Stalin Versus Hitler – The Left’s New Faustian Bargain

For the past few months many Conservatives have been warning against the rising tide of “Alt-Left” violence and the insidious tactics that they are using to suppress dissenting opinions. This new tactic works in seven stages:

1. Create narrative that words are a type of violence. (Microaggressions and Hate Speech is not Free Speech arguments.)
2. Create moral justification that Nazis must be violently opposed and that they have zero Constitutional protections to free speech or assembly.
3. Begin calling everyone who has any opinions that differ from your world view a Nazi. (It is important that you dehumanize your opposition as much as possible to ensure that that lie sticks even when their grandparents were Holocaust Survivors.)
4. Find people who are assembling to engage in their constitutionally protected free with which you disagree. (If you have done steps 1 – 3 correctly then it does not matter if you find actual Nazis like those at the Charlottesville rally or if they are simply Trump supporters who are speaking in defense of free speech.)
5. Build your arsenal of weapons. Remember it is important to make these weapons look as innocuous as possible because you never want the prosecutors to know you had intended to violently assault them to violate their Constitutional Rights. Bike locks, flag poles with errant nails and screws and soda cans filled with cement make great choices.
6. Cover your face and cloak yourself in anonymity. Let’s face it, you should not have to pay the lifetime consequences for your violent behavior when you are simply LARPing being a revolutionary.
7. Attack violently.

This week the media, Democrats and sadly many Republicans have given ANTIFA a pass to continue using the “Rioters Veto” to indiscriminately trample the Constitutional Rights of people who disagree with them. The flattering coverage that this domestic terrorist organization has been receiving over the past couple of days is sickening because it is only going to embolden their attacks on Conservatives. Yes, they finally got some real Nazis this time, but for the last 9 months it has been regular Conservatives that have borne the brunt of this state sponsored violence. What happens in the coming months when ANTIFA finally takes it too far and they kill someone who is protesting, but has zero affiliation with any hate groups? Are the media, Democrats and sadly many Republicans going to condemn this organization or will they simply join in ANTIFA in Step 3 above and slander that person as a Nazi? At this point in time I honestly believe that the latter is the most likely scenario.

The prevailing narrative has become about moral equivalency as if a rational person cannot look at two things that are bad and say that they are both bad without justifying the other. If I denounce Hitler and Stalin in the same breath, this by no means an endorsement of either. I can simply say that they are both evil and I do not need to quibble about the degree to which they were evil. How is denouncing both the neo-Nazis and ANTIFA any different? Yes, one group is clearly racist, but is not a group that specifically targets Conservatives and violently assaults them based upon intellectual differences just as bigoted? When ANTIFA shows up to “counter protest” armed with clubs, pepper spray, urine filled balloons, fireworks and flag poles studded with nails is it not clear that they intend to violate people’s constitutional rights to free speech.

We can agree that racists are the vilest scum to walk the planet, but when we refuse to call out one group of bad actors because they were committing their bad behavior against another group of bad actors then we inadvertently condone the actions of those bad actors. The old adage rings true, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” We must take a stand against all political violence least the political violence you endorse today become the political violence that targets you tomorrow. What we have just witnessed was the media, Democrats and sadly many Republicans making the ultimate Faustian Bargain in the name of tolerance. We have created a justification for political violence where none had existed. ANTIFA will continue to get a pass to violently assault people, destroy property and hold peaceful organizations hostage with the “Rioters Veto” in the name of “fighting intolerance” and God help those with whom ANTIFA disagrees. The politicians get to virtue signal, radical Leftists get to continue rioting, the media get to keep getting clicks and it only costs you your liberty.