'Perhaps Not Enough': The Chilling Leftist Answer on Political Violence

This column begins with a quiz: What do these events have in common?

The assassination of Charlie Kirk
The assassination attempts against Donald Trump
The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
The 2017 Congressional baseball practice shooting
The 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

Most PJ Media readers will not have a difficult time coming up with the answer. They’re all examples of leftist political violence.

Venezuelan-born Franklin Camargo of PragerU took to the streets of Los Angeles to see if Angelenos were able to answer a similar question: Does political violence in the U.S. come more from the right or the left? What he found does not bode well for Western civilization.

The college students he interviewed sounded like so many Western officials do after an Islamist terrorist attack, when they dismiss the ideology and blame it on mental illness. One young man said: “It’s like they’re just crazy people, and that’s the thing that unites these people who try to kill people. It’s not left or right. It’s just crazy.”

Another student said that he’s currently seeing more violence on the right. When asked by Camargo to name some examples, however, he fell silent. A young woman, after hearing the list of recent incidents attributed to leftist political violence, was asked whether she could identify comparable examples from the right. She at least managed an answer: “Not really.”

Camargo then moved to a pro-communism rally in downtown Los Angeles. He first interviewed a man of senior citizen age and wearing a Che Guevara shirt. When asked by Camargo if there’s too much political violence, he chillingly answered: “Perhaps not enough.”

Camargo then mentioned his shirt and asked if he knows Che was a murderer. His answer sounded like something Luis Mangione groupies might say when justifying the assassination of Brian Thompson: “No, Che Guevara was a revolutionary who attacked the forces of the ruling classes.” He proceeded to claim that Guevara “did not execute a lot of people.” The truth, as told by Mary Grabar in a 2011 PJ Media article, is quite different: "Che’s delight was in shooting 240 defenseless victims, some as young as 15. Political prisoners say the real number is much higher. Che also delighted in having people and their children rounded up off the street and forced to watch executions.”

Seeing the Che image always reminds me of my college years, when I’d walk past the CHE Café — the student-run cooperative at UC San Diego — every day, its walls adorned with the mass murderer's face. Dubbed a center of progressive activism, it wasn’t surprising that in 2002 UCSD accused the café of promoting a website that linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which the U.S. had designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The guy in the Che shirt would probably call them freedom fighters

As would the next man interviewed by Camargo — also of senior citizen age — who wore a box on his head marked with pro-Palestine, pro-Cuba, and pro-Maduro messages. He offered his opinion on political violence: “I don't think it's coming from the left. I think it is something embedded in the society at the right.” When told by Camargo that Nicolás Maduro killed hundreds of Venezuelans in the streets for protesting, the man dismissed it as propaganda. Camargo responded with a personal account: "My cousin went to prison for two years for political reasons and I was accused of being a terrorist. Okay. You know what? Because I was doing something that you are doing right here. You're protesting. You wouldn't be able to protest in Venezuela."

Camargo, whose pro-capitalism views forced him to flee to the U.S. in 2019, is the perfect person to confront those on the left who either ignore or excuse leftist violence. When asked in a PragerU interview about a survey showing that 62% of Americans under 30 have a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism, Camargo offered a warning that should be heeded by senior citizens in Che shirts just as much as by college students being brainwashed by their Marxist professors:

Stop with the idea that socialist or socialism has a good intention. It might have it for some people who do not really understand the doctrine or those who haven't paid attention enough attention to history. But the idea that it is okay to just tax people just because they are more more successful. To me, that is an an immoral idea. The idea that we should all be economically equal, that is evil because we're all different. We speak differently. We have different backgrounds. We're going to make different choices. If we're all going to be equal is because we're going to have a government forcing us, using force, the monopoly of or of force to equalize us. And that is also evil and it is immoral. And we need to say that stop validating socialism because when you validate socialist intentions, you're also validating the ideology.

Lest you're tempted to dismiss Camargo's man-on-the-street interview as the product of selective editing and nothing to worry about, consider his surroundings. He is interviewing communist-adorned activists in downtown Los Angeles, an area mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt has dubbed "Zombieland" during his campaign because of the out-of-control homelessness, filth, and crime that have flourished under Mayor Karen Bass.

That context matters. As PJ Media's Victoria Taft reminds us, Bass was once "the leader of a commie terror group called the 'Venceremos Brigade,' a Cuban commie group whose mission was to entice more fellow travelers and create havoc in the United States." Taft adds: "It was, in short, an intelligence operation by Fidel Castro's government. Karen Bass led it in L.A."

And now Bass is leading Los Angeles. Let's hope Pratt can beat her in November.

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