By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
This past Friday, a left-wing mob shut down a Donald
Trump rally in Chicago. Most Americans viewing what happened saw it for what it
was — another assault by left-wingers on the speech of those with whom they
differ and on traditional American civility.
Not surprisingly, the media reporting has concentrated
overwhelmingly on Trump for incendiary and inexcusable comments he has made at
some of his other rallies that were disrupted by protesters. For example, he
offered to pay any legal bills incurred by a man in the audience who
sucker-punched a protester as he was being led out of a Trump rally.
Many have also noted the alleged assault by Trump
campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was accused of trying to grab Breitbart
reporter Michelle Fields’s arm. (I say “alleged” because I have watched the video
of the alleged incident four times but could not ascertain what actually took
place.)
For the record, I have been relentless in my criticisms
of Donald Trump, both in print and on my radio show, preferring any other
Republican candidate. Based on his past, I have not had any reason to trust him
as a conservative or as a Republican, and he has exhibited serious character
flaws.
Nevertheless, truth must trump opposition to Trump.
And the truth is that the left-wing attack on Trump’s
Chicago rally had little, if anything, to do with the incendiary comments
Donald Trump has made about attacking protesters at his events. Leftist mobs
attack and shut down events with which they differ as a matter of course. They
do so regularly on American college campuses, where conservative speakers — on
the rare occasions they are invited — are routinely shouted down by left-wing
students (and sometimes faculty as well) or simply disinvited as a result of
leftist pressure on the college administration.
A couple of weeks ago, conservative writer and speaker
Ben Shapiro was disinvited from California State University, Los Angeles. When
he nevertheless showed up, 150 left-wing demonstrators blocked the entrance to
the theater in which he was speaking and sounded a fire alarm to further
disrupt his speech.
In just the last year, left-wing students have violently
taken over presidents’ or deans’ offices at Princeton, Virginia Commonwealth,
Dartmouth, Providence, Harvard, Lewis & Clark, and Temple, among many other
schools. Conservative speakers have been either disinvited or shouted down at
Brandeis University, Brown University, the University of Michigan, and myriad
other campuses.
And leftists shout down virtually every pro-Israel
speaker, including the Israeli ambassador to the United States, at every
university to which they are invited to speak.
Yet the mainstream media simply ignore this left-wing
thuggery — while reporting that the shutting down of a pro-Trump rally is all
Trump’s fault owing to his comments encouraging roughing up protesters at his
events.
That the Left shuts down people with whom it differs is a
rule in every society in which the Left has ever operated. The Left — not
classical liberals, I hasten to note — is totalitarian by nature. In the 20th
century, the century of totalitarianism, virtually every totalitarian regime in
the world was a leftist regime. And the contemporary American university — run
entirely by the Left — is becoming a totalitarian state, where only left-wing
ideas are tolerated.
Tens of millions of Americans look at what the Left is
doing to universities, what it has done to the news and entertainment media,
and see its contempt for the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. They
see Donald Trump attacked by this Left, and immediately assume that only Trump
will take on, in the title words of Jonah Goldberg’s modern classic, Liberal Fascism.
And if these millions had any doubt that Trump alone will
confront left-wing Fascism, Trump’s opponents seemed to provide proof. Like the
mainstream media, the three remaining Republican candidates for president —
Kasich, the most; and Rubio, the least — blamed Trump for the left-wing
hooligans more than they blamed the Left. It is possible that in doing so
Senators Cruz and Rubio and Governor Kasich effectively ended their campaigns
and ensured the nomination of Trump as the Republican candidate for president.
The combination of left-wing violence and the use of it by the other GOP
candidates to wound Trump rather than label the Left the mortal threat to
liberty that it is might very well clinch Trump’s nomination.
And if the Left continues to violently disrupt Trump
rallies, it — along with the total absence of condemnation by the Democratic
party and its presidential candidate — might well ensure that Donald Trump is
elected president. Between the play-Fascism of Trump and the real Fascism of
the Left, most Americans will know which one to fear most.
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