By Noah Rothman
Monday, June 09, 2025
Apparently, the first thing you need to know about the
rioting in Los Angeles over the weekend is that you don’t need to care about
it.
Maybe you saw them — the mob of vandals who now hide
their identity with a keffiyeh rather than a surgical mask, who waved Mexican
flags and brandished Hamas regalia (sometimes on the same
geopolitically ignorant arm), setting fire to ride shares they themselves
ordered and raining missiles down on police trapped beneath an
overpass. Well, that was just one part of Los Angeles, you see. And you
should know that L.A. is big.
Most Angelenos never experienced the riots. Why should they care if their
neighbors are in distress amid social unrest that spreads like a contagion? You
certainly shouldn’t.
In addition, Donald Trump is president. Have you
accounted for that? Sure, at least 56 people were arrested when riot police were deployed to
quell the disturbance, but there would have been no demonstrations at all if
the Trump administration hadn’t ordered an immigration-enforcement operation
that inspired protesters to block law enforcement from fulfilling their
official duties.
Then there was the administration’s decision to deploy
300 National Guard troops to the city. That maneuver was described as “too
quick” by Los Angeles police. California Governor Gavin Newsom deemed the decision “illegal, immoral, and
unconstitutional,” and he dared Trump border czar Tom Homan to “arrest me.” He
promised to sue the federal government over its response to the violence in the
streets, putting the focus where it should be — on Newsom’s ambitions and on
Trump, the font from which all American ills spring.
And don’t you remember that Republicans
also rioted that one time? If you thought that was bad, it follows that you
cannot find other episodes of violent street action similarly egregious —
especially if the violence is perpetrated by vandals who subscribe to the
politics of the left. That kind of consistency just has no place in activist
discourse.
Of course, the attitude outlined above, on full display
right now with the L.A. riots, amounts to a tacit admission that the Democratic
Party — in California and elsewhere — understands the extent to which it has
become associated with violent hooliganism of this sort. Progressives’ own
statements reflect their deserved insecurity and the extent to which they know
that the rioters are their people.
Former Vice President Kamala
Harris did not even acknowledge the violence. Instead, she deemed the
demonstrations “overwhelmingly peaceful” and civic-minded, castigating the
Trump administration for deploying the Guard — a “dangerous escalation meant to
provoke chaos.” The rioters know not what they do; they merely respond
mechanically and understandably to provocations from above.
Newsom also appealed to flattery. These protests were
“provoked by chaos from Washington,” he remarked.
“Don’t give Donald Trump what he wants,” the governor added.
In expressing similar sentiments, Senator Adam
Schiff gave the game away. Violence “is never the answer” and “assaulting
law enforcement is never ok,” he observed. “Indeed, doing so plays directly
into the hands of those who seek to antagonize and weaponize the situation for
their own gain,” the senator continued. “Don’t let them succeed.”
The conceit in all this is that the rioters can be
reasoned with. Maybe they can be complimented and cajoled into abandoning their
subversion. Perhaps if they are confronted with the potential for their
activities to undermine the Democratic Party’s political goals — objectives the
rioters presumably share with their kowtowers in power — they might pacify
themselves. Do these barbarians not read The Atlantic? The subtext is obvious: We’re all on
the same side here.
The misconceptions fueling these appeals are illustrative
of the problem Democrats dare not acknowledge. They’re right, of course; these are
their people. They should not be. They don’t have to be. But the party
has for too long seen expressions of violent political passion as a force to be
co-opted, harnessed, and wielded. They were open about the goals that informed this ill-conceived project, and we all saw them
pursue it. Even today, amid the ashes of the Harris campaign’s attempt to incorporate anarchistic violence into her
coalition, Democrats cannot bear to admit the error, much less correct for it.
There are a few practical notions that Democrats should,
by now, have learned to stop rebelling against. Riots and criminal disorder
erode faith in government and, accordingly, “the party of government.” Violent social disorder is a
contagion that will expand unless it is stopped. Stopping it requires the
early, overwhelming intervention by law enforcement, the presence of which
discourages would-be participants from joining the mêlée. By calling out the
National Guard, the Trump administration put pressure on local authorities to
respond with more firmness to the violence than they would otherwise.
Democrats don’t have to sidle up subserviently alongside
the president to display some fealty to these elementary propositions, but nor
do they have to position themselves as hostile to the conditions that restore
order once it has broken down. They just can’t help themselves. And they cannot
help themselves because, at some level, they see these hopeless malcontents as
critical elements of their political coalition. At the very least, Democrats
have fetishized expressions of uncompromising zeal, even the violent sort, to
the point that even the preservation of public safety comes across as suspiciously Trump-coded.
Rioting is a clear-cut issue. Democrats have talked
themselves into the idea that they have to walk a rhetorical tightrope amid
outbreaks of left-wing violence, and that has done inestimable damage to the
party’s brand. They must find the courage to jettison this millstone around
their necks. That would not be so difficult if Democrats could convince
themselves that the masked arsonists and looters ransacking American cities are
not their people.
As long as the party out of power in Washington believes
it must cater to the most unsympathetic actors on the fringes of American
public life, it’ll allow the GOP to claim a monopoly on law and order. That is
what government is for, after all — not redistributing income, picking winners
and losers in the economy, or enforcing a more egalitarian social compact, but
preserving the peace.
If the party of government can’t get the basics of
government right, why should it be trusted on anything else?
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