The Radical Left and Violent Anti-Police Rhetoric

From the editors at the Wall Street Journal, "Progressives and the Police":

‘What do we want? Dead cops!” So chanted marchers at one of the protests organized in the last month against the failure of grand juries to indict white officers in the death of black crime suspects Michael Brown and Eric Garner. On Saturday they got their wish, as a black assailant citing revenge for Brown and Garner traveled from Maryland to murder two cops sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn.

“They were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniform,” New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said, and so they were. Garner and Brown were resisting arrest, but the two young officers never had a chance even to pull their guns. They had been marked for death near a high-crime housing project they were trying to protect against criminal predators.

Mayor Bill de Blasio , Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama were all quick to condemn the shooting. And let’s stipulate that no one other than the alleged shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, is responsible for pulling the trigger. Chased into the subway by police, he then shot himself.

But this double assassination is also a moment of clarity about how thin the line in any society is between order and anarchy. America is full of Brinsleys who no longer abide the norms of civilized behavior, if they even know what those norms are. They need but the slightest excuse to take justice into their own hands and go on a rampage.

Especially in urban America, the police walk that line between civilization and mayhem every day. Yet since the Garner and Brown episodes, the progressive leaders in New York and Washington have talked and behaved as if the police are society’s main problem.

They have honored with joint public appearances and private meetings such racial agitators as Al Sharpton who want to stop the “broken windows” policing that has done so much to reduce crime in poor minority neighborhoods. Mr. Holder has sent federal agents to second-guess grand juries and “reform” local police as if he assumes these police chiefs and prosecutors are biased. The New York City Council staged a “die-in” as fallen victims of police.

And progressives have failed to denounce protestors who have disrupted civic life, rampaged through stores, and even assaulted police who tried to arrest law-breakers. All of this has contributed to a public climate of suspicion and hate against police in which a man like Ismaaiyl Brinsley can in his deranged mind think it is justified to stalk and execute two cops on the beat...

Yeah, sing it brothers.

While the direction of blame points only to the killer himself, the radical left has created the tinderbox in which Ismaaiyl Brinsley was waiting to explode. And despicable leftists themselves know it full well, which is why these ghouls have been mounting the most epic walkback marathon in recent years. And frankly, it's not going to help, since Americans are already recoiling at the anti-police protests and the nation's institutional machinery is making epochal course corrections to restore legitimacy and power to law enforcement agencies. Indeed, the priority for the country going forward is to further marginalize the radical left and its racist bombthowers from President Obama on down.

More.

The Left's Racism Narrative Unravels

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "As Police Die, Racism Narrative Unravels" (via Memeorandum):

Any conversation about the murders of two New York City Police officers this weekend must start by acknowledging the ordinary heroism of law enforcement personnel that puts them in harm’s way every day. We should then acknowledge that all those who have criticized police actions in Ferguson, Missouri and New York after the controversial deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner are not responsible for the slaying of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. We don’t know yet who or what may have influenced the reportedly mentally disturbed shooter, who was apparently bent on “revenge” for Brown and Garner. But we do know this. After four months of non-stop condemnations of the police and the justice system for both racism and deliberately targeting African Americans for violence, it is time for the race hucksters and their political enablers such as President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to stop the campaign of incitement against the police.

Conservatives know very well that attempts to politicize violence on the part of the mentally ill is deeply unfair. They know that liberal claims that either the Tea Party or conservatives such as Sarah Palin were somehow responsible for the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was sheer slander. If some angry supporters of the police now try to say Obama, Holder, or de Blasio approved or countenanced the actions of Ismaaiyl Brinsley, they are just as wrong. Obama, Holder, and de Blasio have all rightly condemned the murder of the two officers.

But once we acknowledge that, we cannot ignore the fact that the discussion about race and the police in this country has gotten out of control in recent months and that these same political leaders who should have been seeking to restrain the public from drawing extreme and general conclusions about two very extraordinary cases instead kept the pot boiling for political advantage.

Even worse than that, they have empowered and legitimized racial demagogues like Al Sharpton who have sought to profit from exploiting these tragedies to promote their own agendas. In turn, Sharpton and those like him who are given prominent air time on networks like MSNBC and CNN have encouraged protesters who have not only engaged in violence but often openly called for the killing of police, a stance that has been openly endorsed by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and other radicals.

