Mainstream Liberals Now Openly Encouraging Antifa Violence

In the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s “all sides” speech, the mainstream media attempted to play a game where they completely ignored the truth of his remarks. There WAS no hatred on the left, they insisted. We’re talking about white supremacists! We’re talking about a girl who lost her life! Don’t give us this crap about “many sides!” And maybe they had a point. At the very least, maybe the immediate aftermath of a car attack isn’t the right time to talk about the left’s violent tactics.

But now that the dust has settled a bit, the mainstream media is being forced to confront the truth. And the truth is that there ARE forces on the extreme left openly and plainly willing to use clubs, bats, firebombs, and other weapons to shut down free speech. The truth is that this is exactly what happened in Charlottesville. Does that in any way excuse what one psycho in a Dodge Charger did later in the day? NO. Does that in any way provide some kind of justification for the views of neo-Nazi groups? NO. But the truth is the truth, and the truth is that we have a First Amendment for a reason. It is to protect exactly that kind of speech with which most reasonable people abhor. Nothing fits that definition better than the racist views on display in Charlottesville.

Rather than acknowledge and condemn these anti-democratic forces, the media is increasingly willing to give them a pass. A pass? More like, praise them! That’s what we saw on NBC Sunday morning when “Meet the Press” interviewed author Mark Bray, who is promoting a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”

“You seem to be a very small minority here who’s defending the idea of violence, considering that somebody died in Charlottesville,” Todd said in the interview. “Why do you defend confronting them violently?”

“I would contest the notion that I’m that small of a minority,” Bray replied. “I think that a lot of people recognize that when pushed, self-defense is a legitimate response to white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence.

“And we can see that really the way that white supremacy grows, the way that neo-Nazism grows, is by becoming legitimate, becoming established, becoming everyday, family-friendly, wear khakis instead of hoods,” Bray continued. “And the way to stop that is what people did in Boston, what people did in Charlottesville. Pull the emergency brake and say, ‘You can’t make this normal.'”

After some response from Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who, to give the devil his due, argued that violence should never be used to shut down free speech, Bray said he disagreed – that “fascism cannot be defeated through speech.”

“It’s a privileged position to be able to say that you never have to defend yourself from these kinds of monsters,” Bray said. “Anti-fascists see this as a political struggle. They don’t see fascism as a difference of opinion, or as kind of a different perspective to consider. Instead they see fascists as the enemy. And I think that we need to come around to that notion, considering that there is no doubt what they’ve done historically.”

The First Amendment does not have a “Nazi clause,” and we trust that the Department of Justice and other local law enforcement agencies will prosecute any leftists Antifa lunatics who think they can use violence against speech. They may BELIEVE that right-wing speech is a form of violence, but we must never let their deranged beliefs infect the law.