Killing Republicans to Save Health Care and the Planet The Left’s incitement to violence leads to terrorism. June 15, 2017 Daniel Greenfield
The Democratic National Committee announced that Resistance Summer would begin in June. James Hodgkinson, a Bernie Sanders volunteer, delivered by opening fire on Republicans playing baseball.
Hodgkinson had spent the weeks before the shooting staring at the site of his future attack and working on his laptop. What was he doing on his laptop? Ranting about Trump and Republicans.
The left-wing terrorist who opened fire on Republicans practicing for a charity baseball game, an event to which they had brought their children, didn’t come up with his own ideas. His Facebook pages were dumpsters rotting with reposted left-wing hate. There was Bill Moyers' Resistance plan along with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Maddow, Robert Reich and Noam Chomsky.
They helped shape Hodgkinson’s conviction that Republicans had to be destroyed. Or as the title of a Facebook group that he belonged to put it, “Terminate the Republican Party.”
James Hodgkinson did his best in a Virginia park. And he wasn’t a lone lunatic. Not by a long shot.
After the attack, the office of Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) received an email reading “One down, 216 to go". Congressman Tom Garrett (R-Va.) needed security after receiving threats reading, "This is how we're going to kill your wife". Other threats described graphic atrocities against his daughters and even his dog.
Congresswoman Martha McSally (R-AZ.) went to the FBI after phone messages warning, "Martha our sights are set on you, right between your **** eyes" and "Can't wait to **** pull the trigger."
And it didn’t stop at words.
David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) had his car nearly run off the road and was then threatened. Indivisible Team protests at Dana Rohrabacher's office (R-CA.) ended with a 71-year-old female staffer being injured by the actions of the leftist protesters.
This campaign of harassment was eventually bound to escalate to assassination. James Hodgkinson just happened to be the first to pull the trigger. But it could have been any of a growing number of leftist activists who had become convinced that Trump was a fascist dictator and that violence was the answer.
The “Resistance” began by invoking an unprecedented crisis that required setting aside democracy and the niceties of political discourse. It escalated quickly to street violence and then to murder.
The media and the political personalities of the left who have been profitably feeding the crisis claim to disavow Hodgkinson’s tactic of actually shooting Republicans, but they led him to his bloody conclusion.
What made James Hodgkinson believe that stopping the repeal of ObamaCare was a matter of life and death? Or, as he put it, “Republicans Want to Deny Most All Americans Health Care”?
It was Bernie Sanders who claimed that “thousands of Americans would die” if Republicans repealed ObamaCare. “Families will go bankrupt. People will die,” Elizabeth Warren had tweeted.
James Hodgkinson was a big Bernie supporter. And he was a fan of Elizabeth Warren.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, in whose state the shootings happened, had claimed, “People are going to lose lives." Instead of trying to push gun control, he might have revisited his own rhetoric.
Congressman John Lewis claimed that the repeal would kill. Congressman Ruben Gallego insisted that he didn't have to be civil to Republicans because their "policies that are going to kill people".
It’s a short step from accusing Republicans of killing people to suspending civility to wishing them dead.
And Democrat politicians were downright restrained compared to some of their media allies.
The left has a long ugly history of priming killers and then playing innocent. James Hodgkinson, like Lee Harvey Oswald, imbibed enough of that sense of urgent crisis that instead of just continuing to attend Occupy Wall Street rallies and anti-Trump marches, instead of just donating a few dollars here and there to leftist causes and politicians, he decided to take their rhetoric seriously. There was nothing wrong with his logic. There was something deeply wrong with those whose ideas he was relying on.
James Hodgkinson took the left’s claims at face value. If Trump is Hitler, if Republicans are fascists, if their policies will kill thousands of people, wipe out the economy and destroy the planet, then Jimmy was just a good member of the “Resistance” fighting to save all human life on earth.
The left can’t quite decide whether its incitement should be taken at face value. Some on the left do. They’re the ones who can be seen calling for the murder of Republicans. Others profit from it, but then disavow the tactics. But for many leftists like James Hodgkinson, these fine distinctions are lost.
They don’t understand that Bernie Sanders doesn’t really believe that Republicans will kill thousands of people. He’s just saving up for a fourth home. Elizabeth Warren is a millionaire and former Republican who figured out that being a fake class warrior pays even better than being a fake Cherokee. Robert Reich was getting paid $235,791 to teach a class on income inequality at Berkeley.
Hodgkinson was a side effect of Bernie’s three homes, Liz’s presidential ambitions and Bob’s ambitions. The shooting of Congressman Scalise and others on that field was a side effect of the left’s quest for power. And worse still, there are those on the left who are true believers and who really do want a war.
Leftist leaders believe that they can contain the violence and channel it into protests, rallies and donations. At worst, there might be the occasional campus riot or street fight. But the Alexandria attack is a warning that the violence that the left is inciting and unleashing cannot be contained for long.
The left has whipped up an angry mob and promised them that if they scream and shout enough, President Trump will be forced out of office. They manufactured a crisis and now it’s exploding on them. If they can’t deliver a coup, there will be more shootings like this one.
The Democrats are sleepwalking into a civil war. They want power, but like leftists from Russia to Cuba, they haven’t seriously contemplated the price that will have to paid for their bloody utopia.
In her “Resistance” video, former Attorney General Lynch spoke of blood, marching and dying. At Eugene Simpson Stadium Park, the 10-year-old son of Congressman Barton huddled under a bench. Congressman Wenstrup, an Iraq War veteran, struggled to provide aid to the wounded Scalise.
That’s what Lynch’s bleeding and dying looks like. This is what the left’s Resistance really looks like. Democrats, liberals and even leftists ought to take a good look to see if that’s what they really want.