Extremism, Conspiracies, and Vigilantism

Symptoms of a Broader Problem

Shortly after the 2024 election, a lone wolf vigilante murdered the CEO of a private health insurance company in broad daylight on the streets of New York City, which I strongly condemn, especially when there exist perfectly peaceful and legal ways to reform the health insurance industry. But this reflects a broader phenomenon: if government and proper authorities fail to act, then there is a risk for vigilantes to come out of the woodwork and pursue their own version of "justice." In this way, I view vigilantism as more than just aberrant criminal behavior — it's a policy failure.

A Troubling Pattern

Looking more broadly, this behavior fits into a troubling pattern. Even those who are firmly within the American mainstream can drift toward third-party ideologies, conspiracy theories, or even violence when they no longer believe the system is capable of delivering justice.

During the pandemic, there was a huge spike in conspiratorial thinking. I think it has to do with this overwhelming and unbearable feeling of fear and helplessness. Everything shut down, and people were dying by the thousands, and the government bungled its response to the pandemic. In fact, my own mental health took a dire turn at the time, and I started to look outside the mainstream for solutions to defuse our toxic and contentious political culture. And for a few months, my mental health was at an all-time low, and I became a big believer in voluntary taxation. Luckily for me, four years of care from Crozer Psychiatry and therapy across several mental health providers allowed my mental health to make a full recovery. That phase passed, and so did the voluntary taxation idea — but the underlying experience of drifting toward a fringe framework under stress is one I think about often.

While the politically disaffected differ widely in platform and tone, they often share a common trait: the loss of faith in our major political parties and our institutions to address a systemic injustice. Anarchists have lost faith in the government, ecosocialists have lost faith in the economy, and populists have lost faith in the establishment. And while third-party policies tend towards the extreme, regressive, or unrealistic, they are at least grounded in a real criticism of the system and are constructive in nature, as they attempt to enact positive change through our existing political and legal democratic process. And it helps that they can commiserate together instead of retreating into total isolation from the broader public. But still, it is a warning sign about our major parties when people feel they have to search outside the mainstream for something to fix the problem.

I think that some people tend to look to conspiracies, because they would rather believe that someone is in control than to believe that everyone is helpless — that there must be a network of shadowy, nefarious figures that have corrupted the government and pull the strings behind the scenes to oppress the masses, preventing even the most good-hearted and powerful politicians from addressing systemic injustices. For a widow who was supposed to retire in a few years and travel the world with her husband, but instead lost him to COVID-19, it's only natural for her to be desperately searching for a reason, for someone to be behind all this.

On the whole, this can form a negative feedback loop, as the extreme third-party policies and bizarre conspiracy theories can be so off-putting to the general public, that it can result in chronic isolation, delusion, and despair. There are some who stew for long enough in a place of unbearable desperation, that they eventually feel the need to lash out through violent individual action, either directed outwardly (mass shootings, murders, acts of terror) or inwardly (addiction, self harm, suicide, deaths of despair) — the tragic and natural outcome of a complete loss of faith in any institution, system, or legal means to achieve justice. This is my assessment for how someone who was previously a happy and productive member of society could end up murdering a health insurance CEO on the streets of New York City.

In summary, I view extremism, despair, cynicism, isolation, and vigilante violence as symptoms of existential and systemic societal rot, which paves the way for oppressive "strong-man" authoritarianism to fill the void where everyone else has failed. Alongside climate, inequality, and democratic backsliding, the widespread loss of faith in our institutions is one of the defining policy failures of our time — and addressing it is a precondition for progress on the rest.