I say Republicans because among our political class it's only Republicans who have the moral standing to condemn what happened on Wednesday. This may sound absurd to some, but almost all Republicans who have been outspoken in their criticism of the mob that vandalized the Capitol building were also outspoken in their criticism of the mobs which vandalized and looted our cities and injured and, in some cases, murdered people last summer.
During that long stretch of chaos and turmoil, however, most Democrats were either silent or even excused the violence.
Tristan Justice at The Federalist lists 28 examples of Democrat politicians or progressives in the media excusing or even applauding last summer's riots in which thirty people died and untold millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed.
Justice writes:
Not one prominent conservative pundit or politician with any significant platform was reported to have tried endorsing the mob of Trump supporters infiltrating the U.S. Capitol. To the contrary, conservatives spent months vilifying Democratic leaders for not doing enough in their own states and cities to crack down on the militant mobs of leftists taking streets under siege, normalizing the kind of political violence on track to appear routine in the nightmare 2020 decade.He goes on to list his examples which I've condensed here. I urge readers to go to the original, though, because Justice provides video and tweets which document each of the examples he cites:
Vice-President elect Kamala Harris urged her followers to donate toward paying Minneapolis rioters’ bail. Justice doesn't mention this quote from Ms Harris but he might have:
They’re [last summer's riots] not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.That's our new Vice-President.
CNN's Chris Cuomo justified the violence in our cities' streets by demanding to be shown "where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.”
Multiple reporters, including MSNBC's Ali Velshi, excused last summer's violence by assuring us that the protests were "mostly peaceful." The same could be said, of course, about the protest march in D.C. on Wednesday, but that doesn't excuse or diminish the violence that did occur.
Democrats went through their entire online convention without condemning any of the violence that staggered the nation in the months preceding their event.
During a CBS interview Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the New York Times' 1619 Project, explicitly rejected the idea that destroying property fits the definition of “violence.” The interviewer agreed that she was making "a great point."
CNN news anchor Don Lemon celebrated the George Floyd riots as a 21st-century version of the Boston Tea Party. “And let’s not forget if anyone is judging this, I’m not judging this,” Lemon said as CNN cameras rolled with footage of riots in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. “This is how this country was started.”
CNN’s Chris Cillizza complained that Trump was wrong to describe the looting, burning and beatings in our cities last summer as "Riots."
Huffington Post released a video instructing viewers as to "How Riots Built America." The video drew parallels between the 2020 riots against police with periods of unrest throughout American history.
NBC News evidently instructed staff last summer to avoid the term "Riot."
When anarchists were taking control of downtown Seattle, Mayor Jenny Durkin advised people not to be "afraid of Democracy."
When a mob tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore last June House Speaker Nancy Pelosi merely shrugged and replied, "People will do what they do." Perhaps she repeated that profundity when she saw pics of Trump supporters lolling about her office with their feet up on her desk.
Rolling Stone magazine re-published an article in May urging readers to "Rethink Property Destruction." The article promoted the idea that the devastation and property destruction caused by riots as "frequently effective."
Other publications offered similar justifications for rioting:
GQ Magazine averred that "Violent Protests Work." Slate argued that riots are a "Proportionate Response." Mother Jones declared in June that "Riots Aren't Irrational." Time magazine insisted that using the term "Riot" was "Loaded." Vox said last summer that riots are "scary but productive" and yesterday wrote that the Capitol riots were "devastating.' Jacobin magazine opined that looting is justified only to promote social justice.
Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez informed us early last December that the whole point of protesting "is to make people uncomfortable." She also claimed that marginalized people have no choice but to riot. She was talking about poor people, but her assertion would apply, I suppose, to any form of perceived marginalization, including the belief one is being marginalized by an unfair electoral process.
Writer Vicky Osterweil published a book late last summer titled, “In Defense Of Looting,” and earned a feature on National Public Radio (NPR) for the work.
Temple University Professor Marc Lamont Hill went on NPR complaining that dismissing protestors as rioters “dehumanizes” them and impedes political progress.
As I said, you really should go to the OP and watch the videos and read the tweets, but meanwhile, given their silence or support, both tacit and explicit, when people with whom they sympathized committed crimes even worse than were committed by Trump supporters on Wednesday, they have no moral credibility, at least with me, when they criticize and condemn the mob that overran the Capitol building.
If political rioting is unjustified and criminal when Trump supporters do it, and it is, then it's equally unjustified and criminal when BLM and Antifa do it. Yet, mayors in some of our cities have refused to prosecute those who destroyed peoples' property and livelihoods and no one in the liberal media or in positions of Democratic party leadership has expressed outrage over this.
Indeed, the fact that so many rioters were released without charges last summer doubtless fueled some of the frustration of those who showed up in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate and quite plausibly led some of them to believe they could yield to the temptation to vandalize and assault police without fear of prosecution. The lack of censure of Antifa and BLM from the left has no doubt also led some to ape the left's behavior, believing that if they want to compete with and defeat the left they must play by the left's rules.
This is tragic for the nation, but we reap what we sow. What we excused and rationalized yesterday will come back to plague us today. It's almost a law of human nature.
