Not comfortably fitting the accepted narrative.

Ignored by the liberal media; exposed by Fox News; free speech supported by conservatives.

Weird, right?

//On May 26, Friday morning, Fox News called. It was Tucker Carlson’s producer. The show was going to run a segment on Evergreen that night. Did Bret want to be part of it? No, he didn’t want to. But he felt he needed to. Fox was, at that point, the only member of the national news media that had shown up. YouTube was on fire with videos that protesters had posted, but most journalists were staying away, presumably because the story didn’t fit comfortable, mainstream narratives.

Two notable things happened after Bret went on Fox. One was that a substantial minority of our colleagues at Evergreen called for a “disciplinary investigation” against him. Why? Apparently, people on the Left aren’t allowed to talk to those on the Right. It is against the rules. Prohibitions against talking to “the other side” widens the intellectual fissure opening up in our society. It creates the very silos we are warned against. By speaking to others, Bret was breaking rank, and so treated like a deserter, or traitor. One thing we know is that when you’re being told by your antagonists who you’re not supposed to talk to, it’s probably a good indicator of who you should be talking to.

The other thing that happened after Bret went on Fox was that well over 1,000 viewers wrote to him. A couple of emails came from white nationalists, people perhaps similar to the New Jersey man who later phoned in a threat to the college, which shut the campus down for two days. Another email was a nasty piece of anti-Semitic hatred. But the overwhelming majority were supportive and eloquent. The writers were from across all known fault lines — socioeconomic class, race, national origin, location on the political spectrum. There were letters from First Nations people, high school students and university faculty, Evergreen students and alums, a man building a school in Uganda. And the thing that unites them is their call to stand strong. They say: Do not back down. And: At this moment, I am so glad to have respect for someone with whom I might politically disagree.

Doesn’t that sound like an antidote to the polarization that has gripped the body politic? An ability to reach out across prejudice and talk to people? To respect those with whom we do not share identical core beliefs?//

And last week, the media was comparing Antifa to D-Day Veterans.

FBI and DHS warned about increasingly violent Antifa in 2016.

Quickest change in the Accepted Narrative in our lifetime.

Polling for Democrats must have been really bad.

There is nothing like a Judgment Day to concentrate the mind.

After a year of leftist thuggery, with the 2018 elections looming, within 72 hours suddenly antifa are just "anarchists" with nothing to do with the left.


//The Question is, why the sudden change? Well it’s all in accordance with DaTechGuy’s 2nd Law of Media Outrage

The level of acceptance of the positions and/or actions of any group or organization by the left and media is directly proportional to their current or potential value in electing liberal Democrats.

One doesn’t have to be an expensive political consultant to know that visuals of people in masks beating reporters and their political foes combined with chants of “No Fascist USA” and “No USA at all” being linked to the single most visible group of leftists/Democrats is not going to help Democrat Senators running in blue states.  That’s why the LA Times is doing all it can to segregate ANTIFA from the rest of the left....//

With the 2018 elections looming, the media turns against leftwing thuggery.

Here's another example of the coordinated media roll-out of this theme.

Notice that the issue troubling leftist activists is not whether assaulting middle-class Republicans going to Trump rallies is somehow "wrong," but whether that tactic is actually helping Trump.

Priorities.

Glen Reynolds explains:

//ENJOY YOUR ANTIFA PROTESTS, BECAUSE IT’S GOING TO GET AWKWARD SOON.

You see, there are quite a number of Democratic senators in Congress who are up for re-election next year. Our very own U.S. senator Bob Casey is considered vulnerable being located in a state that voted for President Trump. One of the most vulnerable Democratic senators in Congress is Missouri senator Claire McCaskill. Her state voted for Donald Trump by 57% to Hillary Clinton’s 38%. She has to desperately look as moderate as possible, her Republican attackers will put up ads “Clare’s people think every last one of you is a racist Nazi,” and pair photos of her in ballrooms with Nancy Pelosi set to dramatic music. See how this works?

This obviously has Democratic strategists in a pickle.

It’s very obvious what next year will be like. The worst footage from protest demonstrations will be put on display in campaign advertising and all the claims that Democratic pundits and authors have made claiming America is festooned with 64 million gas-chamber-murdering Nazis. Everyone who voted for Donald Trump is a Nazi. They’re all Nazis. Every fucking last one of them is a motherfucking Nazi.

