Posted on 04/17/2016 1:48:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As Bernie Sanders continues to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, the time has come to focus some of those who are most actively backing his candidacy.
Most of those voting for Sanders are decent people who truly deserve to be called “progressives.” But among his most active supporters are hard left elements within organizations such as Black Lives Matter, CodePink and MoveOn who are more appropriately called repressives. Too many of them have too little tolerance for views different than their own.
Traditional liberals who have made their home in the Democratic Party should be wary of these groups. Much like the Sanders campaign, many of them are dominated by Occupy Wall Street veterans, whose brand of unfocused revolutionary politics was widely derided by Democrats and Republicans alike in 2011. They are at war with certain core liberal values, particularly as regards free speech.
Several weeks ago, for example, dozens of Black Lives Matter activists infiltrated a Donald Trump rally and forced the organizers to cancel due to security concerns, after they became involved in heated confrontations with Trump’s supporters. Whatever one may think of Trump’s policies, there is no excuse for preventing the candidate from expressing them at a political rally. They abridged both Trump’s right to free expression and the ability of thousands of their fellow citizens to participate in the political process.
MoveOn thanked the disruptors for their actions.
Shouting down Donald
Nor have such repressive actions been confined to Trump rallies: Clinton events have been regularly targeted as well, most recently in Philadelphia, where Black Lives Matter activists engaged in a lengthy confrontation with former President Bill Clinton, repeatedly shouting over his attempts to engage them in substantive discussion.
These tactics have been on clearest display in the context of the debate surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In January, for example, far-left activists organized by BLM shut down an LGBTQ conference in Chicago by storming the event, and denying the speakers the opportunity to address the crowd, by chanting “occupy, occupy” and “no justice, no peace.” While protests are a legitimate part of the political process, disruptive efforts to shut down speakers are not.
Disruptive tactics have gone hand in hand with other initiatives designed to silence pro-Israel voices. CodePink, many of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, and a host of other organizations have endorsed or cooperated with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Among other measures, BDS calls for the boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions, as well as for “common sense” boycotts of individuals and organizations that are too supportive of Israel.
Sanders himself has contributed to anti-Israel defamation: In his interview with the editorial board of the New York Daily News, he suggested that 10,000 civilians had been killed in Gaza by Israel during Operation Protective Edge. The truth is that somewhere between 600 and 1,500 civilians — many of whom were used as human shields by Hamas — were killed in a legitimate military effort to protect Israeli civilians, despite Israeli efforts to minimize civilian casualties. Such woeful misrepresentations serve to justify and encourage the repressive bigotry that has become the staple of anti-Israel, left-wing activists.
On university campuses, repressives have justified silencing dissent using “safe space” language, arguing that students should not be exposed to ideas or historical facts that they find threatening. This demonstrates a profoundly warped conception of free speech that seems to reflect the maxim “free speech for me, but not for thee.”
We know that these repressives support Bernie. We need to know whether he supports them.
Dershowitz is surprised that the Marxists and anarchists that his leftist ideas spawned and fed are actually dangerous to our constitutional rights? What a joke.
TLfD “Too loony for Dershowitz”
A liberal’s paradise would be a place where everybody has guaranteed employment, free comprehensive healthcare, free education, free food, free housing, free clothing, free utilities and only law enforcement personnel have guns. And, believe it or not, such a liberal utopia does indeed exist. ... It’s called prison.
The hard left are the Progressives, dumbass.
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