Don's Tuesday Column

            THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   2/07/2017

                Fascist purveyors of leftist violence

UC Berkeley is only a few hours away but it occupies another universe in many ways. However, the violent protests over a conservative speaker—riots in more honest parlance—can help give our local citizens a window into the radical left, its mindset, tactics and goals. While adopting the moniker “antifa” (in a lame attempt to paint themselves as anti-fascists), the black clad thugs, property-destroyers and assaulters-of-Trump-supporters are the real contemporary inheritors of the Fascist parties and movements of the 1900s.

Politically motivated violence is the darkest and most despicable violence that plagues our nation. Violent crimes of greed, passion or psychopathic compulsion cannot, unfortunately, be excised from civil, law-abiding society. No sane person rationalizes the perpetrators or their vile deeds. Political violence, on the other hand, finds a reprehensible level of tolerance, support, or even advocacy among radical fringes.

Let’s dismiss, for present purposes, anti-abortion violence; it is evil but rarely occurs. Violence and property destruction by rabid environmentalists or animal rights fanatics happens more often but is still widely condemned by mainstream liberals. Some Donald Trump supporters lashed out physically at protesters in Trump events; they were often goaded by gestures, signs or shirt-emblazoned slogans of said “protesters.” They were condemnable, there was some inexcusable verbal encouragement by Trump but were, overall, rare incidents.

The violence, which had its start under Obama’s tenure, was inflicted first by union thugs and others on Tea Party protesters who assembled peaceably in permitted rallies, and attended town halls to register disapproval of proposed health insurance reforms. Union “muscle” was used against anti-President Clinton protesters, and families, in Philadelphia.

Anarchists and other assorted professional rioters of the far left have routinely descended on the locations where the International Monetary Fund met, where Republican conventions were held and, now, anywhere conservatives and Trump-supporting people have legitimately, peaceably assembled. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, founded and sustained on the falsehood that thug druggie Michael Brown was shot while his hands were up, has a singular distinction of advocating violence and destruction, particularly directed at law officers. The Occupy Wall Street encampments often morphed into lawless, violent crime-fests.

Last June, in “How The American Left Made Political Violence the New Normal,” Ben Shapiro recounted how “leftist protesters at a Donald Trump Rally in San Jose, California, chased down Donald Trump supporters and beat them bloody, spit in their faces, pelted a female Trump supporter with eggs, hurled rocks at police horses, and broke down metal barriers—all while burning American flags and screaming slogans like ‘America Was Never Great!’ and ‘Make America Mexico Again!’…Under the tender tutelage of the Obama Department of Justice, mass violent action by leftists has become commonplace across the country…

“Vox editor Emmett Rensin tweeted, ‘Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot’…Deray McKesson, a leader of BLM, has openly justified riots and looting.” Democrat and Hillary Clinton operative Robert Creamer was exposed in WikiLeaks emails arranging to have people paid to incite violence and unrest at Trump rallies.

“Many have long suspected that if you scratch an American liberal, you will find a budding fascist…More and more, liberals are openly embracing violence as a path to power. Not just the nuts, either: their recently-defeated vice-presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, has called on his fellow liberals to become street fighting men.” Look up “Liberals Embrace Violence,” Powerlineblog.com (by J. Hinderaker, Feb. 2). You’ll find an embedded video montage of liberals advocating, and in some cases actually committing, political violence.

The Berkeley riots prevented the appearance of conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart News; Occupy Oakland boasted in a tweet that they “won this night. We will control the streets, liberate the land, fight fascists” and other fantastical, even delusional boasting.

Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, ruminated on the upside-down, dystopian climate of violence by leftist thugs: “I’ve decided to side with the Jewish gay immigrant (Milo Yiannopoulos) who has an African-America boyfriend, not the hypnotized zombie-boys in black masks who were clubbing people who hold different points of view. I feel that’s reasonable, but I know many will disagree, and possibly try to club me to death if I walk on campus.”

Tyler Stone posted “How Fascists Take Power” at capitalresearch.org on Feb. 2, and summarized the path that fascists used to take over in Italy (Benito Mussolini), Spain (Francisco Franco) and Germany (Adolph Hitler). It’s worth looking up by title, and I posted it at donpolson.blogspot.com.

“So, what’s the pattern? How do fascists take power? First, they are angry with election results or how the country is being run (DP: that can apply across the political spectrum). Then fascists use militant tactics to force the population into supporting, or acquiescing in, their cause, even though most citizens don’t actually support the fascist agenda.

“Today, some persons who claim to oppose fascism have started using fascist techniques, such as blockading roads and other modes of transit into the city, perpetrating violence against those who disagree with them politically and using fear to suppress those who have different political views. ‘We will fight the fascists’ (Occupy Oakland) could be a quote from Mussolini, Franco, or Hitler.” The left is fomenting a “constitutional crisis” to rationalize fascist tactics.