“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people, which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson (1787)

In 2017, I posted an analysis that also served as a warning: “The Antifa Movement — Coming to a Theater Near You.”

It has arrived.

Over the last week, we have been inundated with videos of “George Floyd protests.” This is how Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists are promoting their violent rioting constituents who have looted and torched their urban poverty plantations across the nation.

That dishonors Floyd, and offends the legitimacy of peaceful objections to the circumstance of his death – if that is the Left’s intent. Floyd who was a contrast of human struggles and trials.

The now-countless videos of citizens being attacked by these “protesters” affirm what Minnesota Democrat Governor Tim Walz declared after a few days of those “protests”: “The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd. It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear, and disrupting our great cities.”

That was about the only thing Walz got right about Floyd’s death, after a racially charged death in Georgia teed up the tension, sparked the ensuing opportunistic riots. That notwithstanding, it will be a high bar to convict the officer(s) involved with premeditated murder or a racist hate crime, though Minnesota’s radical racist Attorney General Keith Ellison, an acolyte of fellow Islamist racist Louis Farrakhan and black-supremacist haters across the nation, will do his best.

No doubt the coming “Ellison Show” will help keep the outrage alive thought the 2020 campaign, including the elections of Minneapolis Islamist Representative Ilhan Omar, who has helped turn that city into the terrorist-recruiting capital of the U.S.

(Update: Floyd’s autopsy determined that his “blood contained a fatal level of fentanyl,” and that, combined with methamphetamine, caused Floyd’s lungs to fill with fluid – which is why he could not breathe. It is likely he would have died on the scene regardless of whether he was being held on the ground or in the patrol car.)

Notably, as small minority-owned business are looted and burned, the Minnesota Freedom Fund raised more than $20 million to provide bail for rioters, but spent less than $500,000 for that purpose. (Members of Joe Biden’s political team supported that fund.)

The urban insurrections across our great country have left a wake of dead or injured civilians and police from coast to coast, including a murdered black federal agent in California, an officer on life support in Las Vegas, four officers shot in St. Louis along with one retired black police captain murdered while protecting a friend’s store from looters, two officers shot in Richmond, officers intentionally hit by vehicles in Buffalo, and dozens of Secret Service agents injured while protecting the White House.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo blamed the NYPD for not protecting its citizens while insisting, “I stand behind the protesters and their message.” Cuomo and other Demo governors have emboldened the rioters after months of the CV19 lockdown. Cuomo declared, “Yes protest, yes express your outrage, but be responsible because the last thing we want to do is see a spike in the number of COVID cases.”

So, burn the city down but keep your mask on…

Meanwhile, on the streets of New York, two NYPD cops were shot and one stabbed, an officer was ambushed and beaten, another officer was hit in the head with a brick, and an officer was intentionally hit by a vehicle.

NYPD Chief Terence Monahan unleashed his fury upon Cuomo: “Tell Andrew Cuomo to get out there on the street with us. … I’m watching my men and women out there dealing with stuff that no cop should ever have to deal with — bricks, bottles, rocks. … I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti plans on solving their “systemic racism” problem by slashing $150 million from LAPD’s budget. That absurd “solution” is being considered by other urban centers, including the epicenter of the violence, where the Minneapolis council is discussing “disbanding the police department. What could go wrong.

One of the most moving messages from law enforcement came from Richmond, Virginia, Police Chief Will Smith. He broke down recounting the details of how rioters blocked first responders from responding to a home fire an rescuing a two-year old was trapped inside. According to Chief Smith, they "intentionally set a fire to an occupied building” and “prohibited us from getting on scene.”

Arguably, riots across the nation were seeded by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who ordered police to stand down during the crucial early stages of unrest in that city. His message green-lighted the violence there and, by domino effect, in other cities. Frey became the latest in a long line of Democrat mayors condemning police and empowering rioters to loot and burn neighborhoods and assault anyone who dares stand in their way.

He and other Democrat politicos have, in recent years, propagated the Ferguson Effect — the predictable outcome after race-baiters vilified police nationwide as “racist” following the justifiable police shooting of street thug Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Researcher Heather Mac Donald, author of The War on Cops, notes that the post-Ferguson rise in crime “is due to officers’ reluctance to engage in precisely the proactive policing that has come under relentless attack as racist.” Law-enforcement officers working urban streets are now less likely to wade into the fray in crime-ridden minority communities for fear of being labeled racists. This has resulted in a surge of crime nationwide — a surge that has hurt precisely the people that “progressive” race-baiters purport to help.

In his second term, Barack Obama stoked the hatred of cops using Brown’s death, the chokehold death of career criminal Eric Garner in Staten Island, and the death of drug dealer Freddie Gray in Baltimore as political fodder to maintain black allegiance to the Democrat Party. He unleashed a disgraceful condemnation of police that directly resulted in the premeditated and racially motivated murders of two NYPD officers and likewise the sniper murder of five Dallas PD officers. Apparently for most Democrats, Blue Lives don’t matter.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake refused to back the police during the city’s 2015 riots, and it now ranks among the most dangerous cities in the nation — but this is typical of Democrat-controlled urban centers. In fact, on the Memorial Day weekend of George Floyd’s death, there were seven black-on-black murders in Baltimore alone — about which you didn’t hear anything because those deaths don’t fit the Demos’ political narrative. Or, to put it more bluntly, those black lives don’t matter to the Left.

For the record, there is nothing in the leftist narrative or in the current riots that comport with Martin Luther King’s vision for racial reconciliation.

