Democrats desperately want people to believe that Republicans are criticizing them in order to deliberately put them in harm’s way. If they can get enough people to believe this, they can simply silence all dissenting opinion as “incitement.”
When asked about the New York Post‘s cover slamming Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) “some people did something” remarks about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) got straight to the point:
“We are getting to the level where this is an incitement of violence against progressive women of color and if they can’t figure out how to get it back to policy, we need to call it out for what it is because this is not normal,” she continued.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was on the same page. “They do this all the time to us, especially women of color. They do that. They take our words out of context because they are afraid because we speak truth, we speak truth to power.”
Omar expressed similar sentiments earlier that same week:
In early March, after Omar was called out and criticized by Republicans and Jewish Democrats about her repeated use of anti-Semitic tropes, 2020 Democratic presidential candidates made dramatic statements expressing their concern for Omar’s safety.
Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) said “But like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) joined the echo chamber, too. “Threats of violence — like those made against Rep. Omar — are never acceptable,” she said.
First things first: No one in their right mind wants anyone’s safety endangered over things that they say. There has been an unspoken rule in politics about being willing to fight for the right for someone to say something with which you may not agree.
This is a rule that Democrats typically only observe in theory, not in practice, however.
Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Warren, Harris, Omar, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA) and all the rest are classic examples of this. They’re reviving a despicable tactic from a long list of shutuppery tactics Democrats employ to try and shame their political opposition into shutting up. They believe that by accusing Republicans of wanting Democrats to be targets of violence, that they’ll succeed in silencing them.
Shutuppery in and of itself isn’t new for Democrats, of course. After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton blamed talk radio. Rush Limbaugh rose to national prominence during the Clinton presidency, so it was believed that Clinton was referring to Limbaugh. Clinton, by the way, wasn’t the only Democrat to suggest Republicans were to blame.
And for the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency—and even before that when he was a candidate, Democrats played the race card with wild abandon any time a Republican criticized Obama. When Republicans weren’t being accused of being racists, they were accused by radical leftists of promoting “rape culture” and being “anti-woman.”
As I wrote at the time—and is still true today, feminists and their ilk have become the modern-day thought police, using a combination of shame tactics, obedient group-think, and mindless mob-rule to shut down dissent.
We see this frequently with the “Three Amigas” (AOC, Omar, and Tlaib), all three of who want Americans to believe Republicans disagree with them because they’re “progressive women of color” and Republicans can’t handle minority women speaking out or something. Never mind that some of the most vocal critics of these women—and other Democratic women like Harris and Warren—are Republican women who have no use for their juvenile word games and dangerous thought policing.
When these Democratic women in particular become especially agitated with their critics, they’ll add on accusations of incitement to try and guilt them into backing down. Their fellow Democrats obediently fall in line, saying Republicans are deliberately putting targets on the backs of these “progressive women of color.”
What they conveniently ignore—and their media allies are happy to overlook as well—are the many, many instances where Democrats have used what could be considered inciteful rhetoric against their political opposition: Republicans are Nazis/racists/white supremacists for supporting and/or defending President Trump. Republicans are child killers and terrorists for supporting gun rights. The list goes on and on.
Shouldn’t their over-the-top rhetoric be considered incitement and called out, too?
Furthermore, should we blame Democrats for all the attacks on MAGA hat wearers that have happened since Alyssa Milano called the hat the “new white hood,” a statement with which Democrats agreed? Should we blame AOC for a liberal columnist’s call for waiters to pee and bleed on food they served to Trump administration officials? Remember, AOC herself joined in on the calls for Trump administration officials to be ostracized in the private sector.
And shouldn’t Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) be called to account for her unhinged rant where she actually encouraged—incited—supporters to confront their political opposition where they slept, ate, traveled, basically everywhere? What about 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker’s (NJ) call for people to “get up in the face of some Congresspeople”?
Democrats are used to having a playing field that is heavily weighted in their favor. Because of that, they make it a point to throw out the most inflammatory rhetoric about Republicans and have actually gone on record urging liberals to harass conservatives in their public and private lives.
But no matter how much the media eagerly aids them in their shutuppery endeavors, the best answer to left’s attempts at silencing speech is . . . more speech.
Andrew Klavan did an excellent video in 2009 on the left’s “shut up” strategy, and it very much relates to how Democrats are still operating today. Click below to watch:
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY