Can lefty commentators PLEASE stop "joking" about killing Republicans and rich people they don't like?

It's not funny. Just dangerous.

May 08, 2026

If MS NOW could walk, it would be Lyz Lenz.

Lenz is a wannabe journalist who got fired in 2020 by the Cedar Rapids Gazette for being too far left and overly political. (In 2020! From a newspaper!)

She parlayed her firing into a successful Substack (over 50,000 subscribers) and a bestselling 2024 memoir whining about the awfulness of her ex-husband.

Actual title of the Substack: “Men Yell At Me.” Actual title of the book: “This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life.” I am not making this up. I couldn’t make this up.

Lenz lives in Iowa and constantly complains about its politics, but for whatever reason won’t move to Seattle or Minneapolis or Brooklyn. You know every single one of her views, and I mean every single one:

Trans surgeries on kids? Great, God’s gift to the universe, absolutely not a socially constructed mutilation fad.

Covid vaccines? God’s other gift to the universe.

Climate change? Bad.

Women? Good.

Men? Bad.

Christianity? Bad, basically.

Christian men? Bad X bad equals bad squared.

Muslim men? Umm… erm… pass.

Donald Trump? So bad. The worst. Except maybe for her ex-husband. No, probably even worse.

Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.

Sample Lyz Lenz headline: “Liberal women should not marry Republican men.” (So many answers to that one, but I will restrain myself. I think you have the picture: Lyz Lenz thinks about men a lot more than they think about her.)

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(Reading woke newsletters, so you don’t have to. It’s not a subscription, it’s danger pay!)

Or consider a one-time donation! (Someone donated $1000 a few days ago… I couldn’t believe it either. Thank you, sir!)

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Somehow I wound up on the “Men Yell At Me” mailing list years ago. Not sure how.

I stuck with it (unpaid, of course), in part because Lenz can sometimes be funny in a biting way. But mostly because I think information silos are dangerous — dangerous for companies, dangerous for intelligence agencies, dangerous for minds. I’ve never spoken to her or met her, though.1

Anyway, every Friday, Lenz has a feature called “Dingus of the Week,” where she makes fun of some (conservative) person she doesn’t like — Marco Rubio, JD Vance, Megyn Kelly.

Today’s “Dingus” was Steven Roth, a New York real estate developer who has pushed back on Zohran Mamdani for his attacks on wealthy New Yorkers.

Fine. Lenz doesn’t like Roth. So be it.

She thinks he’s rich (he is)… and doesn’t pay enough in taxes (sure, we can have that debate)… and, umm, maybe should be executed (say what?).

See for yourself:

Steven Roth, you absolute greedy fuck…

You are in Mar-a-Lago, taking bets on which Iranian kindergarten the president is going to bomb next.

But sure, tell me more about your moral outrage.

Did it hurt your widdle feelings when we said you should pay some taxes, sir? Would you prefer we said, “Eat the rich?”

*Guillotine noises intensify.*

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An animated graphic of a guillotine followed.

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(Funny stuff from Lyz Lenz)

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Less than two weeks ago, President Trump faced his third assassination attempt in less than two years.

Eight months ago, Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

Just over a year ago, Brian Thompson — the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare — was gunned down on a Manhattan street.

And last month, Hasan Piker, a 34-year-old streamer highly popular on the left, justified Thompson’s murder in a New York Times opinion discussion headlined called “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?”:

And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare C.E.O., was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder… because of the pervasive pain that the private health care system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.

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(More than ever the world needs sane, independent voices. Support mine.)

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Lyz Lenz isn’t Hasan Piker.

In a way that makes her and her attitude more dangerous.

Piker knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s built a national audience by being outrageous, by pretending that Cuba is a socialist wonderland. He wants to rile conservatives the same way the alt-right wants to “own the libs.”

Lenz is a third-tier comedienne/journalist/author/whiner from Iowa. She’s not quite a nobody, but she’s hardly a household name. She’s just saying what she thinks: rich people are evil. Joking about chopping off their heads is cool.

I’m all in favor of free speech. Lenz and Piker are legally allowed to say whatever they want, short of “true threats,” and I’m not going to pretend to mistake an animated guillotine for a true threat.

But these jokes and dogwhistles and rhetorical incitements to violence on the left are getting more and more dangerous. As the last two years prove.

Steven Roth is richer than Lyz Lenz. Worse, he’s a man.

But he doesn’t deserve to die for those sins.

Or does he, Lyz?

A few months ago, Lenz quit Substack to move her newsletter to Patreon, a competing site. I emailed her politely to ask about the move, one independent writer to another — I am always interested in the economics of these platforms.

Never heard back. Which somehow did not surprise me.