Since the 1980s, blues musician Daryl Davis of Maryland, a black man, has sought out members of the Ku Klux Klan in an effort to befriend them. His friendship has convinced sizable numbers to throw out their white robes. I have thought about Davis often over the past decade.
We live in disturbing times. Rightwing extremism and authoritarianism are ascendant. The indecency knows no limit. Eleven years of the Trump age, and especially the last year, in which the horrors and absurdities have reached a fever pitch, leave little appetite for what is castigated on the Left as the soft, disgustingly liberal notion of loving thy neighbor. I am sick enough from the nightmare from which we cannot awake; do not sicken me further by asking me to love the fascists. Facing an assault on democracy and human freedom, much of the Left has come not to bring love, but a sword.
In late 2025, after rightwing activist Charlie Kirk was shot, I wrote:
For me, a Leftist, the Charlie Kirk killing brought a lot of different thoughts and emotions. Political violence is disturbing and frightening. This was an unacceptable act that will only make things worse. I don’t want to live in a world like this, where we’re all murdering each other over our views, whether standard or extremist. We want the temperature lowered. I can’t relate to any Leftists cheering this.
At the same time, and while such thoughts hardly lower the temperature, the erosion of democracy and the rule of law will make political violence in general, in other possible contexts, more difficult to enthusiastically reject, for whether you’re a 1770s American colonist, a 1930s German, or a 2020s North Korean, political violence at some point may be the right thing to do. This is not to say that America is at that point, nor is it to say I know when that point is, nor is it to say that Kirk’s murder belongs in this category of the acceptable (it does not, see first paragraph). It’s simply to say that the authoritarian trends over the past year and past decade have been quite frightening, reminding us of this spectrum where political violence is wrong in a democracy, but less wrong under other systems. We all know this — and it’s haunting a lot of minds right now. We don’t want to move a micrometer down that moral scale. Preserving our democracy and avoiding political violence is very important.
In America Is Simply Too Absurd for Democracy to Survive, I affirmed that violence is at times necessary and justified in the face of tyranny. All of this is to simply lay bare my sympathies for the Leftist’s (and most everyone else’s) view on the ethics of violence — turning the other cheek and loving your enemies is not always the right thing to do — while also confessing some liberal sentiments. (Of course, the radical Left has a rich history of nonviolent mass action, so this whole dichotomy is hardly set in stone.)
What is the role of love in the Trump era? To an extent, the Daryl Davis approach — the philosophy of Jesus, Dr. King, Confucius, Gandhi, the Buddha, and so on — is fundamentally correct. One may not like it. One might rather smash a Klansman in the face with a baseball bat. But if one actually wishes to change people, then friendship, love, and connection are necessary. As Davis will tell you, it does not always work. But being nasty or violent or cold to Trump supporters will not work — it will only entrench them in their views. You’re going to need kindness and perhaps earnest conversation. Those who have made it through the complex, difficult deradicalization process will tell you that exposure to targets of hate can be transformative. (Alongside Davis, consider black activist Ann Atwater and later-former Klan leader C.P. Ellis, who were forced to work together and became friends in 1970s North Carolina, immortalized in the moving film The Best of Enemies, which misleadingly sounds like a bad rom-com.) Plenty of studies support the obvious idea that friendship, empathy, and exposure can change political views in positive, if often small, ways. No matter how horrific things get, no matter how far the nation descends into the chasm, loving a Trump devotee offers the best chance of his metamorphosis. It would be a social good. It’s one of those things that we may not want to be true, but probably is anyway.
Of course, to everything there is a season. It is not difficult to differentiate how one might treat one’s extremist relative or coworker or church friend from the proper response to a dictator, his officials, and his soldiers, those more directly responsible for the terrors. As expressed in my post above and elsewhere, this is not to say we live in a dictatorship or advocate violence at this hour; there are many things that can and should be done first, especially nonviolent mass action (after 80 years, the general strike has been reborn in the United States: 50,000 people striking and protesting in downtown Minneapolis, and far more elsewhere around the nation, recently pushed the Trump administration into publicly backing down). Friendship and kindness to MAGA types — that heretical, vile, stomach-churning notion — would also come first. But speaking in general terms, it seems clear enough that more liberal and more leftwing philosophies can coexist. Love for the individual does not rule out violence against an authoritarian regime, nor vice versa. One could do both in a single afternoon. Love for the commoner, the sword for the king.
Some would argue that it is only from a place of immense privilege that one can suggest loving Trump supporters. No question it is far easier (and less dangerous) for some than others. But the more one reflects upon these matters, the less relevant privilege seems. If a black man can befriend Klan members, who am I to reject such love? How can the white man refuse to follow such an example? Earning the ire and scoff of many a past and modern Leftist, Dr. King (also a socialist), who lived in a time far worse than this one, said, as has been endlessly shared on social media: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” A shocking statement. A disturbing, inconceivable sentiment, given the terrors of his age. If someone like Dr. King can insist on such a thing, who am I to say he is wrong to do so? What arrogance and privilege that would require. Further, who could deny that it is the personally impacted, not merely ideological liberals and Leftists, who are the most important people for Trump supporters to meet? If Daryl Davis was white, would Klansmen see how wrong they really are about blacks? If conservatives and far-right extremists found themselves unexpectedly becoming friends with undocumented immigrants and trans persons, some hearts and minds would change. That is the cold, hard truth. None could deny the inherent risks of violence or deportation, the fear and anguish, and this is not to suggest the vulnerable be sacrificed on the altar of love and hope — no one is forcing Davis at gunpoint to get a beer with a Klansman to build a better world. It is simply to embrace pragmatism, to say that if love works, even just sometimes, then those who advocate for it or try to make use of it, privileged or not, are hardly outside their minds.
And there is another reason for the Left to think more like Christ (in whom I do not believe), since much of the Christian Right refuses to do so. Dr. King also said, “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” I have also thought of this repeatedly over the years, and cannot help but grow emotional. Again, that a black man during Jim Crow could say something like this. Hate is indeed such a burden. Sometimes it’s fuel, quite beneficial. But it’s also, as the reverend would put it, “internal violence of the spirit,” self-violence. It flays one’s mental health. Holding onto it is, as the saying goes, like drinking poison and expecting the hated to die — all the liberal cliches will find refuge here today. Who among us does not feel like she has been drinking poison for the past decade? Perhaps we are not solely sickened by the nightmare, but by the ensuing detestation Dr. King warned against. Again, hatred, like violence, at times must be unleashed against despots. It is difficult to imagine one without the other; they pour out together to drown and wash away regimes. I have always reserved any hatred for those at the top, those more directly responsible. I can carry a certain weight, one surely inevitable as long as I have a conscience. Those indirectly responsible — Trump voters, everyday believers in cruel policies and rhetoric and lies — I have never really had the strength to hate. Most of us, if we have not yet cut them out of our lives, have family, friends, and acquaintances who support Trump, whether or not we discuss politics with them. It is usually a bit easier to love them, enjoy their company — but strangers are no different than they. They are all together commoners. Hating them is too great a burden to bear — whether this is from an overdose of poison or privilege, the reader will decide.
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