The husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked in their San Franciso home recently as has been well documented. A canvasser in south Florida was viciously attacked for representing the Rubio campaign by some thugs who took offense to his presence. Abortion clinics as well as pro-life churches and organizations have been targeted with graffiti, property damage and bomb threats in recent months.
The common thread that runs through all the violence and threats of violence is the predictable responses by opportunistic politicians and media figures. If I could summarize the arguments into one sentence, it would be, the rhetoric coming from your side is dangerous and is encouraging people to commit acts of violence while the people on our side who commit these acts are acting on their own.
A great example of this was on display when Ted Cruz was recently a guest on The View. When he attempted to discuss political violence in a balanced way, Whoopi Goldberg interrupted, I don’t even know what an ‘Antifa riot’ is? That’s a clever response. The talking points from the left have included, Antifa is an idea, not an organization. This point was pushed by Joe Biden in a presidential debate with Donald Trump in 2020. That “idea” sure has resulted in a lot of property damage in places like Seattle, Portland, and universities throughout the country who dare invite a conservative speaker to campus. But the left has cleverly distanced themselves from this violence by not acknowledging the group even exists.
Media on the left consistently ask Republican candidates to condemn the Proud Boys and other right wing groups who have engaged in and/or threaten political violence, but they don’t ask Democrats to do the same thing with Antifa and BLM. Media on the right like to point out left-wing violence, but tip-toe around issues related to right wing groups. The truth is that both sides have questionable groups, formal and informal, who support their causes but politicians would prefer to keep these groups at arms-length.
I’d have to say that in the past six years, Democrats have done a better job of linking pro-violence groups from the right to the Republican party than Republicans have linking pro-violence groups from the left to the Democratic party. During the 2020 election, and since, Democrats adopted the phrase dog whistle to link Republican political positions to threats of radical violence. Even when Dems are blatant in their attacks on Republicans, such as Maxine Waters’ famous diatribes, when you see them, get in their face… be more confrontational…left leaning political violence doesn’t seem to stick to the Democrats. James Hodgkinson tried to mass murder Republicans at their congressional baseball practice in 2017, Ron Paul and his wife were surrounded and threatened on their way to dinner in DC, BLM protestors belligerently stormed through restaurants intimidating diners, the George Floyd riots, etc. None of these were effectively linked to Democratic rhetoric the way the Charlottesville driver, the January 6 riots and Paul Pelosi’s attacker have been linked to Republican rhetoric. It’s not that the rhetoric from the right is more dangerous, it’s just that the Dems are simply better at it.
When I was in High School, the mother of one of my friends found her grandfather’s KKK hood while cleaning out his attic after his death. She was embarrassed at the find, but told me this: I don’t agree with the KKK at all, but a part of me is glad they’re back there in the shadows. I suspect that’s the way Republican leaders feel about the Proud Boys and some of the other neo-Nazi-type groups; and it’s the way Democrat leaders feel about Antifa, BLM and other anarchist groups. Neither side is going to completely condemn the groups on their side, and neither side’s groups are worse than the other. Watching each side try to define the other by the actions of these fringe groups is frustrating, however, as it takes away from logical discourse about real political policy matters. It is a shame that the skill of linking tragedy to your political adversaries is effective in swaying and motivating voters.
I once heard a commentator on MSNBC say that he could never vote for a Republican because neo-nazis vote for Republicans. I had an uncle who was a Vietnam vet tell me that he was for whoever or whatever Jane Fonda was against. Logic says that a voter should vote for the candidate and support the party that best represents that voter’s interests and vision for the future. The fact that some nut or group of nuts on the left or right also supports your candidate is no reason to vote for someone else.