Noah Rothman writes for the New York Daily News about the political left’s approach to Antifa thugs.
“Our democracy has no room for inciting violence or endangering the public, no matter the ideology of those who commit such acts,” read a statement released by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday.
Such an unequivocal condemnation of what the Washington Post described as an attack by “black-clad Antifa members” on “peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley” last weekend probably wasn’t high on the Democratic leader’s agenda. Common decency and civil propriety demanded it, but so, too, did elementary political competence.
Much has been said about a surge of racially charged right-wing violence concomitant with Donald Trump’s rising political fortunes, but the reciprocal brutality on the left and its origins have largely evaded that kind of scrutiny. Bubbling beneath the surface is an ethos that not only celebrates political violence but encourages it. …
… [A] subculture on the left that sees itself as the last line of defense against the forces of racism and tyranny took root. Even the word “Resistance” conjures up images of beret-clad partisans organizing behind Nazi lines, sabotaging railways and neutralizing collaborators. It is a fantasy that has attracted a number of adherents on the left, and they’re quite serious in their support for preemptive violence.
