humans. Well, you're trying to figure out what's going on in your life even. It doesn't have to be a horrible breaking news story. And and so but but in journalism, I mean, I think something we hear often is like, why does why does the news have to be so negative?

我理解这一点，因为在人们如此分裂、特别是可怕事件发生时，情况确实可能显得黯淡。但要知道，新闻业在社会中的部分职责是揭露那些运转不良的问题、我们需要解决的事情。所以对我来说，新闻工作的本质实际上是一种非常乐观的处世方式，因为你相信向人们传达真相很重要。但另一方面，人们刷着手机看到可怕的头条和事件。是的，这就形成了一种张力。

And it's I get it because, like, it can be bleak, especially in times when people are so divided, especially when horrible things happen. But, you know, part of the role of journalism in society is to to shine a light on things that are not working, things that are a problem, things we wanna fix. And so, you know, to me, the work of journalism is actually, like, at its core, a really optimistic way of moving through the world because you believe it matters to tell people the truth. And so but on the other side of that, you have people scrolling on their phones and seeing horrible headlines, horrible things happening. And so, yeah, you have this tension.

然后试着理解你提到的灾难化思维。我认为，在这个异常混乱的实时新闻环境中试图实时理解世界，记者们尤其渴望超前思考，试图理解事态并告诉人们可能发生什么、会恶化到什么程度。预测未来总是危险的，这就是为什么报道如此重要——需要采访专家等。我不确定是否完全回答了你的问题，但我觉得新闻业中存在几种不同的张力，使其显得戏剧化和负面。还有注意力争夺战。

And then trying to sort of understand you talked about catastrophizing. I mean, I think in trying to understand the world around us in real time in an extraordinarily chaotic real time news environment, especially, you know, journalists have this desire to think a few steps ahead or attempt to understand things and tell people what could happen, how bad could it get. And and, you know, predicting the future is always a dangerous business, which is why the reporting is so important talking to people who have expertise and whatnot. But so I I don't know if I'm fully answering your question, but I think there's a there are a couple of different tensions in journalism that that make it seem dramatic and negative. Also, just the the fight for attention.

对吧？记者试图让人们阅读作品，在点击诱饵或算法时代，激励机制并不总是倾向于克制。这也是记者们一直在思考的问题。总之我说了很多，而你比任何人都更了解这些。但这些是我思考这个问题的一些角度。

You know? Reporters are trying to get people to read work, that can sometimes you know, in in in the age of clickbait or algorithms or whatever else, the incentives are not toward restraint always. And that's something that journalists are thinking about all the time too. So anyway, I've thrown a lot at you, and you know all of this better than anyone. But those are some of the ways that I think about it.

你提到新闻业有种解释的本能，有时我觉得这是记者的优点，有时却是危险。报道这些事件的一个挑战是，记者相信（我们中有些人确实如此）我们的职责是为世界上最重要的故事提供背景和叙事。有时这是很好的本能，因为世界需要叙事来理解日常发生的点状事件。但有些故事不适合简单的叙事框架，强行套用叙事反而对受众不利。

You mentioned the fact that there's this instinct in journalism to explain, and sometimes I think that's a credit to journalists, and sometimes it's a danger. Right? One challenge, I think, to covering these events is that journalists believe, some of us do, that it's our job to provide context and narrative for for the most important stories in the world. And sometimes that's a wonderful instinct because the world needs narrative in order to make sense of the sort of pointillist events that happen on a day to day basis. But some stories don't fit into easy narratives, And so the attempt to sort of dress something up in a narrative actually does a disservice to the audience.

我认为现代暗杀企图尤其如此。人们本能地想解释这意味着什么，枪手的动机如何契合关于意识形态、左右之争的实时辩论。但深入研究近期暗杀企图的历史：袭击州长乔什·夏皮罗家的纵火犯是激进亲巴勒斯坦者，却试图让家人投票给特朗普；路易吉·曼吉奥内是另类中心自我修养读者，突然失控决定处决医疗高管。

And I think that's especially true perhaps of modern assassination attempts. Like, there's this instinct to say, we can explain what this means and how these shooters' instincts fit into live debates about ideology, left versus right. But then you dig into the history of these recent assassination attempts. The arsonist who attacked governor Josh Shapiro's home was a radical pro Palestinian who tried to get his family to vote for Trump. Luigi Mangione was an alt center self help reader who went off the deep end and suddenly decided to execute a health care executive.

对吧？就我们目前对柯克刺客的初步了解，他似乎是保守摩门教徒父母养育的虚无主义游戏玩家，却暗杀了共和党人。我们总想把这些杀手放进整齐的小盒子，但每次尝试盒子都会爆炸——他们根本不适用。我从你作品中了解到FBI现在谈论的'沙拉吧极端主义'：独狼袭击者的观点难以映射到左右光谱上。

Right? The Kirk assassin, for all for what we can tell very, very early on in his in our understanding of this character, seems to have been like a nihilistic gamer son of conservative Mormon parents who assassinated a Republican. Like, we keep wanting to put these killers into neat little boxes, and every time we try to do it, the box explodes. They they don't fit. And there's this related term that I learned from reading your work that the FBI now talks about what they call salad bar extremism, lone wolf attacks where the assailant has views that aren't easily mapped onto a left right spectrum.

他们像是从互联网上找到的沙拉吧评论中随意抓取观点。请为我们解读：什么是沙拉吧极端主义？它如何帮助我们理解当今新闻中的某些现象？

They're sort of grabbed ad hoc from the salad bar reviews that people find on the Internet. So unpack that for us. What is salad bar extremism, and how might it help us understand some of what we're seeing in the news today?

大多数人的意识形态并不像互联网甚至传统媒体报道中描述的那么纯粹。从'贴标签'说起——这种试图通过定义某人来映射其恶劣行为动机的做法。在互联网前时代，任何新闻编辑室可能都有类似讨论。回想你报道过的每起大规模枪击事件（不幸的是有很多起）。

Most people are not as ideologically pure as the way they are described either on the Internet or even in various legacy news articles. You know, that I think this to start with the box so the sort of box checking exercise of, like, trying to figure out who someone is in order to map them their motivations onto why something terrible happened. You know, there is there was a moment pre Internet where if you were in any newsroom, those same conversations were probably happening. You're thinking back to every mass shooting you've covered. Unfortunately, there have been many.

