Threats Made Against Ann Althouse; Dan Riehl Interviews The Skel Making The Threats

A day or two ago I read (I think on NRO) a knock-down of the left's weird obsession with the Koch Brothers. The point was that the Kochs didn't contribute all that much, in the scheme of things, to the conservative cause, especially when compared to other high-dollar donors. Like George Soros, for example.

The article posited that the motivation for this personalized, particularized attack on the Koch brothers was to give the left a bugaboo to fear, in order to gin up emotion and fundraising dollars.

That's part of it, but I think there's another part that competes with that: The left likes talking about particular people, making particularized threats, because you can't really threaten an amorphous group like the Tea Party. Well, you can, but no particular person in the Tea Party will be strongly alarmed by the treat, being that it would be a generalized sort of blanket threat.

But you can threaten individuals and penalize their participation in the political process by physically harming them, threatening such harm, or just conducting general terror campaigns against them. You only need to suggest the possibility of violence -- or creepy, stalker-ish watching -- to take away a person's usual feeling of basic safety.

So I don't think the Koch brothers are being attacked, personally, just to gin up counter-fundraising on the left. I think they're being attacked, and threatened, in order to drive them from the public square entirely, and even more importantly, to let the next high-profile donor know in no uncertain terms: This could happen to you.

Maybe it's just best to let liberals get their way, eh? Otherwise -- shame if something happened.

That's why I think that Ann Althouse is being singled out by some lefties for threats. She's done original reporting, offered legal opinions contrary to the left's narrative, and contributed in important ways to the real narrative of lawless, violence-minded supporters of the unions. (Interesting, a lot of these people don't even belong to a union because they're either student radicals or unemployed radicals. They're just the black-bandana anarchist left looking for people to hurt.)

Therefore, Althouse needs to be terrorized, not just to scare her off, but to scare off the next person who takes a line not approved by the Party.

This could happen to you. Shame if you wound up harassed and looking over your shoulder every time you were on a public street.

Maybe it's just best to let the leftists have this one, eh?

We will harrass the ever loving shit out of you all the time. Campus is OCCUPIED. State street is OCCUPIED. The Square is OCCUPIED. Vilas, Schenk's Corners, Atwood, Willy Street – Occupied, Occupied, Occupied, Occupied. Did you really think it was all about the Capitol? Fuck the Capitol, we are the CITY... We have the numbers and we don't back down from anyone. We all know each other. We all know each other. We know each other from Service Industry Night at the Orpheum, because we're regulars at the same coffee shops, restaurants and bars, we know each other from the co-ops, we know each other because we've had a million jobs each (and we all worked at CapTel at least once), because we live in every shitty townie house in ever-changing groups of 2 – 7 people, because we are young and horny and screw each other incessantly, because we're all on facebook, and because we aren't anti-social, life-denying, world-sterilizing pieces of human garbage like the two of you. WE WILL FUCK YOU UP.

Dan Riehl tracked down the guy making the threat -- what a shock, he's a long-term unemployed radical who works as a freelance dishwasher.

And he's got some intriguing theories about the American political system.

Apart from his nasty rant, if Shankman, a self-defined “radical progressive” reminded me of anyone, it was Peggy Joseph, who, after hearing Obama speak in October of 2008 said, “I won’t have to work, I’ll put gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage.” Now, those perceived promises unfulfilled over two years into the Obama presidency, Shankman emphatically and repeatedly claims “Obama is the worst president in history.”

Asked about his politics, Shankman expressed no great regard for Democrats or union bosses and sees them as forces, combined with moderate Republicans, who pose a serious threat to America’s future. While denying he is a socialist, or Marxist, Shankman labeled his economic ideology “distributionist.” He believes we should divide the wealth of America across the population “so that everyone can buy a house,” feed and support themselves, starting over from there based upon some concept modeled somewhat after Catholic charity. He also believes in single payer health care and believes Obama has abandoned progressives on that issue.

He had a kind word for both Sarah Palin and Andrew Breitbart, not for their actual politics, but for advocating for what they believe and embracing the new media.

So, be on alert: If the media ever covers this threat (which they won't), here's your headline:

Radical Follower of Sarah Palin Threatens Law Professor

This skel then offers up his ideology:

Finally,as regards Ann Althouse, Shankman said he believes in what he called the “law of privilege.” As best as I could interpret it, it meant that if the majority of Madison residents were progressive and didn’t want an Ann Althouse in their midst, then they are somehow entitled to make it unpleasant enough for her to live there, so that she’ll leave.

The "law of privilege." I guess that's a pretty good sum-up of the leftist mentality. They can violate any law because they have a special privilege to do so.

posted by Ace at 12:41 PM

| Access Comments