Andrew L. Urban
Death threats against several incoming Trump cabinet members are part of the continuum of the simmering violent sentiment on the left. This propensity for violence seems ingrained as part of the left’s playbook: their trigger finger is always on the trigger… a hair trigger.
Several of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks were targeted with death threats and swatting attempts recently, the FBI said on November 28, 2024. The threats were made on the previous Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, local time, and law enforcement acted quickly to ensure the safety of those targeted, Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. (Swatting refers to prank calls to the homes of those targeted to elicit a large heavy police response to the home.)
Pugilist in Chief Joe Biden has more than once intimated he’d like to take him behind the gym and beat up Donald Trump, smack him “on the ass” and so on. Robert ‘Raging Bull’ De Niro has made several expletive laden public comments that he’d like to punch Trump in the face.
In May 2020, then Senator majority leader Chuck Schumer (he’s not some crazy protester) shouted outside the Supreme Court “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” ‘These awful decisions’ refer to the famous abortion case. “Gorsuch” and “Kavanaugh,” of course, refer to Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — President Trump’s two appointees to the Supreme Court, whose confirmations were opposed by nearly all Senate Democrats.
It seems the left’s default position in the face of political opposition is fisticuffs, or worse…
Madonna boasted publicly of “dreaming of blowing up the White House”. Kathy Griffin, who claims to be a comedian, re-tweeted her controversial Donald Trump’s bloodied severed head photo after the president claimed victory in the 2020 election. Senator Waters infamously urged the public to intimidate Trump supporters whenever they saw them in restaurants, petrol stations, wherever… then there were a couple of attempted assassinations, probably not by Trump supporters.
That propensity for violence is replicated globally by the left-aligned protesters against Israel, Jews and the West in general. Pro Hamas sentiment can not be labelled non-violent, really, can it? That aggro is at odds with feigned Islamophobic protests as claimed by the likes of Anthony Albanese, the nominal prime minister of Australia. The legacy media has not held him to account over this cowardly equivalence. In the context of protesting, violence and public bullying against Muslims, where are the Jews indeed?
Perhaps encouraged (empowered?) by this whirlpool of aggro, ex Greens now independent Senator Lidia Thorpe has been turning up the dial on unrestrained outbursts in the Senate, in the King’s presence and in the streets. The other day she tore up Senator Pauline Hanson’s motion in relation to Senator Fatima Payman’s legitimacy as a sitting Senator and threw the pieces at her. (Leader of government business Penny Wong said “too often debate in this place is turning to aggression, to hateful and personal attacks, and there have been multiple instances of Senator Thorpe making inappropriate and sometimes abusive comments towards other senators.” Thorpe was suspended from the Senate for the rest of the week. Just the week?)
Perhaps she took inspiration from Nancy Pelosi infamously ripping up President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech – behind his back but in unabashed public view for the world to see. Thorpe must have moaned in jealous ecstasy. Pelosi showed how to combine disdain for democracy and decency with low-level violence via a theatrical gesture.
The left doesn’t have a historical monopoly on political violence, but lately the left seems to have taken a mortgage on it from the bank of political activism. Much of this activism appears to be fuelled by a moral fervour around social and environmental issues. They believe they are the righteous, and that justifies (in their own minds) any and all means. It is also glued to misperceptions of racism and misunderstood global politics.
The most troubling issue is that behind these actions burns an auto-response of violence towards their political opponents. The rhetoric of hate precedes such actions. Surely, violence is not hard wired into left wing ideology? But then it is a political truism that the right thinks of the left as stupid while the left thinks of the right as evil…
It isn’t the right that is evil…Mahatma Gandhi’s wisdom on the subject is worth remembering: “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”