Society Takes Care of People to Prevent Radicalism and Violence

We don't guarantee basic social rights to people out of the kindness of our hearts, we do it to prevent chaos and violence.

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Following a furious, multi-state manhunt, police have arrested a person of interest following the slaying of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson.

The Internet is combing through Luigi Mangione’s social media footprint, trying to figure out what might have motivated him to kill Thompson. What you’ll find if you join these web sleuths is a hodgepodge mix of beliefs: Mangione seemed to be interested in everything from the far left to the far right; like many Americans, his expressed beliefs don’t slot neatly into either of our over-arching political tribes. He also hails from a wealthy family (although this is not unusual among even radicals on right or left).

But early reporting suggests that when he was arrested he was carrying a paper copy of a manifesto where he denounced the greed of the health care industry, pointing to a possible motive for the murder.

Some high-profile conservative commentators have tried to turn Thompson’s killing into a partisan issue, suggesting that America’s political left was cheering on murder-as-politics. The problem with this view, as Newsweek illustrates here, is that while few Americans condone murder, a lot of Americans, including self-identified conservatives are angry with our health care system.

Americans have some of the most expensive health care in the world paired with some of the most middling outcomes. Most people aren’t going to pick up a weapon and murder someone over it, but the rage at the system runs deep among many Americans.

Some of the most bewildered political conversations I’ve had are with people from overseas when I try to explain to them how difficult it is for many Americans to afford health care. The rest of the developed world and even some members of the developing world, on the other hand, have more or less figured out how to finance health care and make sure everybody has access. Their systems aren’t perfect, but ours is just a disaster.

One reason why our peers tend to have more a developed health care system — and indeed welfare states overall —is because they understood that it was one way to prevent instability and extremism.

The origins of the welfare state

The German Bundestag, the country’s parliamentary building. Photo by Alana Harris on Unsplash

The first modern welfare state was founded in Germany by Otto von Bismarck, a leader who came to be known as the Iron Chancellor.

Contrary to what you might expect, Bismarck was not any kind of leftist. In fact, he was a German nationalist and conservative.

But Bismarck faced a challenge in the late nineteenth century. Socialism and its adherents were on march in Europe, and Bismarck was scared what would happen if they gained more influence.

And workers were restless.

By one estimate, there were “at least 530 strikes between 1871 and 1873.” August Bebel, who led the socialist party, warned “that before a few decades pass, the battle cry of the Parisian proletariat ’War to the palaces, peace to the huts, death to misery and idleness!’ will become the battle cry of the entire European proletariat.” There were even a pair of assassination attempts aimed at the German emperor.

First, Bismarck responded to this rising radicalism with repression. He implemented anti-socialist laws that led to the banning of hundreds of socialist-sympathizing organizations and publications.

Yet he also understood that rising leftist radicalism in the country could not be beaten back with sticks alone.

He created the world’s first welfare state, justifying it as a way to stop the socialists. Starting in the 1880s, Germany gradually built out programs of government-backed insurance that included health insurance, pensions, and accident insurance. (The socialist politicians in Germany continued to succeed, but they also focused more on reform rather than revolution.)

Of course, anyone with even faint knowledge of European history will recall that Germany fell into a different kind of radicalism in the decades to come; the hyperinflation, loss of dignity, and general misery in the Weimar Republic after World War I helped give rise to the Nazi Party and World War II.

The Allies were cognizant of this when they rebuilt the former Axis powers following the war. They knew that widespread misery would only lead to more extremism, and helped rebuild Germany and Japan into prosperous countries with ample welfare states.

The New Deal as a prophylactic against communism

At home, too, American president Franklin Roosevelt understood his political program as helping hold the center hold.

Following the onset of the Great Depression, wide swaths of America were transfixed by radical currents. Some Americans became sympathetic to ideologies like fascism or communism that promised a way out of the capitalist crisis.

