Debra Strop owns Uncle Loui's Cafe in Duluth, MN. Last week, a television news crew reached out to see if they could do their news program from the cafe. The program would be covering President Trump's speech in Duluth. Ms. Strop agreed. That is when the progressive thugs attacked. The news program was Fox & Friends, and the progressive mob had to punish Strop.
Her family came under attack on social media. Organized mobs posted fake reviews of her cafe to rate it negatively. The store itself saw protests. All Strop did was allow a television news program to broadcast from her cafe.
In the 1930s, Hitler used brown-shirted thugs, and Mussolini used black-shirted thugs. The Nazi and Fascist thugs would harass businesses that were not sufficiently supportive of their dictators' policies. Private citizens would be harassed, threatened and eventually beaten or shot. Government officials not considered sufficiently supportive might be killed or scared badly enough to fall in line. The mobilization of the mob to strike fear in the hearts of its opponents is literally a tactic used by fascists, Nazis and communists.
That makes it all the more ironic to see the so-called "anti-fascists," or Antifa, in America adopting both the black flag of fascism and the red flag of communism. The anti-fascists and so-called democratic socialists are increasingly engaged in a sustained effort to harass those they disagree with while calling anyone who disagrees with them "Nazis."
Federal law requires that children crossing the border between Mexico and the United States be placed in detainment facilities to be processed into foster programs. Though President Trump throttled up the program to separate parents from children, Presidents Bush and Obama were already placing children in these camps. The law requires that the children, many of them actually arriving without parents, be interviewed to ensure they are not being abused or trafficked into the United States.
The American media, overwhelmingly sympathetic to progressive causes, ignored reports of awful abuse of these children during the Obama years. In fact, when reports trickled out of serious abuse, reporters pushed the stories until they realized it all happened in the Obama years. But the reports mobilized the progressive mobs even more. Irresponsible media coverage fueled their cause, which progressives increasingly wrapped in moral language. Trump, doing what Obama did, was somehow now a Nazi, though Obama was not, and Trump had to be stopped.
Actor Peter Fonda took to Twitter to encourage the kidnapping and rape of President Trump's son. Liberal reporters reported the private cell phone number of White House adviser Stephen Miller. Other progressive activists started posting pictures of Department of Homeland Security employees and their families, along with their home addresses. In Washington, leftwing activists stormed a restaurant to harass the Secretary of Homeland Security until she was forced to leave. It turns out one of those leftwing activists worked in the Department of Justice, but moonlights as a member of the progressive mob.
This is a dangerous game the left is playing. During the Bush years, the leftwing mob showed up outside Karl Rove's house to intimidate his family. During the Obama years, the mob has taken up residence outside the homes of back executives. Now, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who dared roll back Obama era regulations, has seen the mob attack him and his family. Individual government employees are being harassed. Now, even private citizens and private businesses are being targeted. The left is no longer just trying to drive Christian bakers out of business. Anyone who disagrees with them may be a victim of the mob. As they justify each attack as a moral act, they will only continue.
Last year, James Hodgkinson showed up at a baseball field in Northern Virginia. Fueled my leftwing propaganda against Republicans, Hodgkinson wanted to perform a mass assassination of Republican members of Congress. He failed. What many considered an anomaly seems more and more an inflection point as progressives turn violent, fully embracing the tactics of the Nazi brownshirt and Fascist blackshirts they claim to oppose.