WORDS ARE VIOLENCE, BUT ACTUAL VIOLENCE IS MERELY PEACEFUL PROTEST: Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) says disagreeing with her is ‘policy violence.’

“Today, over 43 million people in the U.S. are crushed under more than $1.7 trillion in student loan debt,” the congresswoman wrote in an explosive Twitter thread. “The student debt crisis is multiracial & multigenerational… it is a racial, gender & economic justice issue. [President Joe Biden] can & must #CancelStudentDebt.”

Here’s where it gets wild.

“Let’s make it plain: student debt is policy violence,” Pressley concludes.

That’s right: The Massachusetts congresswoman has coined a seemingly new term, “policy violence,” and is attempting to smear her opponents with it. That includes me.

I oppose student debt “cancellation” because it is actually a regressive policy that forces working-class taxpayers to pay the bills of a wealthier subset of society: the college-educated. I also believe that it’s an (insanely expensive) Band-Aid on a bullet hole. It fails to address the failed federal policies that have made college so absurdly expensive in the first place.

I’m hardly alone in this view. A February 2021 Yahoo Finance survey found that 54% of voters oppose the cancellation of all student debt. Apparently, Pressley believes those of us who hold the radical view that people can pay their own bills are committing an act of violence!

I’m happy to debate my fellow citizens who, in good faith, fall down on the opposite side of this issue from me. But Pressley is not one of them. By absurdly labeling disagreement on a complex policy issue as “violence,” the congresswoman is attempting to delegitimatize views other than her own. Labeling speech as “violence” — even though words do not and never can constitute an act of violence by definition — is a precursor to the outright suppression of dissent.

After all, if speech is violence, then the government is justified in quashing it. If speech is violence, then violence is justified in response to that violent speech. By Pressley’s disturbing logic, student debt cancellation advocates would have the right to assault their ideological opponents physically as a matter of self-defense!

But assaulting her ideological opponents is something Pressley appeared to have called for in August of last year: Pressley Calls for ‘Unrest In the Streets.’

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) said Saturday the rioting caused by anti-police protests should continue in major cities across the country “as long as there’s unrest in our lives.”

“There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives, and unfortunately, there’s plenty to go around,” Pressley said on MSNBC’s AM Joy with Tiffany Cross.

Pressley said the lasting “public outcry” holds Trump-backing Republican lawmakers accountable for ignoring the needs of American families.

“I’m looking to the public,” Pressley said. “You know, this is as much about public outcry and organizing and mobilizing and applying pressure so that this GOP-led Senate and that these governors that continue to carry water for this administration, putting the American people in harm’s way, turning a deaf ear to the needs of our families and our communities. Hold them accountable.”

The congresswoman’s comments follow a summer of heated demonstrations over racial justice and police brutality, which have in some cities led to riots and mass destruction. In Portland, protesters repeatedly attacked a federal courthouse with fireworks and other explosives. Last weekend, rioters in Chicago broke into and looted stores along the city’s Magnificent Mile and damaged the exterior of a local charity.

As Glenn has joked, getting Pressley and the rest of “the Squad” elected was Roger Stone’s last and greatest political dirty trick.