Appearances, it is said, can be deceiving. The old cliché is true to a large extent when comparing the two groups pictured above: ISIS in Raqqa, Syria, and antifa (as in “anti-fascist”) in Berkeley. We must remind ourselves that the “antifa” crowd has yet to behead anybody, if we can get beyond the ISIS-inspired fashion tips. But the bio’s of the movements have a similar trajectory, including the germination of self-radicalized and inspired lone wolfs.
Within Islam, a militancy has arisen just as lethal as 1970’s Black September. Black September wasn’t so much a vicious religious campaign as an anti-imperialist and socialist goon-fest that culminated in bloody extravaganzas like the massacre of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Not so much into the socialist thing, today’s ISIS , Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., have cooked up a toxic brew of anti-West fervor with a fealty to sharia. They are religion on speed and with a sword … and AK-47’s and RPG’s as well. Their ideal, especially true for ISIS, is an 8th century lifestyle and conquest for Allah.
Within today’s Left, an analogous combativeness is obvious to anyone with a smartphone. The whole left side of the political spectrum acts like they’re on Walter White’s customer list for meth in “Breaking Bad”. The Democrats have transformed themselves into the institutionalized version of the enraged Left. If language is any gauge, the serial use of expletives shows the highly agitated state of the party.
Here’s Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) and her newfound fondness for f-bombs:
(see 1 below)
Or take a policy disagreement about healthcare and label your opponents as reenacting something like the Wansee Conference (remember, the Nazi confab to plan the Final Solution). Elizabeth Warren (D, Mass.) is no shrinking violet when it comes to vitriol. On May 4, she said regarding the House GOP’s healthcare bill,
“This isn’t football. It’s not about scoring points. Trumpcare will devastate Americans’ healthcare. Families will go bankrupt. People will die. Disease, sickness, and old age touch every family. Tragedy doesn’t ask who you voted for.” (see 2 below)
Can you blame an impressionable activist on the emotional fringe of the Left taking these words to heart and grabbing a semi-auto and going on the hunt? Yes, I can pin personal responsibility on the easily led for any subsequent mayhem, but the Left’s political celebrities painting disagreement in stark terms doesn’t exactly set a tone for sober dialogue.
Or take this blog post in the liberal but supposedly respectable HuffPost of June 6 by one Jesse Benn, “Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any”. Benn’s short bio on his Twitter page includes “Member of the intolerant Left. No war but class war.” In the blog he wrote,
“In the face of media, politicians, and GOP primary voters normalizing Trump as a presidential candidate—whatever your personal beliefs regarding violent resistance—there’s an inherent value in forestalling Trump’s normalization. Violent resistance accomplishes this.” (see 3 below)
Is “normalizing Trump” the worrisome issue for the country … or is an attempt at “normalizing violent resistance” the real threat to public decency? Apparently for Benn, the political ends justify the violent means. Rattle that operational principle around in your brain as your mind wonders through the history of its progeny of gulags and Lubyanka wannabees.
Or take the ladies on ABC’s The View describing Trump as “certifiable” or a “moronic gentile”. Absent is even the slightest attempt at moderation. In many circles of the Left, the vilest words seem to be a staple of everyday conversation.
The people on the stage and in the audience on this day appear more as a like-minded mob than anything resembling a gathering of sensible adults.
Or take this CNN report on the raucous incivility at various congressional town halls.
While the effort is made to compare these outbursts to the Tea Party of recent memory, they should not be confused for spontaneous uprisings of the general public. In reality, they are an orchestrated campaign of the Left’s politically connected activists. The subject was examined in one of my earlier blog posts (see “The Left’s Hive in Action: The Modern Edition”).
The hatefulness courses its way through the mainstream media and party channels. And, to no great surprise, it spills out onto the streets and into the fevered imaginations of the true believer.
Enter the self-radicalized lone wolf of Islamic extremist fame, and now of the Left. It has been said of ISIS that it inspires uncoordinated attacks of soft targets in the West. These are the terror assaults in San Bernadino, Orlando, Fort Hood, Paris, Brussels, London, Manchester, Germany, etc. A person’s broad and general affinity for militancy combined with inspiration and knowledge from a website could produce some scary results. Overheat the bombast long enough and a blood bath sometimes erupts.
ISIS will proudly and loudly take credit when one of their excitable long-distance psychopaths goes on a rampage. The Left will not.
James T. Hodgkinson, the attempted assassin of Republicans in Alexandria on June 14, is essentially of a mind with Jesse Benn. He took the admonition for violence seriously. Oh, the Left will demur after the fact about following the lead of al-Baghdadi, Robespierre, or Lenin in advocating executions as a path to nirvana. Like Benn, or the legions on college campuses seeking safe spaces (even as they assault guest speakers), Hodgkinson had only the m-o of your run-of-the-mill lefty activist ready to man the phones for Bernie or grab a sign and join the picket line. Who’d have thought that he’d take Benn’s and John Paul Sarte’s call for “necessary violence” literally?
Here’s James Hodgkinson being interviewed in 2011. The Left’s exploitation ploy has an upfront place in his mind. Yet, he showed no sign that a commando assault on Republicans was in his future.
Yeah, the guy has anger management issues and has been abusive, but who could forecast how the combination of an explosive personality, zealous commitment to the Left’s victimology, and ample role models of incivility before cameras, microphones, and word processors would affect a fanatic?
This isn’t Las Vegas. If you think the odds of connecting the dots to a shooting spree are anything other than low – say, 2-to-1 or less – then running a hedge fund or assessing risk for an insurance company may not be in your future.
ISIS has Raqqa as the capital of its caliphate. The Left has no capital as such; however, it monopolizes thought, action, and culture in megalopolis, USA. From its media centers, the Left’s coarseness disseminates. The signals are being picked up in like manner as a Muslim teenager in a Brussels ghetto cruising the net for ISIS sites originating in Raqqa.
Substitute the cultural centers of the Left – The View, the firing squad of late-night comedians, the social media organs of the The Resistance, the eagerness of legacy media to join in the feeding frenzy, and the functioning core of the Democratic Party for instance – for Raqqa media central. Both politico-media cultures help animate “Raqqa moments” of butchery.
Is there much difference between Omar Mateen of Pulse Nightclub fame and James Hodgkinson of Alexandria ball field notoriety? Are they any different in their metamorphosis from simple activist to butcher?
Certainly, and sadly for the rest of us, the Left had their Raqqa moment.
RogerG
Bibliography and sources:
1. “Senator drops f-bombs during speech”, CNN, 6/9/2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVmSAXttrtg
2. “Elizabeth Warren on GOP health bill: ‘People will die’”, Jaclyn Reiss, 5/4/2017, Boston Globe, https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/05/04/elizabeth-warren-gop-health-bill-people-will-die/GZ0khNWSmJtiAQv2UA9iCP/story.html
3. “Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any”, Jesse Benn, HuffPost, 6/17/2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-benn/sorry-liberals-a-violent-_b_10316186.html
4. “Congressional Shooter Loved Bernie, Hated ‘Racist’ Republicans, and Beat His Daughter”, Daily Beast, 6/14/2017, http://www.thedailybeast.com/congressional-shooter-loved-bernie-sanders-hated-racist-and-sexist-republicans