By Thomas Lifson, AMERICAN THINKER
As America slips into what many are calling a “cold civil war,” not a single Democrat running for president is willing to condemn Antifa, the contemporary version of the Brownshirts that terrorized opponents of the Nazis in Weimar Germany.
CNS News repeatedly sought comments from all 23 Democrats currently running for president, and not a single one of them would condemn the thugs terrorizing and suppressing their own opponents.
Despite the well-documented violence of the radical left Antifa group — the Department of Homeland Security classifies it as “domestic terrorist violence” – not one of the 23 Democrats running for president would condemn Antifa when repeatedly asked by CNSNews.com over the course of 12 business days.
The Trump administration did respond, within a day, condemning Antifa.
In emails and telephone calls to the press offices and campaigns of the 23 Democrats running and to the Trump campaign, CNSNews.com asked the candidates to answer two questions about Antifa…. (snip)
CNSNews.com … asked the candidates, 1) Do you condemn Antifa? And 2) Do you believe federal law enforcement agencies should take all lawful steps necessary to prevent Antifa from engaging in ‘domestic terrorist violence’ during the 2020 U.S. election campaign?
CNSNews.com repeatedly sent these questions to the 24 candidates by email and telephone between July 23 and Aug. 7. Not one Democratic candidate responded. (The Trump campaign answered on July 24.)
Many of the Democratic candidates’ press offices confirmed they had received the question and thanked CNSNews.com for “reaching out.”
Instead, they pretend that “white nationalists” represent some sort of organized threat to civil order, even though the biggest gathering they have been able to launch was a pathetically small number of torch-bearing marchers at Charlottesville, explicitly condemned by President Trump. A lone, deranged driver managed to kill someone, was promptly arrested, prosecuted and convicted, but that’s the basis for ems claiming “white nationalists” present a lethal threat. The few explicitly racist matchers at Charlottesville were far outnumbered by sincere demonstrators whom wanted to preserve the historic works of art that leftists want to obliterate, just as the Taliban blew up statues of Buddha in Afghanistan. And they have no ability to generate violent mobs capable of shutting down their opponents, the way that Antifa does repeatedly. Antifa is apparently well-organized, and explicitly announces its intention to violently disrupt political events they disapprove of. The group has violently disrupted a public speech by Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, and has attacked and seriously injured Andy Ngo, a journalist who covers them in Portland.
Antifa thugs in Washington, DCPhoto credit: cantfightthetendies
Antifa activists constitute a dedicated, organized national violent organization openly suppressing political opponents, something that ought to be condemned by everyone, not just those whom they seek to silence.
Antifa now is arming itself.
History teaches us that armed thugs pave the way for monstrous political oppression. Yet the leaders of the Democratic Party are now becoming complicit with armed thugs, the way the party failed to condemn the KKK in its two phases of political terrorism, the post-Civil War phase where African Americans were terrorized and killed, and the 1920s, when KKK racists marched by the tens of thousands and elected racist Democrats to office, with the occasional lynching and other terror operations suppressing dissent – just as Antifa does today.
@ Lorensacho:
One of their jack-booted thugs just murdered a mass of people in Dayton, OH. A Satanist, Socialist who backs Pocahontas Warren and Never-Held-A-Real-Job-In-His-Life Sanders, and is a Fascist Antifa activist. Not to mention their penchant for violence to silence anyone they don’t agree with, a hallmark of Fascism. They will start burning books any day.
@ Bear Klein: Amen, Bear
Antifa violence has been seen for over a decade. Dems are trying to hide and run from it. These people are part of the violent culture and intolerant and undemocratic far left.
Another, perhaps even more accurate analogy between the Antifa-neonazi confrontations on on American streets might be the street battles between Communists and Nazis during the German Weimar Republic period. Both sides murdered their political opponents and broke up rallies and political meetings by them. The Nazis eventually won the street battles with the Communists because they were able to recruit more former soldiers, embittered by Germany’s defeat in World War I. These had more military combat experience than the Communist street fighters, who were mainly drawn from the industrial workers. Also,most Germans were either middle class people or farmers–and the farmers were not enthralled by Soviet-style collective agriculture. Last but not least, most Germans were fierce nationalists. They were not attracted by Communist “internationalism,” and didn’t want to come under the sway of Russia. Did this mean that the Communists contributed nothing to the chaos and lawlessness that led to the Nazi dictatorship? Hardly. Without the widespread fear among middle class Germans of a possible successful Communist revolution, it is most unlikely that the Nazis would have consolidated power.
How will the similar situation prevailing on America’s streets today play out?Again, very hard to predict. Antifa may triumph. Or the nativist white-supremacist gunman might triumph. Or there might be years of chaos and violence, with no clear winner. But whatever the outcome, democracy, free elections and the rule of law will lose big as American politics transitions from the ballot box to the bullet chamber and the club.
The conflict between the Intifa and the overtly Nazi groups remnds me of the violent attack on the Nazi storm-troopers (S.A. or brownshirts)by the S.S. blackshirts in 1934. The Blackshirts murdered over seventy Brownshirts with Hitler’s approval. But the fact is that both sides were Nazis. The Blackshirts were led by Heinrich Himmler. The Brownshirts were led by Ernst Rohm and affilitated with Gregor and Otto Strasser. After some initial hesitation, Hitler gave in to the pro_Himmler faction, and agreed to purge the Rohm-Strasser faction. Possibly today’s Democrats are plotting a sort of reverse operation, using their own Brownshirts to destroy the oververtly Nazi and KKK Blackshirts, and in the process handing control of the American ‘street” to their Antifa-Black LIves Matter brownshirts. That will leave the ‘left” fascists ruling the American “street.” But it might not work if enough disgruntles, poor European-Americans rally to the overtly neo-Nazi “Blackshirt” side. THat would result in chaos on the streets for years, and a de facto civil war.
Hey Thomas, how many mass murders did ANTIFA personnel commit. The answer is Zero, none, nada, ziltch. Why are you whitewashing white supremacist terrorists?