Political Violence: To Define and Count

My comment on a recent post by @SusanQuinn has expanded into a post of its own, as is not uncommon for the famously verbose GrannyDude. So here you go:

The only definition of political violence that makes any sense is violence that is undertaken with the intention (however quixotic or insane) of affecting the policies and processes of governance. By this definition, political violence is now overwhelmingly coming from the left. It is not merely a matter of fringe elements either, as the behavior of the so-called "fringe" has been encouraged, aided and rewarded by Democrat politicians and office-holders.

One obvious example: The #BLM Mostly-Peaceful-Protests (MPPs) not only had a peculiar tendency to become very violent, but its protesters frequently, openly called for violence. (E.g., what do we want, dead cops.) Unsurprisingly, homicides against police officers, including planned assassinations, ensued, perpetrated by persons who explicitly claimed #BLM as motivation. The declared intention of #BLM violence---from speech to action, from doxing to assaults to arson to murder---was to change the way government functions, that is, the way laws are enforced (or not enforced).

To a considerable degree, #BLM violence was successful. Police officers themselves became far more hesitant to engage in proactive policing, and many left the profession altogether. Potential new hires decided against such dangerous and thankless employment, leaving law enforcement agencies understaffed nationwide to this day.

Normal Americans, encouraged to interpret the violence as a reflection of intolerable (if, strangely, mostly invisible) injustice (a riot being the voice of the unheard, yada yada), became either convinced by, or less resistant to, leftist notions such as defunding the police, de-incarcerating criminals, no-bail release and all the rest. Democrat politicians who tacitly or explicitly endorsed the #BLM cause also made excuses for the violence. Why not? They benefited when voters, exhausted by chaos, decided to vote for Biden as a way to get "back to normal."

Every #BLM-related riot, murder, looting, arson must count as leftist political violence, including the deliberate assassination of police officers by men who made it perfectly clear that they were a.) leftist and b.) killing in the name of #BLM. The same is true of Antifa violence, nearly all anti-Semitic violence, pro-Palestine violence, pro-abortion violence and at least some, if perhaps not all, violence by transgendered persons against assorted, left-identified targets (e.g., Kavanaugh, Christian children, Kirk). Not to mention, of course, the attempted murder of Steve Scalise, Rand Paul and, oh right! Donald Trump.

There is, very simply, no equivalent of this violence on the right. January 6th is the closest one can get to mob violence, and despite strenuous efforts, it is not possible to find Republicans (including Trump) who either called for or approved of that riot after the fact. Moreover, I don't think it irrelevant that it was leftists, not conservatives, who would go on to exploit (and exaggerate) the violence of that day, milking five hours of preventable mayhem for as much Democrat political advantage as possible.

Not all violence committed by the politically active constitutes political violence. Intra-gang violence among members of the Aryan Nation, for example, is no more "political violence" than the intra-gang violence that roils Chicago (and claims many more innocent victims) in an average summer weekend.

According to my suggested definition, violence against political figures is not always political violence. Mental illness is definitely in the mix, and is a more plausible explanation for the attacks on Paul Pelosi and Gabby Giffords and the murder of Melissa Hortman and her husband. By the same token, it is at least arguable that the guy who rammed his SUV through the Christmas Parade in Waukesha may have been a leftist (he was), but he was mostly just...nuts.

Politicians, pundits, celebrities, "comedians" and activists have the same First Amendment rights as the rest of us. And as far as I'm concerned, that means they have the right to say stupid, hateful things. But for any with a remaining conscience, or for Democrat voters concerned that things have Gone Too Far, we might ask: What is the culpability of leftist politicians for the violence of unhinged persons?

There is the underlying lunacy, and then there is the choice of target. Take, for example, the targeting of Kavanaugh by a homicidal, transgendered lunatic. How much did it matter that Schumer phrased his objections to conservative judges in a threatening manner? The Biden DOJ refused to enforce the laws making demonstrations in front of the homes of SCOTUS justices a felony: Did the incessant, loud Mostly Peaceful Protests attract the attention and exacerbate the anxieties of a mentally-fragile man? Did they provide a sort of "broken windows" atmosphere that made escalation inevitable?

Those would be the questions the left ought to be asking itself.

And isn't.