Tag Archives: Political Violence

Yes, We are Headed for Violent Civil War, by Jeff Costello

Posted on October 12, 2020 | 1 comment

There probably won’t be a civil war for control of the government, but rather a war for secession. Either way, political violence is no longer beyond the pale for a growing number of Americans. From Jef Costello at counter-currents.com:

On October 1st, with little fanfare, Politico published an extraordinary opinion piece that may be the most important thing I’ve read all year. Titled “Americans Increasingly Believe Violence is Justified if the Other Side Wins,” the essay was penned by three “senior fellows” at the Hoover Institution, New America, and the Hudson Institute, as well as a professor of “political communication” at Louisiana State University and a professor of government at the University of Maryland (that’s five authors, in case you lost count).

The major takeaway is presented in the graph that appears below:

Way back in November of 2017 (my, how long ago that seems . . . ) a mere 8% of both Democrats and Republicans held that it is legitimate to use violence to advance their political goals. Actually, there’s nothing “mere” about it. It ought to surprise us that such a sizeable percentage of both parties could hold such a radical view. Also surprising is Republicans running neck and neck with Democrats. Contrary to how they are perceived by Leftists, conservatives are slow to embrace the idea of violence, or any sort of punitive measures against their opponents. Their Achilles heel, in fact, is commitment to “fair play.”

We must remember that when these numbers were compiled it had been a year since the 2016 election. A year of unhinged rhetoric by the Left, and repeated calls for Trump to be assassinated. Madonna spoke about her fantasies of blowing up the White House, and “comedian” Kathy Griffin held up an effigy of Trump’s severed head. Of course, those were the unserious, tongue-in-cheek threats. Countless other people made similar threats, quite openly, and seemed to be pretty serious about it. To my knowledge, none of them was charged with a crime.

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The Logic Of Political Violence, by the Zman

Posted on July 14, 2020 | 2 comments

Totalitarian violence may be a lot closer than you think. From the Zman at theburningplatform.com:

Back in the Cold War, one of the things Americans would puzzle over was the political violence behind the Iron Curtain. Most Americans assumed they would resist the state terrorism they heard about from the media. Of course, they assumed such a thing could never happen in America. Today we are seeing just how easily state sponsored terrorism can get going in any country. The reason is there is a political logic to murder that comes as a part of ideological movements.

The logic of political violence is best understood by considering the way Progressives frame their anti-speech pogroms. They keep equaling words and ideas that vex them with violence. For example, someone posting crime statistics on Twitter is accused of posting violent content or inciting violence. At the same time, BLM burning shops and murdering young white mothers is pure political expression. Language they don’t like is violence and violence they like is free expression.

All acts, speaking or physical activity, are judged in purely partisan terms. That person murdering white mothers on behalf of the Progressive cause is morally good by default, as he is sustaining and advancing the interests of the cause. Similarly, the person who stops laughing too soon at an official joke is consciously or unconsciously working against the interest of the cause. He’s a threat. In other words, all actions are judged only in partisan terms, not in relative terms.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, History, Morality, Politics

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Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Caligula, Were More Honest . . . by Butler Shaffer

Posted on October 30, 2017 | Leave a comment

Never fool yourself that government is anything more than organized violence. From Butler Shaffer at lewrockwell.com:

What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.

– Tom Clancy

…than modern politicians in at least one respect: these ancient tyrants made no pretense of being the agents of those over whom they ruled. They established their vicious authority in the same way all political systems of power are created: by violent conquest. Men and women obeyed these thugs for one reason: the fear that their defiance would result in instant death. Despots gradually realized that their power over others could be made more secure by convincing the ruled that their authority was sanctioned by God, with whom they shared a pipeline. By the time of the Enlightenment, the “divine right” rationale was replaced by the principle of an imaginary “social contract” between rulers and the ruled.

In my reading of history, I have yet to find any political system that arose by voluntary agreement amongst members of a given population. Even the history of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution demonstrates the fallacy of such a “contract.” After New Hampshire’s approval satisfied the minimal number of states that would have to have ratified the document, the state of Rhode Island refused to do so. Some 92% of Rhode Islanders voted to reject the document. Rhode Island was home to many independent-minded persons, including Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Quakers. Such people distrusted power – particularly as many of them had been driven out of Massachusetts by those in power. As such, Rhode Island refused to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention. With the U.S. government now in business, one of its first acts was to threaten Rhode Island with military invasion, the cutting off of trade, and the blockading of its ports. Rhode Island was forced to concede obedience to a system that 92% of its residents didn’t want, leading to the conclusion that it was the first victim of American imperialism!