The act of a single possibly mad gunman does not mean that Americans must never question the actions of police or ponder broader issues about race. It is misleading to claim that those who have raised such questions have given a green light to the murder of police officers. Yet those who have sought to take two very different and quite unusual incidents in Ferguson and New York and weave them into a neat narrative of racism and anti-black violence by police have done very much the same thing. The difference between the two is that the media spent much of the last four months seeking to establish that wrongheaded narrative as a fact while they will, quite rightly, give no credence or air time to those who will blame Obama for cop killers....

If there is any reproach today that should be laid at the feet of Obama, Holder, and de Blasio, it is that by helping to foster one false set of assumptions, they have now left themselves vulnerable to questions about their own willingness to accept and exploit calumnies against the police and the justice system.

That's quite fair. But keep reading.

I'd correct Tobin, though, in mentioning that the MSM is indeed giving airtime to those who would blame President Obama for the murders. Further, it's simply not possible to discount the Al Sharpton-inspired protesters who marched through New York's streets inciting violence and exhorting activists to bring about more "dead cops."

That's the burden that the left must bear and it's the complicity that it must accept, and ultimately, overcome. That will require that mainstream leaders repudiate that most strident voices of the far-left apparatus --- which of course will be prohibitively difficult since these same people are those who wield enormous power in government, academe, and the media. Indeed, American politics is going to continue something of an ideological realignment over the next couple of years. The left will most likely continue to revive its default 1960s mode of radicalism and revolutionary dogma. Street activists and college ideological rabble will continue to denounce "this fucking country" with the blessings of those highest in power, such as Eric Holder at the Justice Department, as well as his successor, Loretta Lynch. But in electoral politics, we're already seeing and we'll continue to see ostensibly mainstream candidates aggressively distance themselves from the Obama-inspired radicalism that has infected contemporary "progressivism" with the cancer of ideological evil.

Barry Rubin's Silent Revolution

I'm going to post some book selections throughout the day, for folks still working on last-minute Christmas shopping. Amazon will ship in time for Christmas if you're shopping today.

I can't recommend Barry Rubin's book enough, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.

So timely, there's no other book that pulls together the disparate ideological strands of our current far-left predicament under the Obama interregnum. I'm reading Chapter 7 right now, "Barack Obama as a Case Study of a Third Left Cadre."

Rubin's "Third Left" is the far-left ideological tendency that arose out of the ashes of the two previous lefts, the Communist Party of the 1920s-1950s and the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. The "Third Left" today is what the MSM deceptively identifies as "progressive" liberalism. As I've said many times, progressives are communists. According to Rubin, they've adopted a subterranean ideological program of seizing power across America's leading institutions, particularly the universities and the mainstream press. Millions of students have been marinated in the cultural and intellectual theories of Third Left practitioners, and through this strategy, "the far left converted to its views tens of millions of people, most of them unaware of how outlandish these ideas were and how fundamentally they undermined the basis of America's success."

It's a classic. Available at Amazon.

Marxist Mayor Bill de Blasio Faces Crisis, Resentment by Police

Well, you think?

At the Washington Post, "In New York, tensions between police and Mayor Bill de Blasio boil over after killings":

Tensions between New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s police — which boiled over in the wake of the assassination-style slayings of two officers Saturday — have been simmering since the mayor’s 2013 campaign and represent a sharp turn from the close alliance between the city’s mayors and law enforcement over the past two decades.

Recriminations against de Blasio began within hours of the news that the officers had been shot at point-blank range as they sat in their patrol car near a housing project in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn — and that the gunman had been motivated to kill them as retribution for the black men whose deaths at the hands of police in New York City and Ferguson, Mo., have sparked protests around the country.

A video of the arrival of de Blasio and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton at the hospital where officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos had been taken showed dozens of police officers silently turning their backs.

“There’s blood on many hands tonight,” Patrick Lynch, president of the largest police union, said late Saturday. “Those that incited violence on the street in the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day. We tried to warn it must not go on, it shouldn’t be tolerated. That blood on the hands starts at the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor.”

Although New York is a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 6 to 1, de Blasio is its first Democratic mayor in 20 years, and his stewardship of the city is being watched nationally as a test of unabashedly liberal leadership. After his landslide victory, he declared: “Make no mistake. The people of this city have chosen a progressive path. And tonight we set forth on it together, as one city.”

