New York Times Claims to Support Free Speech on Campus, Then Proceeds to Blame Violence on Campuses on Right Wing "Narrative" of Phony Oppression

What?

Though speakers of all ideologies regularly appear at colleges without incident, a few widely publicized disruptions feed a narrative of leftist enclaves of millennial snowflakes refusing to abide ideas they disagree with. From the president to Fox News, right-wing voices wail, through their megaphones, about how put upon they are, like soccer players collapsing to the turf and writhing in pretend agony.

The woman whose neck was wrenched so badly she had to go to the hospital and have it immobilized in a brace is a liberal, New York Times. Did she do a Spanish Soccer League "flop" and pretend her agony?

Did the girl wearing a Make Bitcoin Great Again hat who got maced in the face by a black bloc progressive terrorist pretend her agony?

Did the people bloodied up on Saturday's pro-Trump marches pretend the blood flowing from their foreheads and noses?

It's a "Right Wing Narrative" that people are getting beaten and even shot by black bloc terrorists on college campuses? The right wing is spreading this, what, #FakeNews?

And somehow the fake news lies about black bloc assaults and terrorism are provoking the actual assaults and terrorism?

A bit like how Donald Trump's mention of violence due to immigration in Sweden then caused immigrant rioting the next day?

Defending those who engage in political violence is active encouragement of political violence.

You know, there are people who still hold out hope that the left are not the monsters they suspect they might be, and that they will awaken to the horror of the illiberal and hyperpartisan and increasingly violent world they are making.

I can nod a little bit of respect towards the optimism and goodwill of such people, but at some point, one has to take a realistic appraisal and stop relying on hope as a plan.

Consider this another data-point to answer the question I asked yesterday: How close is America to the edge, when leading progressive institutions are now offering defenses of street-violence so long as the violence is coming from the left side and being visited upon the right side?

When a newspaper can no longer simply denounce a violent black bloc mob's assault on men and one woman without trying to excuse it away as somehow the fault of the victims of the attack, then I would say we're pretty close to the edge.

The left is now in war mode, where violence in the service of tribe is sometimes (by which I mean "almost always") excusable.

A nation that cannot agree on the most basic nation-making proposition -- that we do not wage actual physical, violent civil war on each other over mere differences of political opinion -- is not a nation, at least not in more but name, and will not be even that for very long.

The allegedly "respectable" left used to claim the black bloc violent protesters have nothing to do with them.

Really?

Then why are you defending them and making excuses for them? People only excuse monstrous behavior for those they consider of the Party.

Everything for The Party; Nothing against The Party.

This reminds me of Islamist clerics who pretend to denounce jihad but then add, "But this is all due to Western aggression and Zionism..."

One defines one's Tribe by the excuses it's willing to make on their behalf.

"This innocent man accused of armed robbery has nothing to do with the Genovese Family," said the Genovese Crime Family's top mob-lawyer as that lawyer the proceeded to defend, at great cost, the man allegedly having nothing at all to do with the "so-called" Genovese Crime Family.

Like I said: an inside-outside game.

I've been told for years about the growing threat of right-wing extremism and how right-wing leaders have to police and denounce their own to keep from encouraging extremists to commit violence, and this is the New York Times' response to left wing violence?

To encourage it and excuse it away, precisely as they've (erroneously) accused right wing "leaders" of doing for years?

I heard the media shriek and whine that Trump supporters would jeer and mock Katy Tur. That was a threat to Democracy Itself, they lectured.

Now their Shock Troops are beating people in the street, and their response is to claim right-wingers are making up sob stories and thereby... provoking their own beat-downs?

When the inevitable violent reaction comes -- and it's both amusing and horrifying to me that the self-declared "elites" have never read a history book and seen that all violent movements inevitably provoke a violent counter-movement -- and the New York Times demands denunciation of it, I'll personally remember the brave and socially-conscious example they set themselves on this matter.

Bonus:

posted by Ace at 05:22 PM

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