There are few Republicans up for re-election in 2018 who are really vulnerable. Those 64 million Trump voters still have access to ballot machines and they can still vote. Calling every Trump voter a Nazi, as so many of you have done, is not going to be forgotten. That projection is going to come back to haunt people. It terrifies people who actually do politics as part of their career; namely pundits, campaign strategists and party officials. . . . You don’t need any more embarrassing YouTube video clips of AntiFa protestors chanting “NO USA AT ALL“.

I’ve noticed a sudden media pivot against Antifa in the last couple of days, which I assume means that someone has polled this stuff and it’s electoral poison for Democrats. Which should come as no surprise, unless you live in a Media Bubble.//

Well, that is a headline we never thought we'd see.

Washington Post: "Black clad Antifa attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley."

It seems like social media just might be forcing the old media to report the news for a change.

Next, we might even see the police in leftist enclaves do their job to protect the constitutional rights of everyone equally.

This is surprising because they've been so peaceful for the last year.

Leftists attack people in Berkeley and run police off Martin Luther King, Jr. Square while chanting "this is payback for Charlottsville."

I like how they were shouting "nonviolence" while they attacked someone.

So, you know it has to be true.

Who precisely are they paying back in Berkeley?

Thought experiment.

What would happen?

//Let’s play a game. Pretend that a conservative white student approached a liberal black student at an event and said “You’re not welcome here.” What do you think would happen?


We all know what would happen. Liberal students would lose their minds and the conservative student would probably be reprimanded and forced into a diversity program.

If you switch the ideology of the students however, it’s apparently acceptable. This actually happened to a conservative black student from Ithaca College.

Spencer Brown of the Young America’s Foundation reports:

EXCLUSIVE YAF VIDEO: Conservative Student Attacked For Wearing YAF Hat At Vigil For Charlottesville Victims

Caleb Slater, a conservative student and the president of the Ithaca College Republicans, recently attended YAF’s 39th Annual National Conservative Student Conference, where he received a baseball cap with the Young America’s Foundation logo and our slogan, “The Conservative Movement Starts Here,” printed on the back. Caleb chose to wear his YAF hat when he attended a vigil in Syracuse, New York, for the victims of last weekend’s violent clash in Charlottesville.

“I wore my Young America’s Foundation hat to the rally as a symbol of peace,” Caleb explained. “I wore the hat to show that conservatives condemn the actions of the alt-right just as much as anyone else in our culture.” It was this hat that earned Caleb the attention of antifa supporters at the same rally, and led to a violent attack caught on camera.

This incident highlights the true intolerance of the Left today: when a conservative goes out of their way to find common ground with their ideological rivals, leftists lash out merely due to a conservative logo and slogan on a ball cap.//

The Narcissism of Small Differences


Brendan O'Neill is an editor at Spiked, an online libertarian site.

Certainly, the distance between the two is much shorter than the distance to bourgeoisie liberalism according to Philosopher Eric Hoffer:

This receptivity to all movements does not always cease even after the potential true believer has become the ardent convert of a specific movement. Where mass movements are in violent competition with each other, there are not infrequent instances of converts—even the most zealous—shifting their allegiance from one to the other. A Saul turning into Paul is neither a rarity nor a miracle. In our day, each proselytizing mass movement seems to regard the zealous adherents of its antagonist as its own potential converts. Hitler looked on the German Communists as potential National Socialists: “The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.”2 Captain Röhm boasted that he could turn the reddest Communist into a glowing nationalist in four weeks.3 On the other hand, Karl Radek looked on the Nazi Brown Shirts (S.A.) as a reserve for future Communist recruits.4

Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics) (p. 17). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Leftists return to old trick of inciting leftists to kill Republican Congressmen.

If you read the headline, you think WTF????

If you read the article you see this opening line:

"Republicans have a penchant for fetishizing violence. They’re a party of draft dodgers and sycophants who like to think of themselves as hypermasculine warriors."

And you see that the Congressman in question made a fatuous, inane, hyperbolic, and non-serious statement about "dueling" the Republican senator from Maine over Obamacare repeal.

Looking at the headline, there doesn't seem to be any reason to conclude that a woman senator couldn't nail his hide with pistols at 30 paces, so, really, the headline should have read "Congressman fantasizes about suicide."

However, you can just see the intent of this Fake News site to stir up "antifa" activists to grab a gun and plan on the assassination of Republican congressmen to protect women.

Crazy talk on my part?

Only if you've forgotten that last month, Bernie Sanders campaign worker actually did that.

Naturally, I took this story off of a leftist's FB page which was breathless about how Republicans fantasize about killing women.

I'm so old I can remember when Democrats were up in arms about Fake News and demanded that the uncivil tone of politics be ended.

Gosh....six months is like forever.

Welcome to the club, professor.

