Leftist Rioters Are Not Just Antifa Wackos, They’re Normal Suburban Kids

BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 5 months ago

I don’t like the article title, but I was true to the original author’s lede.

“[M]ost arrested in protests aren’t leftist radicals,” headlined an Associated Press analysis published Oct. 20. Of those arrested this summer during the nation’s largest outbreak of riots in 30 years, “Very few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults from the very neighborhoods Trump vows to protect from the violence in his reelection push to win support from the suburbs,” the article’s second paragraph says.

These nice young people throwing Molotov cocktails and setting police cars on fire are basically the kids next door, the article implies. It is clear from the article’s framing the AP intends it to be another entry into the “move along, nothing to see here” genre employed against facts that make the left look bad and are impossible to ignore. In reality, however, the article makes things look even worse than the reality it is meant to counter.

The AP doesn’t show or explain how it came to the conclusion that most of the 286 people being federally prosecuted for crimes in connection with this summer’s Black Lives Matter riots are the young, suburban, “not leftist radicals” its article claims. If this is true, however, it suggests violence has become uncomfortably normalized among those who identify on the political left.

If the AP characterization is accurate, tolerance for violence in the service of political ends is not just concentrated in fringe outliers like Antifa cells. It is attracting middle-class people who grew up in comfortable suburbia. People whose parents are aware that their children are politically intoxicated to the point of arson and still bail them out of jail and hire them lawyers. This is not comforting at all.

The article does give information about age, race, and sex. A plurality of those charged with federal crimes in connection with summer riot violence are white; most are men, and seven in 10 are under 30: “More than 40% of those facing federal charges are white. At least a third are Black, and about 6% Hispanic. More than two-thirds are under the age of 30 and most are men. More than a quarter have been charged with arson, which if convicted means a five-year minimum prison sentence.”

[ … ]

The article also contains nearly no evidence for its headline claim, that “most arrested aren’t leftist radicals.” Instead, it says the AP reporters were unable to find evidence in court documents that the majority of the 286 people whose cases they reviewed are part of Antifa or formally affiliated with similarly “radical” groups.

The AP article tries ever so hard to justify their character and give reason for their actions, but they remain thugs and communists nonetheless.

The point is that this represents a large portion of the kids in college today and who have been graduated from college in the last decade.  They are trained communists, and they are intent on the overthrow of the Western system and the destruction of the middle class.  They have been infected with self-hatred.

The reader who sent this points out that a non-trivial portion of them (see the link) were arrested with charges of possession of firearms illegally.  He says that will change his own ROE.

Make your own decisions about that.


Comments

  1. On October 25, 2020 at 8:57 pm, X said:

    Not only have the white suburban kids next door who went to college become trained communists… the white girl next door who went to college has also been trained to copulate with black men.

  2. On October 25, 2020 at 10:40 pm, George 1 said:

    Not only uneducated but mal-educated.

  3. On October 25, 2020 at 11:13 pm, Bill Buppert said:

    So it turns out that the mass government subsidy of K-PhD is finally vomiting out the right mix of lethal naiveté, ahistoricism, anti-empiricism and communist ideological obedience to create a perfect storm to institute the maximum state in the USSA.

    Trillions of dollars to create the most morally crippled, intellectually stunted and easily manipulated coteries of “revolutionaries” on Earth.

    Keep pushing and wait to see that Newton’s Third Law is a Category Five blood hurricane.

    “Stand your ground, don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” 245 years have passed since CPT John Parker uttered those words shortly before dying but they still resonate. It may be time for dangerous old men to put a credit to the exploits of men like Sam Whittimore and Hezekiah Wyman. Those men knew what they were about.

    You owe it to your children.

  4. On October 26, 2020 at 7:45 am, John said:

    Any man carrying a molotov cocktail has declared his position and intent.

  5. On October 26, 2020 at 11:06 am, Brad said:

    There will be a price to pay for bad parenting.

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This article is filed under the category(s) War & Warfare and was published October 25th, 2020 by Herschel Smith.

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