Leftists WANT Violence. Don’t Play Into Their Hands.

Two events prompt this post.  One is the report of a plot against Antifa and a major news organization and perhaps against a prominent Democrat politician as well.  The other is the Climate Strike people blocking traffic and creating gridlock in Washington D. C.

(By the way, Greg Gutfeld went yard on them yesterday at the opening of The Five.  And isn’t creating gridlock pollution an odd way of combating pollution?)

Yes, these two events seem very unrelated.  But what they have in common is the Hard Left’s desire for violence, namely a violent reaction to their provocations.  Provoking and/or making up violent reactions is one of the oldest Leftist tricks in the book. I saw it myself during my college days. We saw it in Charlottesville where Antifa perpetrated and provoked violence.  But, thanks to a compliant fake news media and the cowardly fool who drove his car into a crowd, all we hear about in hindsight is the violence from the right at Charlottesville.

Considering the provocations from the Left, I find it remarkable that there have been so fewinstances of violence from the Right.  The contrast with Antifa and Black Lives Matter is stark.  But when there is one, such as the apparent plot mentioned above, it plays into the Left’s narrative.  Such violence and attempts at violence are not only wrong; they are foolish.

Now I am not a pacifist.  There are times when violence in defense of oneself and one’s rights is justified.  See the American Revolution.  But now is not such a time. 

So what does blocking traffic have to do with this?  At first glance, about all blocking traffic accomplishes is getting attention.  But what awful attention!  My guess is that this is why Black Lives Matter stopped blocking traffic.  That tactic turned the majority of this country against them and strongly and rightly so.

But surely Leftists know how much traffic roadblocks antagonize people.  And that is intended. The hard Left hopes someone will have had enough and violently react with their pick-up, preferably with a Trump sticker.  The hard Left wants a violent reaction; they want to become “victims” for propaganda purposes.  Yes, most of those blocking traffic do not want to be run over.  Such are foolish fodder for the Left’s purposes.

Again, the Left wants violence and often tries to provoke a violent reaction to their outrages.  So again I strongly advise – do not play into their hands.  The Left and their predations must be opposed, but they must be opposed non-violently.  Otherwise, the Left wins.

Those right-of-center have a remarkable record of non-violence in the U. S.  But it is probably good for all of us to be reminded to stick to non-violent opposition.

Post-Charlottesville, The Double Standard Continues

After the awful events in Charlottesville, there has been an odd, but familiar phenomenon.  There are the rightful denunciations of the Nazis, KKK, etc.  But if someone even asks the denouncers if they have ever also denounced Antifa and Black Lives Matters, two groups who also have demonstrated racism and political violence, then even that question gets denounced.  Those who denounce both the Nazi types and Antifa and BLM, and who denounce double standards also get very similar treatment.  I’ve seen this sorry exercise even on the Facebook group page of the Anglican Church of North America, which is shameful.

This is an in-your-face example of a big double standard that has poisoned politics and the study of history since World War 2.  While the atrocities of the “Right”* are emphasized, the atrocities of the Left are downplayed or ignored, even if those atrocities are of a much greater scale.  The History Channel once was dubbed the Hitler Channel because of the frequency of its emphasis on Nazism and its atrocities. And certainly we should “never forget.”  But how often does one see documentaries of the atrocities under Lenin and Stalin, who killed millions more than Hitler?

Of course, there is much more to the study of history than the History Channel – thank God – but the phenomenon can be found across academia as well.  And when someone tries to provide some balance and focus on Communist evil, they often get grief for it.  The controversy that surrounded the publication of the Black Book of Communism is one example.

I detest this double standard, which only enables the Leftist New Totalitarians, who are a much greater danger than the KKK, neo-Nazis, and other loons.  If someone has been silent for over a year as Antifa has violently attacked peaceful demonstrators, Trump supporters, free speech, even those who simply wanted to hear a speaker, then his/her display of indignation over white supremacist violence is worth very little to me.

And, yes I will say it, President Trump was right to denounce violence from both sides.  And he was courageous to do so in the face of those who hate truth-telling about the Left.

By the way, these kind of double standards just feed hate.  Denouncing rightist hate while being silent about or even praising Leftist hate throws gasoline on hate.  The double standards must stop.  The political violence from both sides must be denounced and stopped.

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* I use “right” very loosely here.  Placing, say, Nazis on the right is highly questionable as they are a form of totalitarianism not very different from Communism.