你会想：有时我们看到这种特征，有时是那种画像，有时出现某种元素。9/11后这种情况很常见——发生爆炸后第一个问题总是：是恐怖袭击吗？

And you're thinking, okay, sometimes we see this. Sometimes we see this profile. Sometimes there's this element. Post 09:11, you saw this all the time. There'd be an explosion, and the first question is, is it terrorism?

所以我们天生会基于经验实时理解事件。在早期时代（虽然一直存在不负责任的新闻），多数推测是在发布前于新闻编辑室内闭门进行的，公众看不到。现在所有人都在没有伦理指南的情况下实时同步进行。不是说这完全是坏事（互联网很好），但这增加了巨大复杂性。

And so, you know, we're hardwired to try to understand what's happening in real time based on what we've experienced. And in an earlier era, hopefully, I mean, there's always been irresponsible journalism out there. But in an earlier era, much of the speculation was done pre publication in behind closed doors in a newsroom, and the public didn't see it. Now everyone's doing it in real time together all at once without any of, you know, some of the ethical guidelines. Not to say that, you know, that's a net negative, although, like, the Internet's great, but it adds tremendous complexity.

关于你提到的'沙拉吧极端主义'问题，我也很喜欢这个术语，因为它令人印象深刻。它揭示了一个关键点：试图用纯粹意识形态术语来分类某人的信仰通常行不通，无论是针对犯下可怕罪行的人还是普通人。这个术语常被用来描述我们看到的许多独狼式袭击，无论属于政治暴力还是随机暴力袭击。你可能发现某人留下可怕的反犹宣言，这当然是个线索，但查看他们的投票记录时，结果却出人意料。

And so and then to your question about salivary extremism, I mean, I love this term too because it's memorable. And it gets at the point that trying to categorize what someone believes does not usually in sort of clean ideological terms, usually doesn't work out whether it's someone who's committed a terrible crime or just like a regular person. So this term is, you know, it's often used to describe how how many of the lone wolf attacks we see, whether this is in the category of political violence or just random violent attacks. If you try to discern know, someone might leave a horrific anti antisemitic manifesto, and that's certainly a clue. But then you look at their voting record, and it's for some reason surprising.

特别是在这个激进化过程地理上分散的时代，极端主义能跨越国界、社群和意识形态。如果只将政治暴力或任何暴力纯粹归因于某个政治类别，这种看法就太肤浅了。现实情况根本不是这样运作的。

Or and and so especially in an age where radicalization is happening, disaggregated geographically. It can move across borders, communities, ideologies. It's not it it it would be very shallow to only talk about political violence or even any kind of violence as purely related to one political category. That's just that's just not how it works.

在与FBI人员讨论沙拉吧极端主义时，他们是否认为现代政治暴力比过去更具'沙拉吧'特征？换句话说，过去的政治暴力是否在意识形态上更易辨识？当时暴力事件发生时，其意图和背后势力很容易被解读——这是无政府主义者干的。

In your conversations with folks from the FBI who talk about salad bar extremism, is it their sense that modern political violence is more salad bar than it used to be? Like, another way to ask that question would be, did political violence used to be more ideologically legible? Right? That that political violence happened and the intent of it and the forces behind it were easily read into. Ah, this is anarchists.

这些是社会主义者。这些是极右翼白人至上主义者。但如今，沙拉吧极端主义似乎说明FBI难以定位、映射或解读许多凶手的明确动机，因为他们的动机实在太随机了？

These are socialists. These are far right white supremacists. But that today, salad bar extremism seems to speak to this idea that the FBI can't easily place or map or read the clear motives of a lot of these killers because their motives are just so random?

我认为在某种程度上确实如此。关键区别在于，历史上的政治暴力往往——我不想过于笼统——但通常是由组织策划的，现在有时仍是如此。比如反政府的无政府主义者因恶劣工作条件而采取暴力，这是他们引起关注的唯一方式。即使在二十世纪初，这类人群仍然存在某种组织化努力。

I think, yes, up to a point. I mean, the the big thing that is different is that political violence often and and I don't want to be overly sweeping here. But if you look throughout history, often political violence was organized by groups and still sometimes is. But if you have a group who's organizing around the idea of being anti government, you know, anarchists who are motivated because they're in terrible working conditions and they need there's no other way to get attention to their plight, they have decided to resort to violence. Like, there are still it seems like a contradiction in terms, but there is still an organizational effort for people who fit that category, say, in, like, the early twentieth century.

而如今，至少执法部门更担忧的是那些极易被多方向激进化的人。他们从获得巨大网络关注度的暴力行为中获取灵感，追求恶名昭彰。他们不需要有组织团体，也不需要围绕暴力决策进行人员组织的繁琐工作，就能独自实施造成巨大破坏的行动。过去当然也有零星的独狼式袭击。

Whereas today, there are, you know, the the at least speaking with law enforcement, there is a much greater concern about people who can be easily easily radicalized in many directions, take inspiration from other violent acts which get tremendous attention online. They seek notoriety. They don't need an organized group or the sort of this the, you know, the work that goes into organizing a group of people around a decision to be violent. They can easily carry it out themselves and and and act tremendous damage. And so it's not that there weren't occasionally sort of lone wolf attacks in the past either.

确实存在过。但这正是当今人们对暴力表现形式担忧的一个显著变化。

There certainly were. But but that is one prominent sort of one pronounced shift in how people worry about how violence is playing out today.

您在文章中指出，多项衡量标准显示政治暴力在今天比十年前更易被接受。您引用的2022年加州大学戴维斯分校民调显示，五分之一的美国人认为政治暴力'至少有时是正当的'。《辩论》杂志最新民调发现，越来越多大学生认为可用暴力制止不良言论。您认为这种对政治暴力态度的转变原因何在？

You've written that political violence is seen as more acceptable today than it was a decade ago by several measures. There's a 2022 UC Davis poll in your essay that found that one in five Americans believes that political violence would be, quote, at least sometimes justified. Another recent poll by The Argument, found that college students increasingly say that violence is justifiable to stop bad speech. Why do you think we've seen this sea change in attitudes toward political violence?

我认为这是周期性的。需要指出的是，我们的国家本身就诞生于暴力革命。回顾种族私刑的历史，每个十年都能找到极端恶劣的政治暴力案例。但在某些历史时期，特别是美国历史上，这种情况会比其他时期更严重。

I I mean, I think that there it it comes in cycles. And I think one thing that's important to point out and others routinely point out is that, you know, our nation was founded in violent revolution. And, you know, you look back at the history of racial lynchings. And I mean, every decade, you can find examples of extraordinary terrible political violence. But there are periods in history and certainly in American history where it gets worse than others.

