OPINION:
Liberal dogma in Washington is that the right wing commits all the political violence and the left is “mostly peaceful.”
If you listen to Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas and other Democrats, MAGA is on a perpetual killing spree.
Yet Washington has more voices today. There is President Trump, survivor of two assassination attempts. And there is the muscular conservative press. Its newspaper websites, radio and TV broadcasters, podcasters and roving independent journalists are on the verge of dominating the discussion.
The liberal press can airbrush crazy-left protesters and give one-day coverage to horrible crimes because they lack the needed right-wing villains. Then conservatives jump in to fill in the gaping holes.
The left-wing transgender and “Free Palestine” movements, which are members of the Democratic Party base, have committed a series of killings and attacks.
Another Democratic loyalist base, illegal migrants, have teamed with everyday leftists to attack law enforcement trying to corral foreign criminals let in by President Biden.
Mr. Trump is changing the Washington dynamic via FBI Director Kash Patel.
Mr. Patel is doing more than purging anti-Trump agents. In early October, Mr. Patel ended the FBI partnership with two left-wing activists: the Anti-Defamation League, led by a former Obama White House aide, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. I can say two things. The SPLC is not poor, and it conducts smear campaigns against effective conservatives by placing them on a “hate map” served up to the news media.
To give a sense of that partnership, FBI Director James B. Comey pledged the FBI’s “love” for the ADL in a 2014 speech to its leadership conference. He disclosed that the ADL gives the FBI research, assessments and training. In other words, it picks the targets.
“If this sounds a bit like a love letter to the ADL, it is, and rightly so,” said Mr. Comey, who would go on to become Mr. Trump’s pursuer in the Russia hoax.
Conservatives brand the ADL as anti-Christian. “That era is OVER,” Mr. Patel posted on X. “This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.”
In September 2020, Mr. Comey’s successor, Christopher A. Wray, appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
The date was historic. In the preceding four months, as a response to the police killing of George Floyd, thousands of leftists went on violence-filled demonstrations. Conservatives say a lot of the looting, arson and murder was spurred on by Black Lives Matter.
Portland, Oregon, was ground zero for antifa, the fake anti-fascist army that practices fascism. Adored by liberals, it went on a violent rampage and tried to burn down the city’s federal courthouse.
In late May 2020, leftists besieged the White House. They hurled projectiles at police, wrecked property and set buildings, including historic St. John’s Church, on fire.
In his prepared statement to the Senate, Mr. Wray made no mention of these groups, nor any specific mention of the months of rioting.
Mr. Wray was on record saying antifa does not exist as an organization. Well, it may not have a board of directors, but the cities and people who feel its sting will testify that it is actively communicating on social media and conducts planned mayhem.
Mr. Wray did cite one specific terrorism case: not the George Floyd riots but the arrest of Richard Holzer, a neo-Nazi, for planning to blow up a Colorado synagogue.
At the hearing, Sen. Rand Paul was willing to name names. He and his wife were attacked by a left-wing mob weeks earlier in Washington, just like others were attacked across the country. He knew who was responsible.
“I can tell you that Black Lives Matter is supporting these folks and that we should not shy away from attributing blame where blame goes,” he said. “When we were attacked, the head of Black Lives Matter in Louisville had this to say. She said, ‘We can see the fear in their faces, and that is how we want them to live.’ Their goal is terrorism. They are admitting it.”
No one was convicted in the White House siege. Left-wingers attacked Trump inauguration partygoers, and no one was convicted of that either.
Heritage Foundation scholar Mike Gonzalez wrote in 2023 about Black Lives Matter’s effect. “America enters 2023 as a radically different society because of the 2020 violence linked to Black Lives Matter,” he said. Referring to a 2009 study, he added, “It took years to knit the revolutionary network that would provoke this sea change. And, indeed, the organizers of the protests met for years to plan how to ‘disrupt and transform’ America.”
Even Democrat Ted Wheeler, who ran Portland as mayor during the 2020 riots, singled out antifa.
“My good-faith efforts at de-escalation have been met with ongoing violence and even scorn from radical antifa and anarchists,” he said in January 2021. “In response, it will be necessary to use additional tools and to push the limits of the tools we already have to bring the criminal destruction and violence to an end.”
This fall, Mr. Trump went to war against antifa after declaring it a domestic terrorist organization.
Democrats conceded, sort of, that some of their folks are violent. “Both sides,” they said, while inaccurately ascribing leftist attacks to MAGA.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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