Are Democrats ready to start admitting that Antifa is violent?
At least one is. From the Daily Caller News Foundation:
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said Monday it’s time to classify Antifa as a gang because of the brutal attacks against peaceful supporters of President Donald Trump Sunday.
Previously lionized by mainstream journalists as largely peaceful counter-protests to neo-Nazis, the press made an abrupt about face after more than 100 masked Antifa activists dressed in black showed up at a demonstration at Martin Luther King Civic Center Park on Sunday and began beating unarmed Trump supporters.
The attacks have prompted Arreguin to speak out against Antifa and call for the group to be classified as a gang, KPIX 5 reports.
“I think we should classify them as a gang,” said Arreguin. “They come dressed in uniforms. They have weapons, almost like a militia and I think we need to think about that in terms of our law enforcement approach.”
“I think we are going to have to think ‘big picture’ about what is the strategy for how we are going to deal with these violent elements on the left as well,” Arreguin added.
Reality-based people know that leftist protesters have been violent for a very long time. People who are peaceful and law-abiding don’t need to wear masks.
Criminals do.
I attended Tea Party rallies all over this great nation for over five years and never once did any of us need to hide our faces from the police.
The MSM, however, are not reality-based at all. The story they have been telling all these years is that “right-wing rhetoric” is the real culprit and that the various leftist incarnations of Occupy are “largely peaceful” gatherings.
Occupy had rape tents. The Tea Party movement did not.
One need look no further back than Monday to find a tortured-logic defense of Antifa in the MSM. This is from a little publication called The New York Times:
In truth, there is no symmetry between either “alt-right” and either “antifa” or “alt-left.” Antifa is the backlash to the backlash, a defensive response to the growing presence of right-wing extremism.
J.R.R. Tolkien couldn’t write fantasy that well.
The “growing presence of right-wing extremism” is neither growing nor right-wing, but facts are rough things for the MSM types in any era, and are basically non-existent for them now that President Trump is their Public Enemy Number One. They’ll write about one Klansman for a week and pretend it’s the early 20th century again and that the Klan is in full force.
It’s ten guys who need hobbies.
The danger with the MSM right now is that they are beginning to believe their own lies. In Olden Times (two years ago), most in the media were aware that they were making things up to create or reinforce a narrative. Now they are buying their own false narratives.
That’s how you get to the point where Antifa is a “defensive response” to a problem largely invented and kept afloat by the media. Coastal enclaves aren’t crawling with rising bands of Nazis, no matter how much the MSM wants to say they are.
They are, however, filled with unhinged leftists who have been getting violent for a very long time, and now do so more frequently since the election last year. They are the actual growing threat and presence.
Mayor Arreguin is probably risking some support with this stance. Berkeley, after all, has been turning a blind eye to this violence since last November. It’s refreshing to see a mayor in a liberal city prioritizing public safety over feelings and leftist orthodoxy.
There may be some dissension in the ranks after the attacks last weekend, but the many in the media are still beating the “largely peaceful” dead horse.
They are so used to telling these lies they just can’t help themselves.
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