因此如果问为什么现在更严重或人们更容忍，我认为这两者相互关联。整个社会存在许多助长暴力脆弱性的条件，再加上高度显眼的财富差距、非人化语言的增加、跨政治光谱的委屈感等等。更重要的是信息环境——它奖励情绪化的瞬间反应和愤怒。

And so so if the question is about, like, why why is it worse now or why are people more tolerant of it now? I mean, I think those two things go together. And so we have a lot of the conditions throughout society that make us vulnerable to violence. And then you layer, you know, like highly visible wealth disparity, the increase in dehumanizing language, sense of aggrievement across the political spectrum, and I can go on and on. And then you layer on top of that just the informational environment where it's so like, it rewards just emotional snap reactions and anger.

你知道，社交网络的基础设施设计就是围绕激励愤怒反应而建立的，而人们也确实这么做了。人类缺乏克制力，把这些因素加在一起，再把唐纳德·特朗普掺和进来，所有人就都疯了。

It's just these you know, the the infrastructure of the social web is designed around incentivizing reacting angrily, and and people do. And and, like, humans lack restraint, and it's just and so you do all of that together and and then add Donald Trump into the mix and and everybody's nuts.

我能补充两种可能性吗？其一，这些完全在我的专业领域内，所以我显然违反了那条规则——每当记者看到惊人现象时，他们就会说'哦，这个惊人现象其实印证了我过去两年一直在说的一切'。我明白自己正在讽刺性地助长这种趋势，但我为《大西洋月刊》写的上一篇封面故事《反社交世纪》中，丹麦政治学家迈克尔·邦·彼得森提出了他称之为'混沌需求'的理论。

Can I add two more possibilities? Please. One is I mean, these are very much in my wheelhouse, and so I'm, of course, violating the rule that every single time a journalist sees a surprising phenomenon, they say, oh, that surprising phenomenon is actually results of everything that I've been saying for the last two years. So I understand that I am contributing ironically to that trend, but the last cover story I wrote for the Atlantic, the antisocial century. Michael Bang Peterson is Danish political scientist who's done work on an idea that he calls need for chaos.

他指出选民中有一定比例的人具有暴力混乱的驱动力，将政治视为一种黑暗娱乐，他们只想看着世界燃烧。当他分解数据研究谁最可能产生这种'混沌需求'时，排在首位的是自认为社会孤立的男性。我认为社会孤立和年轻男性缺乏人生剧本绝对助长了这种现象。另一个现象是，社交媒体——正如你提到的——似乎让人们可以 ironically 在空调房里cosplay革命者，实际上根本没有参与任何革命行动。有很多账号——这直接呼应了你昨天发表的文章——在柯克遇刺后发帖说'我们正处于战争中'。

He says there's a certain share of the electorate that has violent, chaotic drive that wants that sees politics as a kind of dark entertainment, and they just wanna watch the world burn. And when he decomposed the data and looked at who is most likely to feel this, quote, need for chaos, top of the list were men who self described as socially isolated. So I think that social social isolation and the lack of a life script for young men is absolutely contributing to some of this. The other thing that I see is, you know, social media, which you alluded to, seems to allow people to cosplay as revolutionaries, ironically, from the comfort of air conditioned rooms where they are engaging in nothing remotely revolutionary. There were a number of accounts, and this speaks right back to the yesterday you published, a number of accounts that posted in the aftermath of of Kirk's assassination that we're at war.

'美国处于战争中，这是内战'。但正如你本周文章所说：不，美国人其实不想要战争。他们想在二月吃草莓。

America's at war. This is civil war. And as you said in your essay this week, no. Americans don't actually want war. They wanna eat strawberries in February.

他们想下班后喝啤酒，想看孩子踢足球。但这些关于战争、暴力和需要消灭对手的空谈，在真正引发行动前都是空洞的——直到它激励一个人、三个人、一小撮极端分子，那些心理状况容易被网络极端主义激活，从枪口寻找救赎的人。我想反过来问你，你是否认为孤立效应加上社交媒体平台的极端主义——它们煽动情绪的方式，算法设计似乎就是要激怒我们——可能会以某种零星的方式助长真正的暴力？

They wanna have beers after work. They wanna watch their kids kick around a soccer ball. But this empty talk about war and violence and the need to destroy the opposition, it's empty until it isn't empty, if you know what I mean. It's empty until it inspires one person, three people, a handful of extremists with a psychological condition that can be activated by online extremism that finds salvation at the end of a rifle. And I wonder, just turning it back to you, whether you think that some combination of isolation and this effect of extremism in our social media platforms, way they rile up, the way they seem algorithmically engaged to rile us up, might feed real violence in some kind of sporadic way.

绝对如此。我对此非常担忧。有趣的是，我最关心的事情之一是言论自由、新闻自由，这些是我极其珍视的价值。我想很多美国人都和我有同感。

I mean, absolutely. I worry about that a lot. And it's interesting to me because one of the things that I am most concerned with is, you know, free speech, free press. These are things that I hold incredibly dear. Think, you know, many Americans are right there with me on that.

我马上要说的观点你大概能猜到。人们经常混淆概念：如果你认为网络仇恨言论不好，或者认为人们在网上宣战不好，就是不喜欢言论自由。但不对，我想要保护言论自由，因此我希望社会保持稳定——不希望它堕落成暴力和战争。

And and I think often you'll see where I'm going with this in a minute. Often, conflate the idea that, oh, if you think that hate speech is bad on the Internet or if you if you think that people declaring war on the Internet is bad, then you don't like free speech. It's like, no. I I I wanna protect free speech. Therefore, I want society to remain you know, I don't want it to to devolve into violence and war.

所以对我来说，你所说的网上宣战行为，绝对可能激励一个人或三个人造成巨大破坏。我还想指出，正如我昨天在《大西洋月刊》文章中所说，针对性政治暴力（如本周所见）与大量美国人集结军队持续相互攻击存在区别。两者都令人发指，我们都不应容忍，任何追求自由和平的人都应该保持克制。这就是我的观点。但没错，绝对如此。

And so so to me, this this like, what you were saying about people declaring war, absolutely, it can inspire one person to do or three people or whatever to do tremendous damage. And I think one other thing I would point out is that and I make this point in the in the essay I wrote for The Atlantic yesterday, is that there is a difference between targeted political violence, as we saw this week, and a huge portion of the American people deciding to amass armies and attempt to fight each other in a sustained way, both are atrocious. We should tolerate neither, and anyone who wants freedom and peace should exercise restraint. So that's the that's the argument I'm making. But but, yeah, absolute I mean, yes.