Kind of the treatment the rest of us get on the internet when we talk to leftists.

//In response, he was branded a racist and an obstructionist. A faculty member who sat on the Equity Council explicitly called him a racist in two different faculty meetings. When Professor Weinstein asked for an opportunity to defend himself, he was told that a faculty meeting was not the appropriate venue for such a defense. When he asked what the appropriate venue was, he was told that no such venue existed because he was a racist. Neither the president nor the interim provost interceded to make it clear that leveling such charges against a fellow faculty member was unacceptable within the college community. When Professor Weinstein spoke privately with both of those administrators about these incidents, they both acknowledged the inappropriateness of the behavior but each said that it was the responsibility of the other to do something about it. Neither administrator took any public action in response.

But even that tells only part of the story. As mentioned above, the Equity Strategic Plan was built on a statistical foundation. When the validity of that foundation was called into question, including by a robust analysis by an Evergreen alum currently in graduate school, the same faculty member who publicly called Professor Weinstein a racist began attacking scientists generally claiming that their reliance on data was dismissive of the concerns of students. President Bridges, upon being presented with the alum’s statistical critique, promised a response but none has been forthcoming.

Despite all of this, Professor Weinstein continued to call for open discussion of the strategic plan with no response other than personal attacks on him being ratcheted up. It became clear why Professor Weinstein’s appeal for dialogue drew such enmity when the same faculty member who publicly called him a racist was reported to have said that the Equity Council didn’t want such discussion because the plan might not survive such scrutiny intact. A number of senior administrators voiced the same fear with one going so far as to say that expecting a public review of the plan after it had been approved by the Equity Council which had so many people of color on it was an example of white supremacy.//

Weinstein's error was in thinking that he was immune because of his progressive self-identification.

It's Fizbin Friday...

...where the rules change to accommodate the player.

Out and Ridiculous - Leftist rhetoric can cause violence.

In and Common Sense - President Trump's rhetoric can cause violence against journalists.

Also, "dissent is the first American virtue" and "censorship is bad."

Secularist saves the nation from the imminent threat of theocratic take-over.

Whew!

That was a close one.

"Man Destroys 10 Commandments Monument In Ark. Less Than 24 Hours After Installed"

That said, you have to wonder why Arkansas would bother to install this kind of ACLU-litigation bait.

Good decisions as far as the eye can see.

Initially, I thought this was intellectual taffy-yanking...

...then I thought, "Ok, this makes sense."

I'm as big a fan of obscure intellectual movements as the next guy, but I don't think that people self-consciously identify as "Gnostic."

But they certainly do the Gnostic thing.

//Gnosticism’s iconoclastic streak throughout history is apropos. Iconoclasm literally means “to break images.” Images, in their original Greek progeny, are phantasmic, as in, they are something mentally or psychologically induced taking projected form. Of course, for the Gnostic, what is mentally or psychologically induced is the only sort of reality that matters.

Here’s the kicker. As I become woke to my imprisonment in the external, dark world order, reality transfers from the outside to the inside. My engagement with reality evolves from a posture of reception to a posture of projection. Where before I might see a particular human being as a unique, independent entity sharing a humanity with me—Christians call that my “neighbor”—now I project onto him my newly “woke” imaging. Everything outside of me now becomes a projection of internal phantasms, characters, and symbols in my own psycho-drama.

The bottom line is that, once woke, you see the world in symbolic, iconic idioms, icons deserving destruction. Thus iconoclasm. A simple shop in an inner city becomes a symbol of the system of capitalistic oppression, deserving of riotous destruction. A police officer becomes a symbol of white privilege, justly murdered in an effort to break free from oppression.

A soldier becomes a symbol of American colonialism, rightly spit upon. Donald Trump symbolizes the patriarchy keeping women down. Republicans become symbols of all that is evil, the archons ruling the world, who will keep us all in chains unless destroyed. Language must be deconstructed, by violent legal fiat if need be. As icons of a hopelessly corrupt world oppressing me, it all must be iconoclastically broken. Violence is salvific.//

Hey, Mr. Crazy and Angy, Far-left, Bernie Bros who thinks Republicans are evil....

....here is another Democrat official telling you that shooting Republicans is a good idea.

Join the Resistance!

//A Nebraska Democratic Party official is now in hot water. An audio recording was posted on YouTube Thursday with Phil Montag, a technology chairman, voicing how glad he was that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., got shot last week at a GOP baseball practice. Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman Jane Kleeb confirmed to FOX 42 News Thursday it was really his voice.

"His whole job is to get people, convince Republicans to (expletive) kick people off (expletive) health care. I'm glad he got shot," said Montag in the audio recording.

