spiked93%
It’s time to talk about left-wing violence 62%
By Joanna Williams83%
7/14/2026, 9:00:07 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 34 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Availability Heuristic, and Hasty Generalization, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 49.4% saturation with 452 hits. Analysis detected 2,563 faulty-reasoning hits from 915 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 57.5% and a BS Rank of 62% (8,339 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 61.90% of the article peer group.
I’m no fan of Wes Streeting.
The wannabe UK prime minister, defeated before a Labour leadership contest was even declared, has been wrong on just about every issue going.
But whatever you think of the former health secretary, we would surely all agree that there could be no justification for calls to harm him or his property.
Not any more.
Bash Back, a militant transgender rights group, has singled Streeting out in its campaign to ‘smash transphobia’ through ‘direct harm’.
The group has produced an online guide urging supporters to identify ‘transphobic’ individuals and then ‘hit them repeatedly until they desist from their activities’.
Suitable targets, the chilling booklet suggests, include the ‘offices of transphobic MPs’.
This is illustrated, by way of example, with a photograph of Streeting’s constituency office.
Also on Bash Back’s hit list are organisations including Sex Matters, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Free Speech Union.
Activists are advised to target party conferences and ‘the property of transphobic public intellectuals’.
And if there were still any doubt as to what all this is meant to inspire, the leaflet urges people to ‘choose your weapon’ above icons of a hammer, a mask and a fire extinguisher.
If such a disturbing instruction manual had been produced by a right-wing group, there would be a national outcry.
Instead, it barely registers as a news story.
Yes, Bash Back might be a small group of violent nutters, but their threats are worth taking seriously.
Not only do they highlight the risk to particular individuals – they also shine a light on the state of our political discourse.
They show that for some activists, politics is no longer about attempting to win over your opponents or convince the public of your point of view.
It is not even about taking part in rowdy or disruptive demonstrations.
Instead, what passes for activism today is a potentially deadly temper tantrum: the promise of violent attacks, justified by hurt feelings.
The Bash Back guide contains one particularly revealing passage:
‘All of our targets have blood on their hands.
We refuse to let them wash it off in peace.
Welcome to a new era of trans rage.’
This reference to ‘blood’ sums up the activists’ view that words wound, and that hateful speech is an act of violence.
This view first emerged with critical race theory, but it has been taken up by trans-rights organisations that consider any challenge to gender ideology to be eliminating ‘the very idea of a transgender person’ and a denial of their ‘right to exist’.
Some have now convinced themselves that actual violence is a reasonable response.
Bash Back’s literal call to arms comes complete with tips on how best to avoid getting caught.
It advises changing clothes after carrying out an attack and wiping down equipment with alcohol to remove DNA.
Ironically, for a group in support of men who want to prance around as ladies, this ‘trans rage’ is very testosterone-fuelled.
It’s Andrew Tate (‘Bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck.
Shut up bitch.’) in pastel-hued drag.
It used to be hot-headed Islamists who issued fatwas to anyone who blasphemed against their dodgy religious principles.
They are still a threat, of course.
But now they’ve been joined by radical left-wing activists who spew out death threats to Nigel Farage and JK Rowling, while urging everyone to ‘Be Kind’.
Sadly, these are not all empty promises.
Last year, Bash Back really did attack Streeting’s office.
They sprayed red paint on the building and wrote ‘child killer’ on the windows.
And they also disrupted a feminist conference in Brighton by smashing windows and spraying paint.
This turn to violence is not limited to trans-rights activists.
In 2024, Samuel Corner was one of four Palestine Action activists who broke into the site of an Israeli-linked arms factory, causing £1.2million worth of damage.
When their protest was disrupted, Corner hit a police officer with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine.
These activists’ crimes ought to have been roundly condemned, but instead Green Party leader Zack Polanski said it was ‘gut-wrenching’ to see them jailed.
Labour’s John McDonnell described their subsequent prison sentences as ‘truly shocking’.
Again, it is impossible to imagine a similar defence of far-right activists being given legitimacy by politicians.
In other cases of political violence, people have been killed.
Police have now declared that the murder of Ann Widdecombe, a prominent member of Reform UK, is being treated as an act of terrorism, despite previously telling the public there was no evidence her killing was politically motivated.
It is, of course, hard to see any other reason for a person to allegedly drive across the country with what’s been described as a ‘wooden pole’.
Then there are the MPs, Jo Cox and David Amess, who were both murdered for their views.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a court has heard that Charlie Kirk was killed by alleged shooter Tyler Robinson in part over his views on gender.
We urgently need a reckoning with this outbreak of political violence.
It should not have to be stated that words – no matter how offensive, hateful or upsetting – can never justify injuring other people or taking their lives.
Solving disagreements with weapons rather than through debate takes us down a truly dangerous and disturbing path.
Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won.
Follow her on Substack: cieo.substack.com
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