社交网络让事情变得更糟，但人们在社交网络上的行为方式也是问题所在。

The social web is it makes thing it makes things worse, but it's the the way people are acting on the social web as well.

两年前你为《大西洋月刊》写过封面故事《新无政府主义》，副标题是'美国面临一种不知如何阻止的极端主义暴力'。阿德里安，我要向你坦白：初读这篇文章时，我觉得你可能有点过于超前了。我不完全认同我们处于极端主义暴力时代，在我看来更像是随机零散——甚至随机性——的独狼式暴力事件，只是偶尔有疯子做点什么，但这不成趋势。

Two years ago, you wrote a cover story for the Atlantic entitled the new anarchy, the subtitle of which was, quote, America faces a type of extremist violence it does not know how to stop, end quote. And, Adrian, I will make a confession here to you. When I first read this essay, I thought to myself, Adrian might be, like, a little bit over her skis here. I'm not entirely sure I buy that we're in an age of extremist violence. It seems to me like we're in an age of really random, like I said, sporadic, even stochastic, like, truly just, like, random one off lone wolf loon wolf violence of just once in a while, the crazy person does something, but that's not a trend.

关键在于美国有3.2亿人口，偶尔总会有人做出些疯狂至极的事情。我改变想法了。我认为你在这里看到了我没看到的东西，因为我不知道该往哪里看，而你知道方向。那么让我们从基础开始。什么是新无政府状态？你试图描述的这个现象究竟是什么？

That's just there's 320,000,000 Americans, and once in a while, they're gonna do some crazy crazy shit. I have changed my mind. I I think you saw something here that I did not see because I did not know where to look, and you knew where to look. So let's start with the basics. What is the new anarchy, and what describes this phenomenon that you were trying to put your finger on?

作为记者，我一直对政治暴力和暴力问题抱有长期兴趣。当局势恶化时，你必须迎难而上，努力向人们解释即将发生什么，并让自己理解局势。特别是在1月6日事件后，这给我提出了一个重大问题：我们如何前进才能避免类似或更糟的情况再次发生？于是我一直在思考：我们该怎么办？我们国家的蓝图究竟是什么？实际上，那篇封面报道最初是我的构想，我的提案可能有些过于雄心勃勃了。

I've been interested in political violence and and violence generally forever because I'm a journalist. And when things go badly, you have to run toward it and and try to explain to people what's gonna happen and understand it for yourself. And and, you know, particularly after January 6, it for me posed this huge question of how do we move forward without that happening again or worse? And so I had this question of, like, you know, what do we do? What is the blueprint for our country that can originally, that cover story, actually, my my vision of it and my pitch for it was I'm gonna this may be overly ambitious.

这就是我有些好高骛远的地方。但我想弄清楚：在历史上，无论是美国还是其他国家，是否曾有过这样的时期——局势看似正在恶化，但在变得更糟之前成功悬崖勒马？我进行了大量报道，与数十人进行了交谈。

This is where I got ahead of my skis. But I wanted to figure out, okay, where in in history, whether in The United States or elsewhere, has there been a period where it seems like it's getting bad, but you're able to pull back from the brink before it gets much worse? And I I reported. I did a ton of reporting. I talked to, you know, scores of people.

我满世界寻找案例。但我的发现和所有交谈对象都令人不安——这么说吧。举个例子：我曾思考过俄克拉荷马城爆炸案和九十年代的爆炸事件，当时似乎出现了极端民兵暴力时刻和高度不信任感（有时确实事出有因，比如对联邦执法部门的不信任，联想到韦科事件、红宝石山脊事件等），这种错综复杂的极端主义与我们1月6日前后看到的情况类似。于是我的问题是：我们当时是如何摆脱那种局面的？

I looked all over the world for examples. And everything I found and everyone I talked to, it was not reassuring, put it that way. And and one of the examples I'll give you is, you know, I had this thought, and I I read about this in that in that story that, well, you know, there was I I was thinking about, like, Oklahoma City and the bombing in the in the nineties and and how it seemed like that there was this moment of extremist militia violence and really high levels of distrust, in some cases for a very good reason of of law federal law enforcement thinking about, like, Waco and and Ruby Ridge, etcetera, and all this tangled sort of similar kind of extremism as it seemed we were seeing around the time of January 6. And so my question was like, okay. Well, it seems like we got out of that.

那我们当时做对了什么？但当我开始与人交谈时，发现事实并非如此——我们其实什么都没做对。暴力只是转入了地下，而现在又重新浮现。无论我转向哪个方向，都得出了这样的结论：我们不仅比我最初想象的更深入一个可能持续一代人或更长的暴力长周期，而且历史表明，通常只有在局势变得极其糟糕时，才能真正摆脱政治暴力的恶性循环。

So what did we do right then? And then I started talking to people and it was like, well, no. We didn't really do anything right. It just kind of went underground and now it's just reemerged. And so everywhere I turned, it it was it it seemed like I came to the conclusion that we were not only farther along than I initially thought in what could be a very long, perhaps, generation or longer long cycle of of violence, but also that in looking at other points in history that often you don't actually break out of a terrible cycle of political violence until it gets really very bad.

显然，这是我希望避免的，我相信大多数人也是如此。难题在于：在没有历史 hindsight 的情况下，你永远无法确知自己处于周期的哪个阶段。更直接地回答你的问题：我认为我看到的是——即使只发生一次国会议员或任何人的枪击事件，即使只有一桩政治暴力行为，都已经是太多了。我想知道需要什么才能让其他美国人也产生同样的感受。

And, obviously, that's something that I wish to avoid, and I think most people do. The difficult question is you don't know at any given moment where you are in a cycle until you have the benefit of history. So so, you know, I I think I to answer your question more directly, I think what I saw was that, like, even one shooting of a member of congress or anyone for that matter, even one act of political violence is is too much. And I wanted to know what it would take for the rest of America to feel the same way.

