Saturday, August 1, 2020

Portland Riots Showcase the Left's Terror Odyssey - Joseph Klein


by Joseph Klein

FrontPage Magazine’s tagline is correct: 'Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.'





FrontPage Magazine’s tagline warns that “Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” Progressive leftists showing their true totalitarian mindset have emerged and shown up in Portland and other major U.S. cities. Useful idiots among the liberal elites are enabling them.

In true Orwellian style, the progressive leftists are poisoning language to exert mind control. Violence now means white silence and politically incorrect speech. You must say what the radical left tells you to say or you are committing unspeakable violence for which you must be canceled. However, the burning of buildings and destruction of property are not violence, so long as they are on the list of approved progressive leftist targets such as federal courthouses or capitalist businesses.

The progressive leftists are holding up Portland Oregon as their prime example of a city enduring federal “occupying forces” who stomp on the people’s right to assemble and air their grievances. It does not matter to the progressive leftists and their useful idiots that the rioters have engaged in anything but the constitutionally protected “right of the people peaceably to assemble.” (Emphasis added)

Let’s see how the progressive leftists will act after federal agents begin withdrawing from Portland, under the terms of an agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and Oregon’s state government, announced on Wednesday by the Democrat Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown. Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said in his own statement that he and the governor had "agreed to a joint plan to end the violent activity in Portland" under which "State and local law enforcement will begin securing properties and streets, especially those surrounding federal properties, that have been under nightly attack for the past two months."

Governor Brown is touting the agreement as a victory over federal law enforcement who, she tweeted, “had acted as an occupying force & brought violence.” But Oregon’s version of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Governor Brown and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, must first do something they haven’t done successfully so far – enforce the law against criminal mobs who will not likely fade away.  

Acting Secretary Wolf made it clear that the Department of Homeland Security’s "current, augmented federal law enforcement personnel" would not be leaving Portland until the security of the Hatfield Federal Courthouse and other federal properties is restored. “The Department will continue to re-evaluate our security posture in Portland, and should circumstances on the ground significantly improve due to the influx of state and local law enforcement, we anticipate the ability to change our force posture," Wolfe said.

On July 28th, the day before the Oregon state government and the Department of Homeland Security reached their agreement that will hopefully bring some peace to Portland, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee fulfilled their role of useful idiots for the progressive leftists perfectly. They did so during Attorney General William Barr’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. After being cut off by Democrats repeatedly as he tried to answer their loaded questions, Barr reminded them: “This is a hearing. I thought I was the one who was supposed to be heard.”  

Democrat Jerrold Nadler of New York, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, led the Democrats’ vicious assault on Barr’s character. Nadler, who has previously called reports of Antifa violence a “myth,” blamed Barr’s Justice Department for “flooding federal law enforcement into the streets of American cities, against the wishes of the state and local leaders of those cities, to forcefully and unconstitutionally suppress dissent.”

According to Nadler’s telling, the video scenes of rioters setting fires and assaulting federal officers trying to defend Portland’s federal courthouse are only disturbing because the images provide campaign footage for President Trump’s reelection campaign. Nadler accused Barr of “projecting fear and violence nationwide in pursuit of obvious political objectives.” Ever the demagogue, Nadler added, “Shame on you, Mr. Barr.”

The shame is on Nadler, who reprised his clownish performance during the impeachment hearings. When he wasn’t ranting, Nadler played the role of jailkeeper, refusing initially to even grant Barr’s request for a five-minute bathroom break.

Aided by other useful idiots on the committee, Nadler peddled the progressive left-wing propaganda that federal officers defending federal property in Portland night after night against mob attacks, including attempts to burn down a federal courthouse, are suppressing peaceful protests. This false narrative holds that well-meaning demonstrators were provoked into escalating their tactics by the feds’ occupation “troops” deployed by President Trump and his complicit attorney general. This is straight out of the Palestinian terrorists’ playbook, which justifies atrocious acts of violence as legitimate resistance against occupation.

Attorney General Barr challenged the enablers of the Portland riots. “Remarkably, the response from many in the media and local elected offices to this organized assault has been to blame the federal government,” Barr said during his House Judiciary Committee hearing. “To state what should be obvious, peaceful protesters do not throw explosives into federal courthouses.” Barr asked his critics, “Why can’t we just come out and say violence against federal courts has to stop? Could we hear something like that?” Crickets from the Democrat side of the committee.