The people of New York chose "a progressive path"?

Well, remember, "Progressives Are Communists (If You Didn't Know)." Violence against police --- considered the agents of the capitalist oppressors --- is boilerplate rhetoric for the left's violent protest cadres.

We've been witnessing leftist exhortations to violence and vigilantism for months.

But keep reading.

Also at the New York Times, "A Widening Rift Between de Blasio and the Police Is Savagely Ripped Open."

And at the New York Post, "De Blasio visited Communist USSR in college."

Khadijah Lynch, Undergraduate Representative for Afro-American Studies at Brandies, Resigns After Outrageous Anti-Police Comments on Twitter

Some stupid people think they can just tweet whatever the f-k they want and everyone else will be down with it.

Nope. We're at a turning point, and leftists are coming up all over with blood on their hands.

At Truth Revolt, "Student Leader Resigns After Stating She Has 'No Sympathy' for Murdered Cops."

And here's the report that triggered her resignation, "Student Leader: 'No Sympathy' for Executed NYPD Officers."

.@BeccaJLower @AaronWorthing Khadija has "protected her tweets": https://t.co/pqha58HnS0 http://t.co/TaN93kn5Dp

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 21, 2014

There is Blood on Hands of Those Who Demanded 'Dead Cops'

From Bob McManus, at the New York Post:

“What do we want?” drones the blood chant.

“Dead cops!” comes the reply.

Done.

Thus does rhetoric have consequences.

There may have been just a single shooter in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Saturday afternoon. But New York’s failure to denounce without nuance the bloodlust that’s been boiling out of the corners of the Eric Garner-Michael Brown demonstrations for weeks now boils down to this:

There is blood on many hands this morning.

Yes, First Amendment. Yes, redress of grievances. Yes, peaceful protests — even as clogged bridges and mobbed boulevards created, however temporarily, very real peril for tens of thousands of New Yorkers every night for a week.

The free-speech trope is so obviously true that it’s a deflection even to raise it.

Here’s the real issue: It was, and it remains, the responsibility of protest organizers — such as they may be in the face of ubiquitous social media — to directly address murderous incantations, to unequivocally condemn those who call down harm on the city’s protectors.

And they didn’t do that.

Moreover, when two of the six people who “allegedly” attacked two cops on the Brooklyn Bridge a week ago Saturday night turn out to be, respectively, a CUNY professor and an organizer for a union that placed five one-time senior union leaders in top de Blasio ­administration posts, it’s clear that New York isn’t dealing with bearded Bolsheviks living in caves.

Violence against cops has gone mainstream — that is, violent threats to society itself can manifest virtually without a soul among the city’s elected leaders saying so much as boo.

Pitiful.

The cops understand all this, of course. They get the threat. They are steeped in the department’s institutional memories of other cops, executed from ambush in similar circumstances. They know its tradition of reflexive heroism under deadly threat — and they are proud it its record: Not perfect, of course, but better than anyone else’s.

And now this.

Who would have thought that PBA President Pat Lynch’s don’t-come-to-my-funeral petition would have become so relevant, so prescient, so tragically right to the point.

So quickly.

There will be time to count the political consequences of Saturday’s cowardly murders.

They will be substantial.

The city’s cut-the-baby-in-half approach to the Garner-Brown protests — genuflect to the PBA, confer with the most rhetorically irresponsible of the protesting groups, rinse, repeat — lent an air of moral equivalence to the events leading up to Saturday’s savagery.

Nobody knows what was in the shooter’s mind, of course; happily, he relieved society of the ­responsibility of trying to find out with a well-placed bullet to his own head.

But anybody who thinks he wasn’t emboldened by City Hall’s placidity in the face of nihilistic, bloodthirsty incantations is delusional...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Al Sharpton's New York Protesters: We Want 'Dead Cops!' (VIDEO)."

Ghouls, Racists, and Savages Take to Twitter to Celebrate Execution of NYPD Minority Cops

It's almost shocking, but by this point I'm literally inured to the left's vicious hatred.

From Pamela Geller, at Atlas Shrugs.

Radical Protest Leaders Under Fire, on the Defensive, in Wake of New York Police Assassinations

You know, it's like a silent majority is rising up against the blood-red tide of destructive leftism destroying the country. Radical left protest leaders can't run away fast enough from their own diabolical handiwork.