我认为当大多数美国人回望以政治暴力为特征的历史时期时，他们会想到二十世纪六十年代——那时发生了一系列高调的政治暗杀事件：肯尼迪、马尔科姆·X、马丁·路德·金、罗伯特·肯尼迪，而这只是冰山一角。那真是个非凡的时期，杰拉尔德·福特还遭遇多次未遂暗杀，政治暴力事件频发。在你的文章《新无政府状态》中，你带我们回到了一个我不太熟悉的美国历史时期——十九世纪末到二十世纪初的那些年，当时美国的政治暴力（也许与今天有些相似，虽然我不想做任何预测）一直在酝酿、发酵，到处都有暗杀事件，最终在1919和1920年爆发了大规模的无政府主义暴力浪潮。

I think when most Americans look back to a period of history that was defined by political violence, they think about the nineteen sixties where you saw this spate of high profile political assassinations, JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Junior, RFK, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Just an just an extraordinary period. I mean, several attempted assassinations of Gerald Ford, a period of really extraordinary high profile political violence. In your essay, the new anarchy, you take us back to a period of American history that I did not know as much about, which are the years leading up to the late nineteen teens where political violence in America, maybe somewhat like today, although I don't want to make any kind of prediction, was simmering, simmering, simmering. You had assassinations here, assassinations there, until finally this enormous explosion of anarchist violence in 1919 and 1920.

请讲讲这个历史时期的主要人物。路易吉·加利亚尼是谁？帕尔默搜捕行动又是什么？

Tell me about the main characters of this period of history. Who was Luigi Galiani, and what were the Palmer raids?

没错。我被这个时代吸引的部分原因是，相对于那段暴力时期的显著程度，它的讨论度太低了。另一个原因是它提供了一个清晰的范例：当社会变得更具暴力倾向或更容忍暴力，或个人更倾向于暴力时，所有人的公民自由都会面临风险。路易吉·加利亚尼是一位无政府主义者，他和一些意大利移民对工厂工人在各种环境下的恶劣工作条件感到极度愤怒。

Right. So I was drawn to this era in part because I think it's under discussed relative to how, you know, remarkable that period of violence was. I also was drawn to it because it offers a very clear example of how a society that grows more violent or tolerant of violence or or individuals who grow more more drawn to violence really risk everyone's civil liberties. And so so okay. So Luigi Gagliani is is an anarchist who, you know, along with several other Italian immigrants, is furious about the really horrific working conditions for factory workers in in various settings.

他曾在美国佛蒙特州巴里的花岗岩厂工作过——那些工作条件的恶劣程度怎么形容都不为过。我指出这一点是因为，我最关注的问题（可能也是最复杂的问题）是：暴力在何时、是否真的具有正当性。对路易吉·加利亚尼和他的同伴来说，他们有充分的理由愤怒，不信任当权者，并决定诉诸暴力。于是，一波波的爆炸事件就发生了。

I mean, at one point, he's working at a granite factory in Barrie, Vermont. And if you I mean, it's just you can't overstate the degree to which these were terrible conditions. And and so and I and I point this out because I think one of the questions I am really drawn to, and that is probably the most complicated question, is when and whether violence is is in fact ever justified. And so to me, Luigi Gagliani and his you know, those who are alongside him has all the reason in the world to be furious, to distrust people in positions of power, and decide to resort to violence. And and so, you know, there's the waves of bombing.

不仅仅是他。我只是觉得，对我而言，他是个有趣的人物，一个极具魅力的人，一个拥有追随者的人。但无论如何，你进入了这个炸药爆炸的时期，正如你指出的，有暗杀企图和实际的暗杀，以及非常、非常真实的暴力。而反应，即随之而来的镇压，其形式之一就是帕尔默搜捕行动。1919年，司法部长米切尔·帕尔默的家发生爆炸，差点炸死他的家人。

It's not just him. I just he's, to me, an interesting character, a hugely charismatic guy, just someone who had a following. And but but in any case so you enter this period of of dynamite bombings and, you know, just just the assassination attempts as you point out and actual assassinations and and just real, real violence. And the the reaction, the crackdown as it came was in the form, among other things, of the Palmer raids. In 1919, there is an explosion at the home of the attorney general, Mitchell Mitchell Palmer, that very nearly kills his family.

他们能活下来真是非常、非常幸运的巧合。顺便提一下，他的隔壁邻居是富兰克林和埃莉诺·罗斯福。所以对他们来说可能也是险遭不测。对此的回应，我的意思是，显然这是一次非常个人的攻击，但这发生在一连串真正可怕的暴力事件之中。所以帕尔默决定做的是，放弃任何形式的宪法秩序，进行非常激进的移民镇压。

Just, like, really extraordinary stroke of luck that they lived. Side note, their his next door neighbors were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. And so near perhaps a near miss for them as well. And and the response to that, I mean, obviously, it was a very personal attack, but this comes amid a real just string of really terrible violence. And so what Palmer decides to do is to, you know, turn away from any sort of, you know, constitutional order and just a really aggressive immigration crackdown.

他想清除美国的无政府主义者。所以，在某种程度上，是的，你的房子被炸了。你看到周围的人都受到攻击。你当然不希望这些罪行继续，但他追求正义的方式是在没有……的情况下驱逐人员，特别针对意大利人和整个群体，采取一刀切的方法，无视宪法，清除社会中任何可能被怀疑是无政府主义者的人。所以你会看到，当然，现在这被铭记为公民自由的一个污点，不应重演。

He wants to to rid America of anarchists. And so, you know, on one level, like, yeah, your house is getting blown up. You're seeing people being attacked all around you. Of course, you don't want those crimes to continue, but the way he goes about pursuing justice is to deport people without, you know and specifically focused on Italians and and whole classes of people and and takes a blanket approach without regard for the constitution to ridding society of anyone who might be suspected of being an anarchist. And so you see just, you know, it's, of course, now remembered as a stain on on, you know, the civil liberties or and and not to be repeated.

但我认为我今天如此担心政治暴力的一个关键原因是，你可以很容易地看到，当情况恶化时，国家有理由做出违背美国核心价值观的事情。

But I think one of the one of the key reasons I worry so much about political violence today is you can see very easily how when things get bad, the state has justification to do things that are against core American values.

