You would think that President Donald Trump had really said something controversial. But of course, to the anti-Trump chorus that has replaced anything resembling an objective mainstream media, anything that Trump says must be at least controversial, if not damnable.
Take his latest comments on political violence in America. When he suggested that both sides were to blame for the violence at Charlottesville, the liberals somehow construed this as his giving a pass to the white supremacists. Not at all. It takes two to tango, baby; and unless the guys in the helmets and pyjamas were fighting with each other, there had to be someone else there to tangle with. It’s a no-brainer.
And to suggest that the political violence in America is only being generated by the KKK and neo-Nazis is to grant these marginal groups way too much prominence and influence. It is also to flagrantly deny the preponderance of violence on the left. Black Lives Matter is nothing more or less than a domestic terror group but its representatives were allowed to meet with former President Barack Obama, who simply said you can’t judge every member of the group by the acts of its worst members. Can you imagine Trump meeting with some good old boy from the KKK and announcing that there are some really good folks in this organization and, you know, it’s really unfair to tar them all with the same brush.
But the left has been doing this for decades. Left-wing academics had a moral blind spot for communism since it first seized power in Russia a century ago next month. Lenin had to take make some “tough” decisions and bash a few heads in order to establish some order out of the post-First World War chaos. Stalin? Uncle Joe was forced to deal with “wreckers” who were undermining the Soviet economy, had to punish the Trotskyites who were planning a counter-revolution, obligated to starve those millions of Ukrainians in order to enforce collectivized farming, had to imprison and murder further millions to build a modern industrial state. And so on and so on.
Besides all those show trials proved just how much conspiracy Stalin had to live with!
Somehow, none of this was described as violence by the left, who were either too naive to recognize the truth or to ideologically twisted to care.
When they wanted to talk about violence, they pointed to the Nazi regime with is Gestapo, concentration camps, jackboots, interrogations and systematic brutality.
Hitler did these things because he was evil; Stalin did the same things because he was motivated by a higher ideal.
In truth, the Nazis and the communists behaved exactly like each other and when they signed an non-aggression pact in August 1939, it may have shocked the world at the time but it was really a marriage of ideological twins. The Soviets operated in exactly the same way and treated human life with the same basic contempt as the Nazis. The Soviet Union packed its gulags with millions and worked them to death, the NKVD secret police arrested whomever they pleased and often ended an interrogation by shooting a bullet into the back of their victim’s neck — their sanguinary trademark. Stalin even favored the same kind of art, architecture, literature and film as his nemesis in Berlin.
Neither of these totalitarian regimes cared for the rights of the individual if the masses go in the way of the state. Both used violence to attain power, sustain power and to make war.
Just like the political extremists in America today. The people who are motivated to join these movements (like the one in your bowels) are in love with violence. It doesn’t and shouldn’t matter why they want to murder or assault; we shouldn’t care whether they envision an all-white society or a socialist utopia — they’re equally crazy and equally guilty for choosing violence over normal and appropriate political involvement.
When Trump suggests the same thing, he is merely pointing out the obvious.
Perspectives expressed by op-ed authors are their own and are not the views of The Daily Caller.