At the Washington Post, "Protest leaders seek to distance budding movement from New York police killings":

Left-wing Twitter is on an epic walk-back marathon from all the anti-cop vigilantism they've been advocating all year. It's on their hands.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 21, 2014

The ambush killing of two New York police officers Saturday has forced a burgeoning protest movement over police use of lethal force to address accusations that it bears some responsibility for violence carried out in the name of that cause.

Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were fatally shot Saturday as they sat in their patrol car in a Brooklyn neighborhood. The suspect, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, is thought to have posted threats against police on social media before shooting his ­ex-girlfriend in Baltimore and then traveling to New York to target the officers. He killed himself soon after attacking the officers.

Police officials in New York and elsewhere were quick to lay at least partial blame for the officers’ killings on ongoing protests of several high-profile fatal encounters between police and unarmed black men this year. Brinsley referred to two of those men in his online rants.

“Let’s face it: There’s been, not just in New York but throughout the country, very strong ­anti-police, anti-criminal-justice system, anti-societal initiatives underway,” New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said during a news conference Saturday. “One of the unfortunate aspects sometimes is some people get caught up in these and go in directions they should not.”

The officers’ deaths were condemned by local, state and national officials; the families of the victims of police killings this year; and many of the civil rights leaders and groups that have been the most vocal in the ongoing national Black Lives Matter protests.

“I’m standing here in sorrow about losing those two police officers,” said Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, whose ­video-recorded chokehold death at the hands of a New York officer this year sparked national outrage that turned to protest when the officer was not indicted. “These two police officers lost their lives senselessly.”

But pundits, particularly among political conservatives and law enforcement officials — who for weeks have insisted that the demonstrations are ­“anti-police” — said this weekend that the attack on the two officers was a result of the tense environment created by the protests.

“There’s blood on many hands tonight — those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day.” Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association in New York, a union representing the city’s police officers, declared during a news conference Saturday night...

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "NYPD Assassinations Spark Massive Backlash Against the Radical Left's Police Protests."

NYPD Assassinations Spark Massive Backlash Against the Radical Left's Police Protests

Well, it's about time.

The radical left has all but declared open season on America's law enforcement. We're basically in an ideological war commensurate with the political violence of the 1960s.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Killings of New York Police Officers Spark Backlash to Protests":

The assassination of two New York City police officers this weekend has emboldened police and their supporters to lash out at weeks of nationwide protest and criticism that they say have left officers more vulnerable.

Police are investigating social-media posts by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, the apparent assailant in the point-blank fatal shootings Saturday of the two officers who were sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn. In them, he allegedly talked about killing officers in retaliation for the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island, N.Y., and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., this summer during confrontations with police.

Experts on law enforcement said the demonstrations that followed grand jury decisions not to charge the officers in those cases have strained police morale nationwide, as officers have been forced to defend their tactics, then deploy in big numbers to protests against those tactics.

“This senseless murder of two of New York’s finest further exemplifies the dangerous political climate in which all members of law enforcement, nationwide, now find themselves,” Baltimore police union President Gene Ryan said in a posting on the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police website. “Not since the political unrest of the 1960s have police officers been so targeted.”

On Sunday, a somber-faced New York Mayor Bill de Blasio , who has come under withering criticism from the city’s police union, which contends he has undermined officers, attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, flanked in a pew by his wife and Police Commissioner William Bratton .

“We are in solidarity with you,” New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan told the public officials.

Protest leaders have condemned the killing of the two officers. The protest movement faced its first test Sunday evening, when about 100 demonstrators marched almost silently in Central Park and parts of Harlem to the First Corinthian Baptist Church.

“We realize the sensitivity of this time,” said Tamika Mallory, a board member of Justice League NYC, one of the main organizations involved in the New York City demonstrations.

Elsewhere, organizers defended their demonstrations...

Keep reading.

VIDEO: Aftermath at New York 'Pigs in a Blanket' Execution Scene (VIDEO)

Scene of the left's politics of vengeance.

Via Legal Insurrection:

From Ismaaiyl Brinsley to Barack Obama, Leftist Agenda All About Revenge Against Political Enemies

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani put the cop-killing blame squarely on President Obama, saying that our racist Bombthrower-in-Chief has been exhorting his partisans to "hate the police."

