Tipsheet

What In The Fresh Hell Is This? WaPo Op-Ed Says The Left Gave Up On Political Violence

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  August 21, 2017 3:30 PM

Well, that’s certainly news to—well, everyone. The political Left has totally renounced violence, according to Yoav Fromer. Well, in case he didn’t come out of his ivory tower this weekend, Antifa was in Boston. And as Guy mentioned, they were violent, they threw urine on cops, and they threw rocks as well. While CNN caved to Antifa’s criticism and changed the headline, it didn’t sanitize the body of the text, where they reported on a movement that was violent, embraced lawlessness, and totally out of the political mainstream. Fromer wrote this op-ed for The Washington Post on Friday:

…since the 1960s, left-wing movements in the United States (and in the West writ large) have gradually turned away from violence. There are three main reasons for this.

The first is practical: It backfired terribly. The Vietnam War protesters initially believed that their country was beyond redemption, so a revolution was imperative. This alienated the general public, helped unify a deeply divided conservative movement and emboldened Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.” Violence proved counterproductive to ending the war; if anything, it helped prolong it. The leaders of the New Left, who consciously distinguished themselves from the “liberal center” through their obstinate allegiance to a romantic revolutionary spirit, eventually admitted this. Tom Hayden, a founder of SDS and a lifelong social justice crusader, later expressed regret over his uncompromising positions. And Mark Rudd, a leader of the Weather Underground, sounded an unequivocal mea culpa. “Much of what the Weathermen did had the opposite effect of what we intended,” he conceded.

[…]

The left’s second reason for rejecting violence was even simpler: There were better ways to get things done. The civil rights and feminist movements showed that nonviolent protest could achieve tangible political goals.

[…]

The third and most important reason for giving up violence can be found in the new makeup of the American left. Emerging out of the rubble of the 1960s, the modern left, which coalesced around George McGovern’s quixotic 1972 presidential run, effectively represented a gathering of fugitives. African Americans, Hispanics, women, gay men and lesbians, Native Americans, and workers: These long-ostracized groups, which came to replace the New Deal coalition anchored by the white working class, were the very peoples against whom violence had been done for so long. Their painful histories made them instinctively averse to, and intolerant of, political violence.

Yeah, what the hell is this? Did someone ignore the events of this weekend or at Trump’s inauguration? It was insanity. Just because the old left wing student groups of the 1960s collapsed doesn’t mean these people have gone away. Right now, there’s a fixation on the white nationalist who murdered someone in Charlottesville, though polls show Americans blame both sides for the violence. Antifa will solely be responsible for causing a brawl in the future. Given the nature of this group, it seems inevitable, especially when they think speech with which they have deep disagreements with constitutes violence. In fact, this sort of behavior is exactly what the NRA's Dana Loesch was slamming, which everyone on the Left took as a cry for civil war and a defense of white supremacy. 

Last Note: Did you catch that gem from Philip Crowther of France 24, where a left wing protester yells at a black cop saying, “You stupid-ass bitch. I'll f**king spit on you, bitch. You stupid-ass black bitch. You're supposed to be on our side!”

Oh, the inclusivity and peaceful rhetoric is just oozing from these people.