Blood, Progress, and Amnesia
27th July 2026
The assassinations of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and insurance executive Brian Thompson, the murder of a Jewish couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum, the latest (as of this writing) attempt on the life of Donald Trump—these are some recent examples of serious violence in the name of left-wing causes. Others include the spate of bombing and shooting attacks against ICE facilities, and, going further back, the deadly and destructive riots of 2020.
Noah Rothman’s Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America aims to “confront its readers” with “the quickening tempo of left-led attacks and their political motives,” as well as with the ways in which such violence is often forgotten or justified.
Rothman opens the book with recent examples like the Kirk assassination, then goes back in time to consider waves of leftist violence since the early 20th century. It thus proceeds from the anarchists of the 1910s to the Marxian terrorists of the 1970s, on up through violent offshoots of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and pro-Palestinian movements.