Fanning the race-bait flames, Governor Walz absurdly suggested that the Minnesota riots were agitated by “white supremacists” from out of state, saying, “What I’ve seen on this, yes. We’re seeing evidence of some pretty sophisticated attempts to cause problems.” His Demo Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan also claimed, “There are white supremacist … who are burning down the institutions that are core to our identity and who we are.”

Now, it would not surprise me if some white racist idiots were present but there is no evidence to support that. Even Howard Graves with the leftist SPLC told The New York Times, “I have not seen any clear evidence that white supremacists or militiamen are masking up and going out to burn and loot.”

In fact, the white agitators Walz saw were not racists, but they were haters — radical leftists who have played a key role in the riots in Minneapolis and elsewhere around the nation.

Those mostly middle-class white radicals identify with the so-called “antifa movement” — the self-styled anti-fascists who, in fact, embody many attributes of fascism. I note “identify” because there is no “antifa organization” per se, and no hierarchical leadership structure. Their bond is radical ideology — the same ideological model that binds Islamist terrorist networks. They are a network of adolescents of all ages who use “black bloc” tactics — dressing in black with black face masks and bandannas — as their identity uniform. Notably, some antifa organizers are the effluent of generational wealth and privilege.

FBI Director Christopher Wray views antifa “as more of an ideology than an organization,” which is to say it is difficult to single out individuals as “members.”

Democrats feign shock at the level of rioter organization, without acknowledging a major factor in that organization are the antifa protagonists. For example, leftist New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the riots had an organizational element directed by “people who came to do violence in a systematic, organized fashion.” He added, “We are seeing something new, and not just here in New York City but all over the country, and we have to recognize it and we have to address it.”

While Walz, de Blasio, and other leftists would have you believe this is “something new” in order to tie it to hatred for Donald Trump this election year, these riots have a well-documented genesis. Their historic roots are in socialist, communist, and anarchist groups in Europe. Rioters had cells in the U.S. during the late 1980s but faded in the mid-2000s until like-minded miscreants re-congealed after Barack Obama’s 2008 election. The current cadres of violent organizers have roots with the radical socialist “Occupy” movement that was seeded and empowered by Obama. He was the inspiration for those rioters a decade ago, as they infested cities from coast to coast, including Oakland, Seattle, Denver, Austin, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, New York, and Boston.

They reemerged in force at the 2017 Charlottesville riots and have been gaining even more ground nationwide since.

According to Dartmouth professor Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, antifa radicals define “fascism” as whatever suits the moment. Bray says, “There is a lot of debate about what constitutes fascism, and it’s a legitimate question to ask — where does one draw the line?” He notes, “The slippery-slope argument, which is that if you start calling everyone a fascist and depriving them of a platform, where does it end?”

Notably, Bray concludes: “These are revolutionary leftists. … These are self-described revolutionaries. They have no allegiance to liberal democracy, which they believe has failed the marginalized communities they’re defending. They’re anarchists and communists who are way outside the traditional conservative-liberal spectrum.”

They are also way outside the limits of the law and civil society.

Antifa adherents are now using black inner-city frustration to inflame the anti-fascist fascist agenda, which has nothing to do with “justice” for anyone and everything to do with undermining our Constitution and Rule of Law. And their tactics are sophisticated.

Consequently, the Trump administration rightly plans to designate antifa as a “terrorist organization.”

As Attorney General Bill Barr confirmed, “In many places it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by far left extremist groups and anarchic groups using antifa-like tactics.” In an official DoJ statement, he added, “Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent, and extremist agenda. It is time to stop watching the violence and to confront and stop it. … The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa … is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”

Don’t forget the RICO statutes!

Note that the aforementioned racist, Keith Ellison, and his son are antifa backers. Recall that when Ellison posed with a copy of the “Antifa Handbook” for his social-media page, he posted it with this comment: “I just found the book that [strikes] fear in the heart of @realdonaldtrump.”

Responding to the violence, President Trump announced that he might utilize the Insurrection Act if the looting and destruction continues unabated. He declared, “My first and highest duty as president is to defend our great country and the American people. I swore an oath to uphold the laws of our nation, and that is exactly what I will do.”

He acknowledged: “All Americans were rightly sickened and revolted by the brutal death of George Floyd. My administration is fully committed that, for George and his family, justice will be served. He will not have died in vain. But we cannot allow the righteous cries and peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob.”

“America is founded upon the Rule of Law,” he concluded. “It is the foundation of our prosperity, our freedom, and our very way of life. But where there is no law, there is no opportunity. Where there is no justice, there is no liberty. Where there is no safety, there is no future.”

Of course, the president’s plans were met with ridicule by Democrat racial flame-fanners led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who claimed Trump is “fanning of the flames of discord, bigotry and violence.” They were, of course, joined by equally indignant race-baiters Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

But as legal analyst Andrew McCarthy insists, “The president and governors must work together to restore order, including by deployment of the military where that is necessary.”

Finally, Biden and the rest of the Democrat Party protagonists are repeating the race-bait mantra about the “systemic racism” that they claim infests the ranks of every level of our justice system, while insisting “I can’t breathe.” But allow me this observation: The “systemic racism” canard is a rhetorical caricature of the reality those of us who are or have been in law enforcement experience in service to our communities and our nation. There are people who hold racist views on ALL sides, and there is no room for it anywhere. That is especially true among the ranks of those charged with upholding the law — bad cops need to be purged. But as Heather Mac Donald’s research concludes, there is no “systemic racism” in our system of justice.

And a footnote: This video (language warning) of a couple defending an REI store in California speaks volumes about the difference between legitimate protest and violent looting opportunists.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

(Updated)

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