The Lawless Left and Its Liberal Camp Followers by Matthew Continetti
https://www.commentary.org/articles/matthew-continetti/lawless-left-riots-liberal-followers/
You’ve seen the image: A shirtless young man, wearing a mask and gloves, waves a Mexican flag while standing on the roof of a defaced car. He’s ringed by flames from a nearby burning vehicle. The smoke obscures a traffic light hanging in the distance. It’s a desolate, anarchic landscape—more fitting for science fiction than a spring evening in America’s second-largest city.
This was Los Angeles in early June, when street protests over federal immigration raids turned violent. For four days, masked men battled local police. They hurled stones and shot fireworks. They obstructed highways, torched taxis, and looted shops. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said his officers were “overwhelmed.”
Liberals shrugged.
Mayor Karen Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom, Representative Maxine Waters, and the unemployed Kamala Harris were all preoccupied with someone 3,000 miles away: President Trump. They downplayed the chaos while blaming him for it. They demanded Trump relinquish control of the California National Guard and remove the 700 Marines he deployed to Los Angeles. They called for ICE to leave town.
Above all, they preened. They issued statements oozing with moral superiority. “Demonstrations in defense of our immigrant neighbors have been overwhelmingly peaceful,” wrote Kamala Harris with characteristic vagueness. “The Founding Fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment,” Newsom said in a televised speech.
He’s right, but not in the way he thinks. The Founders didn’t live and die to see anarchists flout the law in defense of illegal immigrants. They wrote a Constitution establishing federal supremacy over the states. They quashed rebellion and were, shall we say, tough on crime. The Founders would have had no problem recognizing anarchy and declaring it impermissible. Why does Newsom?
Because he’s playing to type. Since the 1960s, liberal Democrats have made excuses for the radical Left: the Chicago Seven, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, the Reverend Jim Jones—not to mention Castro, Guevara, Arafat, and Assad. In each case, liberals deplore violence in the abstract while going out of their way to minimize or excuse actual wrongdoing.
Confronted by leftist violence, establishment liberals try to blame unjust social conditions. They point to inequality, patriarchy, colonialism, Zionism, and the military-industrial complex. They urge calm while signaling sympathy with the vandals’ motivations. They may not endorse antinomianism, but they rarely act against it. Meanwhile, Republicans profit from this selective indignation.
Why can’t liberals break the habit? Two reasons: partisanship and ideology. The politicians recognize they are funded by the same institutions—labor unions, NGOs, progressive donor networks—that organize and condone violent protest. They don’t want to be crosswise with their base. Most Democrats may be conventional, upscale liberals. But the fiery core still provides resources and moral certitude.
Ideology is just as insidious. It excuses law-breaking as authentic outrage at injustice. In this view, a riot is therapeutic, a way to blow off steam. Victims can’t be expected to contain their anger at oppression. Imposing consequences makes things worse by ignoring root causes. This attitude is terribly condescending. And dangerous.
Consider the past several years. The 2020 Black Lives Matter riots were the costliest in American history, totaling more than $1 billion in damage. Yet prominent Democrats and the media framed the destruction as a minor bump on the road to racial reckoning.
A CNN chyron reading “Fiery but Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting” appeared below a cable news correspondent reporting in front of an inferno in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as armed men roamed the streets. Senator Kamala Harris warned Stephen Colbert about the protests: “They’re not going to stop. And everyone beware, they’re not going to stop.”
They didn’t. For weeks, black-clad militants in Portland engaged in running street battles with secur-ity at a federal courthouse. For a month, armed vigilantes in Seattle established an “autonomous zone” in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Congressman Jerry Nadler, from his perch in Manhattan, said the strife in Portland was “a myth.” Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan likened the lawless Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone to a Pride festival.
Voters were not in a partying mood. They soured on Durkan, who announced that December that she wouldn’t run for a second term. Republicans did better than expected in 2020 precisely because voters closely associated the Democratic Party with socialism, Black Lives Matter, the Defund the Police movement, school closures, and crime. Not long after Election Day, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger warned her Democratic colleagues: “If we are classifying Tuesday [Election Day] as a success … we will get f—ing torn apart in 2022.”
Few listened. Beginning in 2021, radical environmentalists and anti-cop activists targeted a plan-ned police-training facility, nicknamed “Cop City,” outside Atlanta. Clashes between far-left agitators and authorities escalated into arson, vandalism, and assault. Georgia Democrats condemned violence while treating the grievances behind the havoc as legitimate. Senator Raphael Warnock refused to say whether the facility should be completed—tacitly conceding the premise that police are inherently menacing.
Then came October 7. Within hours of the attack on Israel, pro-Hamas protests spread on college campuses. Liberal administrators did nothing. They barely lifted a finger to protect Jewish students and guarantee that every student could study without harassment from keffiyeh-wearing thugs. University presidents found themselves unable to condemn calls for genocide. They lost their jobs—justly.
The Biden administration denounced anti-Semitism and pledged support for Israel. But, as the war continued, Israel became a liability within the Democratic Party. Hamas sympathizers grew in number and intensity. Biden slow-walked military aid and pressured Israel to make a deal with Hamas. Harris refused to appear with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When hecklers accused her of supporting genocide, she could only respond, “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
She spoke. And Trump won. The Democrats’ inability to confront and contain anti-Semitism on America’s campuses and city streets was a preview of things to come during Trump’s second term. The cause may change—Gaza one day, ICE the next. The spineless liberal response to radicalism does not.
Republicans fell into a similar trap in the years after the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump supporters who soft-pedal the events of that day run the same risk as liberals who succumb to tribalism and dogma. At the same time, January 6 also exposed the hollowness of the liberal position: They found a riot they wouldn’t call “mostly peaceful” and brought down the heavy hand of government on everyone involved.
The pattern holds. On June 12, Mayor Bass imposed a curfew on downtown Los Angeles. The protests diminished. Yet she still held Trump responsible for the mess, not the actual criminals. “Every time you do something like this,” she said, referring to Trump’s bringing in the National Guard, “you provoke the population.”
Madame Mayor needs a refresher course in cause and effect. Democrats who wink at violent protest don’t just risk their electoral future. They guarantee more chaos.
Comments are closed.
