Left Eats Left: Al Sharpton Triggers Leftists by Equating Anti-Israel Campus Mobs to J6
“How do the Democrats, how do all of us on that side, say January 6th was wrong if you can have the same pictures going on on college campuses? You lose the moral high ground.”
It’s been a wild week across the nation between the NYPD clearing the violent anti-Israel occupiers from Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and the LAPD and CHP taking care of business at the militarized UCLA anti-Israel compound encampment.
As the warzone-like video clips and images flashed across the screen Thursday morning, the crew on MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” program were seemingly in agreement that campus agitators were making Democrats look bad ahead of the November elections.
Rev. Al Sharpton was particularly unamused at what he was seeing and noted that he agreed with co-host Joe Scarborough’s assessment of the optics. Sharpton went even further, though, equating the anti-Israel agitators to the January 6th defendants:
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” showed footage of police moving in on UCLA’s anti-Israel encampment, as host Joe Scarborough demanded Democrats speak out against these demonstrations.
“The politics of that, what is being robbed by them not doing that, Joe, where you and I agree. How do the Democrats, how do all of us on that side say Jan. 6th was wrong if you can have the same pictures going on on college campuses, you lose the moral high ground,” Sharpton said.
“Good Lord, don’t make a parallel to Jan. 6th,” co-host Mika Brzezinski said in response. “For some reason that’s not allowed.”
Watch:
Al Sharpton: "How do the Democrats, how do ALL of us on that side, say January 6th was wrong if you can have the same pictures going on on college campuses?!"
Mika Brzezinski: "Good Lord! Don't make a parallel to January 6th!" pic.twitter.com/8CdfoN8Vbp
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 2, 2024
Brzezinski, as it turns out, made a similar statement a couple of days prior, which presumably did not please their small audience:
Mika Brzezinski on Tuesday: "I'll echo the horror that this does look like January 6th. What a terrible example for our students." https://t.co/SnuyiuFo3j https://t.co/zgsbRk0w5B
— Zachary Leeman (@WritingLeeman) May 2, 2024
But it was Sharpton’s observation in particular that had the Very Online Left fuming:
Ok this is getting weird. We’re comparing students who are peacefully protesting a genocide to white supremacists who tried to overturn an election and had murder as the end goal? Y’all are serious? https://t.co/k6AV4mjVH6
— Shaina Wiel (@ShaiMW) May 2, 2024
Love him, BUT this is leadership malpractice for Al Sharpton to say this.
January 6 was an outgoing President spurring
on a violent revolt against the government to interfere with the peaceful transition of power domestically.Campus protests aren’t threatening democracy here https://t.co/5UKeS5BkVS
— 𝐄𝐱𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐨𝐩𝐞 (@exavierpope) May 2, 2024
These are not equivalent, and this analogy isn’t hitting the way he thought it would.
— Bärí A. Williams, Esq. (@BariAWilliams) May 2, 2024
What a twit.
— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) May 2, 2024
Al Sharpton once again showing himself to be a useful idiot against the left https://t.co/CVxldoNXxK
— Kamau Franklin (@kamaufranklin) May 2, 2024
Is this for real??? Rev. Al Sharpton appeared on liberal media denouncing college encampments because they resemble Jan 6 .
How is demanding divestment from Israel equivalent to overturning the result of an election. STFU man!!!🙄 pic.twitter.com/eKyLGn3Fem
— Mince LàSalad (@MinceLaSalle) May 2, 2024
The day after Sharpton made the comparison, he walked it back:
“…The right will wrongly try to act like see they’re violent and they talk about January 6th. First of all, January 6th and the violence here is not the same thing
They try… some right wing to say I’m comparing it, not comparing it, what I’m saying is they will compare it”
Al Sharpton BACKTRACKS his comments comparing the pro-Palestine 'student' protests across the United States to Jan. 6
'…The right will wrongly try to act like see they're violent and they talk about January 6th. First of all, January 6th and the violence here is not the same… pic.twitter.com/g7fFPbIA2a
— Unlimited L's (@unlimited_ls) May 3, 2024
First things first, Al Sharpton of all people pretending he’s some arbiter of what’s right and wrong as it relates to riots is hilarious considering his sordid history, but I digress.
Sharpton’s comparison of the anti-Israel campus mobs to the January 6th defendants was interesting when one takes into account that, unlike the J6 defendants who have had the book thrown at them in addition to many being held without bond for long periods, the pro-Hamas demonstrators likely will not spend much if any time in jail.
In fact, the UCLA protesters who were arrested reportedly never even saw the inside of a jail cell and were given free breakfasts before they were released in what amounted to little more than a field trip:
According to this report, protesters arrested at UCLA were immediately released without even setting foot inside the jail and were simply handed citations along with takeout breakfasts to enjoy with their friends. pic.twitter.com/IJELnAM7B3
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) May 2, 2024
And, not surprisingly, there was already talk about the protesters who were released coming back to rebuild the encampment:
All that work spent to dismantle the UCLA encampment, and now the protesters who escaped arrest are being allowed to return and are talking about rebuilding it. pic.twitter.com/5qGMSrLS0b
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) May 2, 2024
And in the aftermath of the Columbia University encampment and occupation debacles, the “punishment” for some students by their professors was to announce that they don’t have to take final exams, that they’ll be getting As for their courses – a policy that campus administrators greenlighted Wednesday.
From an email from a Columbia professor to his class. No final exam, and everyone gets an A. Is Columbia going to allow professors to literally not do their jobs? pic.twitter.com/X4KukVg7q1
— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) May 3, 2024
Wash, rinse, repeat. Far-left activists keep doing what they do because there are rarely if ever any consequences.