After the conclusion of the House Judiciary Committee circus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi – another useful idiot for the progressive leftists - repeated her comparison of federal law enforcement officers trying to defend federal property from violent rioters to “stormtroopers.” Sure, she said, some people “come along and try to disrupt” peaceful protests. However, “you don’t send in people acting like stormtroopers into the scene and evoking even more, even more unease and unrest.” Pelosi’s inflammatory language legitimizes the rioters’ continued acts of violence against the bogeyman “stormtroopers” supposedly occupying parts of Portland.

Pelosi and other apologists for lawlessness invariably leave out the fact that the rioters in Portland started their rampage against federal buildings way back on May 29th  when they broke a front window at the federal Hatfield Courthouse. That incident occurred more than a month before federal reinforcements were sent in to help the team of federal officers that protect the courthouse year-round.

The rioters escalated their violence throughout June. They destroyed fencing surrounding federal property, vandalized equipment at the Hatfield Courthouse, and threw metal pipes at the Hatfield Courthouse, in addition to defacing several federal buildings. Worst of all, rioters tried to cause eye damage to officers on duty with commercial grade lasers. Some officers may be permanently blinded as a result, according to the Federal Protective Services.

Federal officers took minimal actions in response to the violence until July 1st when over 200 rioters blocked access to the Hatfield Courthouse building and proceeded to launch aerial fireworks at federal property. On July 4th the rioters launched more aerial fireworks, broke a front window to the Hatfield Courthouse and attempted to unlawfully enter the building. They threw objects at officers, while again attempting to cause eye damage with lasers. “Multiple individuals were seen carrying rifles,” the Department of Homeland Security reported. Officers from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group, Customs and Border Protection’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit, and the Federal Protective Service finally had enough and responded with pepper spray and tear gas.

The useful idiots neglect to mention that federal officers do not come out from behind closed doors at the mob’s main target – a federal courthouse - to confront the rioters until after the rioters have started fires and committed other destructive acts. These are criminals, not harmless mischief makers.

The mainstream media are full of their own useful idiots. A leading example is CNN anchor Don Lemon. He said in early June, responding to President Trump’s vow to restore law and order to the streets of America engulfed in riots and looting, that “We are teetering on a dictatorship. He is saying he wants to protect peaceful protesters at the same time sending law enforcement and military into the streets to push peaceful protesters back, to be aggressive with peaceful protesters.” Lemon conveniently melded peaceful protesters and rioters together as if they were all equally legitimate demonstrators against alleged police brutality.

The New York Times ran an article on July 28th with the headline “Peaceful Protesters With ‘Room for Rage’ Sympathize With Aggressive Tactics.” The Times article quoted one of the participants in Portland’s so-called Wall of Moms standing in front of the mob, who said, “There is room for chanting and dancing and joyful noises and there is also room for rage. We make that space for each other.” By providing a human shield for the rioters, just as women and children do for Hamas terrorists, she and the other moms along the “Wall of Moms” are enabling violence.

Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, wrote that
although the administration’s behavior makes no sense as law enforcement, it makes perfect sense as a new kind of campaign tactic.” She charged the Trump administration with “deliberately” escalating “the chaos” so that “the violence will provide pictures, footage, video clips, and other material for Trump’s media supporters, and eventually for his campaign advertisements.
Expanding on the years of Russia hoax rhetoric in the media, she claimed that President Trump “is deploying the kind of performative authoritarianism that Vladimir Putin pioneered.”

It’s hard to get more ridiculous than Applebaum, who made similar claims on CNN. But Howard Fineman, an NBC News and MSNBC analyst, gave it his best shot. Fineman tweeted that “performative authoritarianism” is too benign a description of the federal deployment. Fineman called it “a fascist vanguard." He added, “Deadly dictators have long been dismissed at first as mere performance.”

It remains to be seen whether state and local law enforcement in Oregon can contain the mob violence that has plagued Portland for two months and prevent further destruction of federal property. But no matter what happens, the useful idiots blaming the Trump administration for all the country’s ills are unlikely to shut up.


Joseph Klein

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/portland-riots-showcase-leftist-yearnings-tyranny-joseph-klein/

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