Indeed, the left from Obama and Eric Holder on down has been on a jihad against "racist" law enforcement for years now, and thus the cold-blooded ideological murders of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos are the natural consequence of the left's politics of ideological recrimination and hate-driven vengeance.

According to Politico, President Obama's current viability is based on a revenge-based agenda against ideological foes. See, "Operation Revenge: President Obama is back in his campaign comfort zone: Smiting his political enemies":

Obama’s turnaround in recent weeks – he’s seized the offensive with a series of controversial executive actions and challenges to leaders in his own party on the budget — can be attributed to a fundamental change in his political mindset, according to current and former aides. He’s gone from thinking of himself as a sitting (lame) duck, they tell me, to a president diving headlong into what amounts to a final campaign – this one to preserve his legacy, add policy points to the scoreboard, and – last but definitely not least – to inflict the same kind of punishment on his newly empowered Republican enemies, who delighted in tormenting him when he was on top.

Obama needs someone to "run against," to demonize and destroy. Indeed, that's the fundamental basis of leftist Democrat Party ideology and politics. And now the chickens have come home in Brooklyn, and this won't be the last of it. It's no wonder that Americans blame the White House for the violent deterioration of race relations in America.

Al Sharpton's New York Protesters: We Want 'Dead Cops!' (VIDEO)

Via Katie Pavlich, at Town Hall, "FLASHBACK: Al Sharpton's Marchers in New York City Chant 'What Do We Want? Dead Cops!'"

Cowards like DeBlasio, Sharpton, Holder & Obama stoke bogus racial flames w/ gasoline & then run away & cry politics when real sh*t happens

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) December 21, 2014

As the White House tries to squirm away from this, remember Al Sharpton is Obama's advisor, and Sharpton's march chanted for dead cops

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) December 21, 2014

Leftists denying responsibility for the murders are lying. The blood is dripping from their hands.

Margaret Hoover's Regrets

I'm gobsmacked by the shameless lack of self-awareness of people like the disgusting faux-conservative Margaret Hoover.

.@MargaretHoover's gotta be regretting that "hands-up" idiocy she douched on CNN last week. #CopsLivesMatter

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 21, 2014

"Hands up" has fused with a larger mvmt & we all have an interest equal justice. @sallykohn @SunnyHostin @melrobbins http://t.co/jMc94bPdhQ

— MargaretHoover (@MargaretHoover) December 16, 2014

Actually, hands up is a lie @MargaretHoover @sallykohn @SunnyHostin @melrobbins @CNNOpinion

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) December 16, 2014

Rape Truthers

At the Other McCain, "Feminism’s New Enemy: ‘Rape Truthers’."

I Can Breathe

From Friday night in New York, via Reason:

Deep Discounts in Electronics

At Amazon, Shop Amazon - Deep Discounts in Electronics.

NYPD's 84th Precinct in Mourning (VIDEO)

Via CBS News New York:

NYPD Officers Turn Backs to de Blasio (VIDEO)

At London's Daily Mail, "Police officers turn their backs on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio as he is accused of having 'blood on his hands'."

Vicious Hatemonger @CassandraRules 'Spammed by Idiots' Calling Her Out for Her Violent Anti-Cop Agitation

She deserves to be mercilessly trolled for her vicious anti-police agitation, the scummy bitch.

.@CassandraRules has blood on her hands. She's been agitating vigilante anti-cop violence for months. @CFLancop @MarshallLocke @MsEBL

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 21, 2014

Does this mean I can't wear my FTP Santa hat today? #ColdMedsDanceParty pic.twitter.com/ovr4BCZh8i

— Cassandra (@CassandraRules) December 20, 2014

Every time a cop gets killed I get spammed like I did it. Wanting cops to stop killing people isn't the same as wishing anyone dead.

— Cassandra (@CassandraRules) December 21, 2014

Being spammed by idiots, have a cop telling me about when he killed someone, & I'm still loopy from cold meds. Twitter, I can't handle you.

— Cassandra (@CassandraRules) December 21, 2014

'Al Sharpton Got What He Wanted' — On CNN, Retired NYPD Detective Slams Obama's Race Huckster (VIDEO)

Detective Harry Houck pulls no punches, man.



PREVIOUSLY: "Two NYPD Officers Shot Dead — 'Execution Style — in 'Revenge' for Michael Brown and Eric Garner (VIDEO)."