To continue reading: Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Caligula, Were More Honest . . . 

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Why the Media are in a Never-Ending Hunt for Right-Wing Violence, by Ann Coulter

Posted on August 31, 2017 | 2 comments

In real life, right-wing violence is a small fraction of life-wing violence. In media land, coverage of left-wing violence is a small fraction of coverage of right-wing violence. From Ann Coulter at anncoulter.com:

After I’d spent a decade begging Republicans, including a few presidential candidates, to take up the immigration issue, Donald J. Trump came along, championed the entire thesis of Adios, America, and swept all contenders aside.

It’s too late for the likes of Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to avoid humiliation, but if they don’t want to keep making asses of themselves in public by, for example, praising today’s version of the KKK, they should read my entire corpus of work, starting with Demonic. (Trump somehow grasped the whole point of that book, too.)

The reason normal people are suspicious of the media’s narrative on Charlottesville is that we’ve heard this exact same story many, many times before.

Facts on the ground:

— Approximately every other year since forever, liberal hooligans have been rampaging through the streets, beating people up, setting off bombs, killing cops, smashing store windows, assassinating politicians and burning down neighborhoods — against capitalism, Vietnam, Nixon, Wall Street, a police shooting, Trump, Starbucks, a sunny day.

— Conservatives, mostly families, have generally avoided even the mildest forms of political protest, and, when they finally are driven to petition the government over their grievances, they pick up after themselves — at tea parties, townhalls, Trump rallies and so on.

Result: The entire media are constantly on Red Alert for the threat of Right-Wing Violence.

The explanation for this apparent madness is that the left — both the scribblers and the shock troops — bear all the characteristics of a mob, as set forth more than a century ago by the father of group-think, French psychologist Gustave Le Bon. No behavior of the left is mysterious if you’ve read Le Bon — or “Demonic.” In The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Le Bon observed that the “complete lack of critical spirit” prevents crowds from “perceiving … contradictions.”

No matter the year or the circumstances, the media and their eunuch politicians are quick to blame any surprising violence on the Right-Wing Nazis of their imaginations — from Lee Harvey Oswald (communist) to Jared Lee Loughner and James Holmes (psychopaths) to the two stabbing murders on a Portland train earlier this year committed by a Bernie Sanders supporter, whom the media — to this day — insist, all evidence to the contrary, was a Trump supporter.

To continue reading: Why the Media are in a Never-Ending Hunt for Right-Wing Violence

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The Left Has One More Argument: Kill Them, by Ann Coulter

Posted on June 22, 2017 | Leave a comment

Trump Derangement Syndrome has violent manifestations, but a lot of the left’s lunacies do. From Ann Coulter at anncoulter.com:

After a Bernie Sanders supporter tried to commit mass murder last week — the second homicidal Bernie supporter so far this year — the media blamed President Trump for lowering the bar on heated political rhetoric by calling his campaign opponents cruel names like “Crooked Hillary” and “Lyin’ Ted.”

As soon as any conservative responds to Trump’s belittling names for his rivals by erupting in a murderous rage, that will be a fantastically good point. But until then, it’s idiotic. Unlike liberals, conservatives aren’t easily incited to violence by words.

What we’re seeing is the following: Prominent liberals repeatedly tell us, with deadly seriousness, that Trump and his supporters are: “Hitler,” “fascists,” “bigots,” “haters,” “racists,” “terrorists,” “criminals” and “white supremacists,” which is then followed by liberals physically attacking conservatives.

To talk about “both sides” being guilty of provocative rhetoric is like talking about “both genders” being guilty of rape.

Nearly every op-ed writer at The New York Times has compared Trump to Hitler. (The conservative on the op-ed page merely called him a “proto-fascist.”) If Trump is Hitler and his supporters Nazis, then the rational course of action for any civilized person is to kill them.

That’s not just a theory, it’s the result.

A few months ago, 38-year-old Justin Barkley shot and killed a UPS driver in a Walmart parking lot in Ithaca, New York, then ran over his body, because he thought he was killing Donald Trump. During his arraignment, Barkley told the judge: “I shot and killed Donald Trump purposely, intentionally and very proudly.”

In the past year, there have been at least a hundred physical attacks on Trump supporters or presumed Trump supporters. The mainstream media have ignored them all. (You can click the Anti-Trump Hate Map to see some of them here — http://www.amren.com/news/2017/05/anti-trump-hate-map/.)

To continue reading: The Left Has One More Argument: Kill Them

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