WarSclerotic

From Ferguson to Chicago, Front Page Magazine, Matthew Vadum, March 14, 2016

The riot planned and executed by the Left at the canceled Donald Trump campaign rally in Chicago on Friday was just the latest in a long series of mob disturbances manufactured by radicals to advance their political agendas.

Even so, it is a particularly poisonous assault on the American body politic that imperils the nation’s most important free institution – the ballot.

“The meticulously orchestrated #Chicago assault on our free election process is as unAmerican as it gets,” tweeted actor James Woods. “It is a dangerous precedent.”

This so-called protest, and the disruptions at subsequent Trump events over the weekend, were not spontaneous, organic demonstrations. The usual culprits were involved behind the scenes. The George Soros-funded organizers of the riot at the University of Illinois at Chicago relied on the same fascistic tactics the Left has been perfecting for decades – including claiming to be peaceful and pro-democracy even as they use violence to disrupt the democratic process.

Activists associated with MoveOn, Black Lives Matter, and Occupy Wall Street, all of which have been embraced by Democrats and funded by radical speculator George Soros, participated in shutting down the Trump campaign event. Soros recently also launched a $15 million voter-mobilization effort against Trump in Colorado, Florida, and Nevada through a new super PAC called Immigrant Voters Win. The title is a characteristic misdirection since Trump supports immigration that is legal. It’s the invasion of illegals who have not been vetted and are filling America’s welfare rolls and jails that is the problem.

Among the extremist groups involved in disrupting the Trump rally in Chicago were the revolutionary communist organization ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), National Council of La Raza (“the Race”), and the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Rights Reform. President Obama’s unrepentant terrorist collaborator Bill Ayers, who was one of the leaders of Days of Rage the precursor riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, also showed up to stir the pot.

The goal was to help reinforce the media narrative that Trump is a dangerous authoritarian figure who needs to be stopped now before he upsets too many people and proclaims himself emperor, or some fevered fantasy like that. The organized rioters who showed up at UIC to taunt and bait Trump supporters, hoped to generate compelling TV clips that could be used to attack the Republican front-runner.

The people who infiltrated the Trump rally and attacked his supporters weren’t mere protesters and were not nonviolent. By now, after decades of getting away with lawlessness and mayhem, nonviolent left-wing protesters are as rare as four-leaf clovers.

They are violent agitators, trained in Alinsky-style disruption, aiming to shut Trump and his supporters down by any means they can get away with. These modern-day brownshirts use force and the threat of force to harass and intimidate, and to provoke people who have come to a peaceful assembly to hear their candidate speak.

“Many of these people come from Bernie [Sanders],” Trump said, pointing out how since the 1968 riot at the Democratic convention street radicals and party radicals have become a seamless force. On “Face the Nation” Trump called them “professional disrupters” a polite name for incipient fascists.

Since the liberal media was already blaming him for the anti-Trump thuggery, he told them, “I don’t accept responsibility,” Trump said on Sunday TV. “I do not condone violence in any shape.”

In speeches since Friday Trump regularly invokes Bernie Sanders when an activist disrupts. He calls them “Bernie’s people.” At one stop, Trump said, “Get ’em out. Hey Bernie, get your people in line.”

Although Sanders supporters are well-represented among the anti-Trump thugs, the self-described socialist senator from Vermont denied the charge. But Bernie’s campaign is so focused on demonizing the rich and blaming them for America’s problems, the hatred he is retailing can reasonably be called an incitement to those who buy his propaganda and support him.

Sanders after all is a lifetime admirer of Communist states like the Soviet Union and Cuba where this kind of thuggery is a political norm.  So even if he’s telling the truth and did give the orders to his followers to be there, he’s lying. They came because they hate rich people too.

Major organizations of the left who are backing Sanders, like Moveon.org openly bragged about trampling on Trump’s free speech rights in Chicago, and promised more of it.

Incredibly, instead of blaming the Left for the attacks on Trump, all three of Trump’s remaining rivals for the GOP nomination are joining the left in blaming him for the violence that unfolded. If the roles were reversed, leftists would call it blaming the victim.

