America’s ‘fringe’ has taken over the country

Another day, another public execution. The talking heads on television and Twitter tell us not to worry too much: America is still strong. They repeat this sentiment after every waking nightmare. These horrific events are not the norm, they say. They’re just the actions of a few people on the “fringe.” 

But what is the American “fringe”?

The “fringe” tried to incinerate the country in 2020. The “fringe” tore down statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The “fringe” control the universities and has spent years indoctrinating kids with discriminatory dogmas. The “fringe” created the policies that let violent, mentally ill men prowl the streets and kill refugees. The “fringe” killed a healthcare CEO at sunrise in December. The “fringe” tried to kill Donald Trump last summer. The “fringe” killed Charlie Kirk on Wednesday. 

The “fringe” celebrated everything that was destroyed and every life that was taken.

The “fringe” is a bunch of very normal people I went to high school and college with, who have spent the last three days cavorting and reveling over the death of a man they never met and whose actual beliefs they likely cannot articulate, let alone rebut. These are not incels or idiots; they’re ostensibly educated people with jobs and families and degrees. And yet they’re possessed by an ideology that apparently prohibits them from accepting the sanctity of every human life. 

The “fringe” is not on the fringes. It’s everywhere. It’s taking over the country. 

And yet for years, well-intentioned voices have told us that the madness we see online is somehow unreal – that the internet is not real life. It may be true that the internet cannot replace real life, but it can certainly destroy very real, meaningful parts of life. 

And it’s succeeding, especially in its pursuits to rot the brains of young people. To say that the radicalization we’re seeing is a “fringe” issue is to simply admit you have no idea the scale of the problem; it reveals you do not know what’s happening to young people online.

If you’re a Boomer, or a “not very online” person, you won’t understand the extent of the problem. That’s not a criticism. It means you’re probably doing something right – you’ve not witnessed the effects of online addiction. You’re not seeing the kinds of vile images and videos and calls to arms that create the world’s Luigi Mangiones and their disciples. But just because you’re not seeing radical, politically insane, very subversive, and dangerously attractive content online all day doesn’t mean others aren’t. 

More and more of my friends are becoming openly Bolshevist or sympathetic to nihilistic authoritarianism, every month. This isn’t because they’re reading Lenin or Marx or Marcuse. No, they don’t read at all. No one does. Their minds have been captured by algorithms that exist solely to weld their eyes to their screens. Those algorithms feed them craziness to intrigue the scroller, and, with enough time, that craziness starts to feel normal to the addict, who then goes seeking crazier content, which the algorithm gladly supplies. This cycle replays millions of times across the country, every day. And then, before you know it, you have millions of people rejoicing over the death of a civilian who’d broken no laws. 

Refusing to acknowledge that these screechers are destroying the nation’s harmony is a refusal of duty. The very insistence that these people are fringe has allowed this scourge to grow to the size it has now, where it can take lives and endanger the democratic process. 

It’s also made social media a more miserable place (which it was always destined to be). That has in turn made social life in America more miserable. Anyone still insisting that these forces are marginal is naïve or complacent, or speaking with their hands over their eyes. Perhaps they’re afraid of what they’d see if they peeked through their fingers.

Because the “fringe” has already infiltrated real life, real America. They were educated in our schools, and they now teach our children. They tyrannize the public square. They swing clubs when they cannot win debates. They disrespect our gods. They ransack our churches, and, like the barbarians of old, they do not speak our language. They speak only the language of violence and convulsion. And they are not “fringe.”