Left to Their Own Devices

Ian Haworth· May 17, 2026 · 9:02 AM UTC ·5 min read · 0 reactions · 0 comments · 42 views

#politics #political violence #left-wing extremism #american history #social unrest

TL;DR · WeSearch summary

Noah Rothman's book 'Blood & Progress' examines a century of left-wing political violence in the United States, arguing that such violence is part of a recurring pattern enabled by a permissive activist culture. The book highlights numerous recent incidents, including high-profile assassinations and attacks, to challenge the notion that political violence is solely a right-wing phenomenon. The reviewer, writing amid ongoing political violence, underscores how frequent such events have become and how desensitized society has grown.

Key facts

▪The book 'Blood & Progress' by Noah Rothman documents a century of left-wing political violence in America, including assassinations, riots, and terrorism.
▪The reviewer notes the assassination of Charlie Kirk in 2025 and multiple assassination attempts on President Donald Trump as pivotal examples of left-wing violence.
▪Prominent Democratic figures like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders are cited for condemning violence while offering justifications that the book criticizes.
▪Incidents covered include the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the Seattle Autonomous Zone, and antisemitic attacks following October 7, 2023.
▪The reviewer observes that the frequency of political violence has led to societal numbness, even among those deeply engaged in political discourse.

About this source

Washington Free Beacon files mainly under politics. We currently carry 130 of its stories.

All Washington Free Beacon coverage →

Original article

Washington Free Beacon · Ian Haworth

Read full at Washington Free Beacon →

Story provenance

Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record

inspect →

Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.

Record

Original publisher	Washington Free Beacon
Canonical URL	https://freebeacon.com/politics/left-to-their-own-devices-2/
Publication time	Sun, 17 May 2026 09:02:43 +0000
Retrieval time	2026-05-17T09:07:12.954Z
Last seen	2026-05-17T09:07:12.954Z
Headline source	Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite)
Excerpt source	publisher body
Excerpt method	First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited.
Summary	WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer)
Summary source text	contentText
Citation coverage	Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL.
Cluster	9hdKAwTPuAwO
Cluster logic	Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison.
Ranking reason	Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking.
Publisher visit	Yes — open original
Substitutes article?	No — link-out required for full text

Rights status (four layers)

Publisher-declared

No publisher-confirmed rights record for this source yet.

Machine-readable

No source-specific machine-readable restriction detected beyond the public feed.

WeSearch interpretation

WeSearch declared handling (basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed). This is WeSearch policy, not a legal grant on the publisher's behalf.

Unknown

Retrieval and training permissions are not asserted unless the publisher confirms them.

WeSearch handling by dimension

Indexing	May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)?	Allowed
Snippet	May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown?	Allowed
AI summary	May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article?	Limited
Retrieval / RAG	May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation?	Not asserted
Model training	May the content be used to train AI models?	Not asserted
Commercial reuse	May the content be reused commercially?	Not permitted

Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.

Open original publisher → Source rights JSON → Machine-readable provenance → Rights framework → WESEARCH-STORY-PROVENANCE-V1

Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand

Politics Left to Their Own Devices REVIEW: 'Blood & Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America' by Noah Rothman (hachettebookgroup.com) Ian Haworth May 17, 2026 image/svg+xml .st0{fill:none;stroke:#384f61;stroke-width:2;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-miterlimit:10;} .st1{fill:none;stroke:#384f61;stroke-width:2;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-miterlimit:10;} Perhaps the greatest challenge every current affairs author faces is the inevitable decision of where to draw the line. As events continue to remain all-too-current, they must decide where to finally freeze time in place, put down the pen, and accept that no future "current" events will be included.

…

Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Washington Free Beacon.

Anonymous · no account needed

Discussion

0 comments