Leftist storm troopers in America

A bizarre event occurred yesterday afternoon in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, a gang of 18 men wearing hooded jackets with scarves covering their faces invaded the Ashford House restaurant and assaulted a particular group of about 20 patrons with metal batons and hammers. Reading the story, which says nothing about race, you would assume from their hoodies that the invaders were black. But that’s not the case. As reported further by Fox News in Chicago, the attackers were not blacks but a group of self-described “anti-racists” and “anti-fascists” called the Anti-Racist Action Group, all of them white, and the victims were white nationalists associated with neo-Nazi website Stormfront.

This could be a one-off incident, or it could be a signal event in modern American history. These leftist storm troopers are starting by attacking a group for whom few will have sympathy—neo-Nazis of the Stormfront variety. But why should they stop there? Their next logical target would be a meeting of American Renaissance readers, then a meeting of VFR readers, then anyone who has non-liberal views on race, or, indeed, anyone who the left believes has non-liberal views on race. Remember: many liberals say that the real reason Republicans and tea partiers oppose the stimulus and Obamacare is that Obama is black. Thus, in the mind of the left, all conservatives are racists, and thus, in the mind of the group that carried out the attack yesterday, all conservatives are legitimate targets of anti-racist, storm-trooper violence.

- end of initial entry -

James N. writes:

It is perfectly clear to me that storm troopers are the next step for the left.

Do you really think they BELIEVE racism explains opposition to Obama?

When they say that, I believe they are consciously lying.

LA replies:

We can never know for sure what’s going on in another person’s head; all we know, and all that matters politically, are the things a person says and the positions he actually takes.

A couple of years ago, when some left-wing pundits (Joe Klein is the only name I remember a the moment) began saying that the reason the tea party opposed Obamacare was that Obama was black, that struck me as very extreme. After all, the tea party has nothing to do with race. So these leftists were really saying that anyone who opposes Obama, on any subject, opposes him because he is black. Then (though I have no evidence to back this up) it increasingly seemed to me that this was not a weird outlier view on the left, but fairly common. Then, a year later, I was talking with a liberal acquaintance, not about politics, and he suddenly said, “You know, the only reason I can think of that the Republicans and tea partiers oppose Obama’s spending policies is that he’s black.” I don’t think he was lying. From the way he was speaking, this was something he had thought about and he believed it.

LA replies:

If they were hitting people with metal batons and hammers, they were seeking to cause grievous bodily harm or death. How did they think they would get away with this, or survive as a group to carry on more such attacks?

LA writes:

Here’s a story from the Chicago Tribune. Notice that while ten people were injured in the storm trooper attack, the story says nothing about their injuries. If they were hit with metal bats and hammers, how could the injuries not be very grave?

Also notice, in the Fox story I linked above, that the event is twice described, the headline and lead, as a “brawl,” as though this were a fight between two groups rather than a deadly attack by one group on another:

Tinley Park brawl between white supremacists, ‘anti-racists’

Posted: May 20, 2012 12:11 PM EDT Updated: May 20, 2012 3:10 PM EDT
By Mike Flannery, FOX Chicago News Political Editor - bio | email

It now appears that a vicious brawl at a south suburban restaurant on Saturday involved hammer-wielding “anti-fascists” attacking a group of self-professed “white nationalists.”

And notice how the headline puts “white supremacists” first, suggesting that it was the white supremacists who started the “brawl.”

All so typical. Even when the MSM technically reports the truth, it puts a PC spin on it so that the reader will receive the truth through that PC spin, insensibly affecting his impressions of and his feelings about what happened.

LA continues:

And here is a story from CBS Chicago. Not worth reading, as it is as brief and superficial as the other accounts. That pretty much covers everything I’ve found via Google on this.

Here’s this extraordinary thing, a group of 15 armed people entering a restaurant and attacking a group of diners with deadly weapons, and the media treats it as some minor, uninteresting event—not going into any details, not getting descriptions from the witnesses, not getting any information on the victims and their injuries. My guess is that this is because the victims are identified as white supremacists. Therefore the media’s reporting of the story is bland, routine, without affect (i.e. without feeling or emotion), as with its stories about black mob attacks on whites.

From which we can reasonably predict that if groups such as Anti-Racist Action proceed to do the same thing to a meeting of race-realists, or a meeting of traditionalists, or a meeting of tea partiers, or a meeting of Republicans, the reporting on the attack will also be bland, routine, and without affect.

May 21

Daniel S. writes:

It was only a matter of time before the antifa (“anti-fascist”) jackboots reared their heads in America. I think the atmosphere stoked by the left is the perfect swamp to bred these sorts. We see it in the rising number of Occupy anarchists willing to engage in terrorism and revolutionary violence. The same Occupy antifa types that today “protest” a radio station for airing Rush Limbaugh will tomorrow firebomb such stations and direct acts of violent intimidation against men like Limbaugh and others demonized by the leftist media and the Obama administration.

While the usual conservative mouthpieces will decry the left as “desperate” for such acts, I believe it shows how empowered the left perceives itself to be.

Natassia writes:

Maybe this will teach non-liberal whites to stop meeting in areas hostile to the Second Amendment.

Ferg writes:

Yet another reason to go armed at all times. There are no limits to their hatred of us.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 20, 2012 04:06 PM | Send