The GOP's continuing silence on Charlottesville is defeaning. The President made a false equivalency argument that both the left AND right operate with violence and therefore the blame for some guy driving his car into a crows was shared. However, I don’t recall the last time a leftist blew up an abortion center, killed a doctor performing legal services, knifed people standing up for teenage girls or blew up a federal building (or tried).
Claims of left wing accountability for what happened in Charlotte are absurd. The left (improperly) attempts to squelch free speech, and I don’t support it, but they clearly are allowed to try and clearly are ALLOWED to boycott (like it or not). No one, though, is allowed to engage in premeditated acts of terrorism and intimidation. The left is not immune from engaging in violence, but it is rare compared to right-wing violence. The GOP has falsely tried to claim the primary problem is a lack of civility on both sides, violence on both sides. That is bullcrap, the primary problem is that the GOP, and more importantly conservatives has used dog whistle terminology to appeal to racism since the time of Reagan (and even before that if we include the writing of William F. Buckley - grandfather of modern conservatism).
The Anti-Defamation League’s site (a Jewish website focusing on anti-Semitic activities) notes:
“Over the past 10 years (2007-2016), domestic extremists of all kinds have killed at least 372 people in the United States. Of those deaths, approximately 74% were at the hands of right-wing extremists, about 24% of the victims were killed by domestic Islamic extremists, and the remainder were killed by left-wing extremists.” https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/murder-and-extremism-in-the-united-states-in-2016
Go read that again, 74% of ALL terrorism in the US over the past 10 years has been by right-wing extremists, 2% by left wing. That’s not equal, that’s not “Blackshirts”, it’s not left wing tyranny. It’s right-wing violence.
That's right, Right-Wing terrorism is 37 times more common that left-wing terrorism, and more than THREE times more common that Islamic terrorism. The President cajoled President Obama for not calling it "Islamic terrorism" but Trump is SILENT on calling it right-wing terrorism.
Bluntly, there is no equivalency at all and the GOP has no excuse for remaining silent on this issue. The only reason they are silent or have been, is that appealing to racism works for them to help win elections. They use those same dog whistles when they bring up "election fraud", blacks and Hispanics are voting twice, that's the only reason the GOP loses elections. They are now seeing the fruits of their cowardice. When you tell whackos that they should be afraid of their government and have rights to "defend themselves" from thugs, you have folks walking around with semi-auto rifles, having illegally invaded a US Government facility, staring down the ATF and FBI. The GOP fails to call that out as crazy, but more importantly, it continues to bring up these dog whistles (like voter fraud) - and so we get right-wing terrorism like some crazy a$#ole driving a car into protesters. No left-winger did that, no left-winger forced anyone to do that. This wasn't retaliation, it was a pre-meditated act by a racist, fascistic Nazi and the GOP owns that lock, stock and barrel, there is no equal on the left.
Actually, David Frum, George Bush's speechwriter, wrote a piece in the Atlantic condemning this:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/open-carry-laws-mean-charlottesville-could-have-been-graver/537087/
The problem is that this is a lot too late. The right has come out with the BS argument that the Second Amendment somehow tolerates this type of activity, Despite Presser v Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 6 S.Ct. 580, 29 L.Ed. 615 (1886), making it clear neither the First or Second Amendments cover this type of activity.
I agree that it's too late. This started with Buckley in the late 50's, proceeded to Goldwater, and Reagan made it mainstream to use thinly-veiled bigotry as a way to drive a wedge in the American public to do one thing, blame the weak so that the rich could get tax cuts and greater control of society by tearing down the public institutions which help the middle-class and by destroying the public's trust in government. This was not a mistake, it was intentional. The GOP knew they were doing this, they still do it by calling Black Lives Matter (Too) as equal to the KKK or skin-heads. They still do it by saying we need "second amendment remedies" and it's "Thugs" who create most of the problems in the US.
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