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Disrupt Violent Left-Wing Networks

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Disrupt Violent Left-Wing Networks

Americans must become confident again that their government will enforce the law, without fear or favor.

Christopher F. Rufo
Nov 20, 2023
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Disrupt Violent Left-Wing Networks

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The following policy proposal was first published as part of a City Journal symposium, “A New Anticrime Agenda.”

❖

The summer of 2020 resembled a political revolution. Militants associated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa led the most destructive riots in American history. Radicals burned down city blocks, perpetrated acts of violence, and briefly established an “autonomous zone” in Seattle characterized by a police-free political order and a homicide rate 50 times higher than that of Chicago.

For those who monitor left-wing radical movements, this shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. Federal law enforcement had long acknowledged the threat of left-wing, anarchist, and racialist violence. In 2016, the FBI published a report raising the alarm about the threat of anarchist groups that deployed arson and violence for political ends. The following year, it published an intelligence assessment warning about the rise of “black identity extremism,” which was linked to ambushes and violent attacks against police officers.

In the wake of the George Floyd protests, however, FBI director Christopher Wray changed his tune. In testimony to Congress, Wray distanced himself from the report on black-identity extremism and repeated the canard that Antifa was “not a group” but “an ideology,” an evasion that invites the obvious rejoinder: ideas don’t torch buildings—people do. Activists exerted tremendous social and political pressure on mainstream institutions to fall in line with BLM.

Three years later, accountability hasn’t been forthcoming. In Portland, federal prosecutors quietly dismissed nearly half the cases against George Floyd rioters. In Seattle, ringleaders of the ill-fated “autonomous zone” were never charged with crimes, and the paramilitaries who served as the zone’s armed security and murdered a minor were never identified. Many of the downtown neighborhoods most affected by the riots have still not recovered.

A vacuum has ensued. Violent militants in cities such as Portland have become increasingly brazen in their public statements, confident that law enforcement won’t stop them. During a civil trial against Antifa-affiliated militants who allegedly participated in an attack on journalist Andy Ngo, the defense attorney declared to jurors, “I am Antifa,” and vowed to “remember their faces.” The jury decided in favor of the “anti-fascists,” with jurors telling the judge that they feared having their identities exposed.

Federal law enforcement should intervene. The public has an interest in ensuring that this situation cannot continue. These violent, left-wing radical networks can be disrupted through proactive investigations and, as necessary, prosecutions. Violence in the name of social justice remains violence. Americans must become confident again that their government will enforce the law, without fear or favor.

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This article was originally published in City Journal.

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Disrupt Violent Left-Wing Networks

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Ian
Nov 20Liked by ParisApodaca

Well, people who study political movements are fairly confident that America's left-wing violence is a communist revolution. Even the unschooled like me can see the similarities between what is going on here and what happened in China and Russia before the communists came to power. I think the problem is that the hard-left, which controls all the institutional power in this country, are part of it and are facilitating the takeover by every means possible, i.e., the courts, the media, the schools, etc. While "opposition" is basically ineffective at best, and cowardly and complicit at worst. There is no excuse for remaining silent while our history, culture and population are destroyed because you are afraid that the Amazon/Washington Post will publish an unfavorable article about you or your supporters, but that's where we are.

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Roger Holberg
Nov 20

"Americans must become confident again that their government will enforce the law, without fear or favor." Wait a minute. The public isn't confident BECAUSE the government has demonstrated that it won't enforce the law against Leftist rioters. You can't just conjure up public confidence when the government, at all levels - federal, state, and local - has shown that it will not do so. The first step is for government to grow a pair and stop giving the Left a free pass. There have been violent riots in D.C. at both the White House and the DNC's headquarters. I could count the number of arrests on the fingers of one hand. At the DNC, six cops were injured and there was one arrest. Yet, arrests are still being made of people who walked through the Capital, through open doors, nearly three years ago. No wonder people don't, and shouldn't, have confidence in the equal application of law.

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