而这一点上，不幸的是，我觉得在查理·柯克遇刺事件后，我们近乎经历了一种似曾相识的感觉，当时人们普遍认为他的刺客是一个典型的标准安提法左派，一些著名的保守派和共和党人呼吁调查整个左派资助的非政府组织体系，基本上以某种欺诈罪起诉他们所有人，或者把他们全部传唤到国会，以关闭整个这种政治阵营。在一所教堂发生极其悲惨的枪击事件后，袭击者、嫌疑人是跨性别者或认同为女性（你知道，出生时为生理男性）的人，我看到许多保守派评论员说，我们基本上需要为所有人关闭跨性别治疗。我们需要消除这种身份，因为它是美国健康和美国安全的祸害。这让我害怕地想到我们正在看到这种重演。就在一个世纪前，我们看到了帕尔默搜捕行动，那里有一个真正的悲剧，而对那个悲剧的回应源于一种限制公民自由和削减宪法权利的本能，以换取安全感和安全事实。

And this is a piece where, unfortunately, I felt like we were near a deja vu in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination when it was widely assumed that his assassin was a typical standard Antifa leftist, there were calls from several prominent conservatives and Republicans to investigate the entire left funding NGO apparatus and basically indite all of them for some kind of fraud or pull them all before congress in order to shut down the entire this this entire sort of political column. After the incredibly tragic shooting at a church where the assailant, the suspect was a trans person or someone identifying, you know, born, biological male identifying as as a woman, I saw many conservative commentators saying we essentially need to shut down trans treatment for everyone. We need to erase this identity because it's a scourge on American health and and on American safety. And it's just it's it scared me to think that we were seeing this replay. Again, just just just a century ago, we saw the Palmer raids where you have a real tragedy, and you have a response to that tragedy flowing out of an instinct to constrict civil liberties and to curtail constitutional rights in order to purchase the feeling of and the fact of safety.

所以我想知道，在我们更积极地思考这个问题、思考暴力时代如何结束之前，我想知道这是否是你经常思考的事情，帕尔默搜捕行动的遗产以及明确的教训，即有时在美国历史上，当然也在世界历史上（你知道，国会纵火案是一个标志性例子），一个戏剧性的暴力事件会导致对公民自由的镇压，使一个国家陷入类似灾难的境地。

And so I wonder just, you know, before we move to thinking more positively about this, thinking about how violent eras end, I wonder whether this is something you think about a lot, the legacy of the Palmer raids and the clear lesson that sometimes in American history and certainly in world history, you know, the Reichstag fire being sort of the iconic example, a dramatically violent event leads to crackdowns on civil liberties that tip a nation into something like disaster.

我的意思是，绝对是。你知道，无论如何，国家垄断了暴力。所以，公民的权力是不成比例的，而我们保护自己的是我们所希望的宪法权利。所以，是的，我担心任何情况变得如此糟糕，以至于当权者可能会说，你们拥有的那些自由，也许在我们可以平息事态之前你们不应该拥有它们。这让我非常担心。

I mean, absolutely. You know, no matter what, the state has a monopoly on violence. And so, you know, it's there is disproportionate power for citizens, and what we have to protect us are our constitutional rights, we hope. And and so so, yeah, I mean, I worry I worry a lot about any situation where things get so bad that someone in a position of power might say, those freedoms you have, maybe you shouldn't have them until we can calm things down. That that worries me a lot.

我还要说的另一点是，因为我认为鉴于整个对话，现在人们有一种冲动，想要一种意识形态上的‘抓个正着’时刻。所以，你看到，这是可以理解的。比如，你有一位极受关注的右翼人物在一场可怕的犯罪中被杀，我理解人们责怪其政治对手的冲动。我确实理解这一点。另一方面，有人说，这个国家存在严重的右翼极端主义问题，确实存在，我们应该谈谈这个。

The other thing I'll say, just because I think it's important given the whole conversation that, you know, there's such an impulse right now for people to have a sort of, like, ideological gotcha moment. And so, you know, you I you see and it's and it's understandable. Like, you you you have this extremely high profile figure on the right who's killed in a horrific crime, and I understand the impulse for people to blame their political enemies. Like, I I do understand that. On the other hand, you have people saying, you know, there is a huge problem with right wing extremism in this country, which there is, and and let's talk about that.

所以，我理解人们想要搞对、想要计分，看看谁更糟的冲动。所以，这样做是人类的本能，但它对任何人都没有帮助，而且事实上，我认为真的在伤害我们所有人。有时人们说，让我们搞清楚。让我们谈谈谁更该受责备。当然，人们应该理解这一点，应该研究它。

And so, like, I understand the impulse for people to wanna, like, get it right and tally, you know, who's worse. And so, like, it's a human impulse to do that, but it is not helping anyone and is, in fact, I think, really harming all of us. It's and and sometimes people say, you know, you know, let's get it right. Let's talk about who's more to blame. It's certainly, people should we should understand that, and people should study it.

而且，你知道，我一点也不想对任何一方各打五十大板。但对我来说，我们社会中的暴力危机已经达到一个点，更重要的事情是每个人都拒绝政治暴力，句号。到此为止。而且，你知道，一旦事情平静下来，有人可以写一篇伟大的论文，论述我们是如何走到这一步的。但是，是的，那种在意识形态上交战的冲动，我认为，实在太危险了。

And, you know, I don't at all wanna both sides any of this. But to me, this crisis of violence in our society has reached a point where the more important thing is for everyone to reject political violence, period. Full stop. And, you know, once things are calm, we can somebody can write a great thesis about how we got here. But but, yeah, just the impulse to war ideologically, I think, is just so dangerous.

我也认为人们进行意识形态战争是因为意识形态战争最容易打。当灾难发生时，右翼人士很容易说：'看吧，正如我一直说的，左翼糟透了'。同样，左翼人士看到一个极右保守派的袭击者时，也很容易说：'这正好说明极右翼有多可怕'。这很棘手，因为正如我们开头所说，在这个'沙拉吧极端主义'时代，人们容易关注的焦点——即左右之争谁更优越——有时与刺客生活的真实动机和事实完全无关。这种看法实在太肤浅和简化主义了。

I also think that people war ideologically because the ideological war is the easy one to fight. It's easy when there's a catastrophe for someone on the right to say, well, this just goes to show, as I've always said, that the left is terrible. Just as it's easy for someone on the left to maybe look at maybe an assailant who's a far right conservative and say, this just goes to show how how terrible the far right is. And it's tough because, like we said at the beginning, in an era of salad bar extremism, the causes that are easy to pay attention to, which is this fight over who's better, left or right, is sometimes completely orthogonal to the actual motivations and facts of the assassin's life. It's so it's just so shallow and reductionist.

就像，你不可能通过指责整个政党来接近真相。

Like, it's just you're not gonna get at the truth just by blaming an entire party.

就像，反正那不是... 你

Like, that's not what's anyway, you

是的。这一点某种程度上被事实所印证：美国有多少极左主义者？数千万。美国极右翼有多少人？也是数千万。

yeah. This is this is somewhat borne out by just the fact that, you know, how many how many far leftists are there in America? Tens of millions. How many people on the far right are there in America? Tens of millions.