Continuing the scorched earth policy that has damaged his campaign Marco Rubio laid the blame at Trump’s door. “This is what a culture and a society looks like when everyone goes around saying whatever the heck they want. The result is, it all breaks down. It’s called chaos. It’s called anarchy and that’s what we’re careening towards.”

Breaking of ranks on the right in order to blame Trump is a betrayal that has ominous implications for the future of the conservative cause.

Rubio and John Kasich have gone even further, wavering on their pledge to support Trump if he wins the party’s nomination.

Rubio downplays the fact that it’s the activist Left that is generating chaos, not Donald Trump and his supporters, a dagger aimed right at the heart of the Republican coalition.

Robert Spencer reflects that these Republican attacks “have tacitly encouraged the rioters by claiming that Trump is at least partially responsible for what they did.” It’s a re-imposition of political correctness. Spencer explains: “In that scenario, you see, it becomes incumbent upon Trump not to say anything that Leftist thugs might dislike, or he will bear partial responsibility for what they do. Cruz, Rubio and Kasich, of course, will also have to be careful not to ‘create an environment’ that might force the Left-fascists to shut them down as well. But unless they become clones of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, they will inevitably end up creating that ‘environment’ anyway, despite their being more decorous and careful than Trump. And then they will be responsible for what they get, won’t they?”

The left didn’t need a Trump provocation. For the left, the issue is never the issue: the issue is always the revolution, that is, the war against Amerikkka, as an SDS radical put it many years ago. Everything is an excuse to advance the radical cause.

Meanwhile, leftist Alex Seitz-Wald wrote a glowing review at NBC.com of the activists’ anti-democratic efforts in Chicago, as if silencing candidates were a legitimate form of political activity as American as apple pie. “What made Chicago different,” Seitz wrote, were its scale and the organization behind the effort. Hundreds of young, largely black and brown people poured in from across the city, taking over whole sections of the arena and bracing for trouble. And as the repeated chants of ‘Ber-nie’ demonstrated, it was largely organized by supporters of Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate who has struggled to win over black voters but whose revolutionary streak has excited radicals of all racial demographics.”

Seitz urged his readers to “‘Remember the #TrumpRally wasn’t just luck. It took organizers from dozens of organizations and thousands of people to pull off. Great work,’ tweeted People for Bernie, a large unofficial pro-Sanders organization founded by veterans of the Occupy movement and other leftist activists.”

Chicago is overrun by radical leftists and is in a constant state of turmoil nowadays so throwing together a demonstration against anyone to the right of Che Guevara wasn’t too difficult a task. Sanders backers and Black Lives Matter thugs were easy to find on social media. At the UIC campus, the Black Student Union and a group called Fearless and Undocumented got to work recruiting disrupters.

Illegal alien Jorge Mena, a graduate student at UIC, started a petition at MoveOn.org demanding the school cancel the event. It garnered in excess of 50,000 signatures including UIC faculty. MoveOn paid for signs and a banner and emailed its Chicagoland members, urging them to get involved.

On the night of the rally, activists snuck into the venue and assembled at “designated multiple rallying points around the venue to avoid arousing suspicion of authorities with large congregations,” Seitz-Wald writes.

“As activists slipped into the lines, they were told to blend in with the crowd and act natural. Inside, about 100 protesters received coveted orange wristbands allowing them access to the floor. Even as organizers tried to maintain calm, some scuffles with Trump fans started right away, and police began removing people.” And that was all that was necessary. The powder was in place and the fuse was lit. But then Trump consulted with his security people and cancelled the event.

This is only the beginning, regardless of whether Trump secures the GOP nomination for president. Socialism is coming to America – at the ballot box and in the streets.

Editors’ note: The Freedom Center is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Therefore we do not endorse political candidates either in primary or general elections. However, as defenders of America’s social contract, we insist that the rules laid down by both parties at the outset of campaigns be respected, and that the results be decided by free elections. We will oppose any attempt to rig the system and deny voters of either party their constitutional right to elect candidates of their choice.