Police may be regaining control in Minneapolis, but only after untold damage has been done. Whole neighborhoods are destroyed. While privileged progressives excused the rioting, and while Minnesota’s progressive politicians let it go unchecked, the common woman and man has paid the price.
“How was last night?” a local reporter asked Stephanie, an older black American woman who lives in Minneapolis. Sobbing, she responded:
Scary, I live in the high-rise right back here, and I seen them as they came down Lake Street but then they turned and started coming over here. And I’m sitting up looking out my window, and they went straight to Office Max and the Dollar Store and every store that I go to. I have nowhere to go now. I have no way to get there because the buses aren’t running. These people did this for no reason. It’s not going to bring George back here. George is in a better place than we are. And last night—I’ll be honest—I wished I was where George was because this is ridiculous. These people are tearing up our livelihood. This is the only place I can go to shop, and now I don’t have any way to get there.
Calls to 911 went unanswered (already a trend in Minneapolis). A dead body of a young man was found in an area that suffered rioting overnight. A young woman’s body was found in a car near where riots occurred, and a man looting a pawn shop was shot by the owner. All three deaths were the result of police pulling away from pockets where chaos then took over.
After allowing the rioting and looting for four nights, Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz tried to blame “white supremacists” and claimed that about 80 percent of those arrested were from out of state. In fact, about 85 percent of those arrested gave in-state addresses. Intelligence reports, detailed by a security expert, indicate that “most of the hard-core protestors in Minneapolis are far-left or anarchists, and that far-right groups have not yet made a significant appearance.” Minnesota’s commissioner of public safety also confirmed that no evidence exists that white supremacists are operating in Minnesota.
The same is true in New York, and likely across the country. Yet media personalities and outlets justifying the rioting—but perhaps realizing that lawlessness is extremely unpopular with the public—then ran with Walz’s baseless claim. This includes MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who implied in a series of tweets that President Donald Trump was behind the riots. Meantime, it is now common for news articles to mention the white supremacist claim in passing. Aside from having no evidence, those making the claims are especially ridiculous, given that they initially defended the looting. Are progressive celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and Steve Carell bailing out neo-Nazis from jail?
Corporate media outlets did find the time to defend Antifa, after Trump declared the far-left violent group a domestic terror organization. CNN ran multiple articles to this effect; two years ago, it’s worth noting, CNN’s Chris Cuomo—brother of New York Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo—said that Antifa was “on the side of right.” The Washington Post ran an article critical of Trump’s designating Antifa a domestic terror outfit; it was written by the author of an Antifa-friendly book. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison had held up that same book in a photograph several years ago. Ellison’s son Jeremiah, a Minneapolis City Council member, tweeted: “I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA.” He continued: “Unless someone can prove to me ANTIFA is behind the burning of black and immigrant owned businesses in my ward, I’ll keep focusing on stopping the white power terrorist THE (sic) ARE ACTUALLY ATTACKING US!”
Across the country, anarchists and Antifa “Black Bloc” shock troops have appeared in cities to foment riots. In New York, anarchists from a dozen states as far away as Nevada have been arrested. In Washington, the newly designated domestic terrorists set fire to the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, threw Molotov cocktails, injured 50 Secret Service agents, and burned an American flag. Most concerning, evidence suggests that these radical left groups are well organized. Stockpiled fire-accelerants and projectiles have been reported in Minnesota, as well as stolen un-plated cars bringing supplies to those causing the mayhem. The NYPD has cited resupply chains and forward observers on bicycles who signal the presence of police ahead.
Plenty of other violence has occurred obviously not tied to Antifa, though. A video from Rochester, New York, shows four black men savagely beating an older white woman. She owned the pizza shop they were trying to loot and had stood up to them. Black “protestors” attacked and beat up a cop in the Bronx, a gang of black youths brutally attacked a Dallas man, and images throughout the nation show similar scenes.
Why is the national media so intent on disinformation and division? One answer may be that Antifa has been a problem for a long time. Portland’s streets have at times become lawless, as Antifa thugs commandeer streets and stage blockades. The media and some in the Democratic Party have been complicit in covering for the group, repeating the absurd point that Antifa stands for “anti-fascist”—implying that to be against Antifa must mean that you are a fascist. This schoolyard logic works as a one-liner on television, where no one can counter it. Maybe the media are also afraid. One of the only journalists to cover Antifa was beaten savagely, and remains subject to threats. And as we saw in Atlanta, where rioters invaded the headquarters of CNN, even left-wing, Democrat-friendly corporate media are vulnerable to attack.
Many have pointed out that the mostly white, disaffected punks of Antifa suffer from dead-end lives and come from broken homes without fathers. America has deep social problems, but plenty of people deal with such challenges without trying to burn down the country. Antifa certainly deserves its designation as a domestic terror group, and local law enforcement doesn’t seem up to the challenge of stopping them. The silver lining: these thugs remain a small minority, no matter how many people who should know better cover for them. The American people will gladly support the group’s demise.
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