真正刺杀政治人物的人有多少？几十个。对吧？我的意思是，这只是一个极其、特别小的群体，却能造成难以置信的巨大破坏。他为这件事做的最喜欢的采访之一是与《群体妄想》的作者威廉·伯恩斯坦的对话。

How many people actually assassinate political figures? Dozens. Right? I mean, you're talking about just an incredibly, specifically small number of people that can do an incredible number of incredible amount of damage. One of my favorite interviews he did for this was with the author of the book, The Delusions of Crowds, William Bernstein.

他有一个非常有趣且奇怪地乐观的评论。你问他暴力时代如何结束？是 exhaustion（精疲力尽）？是一方的失败？他的回答极其有趣。

And he has this comment that is really interesting and weirdly optimistic too. You ask him what ends violent eras. Is it exhaustion? Is it defeat of one side? And his answer was incredibly interesting.

他说，'有时，如果暴力升级为一场可控的灾难（containable cataclysm），暴力就会结束'，引述完毕。什么是'可控的灾难'？它又是如何结束政治暴力时期的？

He said sometimes violence ends if it boils over into a containable cataclysm, end quote. What is a containable cataclysm, and how does it bring periods of political violence to a close?

所以这并不完全是一种乐观的思考方式，但我也... 你知道，这话也让我印象深刻。他的论点（这也涉及到'情况会变得多糟？'这个问题）... 他是这么跟我说的，我的意思是，这相当黑暗。但他是这么跟我说的，我引用一下他在我为《大西洋月刊》写的关于'新无政府状态'的故事中告诉我的内容，他说，'我几乎犹豫要不要说这个，但是...'（我会稍微转述一下）。但基本上，如果1月6日他们真的吊死了迈克·彭斯或南希·佩洛西呢？

So it's not exactly a hopeful way of thinking about it, but I I you know, it stuck with me too. His argument was and this goes to sort of the question of like how how much worse is it gonna get? The way he put it to me, mean, this is quite dark. But the way he put it to me, I'll quote from from what he told me in my in my story for the Atlantic, the new anarchy, he says, I almost hesitate to say this, but and I'll paraphrase a little bit. But, basically, what if they actually had hanged Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi on January 6?

他说，'我认为那就会终结它。'所以他的观点是，你知道，如果发生某些如此恐怖的事件，震撼了公民使他们清醒，让他们说'这不是我们想要的生活方式，这不是我们'，你就可以防止全面内战。所以，你知道，我这周在想，查理·柯克的遇刺... 你知道，就相当于他当时向我描述的情况，一场可怕的刺杀，一位在认识他的人群中备受爱戴的知名人物。然而，仅仅观察对此事的反应，我并不确信这意味着我们的灾难已经得到控制。

He says, I think that would have ended it. So his point is, you know, you could prevent all out civil war if something is so horrific that it shakes citizens to their senses and such that they say, this is not how we wanna live. This is not who we are. And so, you know, I I had I had the thought this week that the that the assassination of Charlie Kirk is you know, amounts to what he was describing to me, you know, just a horrific assassination, very high profile beloved figure among among those who knew him. And and yet I am not I am not confident that this means our cataclysm is contained, just looking at the reaction to it.

嗯，我认为这有两面性。我认为许多人对柯克被刺完全感到震惊。这种震惊可能会改变他们在网上的言论方式，可能会改变他们参与政治的方式。但话又说回来，这类暴力事件往往只是由少数随机的人参与，在某些奇怪的情况下，这些人甚至可能受到那些本应遏制他人言论的灾难性事件的煽动，如果这说得通的话。预测这样的事件将如何影响未来的政治暴力，是非常非常混乱的。

Well, I think it cuts both ways. I think many people are completely stunned by Kirk's assassination. And in being stunned might change the way they talk online, might change the way they engage with politics. But then again, these kind of violent events are often participated in by just a few random people who can, in some cases, in a weird way, be inspired by the very cataclysms that might contain other people's speech, if that makes sense. It's just very, very messy to predict how an event like this is going to shape in your future political violence.

你知道，我的猜测和希望是，某些共和党和保守派人士在指责左翼杀害查理·柯克之后，在认识到实际刺客并非明确属于极左翼后，或许会稍微收敛他们的言辞。这是可能的。但也有可能，就像唐纳德·特朗普未遂的刺杀事件一样，两周后我们又回到了反刺杀企图的常态。对吧？奇怪的是，整件事就像被冲淡了，几乎不会改变美国的对话和交流方式，因为如今事情发生得太频繁，没有什么能留下深刻印象。

You know, my my guess, my hope is that, you know, certain Republican and conservative figures after accusing the left of killing Charlie Kirk might, in the aftermath of recognizing that the actual assassin is not a clear cut member of the far left, maybe pull back a little bit of their rhetoric. That's possible. It's also possible that, you know, as with the failed assassination of Donald Trump, two weeks from now, we're right back to the status quo anti assassination attempts. Right? That that in in a weird way, the whole thing washes out, and it changes almost nothing about American conversation and communication because things are always happening so much in this day and age that nothing can really have a deep impression.

我觉得很难准确预测这件事会如何发展。实际上，我想以个人化和稍微务实一点的方式结束，我想知道你认为我们普通人能做些什么。我觉得政治暴力有点像闪电袭击，感觉是随机的，很罕见，但闪电也是从局部天气系统中产生的。而我们都在某种程度上‘制造天气’。你知道，政治和媒体气候是我们所有人共同创造的。

I I find it very difficult to to predict exactly how this is going to shake out. I I wanna close actually by by by making this personal and and a little bit pragmatic even, I wonder what you think we can do, like we as an average people. I feel like political violence is a little bit akin to a lightning strike where it feels random, it's it's rare, but also lightning emerges from a local weather system. And we all make the weather, so to speak. You know, the political and the media climate is cocreated by all of us.

根据你对历史的分析，以及与众多专家的交流，你认为我们——不仅仅是记者，还有拥有社交媒体账号的普通人——能做些什么来降低政治暴力的可能性和发生率？

What do you think from your analysis of history, from speaking to scores of experts, what can we, not just journalists, but ordinary people with access to a social media account, do that you think would reduce the likelihood and rates of political violence?

德里克，我思考这个问题很久了。我是美国人，也是个乐观主义者。我真的相信个人的力量，美国个人的力量。我相信如果足够多的人——而且大多数美国人都是善良的——大多数美国人都希望和平，希望为自己、子女、孙辈、朋友等等创造一个更美好的社会。

So I have thought about this so much, Derek. And I I mean, I'm an American, and I'm an optimist. I I really believe in the power of of the individual, of the American individual. And I believe that if enough and that most Americans are good. Most American people are good and want peace and want a better society for themselves and their children and grandchildren and friends and on and on.

