By John Fund
Monday, August 21, 2017
One of the great gifts the British writer George Orwell
gave us, in addition to his classics 1984
and Animal Farm, was a clear and
uncompromising look at dangerous ideologies. In “Orwell and the British Left,”
British writer Ian Williams recalls Orwell’s underlining of “the old, true and
unpalatable conclusion that a Communist and a Fascist are somewhat nearer to
one another than either is to a democrat.” Orwell’s well-observed conclusion
nonetheless scandalized many on the left who rallied behind the Marxist phrase
“no enemies on the left.”
Sadly, a quarter century after the fall of Communism, too
many leftists are still ignoring Orwell and refusing to acknowledge the reality
of left-wing brutality. In the wake of Charlottesville, eyewitnesses and
reporters agreed that while the violence was instigated by neo-Nazis and white
nationalists, it was countered with bloody counterattacks by left-wingers and
black-shirted anarchists wearing masks. There was a clear asymmetric outcome to
the violence: A white nationalist mowed down protestors with his car, killing a
32-year-old woman.
But that didn’t mean there were no victims of left-wing
violence. Antifa — short for “anti-fascist” — protestors came armed with pepper
spray, bricks, and clubs. Antifa members believe that racist speech is violence and that they must counter
it physically, not just oppose it with rhetoric or better ideas.
As the New York
Daily News reported, among antifa’s victims were journalists:
Taylor Lorenz of The Hill was punched in the face by an
antifa for recording a fight between the two groups; she tweeted that her
assaulter told her not to “snitch, media bitch.” A videographer from Richmond’s
WTVR covering a counter-protest got a concussion from head blows with a stick.
In addition, Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times tweeted from
Charlottesville:
The hard left seemed as hate-filled
as alt-right. I saw club-wielding “antifa” beating white nationalists being led
out of the park.
Nor is Charlottesville the only place that antifa
activists have crossed the line. Peter Beinart has a piece in this month’s Atlantic magazine noting that rioting by
antifa forces forced University of California at Berkeley officials to cancel
speeches by Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopolous earlier this year.
In April, threats by antifa supporters convinced the
Portland, Ore., police department that they couldn’t guarantee security for the
annual Rose Festival parade. The parade’s sin? Allowing the local Republican
party to have Trump supporters march under the GOP banner in the parade. The
parade was canceled, to the delight of many in the hob-nailed boot Left that
makes Portland, well, such a special place.
But most of this has been swiftly swept under the rug or
underreported by liberals and much of the mainstream media. On Friday, the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights held its monthly meeting in Washington. A liberal
member introduced a stirring denunciation of the Nazi, KKK and
white-nationalist participants in the Charlottesville rally.
But then Commission member Gail Heriot introduced an
amendment that would have added the following:
Though we support peaceful protest
and note that most of the counter-demonstrators were peaceful, we condemn
violence by anyone, including violence by so-called antifa demonstrators.
Heriot, an independent, was supported in her amendment by
Peter Kirsanow, a Republican appointee and African American from Cleveland. But
they received no other support from the five commission members appointed by
Democrats. Chairwoman Catherine Lhamon complained that Heriot’s amendment would
“water down” the main resolution, when all it did was make clear that the
commission wished to condemn violence of any
kind.
Karen Narasaki, another commission member, scoffed at
Heriot’s reading of Stolberg’s New York
Times observation about the antifa activists in Charlottesville. As she
voted against Heriot’s amendment, she noted, “You can’t believe everything you
read in the media.” Apparently, the “paper of record” for so many liberals is
to be considered bird-cage lining material if it contradicts the left-wing
narrative. Heriot’s amendment was voted down 6–2. The original resolution was
approved unanimously, as recorded in the “Statement on Charlottesville,
Virginia, that the commissioners did adopt.
It’s pathetic that the dogma of “no enemies on the left”
so clouds the judgment of the commission set up to protect civil rights.
Some clear-minded experts on extremist violence harbor no
such ideological blinkers. Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s
Center on Extremism, categorically told CNN last week:
There is violence on the left. The
anti-fascists engage with those they oppose through physical confrontation. And
that is a problem. That is an extremist’s tactic. There is also bigotry on the
left.
I would only add that if George Orwell were with us
today, he would probably say that there is willful blindness on the left.
No comments:
Post a Comment