Montag is now looking for a new job; Kleeb let him go after the recording became public.

"I wish he was (expletive) dead," said Montag in the recording.

"We obviously condemn any kind of violence, whether it's comments on Facebook or comments in a meeting," said Kleeb when reached by phone Thursday.//

I know Both Sides Do It, but I don't remember any Republican party officials exulting in the shooting of Gabby Giffords.

Some of us stopped trusting the FBI's conclusions last year...

...when FBI Director Comey laid out the case for indicting a regular American for negligent handling of national security information but discovered a special standard for Hillary.


//There’s also this incredible tidbit, which somehow has received little to no attention: “Hodgkinson also visited the office of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign he had worked on as a volunteer, and was in email contact with the two Democratic senators from his home state.” If this was a shooter who had worked for Ted Cruz and was in contact via email with both of the Senators from Texas, wouldn’t we know about it?

There’s no reason to beat around the bush here: what the FBI is claiming is mind-boggling when they claim the shooter had no target in mind. Consider the number of accidents of circumstance you would have to believe were going on here to not have the shooter doing what seems obvious from every piece of evidence we have: researching and planning for an attack on Republicans of some kind, particularly looking for an opportunity when security will be low and vulnerability will be high. This was an attack, not an “anger management” problem.

Step back, though, and think on the institutional conclusions here. Considering how ludicrous the FBI’s conclusions are as it relates to an attack on the third ranking member of the House of Representatives, you might reconsider whether to trust the FBI’s conclusions in other areas, as well. And this is how our faith in institutions is degraded: steadily, gradually, with incident after incident where men in suits stand in front of microphones and make claims we know are not the whole truth.//

Hey, Mr. "Crazy, Unhinged, Leftist, FB-Ranting, Bernie-Bro, Super-angry about Evil, Greedy, Murderous Republicans"....

....Elizabeth Warren has confirmed that Republicans are going to murder Americans!!!!

Why are you just sitting there reading this????

#Resistance!!!

Democrat Operatives with Press Credentials.

Comparison of the coverage of the Giffords shooting to the Republican congressmen shootings.

Want more Trump?

Nebraska Democratic Party official won't resign after calling reactions to shooting at GOP baseball practice 'so funny'

We can play the equivalence game. Sure, some Republican yahoo somewhere once said something bad.

But that misses the point - this kind of ugly thinking is normative in parts of the leftist coalition. I'm sure that there are people in the Democrat party who are not comfortable with this, and, if so, they won't remain Democrats much longer.

Liberal Totalitarianism...

...may have seemed over the top a few years ago.

Not so much now.

https://youtu.be/2cMYfxOFBBM

Everyone obviously knows that those "coexist" and "practice kindness" signs are talking to loving and caring leftists....

...they are aimed at nasty, evil, murderous, fascist conservatives.

Obviously.

James “Tommy” Hodgkinson must not have seen the signs.  They were hard to miss in the Alexandria, Virginia, neighborhood known as Del Ray where he gunned down Republicans playing baseball.

“Practice Kindness” yard signs are ubiquitous in Del Ray.

If he did see the signs, Hodgkinson must not have taken them very seriously.

"Practice Kindness" sign, blocks from shooting (Image Credit: J. Christian Adams, PJ Media )

Del Ray prides itself on being a diverse and progressive neighborhood.  In 2016, Hillary got 4,549 votes in Del Ray and Trump just 883.

Another house (with a United Nations flag and  a “Proud Democrat” sign) a few blocks from the baseball diamond has a “Little Free Library,” a birdhouse-shaped hutch where one can take and give books.  Next to it is a chalkboard: “Kindness Is Everywhere, I Saw It Today When…” it says, inviting folks to complete the story.

“Traffic stopped for me to cross,” says one answer. “Friends came to my defense when an infernal troll targeted me on FB.”

A good chance that last spat involved politics.

Since Trump’s win, yard signs have sprouted up in front yards all over Del Ray, just blocks from the shooting scene.

(Image Credit: J. Christian Adams, PJ Media)

“Practice Kindness, Build Communities” is the most common.  Here's another: “Make America Kind Again.”

Then there's this long-winded cause-cornucopia: “In this House We Believe Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights, No Human Is Illegal, Science Is Real, Love is Love, Kindness is Everything.”

Another banner posted at the ball field before the shooting captures lots of causes (some in Arabic), including: “In the Future I Hope That Coming Out Doesn’t Exist Because Everyone is Just Who They Are.”  In the photo below you can see the baseball field in the background.