所以我真的相信，如果足够多的人选择克制、倾听彼此，是的，可以激烈地分歧，但以和平的方式，我相信人们可以通过日常的、每时每刻的选择让事情变得更好。我知道这听起来，尤其是在这周，可能过于乐观。为了让这一点更具体，我想到的一个想法是，你知道，只是一个思维练习：如果人们决定成为单一议题选民呢？对吧？有些人主要根据经济状况投票。

And so I really believe if enough people choose restraint and to listen to one another and, yeah, disagree passionately with one another but peacefully, I I believe that people can make day to day, moment to moment choices that make things better. I know that sounds, especially this week, hopelessly optimistic. And one thing I've thought about to make it just slightly more concrete is is, you know, just this thought exercise of what if people decide there there are single issue voters in all kinds of things. Right? Some people vote primarily with their pocketbooks.

有些人投票给他们最关心的一件事，无论是维护第二修正案权利、堕胎权还是其他什么。我在想，如果人们决定他们的单一议题是支持拒绝政治暴力的领导层，句号，彻底停止，那会是什么样子？我们会选出什么样的领导人？至少，我认为这对人们来说是一个有趣的思维练习。

Some people vote for the the one thing they care about most, whether it's keeping the, you know, their second amendment rights or abortion rights or whatever it is. And I have thought, what if people decided that they wanted their single issue to be leadership that rejects political violence, period, full stop? What would that look like? What kind of leaders would we elect as a result? And it's I mean, it's an at the very least, I think an interesting thought exercise for people.

就像，如果这不是你想生活的世界，我们需要什么样的领导层才能避免这种情况？也许闪电袭击，不幸的是，偶尔会发生，但要真正改变我们似乎所处的方向。所以我想到的一点是，人民的力量体现在我们如何投票上，体现在我们如何花费时间和注意力上，体现在我们如何对待他人和彼此交流上。

Like, if this is not the world you wanna live in, what is the leadership we need such that it doesn't happen? Maybe the lightning strike, like, you know, it happens now and again, unfortunately, but to really change this direction we seem to be in. And so so that's one thing I think about is just the power of the people comes through how we vote. It comes through how we spend our time and attention. It comes through how we treat other people and speak to one another.

而这些是我们每个人在每一天的每一刻都能控制的。所以我仍然相信，我们可以让这个国家回到一个感觉更好的地方。

And and those are things that all of us can control every single moment of every day. So I I still believe we can get this country back to a place that feels better.

嗯，我欣赏你的努力。我不确定我是否像你那样乐观。我认为社交媒体本周暴露出的一个挑战是，在一个人们更可能通过屏幕互动、因此更常看到社交媒体头像而非邻居和政治对话者真实面孔、身体和手势的时代，我们看到的他人版本 frankly 是一个恶心、怪诞、哈哈镜般的扭曲形象。我知道，我必须认为，许多 essentially 呼吁内战或只是对内战前景剑拔弩张的人，他们喜欢早午餐、香槟、孩子踢足球和冬天的草莓，就像你在文章中提到的那样。

Well, I appreciate your effort. I don't know that I'm optimistic in precisely the way that you're optimistic. I think that one of the challenges of social media that was really born out this week is that in an era where people are more likely to interact with other people through a screen and to therefore see their social media avatar more than they see the actual face and body and gesticulations of their neighbors and their interlocutors in political discourse, we see a version of other people that's frankly a disgusting, grotesque, funhouse mirror of who other people really are. I I I know, I have to think that many of the folks essentially calling for civil war or or just saber rattling about the prospect of civil war in America. I know that they love brunch and champagne and kids kicking soccer balls and strawberries in winter, as you put it in your piece.

所有这些你只能在一个没有内部战争的世界或国家中享受的东西。因此，我们通过社交媒体平台呈现了这种戏剧性的内群体 vs. 外群体、高唤醒负能量的版本，而一旦我们关上电脑、放下手机，我们是父母、兄弟姐妹。就像，许多拥有我认为最恶劣社交媒体账号的人，在内心深处，从根本上说，有时是相当正常的人。但正如你所暗示的，要清晰了解‘我们人民’是非常非常困难的，当我们以这种方式看待他人时。

All the things that you can only have in a world or in a country that is not in at war with itself. And so we represent this version this version of dramatic in group versus out group, high arousal negativity through our social media platforms when once we close our computer screens and put our phones away, we're moms and dads and brothers and sisters. Like, we're we're like, many of these people with, I think, the most heinous social media accounts are deep down, like, fundamentally, sometimes quite normal people behind the scenes. But it's very, very hard, I think, to get a clear sense of we the people, as as you were alluding to. Very, very hard to get a clean sense of we the people, when this is how we see other people.

我们在屏幕上看到的是他们最糟糕的一面，而不是在餐桌对面看到他们最好的一面。

We see them at their worst on screens rather than see them at their best, across across the dinner table.

完全同意。这正好引向你关于社交隔离的杰出研究。正如你之前提到的，每个人都应该读你写的封面故事。对我来说，首先，是的，下线接触现实，但也要通过——我的意思是，这完全可以成为另一个话题，你已经谈了很多——但第三空间以及世俗或非政治空间的衰落。要找到方式去认识那些在政治上与你意见不合的人。

Well, totally. And this goes to your brilliant work on social isolation. Everyone should read the cover story you wrote, as you mentioned earlier. And to me, I mean, it's like, first of all, yes, log off, touch grass, but also find ways to have real connection socially through what I mean, this could be a whole another you've talked about this so much, but the the decline of sort of third spaces and secular or or nonpolitical spaces. But find ways to get to know people who you don't agree with politically.

就像，我只是觉得有太多人生活中缺少这样的经历，我认为如果我们能做到这一点，我们所有人都会变得更好。

Like, I I just there are way too many people who don't have that in their lives, and I think we'd all be better for it if we did.

拉弗朗斯特工，非常感谢你。

Agent LaFrance, thank you very much.

谢谢，德里克。

Thanks, Derek.

感谢收听。《简单英语》由德文·贝拉尔迪制作，我们已经恢复每周两次的更新频率。很快再聊。

Thank you for listening. Plain English is produced by Devin Beraldi, and we are back to our twice a week schedule. We'll talk to you soon.