Roosevelt no doubt believed that the New Deal — the package of economic regulations and social guarantees that came to redefine the American economy and state under him — was the right thing to do on the merits. But he also saw himself as defending an American system from radicals who wanted to overthrow it.

He explained his logic during an address in Syracuse to the New York Democratic state convention in 1936.

Roosevelt made clear that he rejected “the support of any advocate of Communism or of any other alien ‘ism’ which would by fair means or foul change our American democracy.”

He that while there was “no difference between the major parties as to what they think about Communism,” there was a “very great difference” in “what they do about Communism.”

Roosevelt argued that “Communism is a manifestation of the social unrest which always comes with widespread economic maladjustment.”

And he explained how set out to prevent radicalism by making the economy fairer and more productive for more people:

The answer is found in the record of what we did. Early in the campaign of 1932 I said: "To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite disaster. Reaction is no barrier to the radical, it is a challenge, a provocation. The way to meet that danger is to offer a workable program of reconstruction, and the party to offer it is the party with clean hands." We met the emergency with emergency action. But far more important than that, we went to the roots of the problem, and attacked the cause of the crisis. We were against revolution. Therefore, we waged war against those conditions which make revolutions—against the inequalities and resentments which breed them. In America in 1933 the people did not attempt to remedy wrongs by overthrowing their institutions. Americans were made to realize that wrongs could and would be set right within their institutions. We proved that democracy can work.

Roosevelt’s program of reforms worked. American support for communism and other radical ideologies never approached to the level it found on the other side of the Atlantic. As one article published at the conservative Hoover Institution noted back in 2001, “FDR saved capitalism.”

The link to the Daniel Penny case

Photo by Arthur Hutterer on Unsplash

Although the bulk of this article has been about how the welfare state can prevent political radicalism and violent extremism, it’s worth recalling the power of preventative action even in more banal circumstances.

In the past week, a New York City jury decided that Daniel Penny was not guilty of criminally negligent homicide following his chokehold of mentally ill homeless man Jordan Neely.

The case — which rose to prominence in national news thanks to its proximity to culture war narratives about race, crime, and fear on the New York subway — has been discussed ad nauseum.

Because of the day and age we live in, the issue was quickly polarized, with the left largely arguing that Neely was unjustly killed and needed social supports instead and the right arguing that Penny had no choice but to intervene in a circumstance where subway riders could have been harmed by an unstable man.

But one link that is rarely made is the commonalities between the arguments above about the welfare state and the need for the state to intervene in cases where someone’s mental state can make them a risk to themselves or others.

Neely had been offered a range of social services, but he quickly withdrew from them. This is likely because he wasn’t in the right state of mind to judge his own needs. Was the state of New York really so kind to him by not forcing him to be institutionalized or cared for in some way? That path ended up with his death.

Many on the left who were so quick to excoriate Penny didn’t look at the wider issue here: that when we fail to take care of people, they can end up exactly like Neely did. And sometimes taking care of someone does mean forcing them to do things against their will, especially when they’re in a poor mental state.

Preventing violence before it starts

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I’m not here to argue that every act of violence can be prevented by building a kinder and more proactive society or state.

There will always be some disturbed or malicious individuals who choose to act in antisocial ways.

But we have plenty of evidence that shows that we can reduce radicalism and violence by ameliorating the conditions that might create it in the first place.

There’s a reason that Egypt’s revolution in 2011 adopted the slogan “Bread and Freedom”; even monarchs and other dictators have to tend to the basic needs of their people if they want their reins to be long.

I’m reminded of an interview with Tony Benn, the long-time British Labour politician, about the National Health Service (NHS).

Although the NHS is far from perfect, it has become a third rail of British politics for a reason. No major politician suggests moving towards some kind of American health system because they don’t want to be laughed out of politics.

Even Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s most famous Conservative Prime Minister, made clear that she had no intention of privatizing it.

When a filmmaker asked Benn what would’ve happened had Thatcher decided to dismantle the NHS, he had a simple answer.

“There’d have been a revolution,” he replied without hesitation.