And that brings me to my next point, Sharpton’s claim about Democrats “losing the moral high ground.” When exactly did they ever have the moral high ground? Was it before or after the Antifa/Black Lives Matter-led riots in 2020? Before or after the crime-riddled Occupy Wall Street encampments from 2011? Before or after the stalking of conservative Supreme Court Justices in the spring and summer of 2022?
As unfortunate as it was, the Capitol riot was a one-time thing. But we could go back 20, 30, 40, 50 years or more to see how the activist left led by professional agitators have used violent protest as a tool to manipulate public sentiment in order to get what they want.
Will they be successful this time around? It’s unlikely, considering an overwhelming majority of those recently polled indicated they supported Israel over Hamas in the war. Relatedly, only three percent said the Israel-Hamas war was the most important issue to them personally, which is further evidence that the anti-Israel left’s attempts at raising awareness of their “cause” and turning public sentiment against Israel aren’t working.
With any luck, the pro-Hamas movement here in the U.S. will be a miserable failure on par with the Defund the Police movement’s epic crashing and burning. But even if it does, it won’t be long before the next violent left-wing call to action begins, because as history has shown us, it’s just who – and what – they are.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
Al Sharpton making sense. What is this world coming too.?!
Don’t get too excited—he walked it back. Now all is right with the world again.
Yeah, pretty typical but we use the first part and ignore the follow up.
He didn’t walk it back. He pointed out the truth, that he had never said the two protests were alike, but that the Republicans would “pounce” on it and “falsely claim” they were alike.
How does this stack up? Who gets to call who what, here, because of who they are?
There are some echos—for instance, at Kent State they were protesting in support of the mass murdering Khmer Rouge regime and today’s protests are in support of the mass murdering Hamas regime!
Sort of. At Kent State they were not actively protesting in support of the Khmer Rouge but rather overseas involvement of the US in what most saw as a war the US had no business being in as well as the draft. The numbnuts “protesting” now are not saying much about US involvement in a war, they are calling for the genocide of Jews, the destruction of a sovereign nation and the total withdrawal of support for that country.
No, they weren’t against the war, or the draft; they were on the other side. If the USA had decided to intervene in support of the communists instead of against them, they’d all have cheered.
Neo: Khmer Rouge regime
There was no Khmer Rouge regime in 1970. The U.S. incursion in Cambodia is often cited by historians as helping bring about the collapse of the Cambodian government leading the way for the Khmer Rouge to take control in 1975. The Vietnamese communists brought about the end of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.
If he’s not careful, they’re going to revoke his victim card.
He’ll just get another Fake Victim ID. This one is getting dog-eared anyway, he’s had it since Tawana Brawley.
Obviously Sharpton was chosen to cool down the rhetoric before the election.
Al Sharpton is grifting huckster who has a finely tuned sense about whether certain actions are playing well or playing poorly among the gullible public. He is pointing out that these pro Hamas mobs using intimidation, physically preventing movement of Students/Faculty to classes, occupying buildings and public spaces, disrupting campus life to in life graduation ceremonies …ain’t being well received by the general public. Not by leftists who haven’t yet drunk the antisemitic kool aid and certainly not by the majority center right taxpayers.
IOW this is PO folks and undermining the ability to divide and manipulate threatening the left’s ability to politically profit from that artificial division. When a gifted grifter like Sharpton says to his team, in essence, ‘knock it off’ folks should listen.
J6 protestors were right, these protestors are wrong.
Sharpton doesn’t even understand the concept of right and wrong. (To be fair, neither do a lot of the commenters here on LI. Like Sharpton they see only whether something is useful to them.)
But al sharpton is all good with BLM burning and looting american cities, right? Such a fraud.
You can’t equate these riots with J6. These riots inconvenience only the little people. The J6 riots inconvenienced Our Masters, and so were tres insurrectiony.
“We’re comparing students who are peacefully protesting a genocide to white supremacists who tried to overturn an election and had murder as the end goal?”
Holy Jeebus, where you buying THAT kool aid? The MK Ultra kiosk?
Yep. When our elite/establishment leadership class is inconvenienced that is a ‘problem’. When it is average folks trying to get to work, drop off children at school, go to the airport…meh it is a ‘peaceful protest’. The average folks have become more and more aware of this bifurcation. Widespread understanding came in the residential real estate bubble in ’06, amplified by Tea Party era, pushed again in the Trump era. Covid policies left no doubt about bifurcation as big box stores, liquor stores and other high tax revenue and/or politically connected businesses were allowed to operate, gyms, schools, Churches and small mom/pop businesses… not so much. Today we have the entitled leftist students forming anti Semitic mobs on/around campus using intimidation to cause chaos while demanding taxpayers pay off their student loan debt. Average folks are paying attention.
Well there certainly seem to be professional agitators in this crowd of Hamas terrorist supporters but are they government sponsored like the lowlife scunge inciting problems on Jan 6?
Whether you consider the J6-Campus mobs comparison to be reasonable depends on whether you’re a Leftist or not.
The Left hold the mob to be righteous, non-violent, and defensible, despite the fact they’ve engaged in violence, criminal conduct, openly support Hamas and terrorism, refuse to condemn the murder, rape, and other atrocities of October 7, and whose ultimate goal is the absolute destruction of the Jewish state i.e. genocide.
The Left also hold that J6, the fiery but mostly peaceful march on Congress, and then through parts by some, was a violent, dangerous effort to overturn the Democrat’s natural right to rule, and occurred at the direction of He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken.
The question is, how does the part of America that votes, but doesn’t mindlessly opt Democrat, interpret it?
Did I miss a fire? Was there a cookout?
“As unfortunate as it was, the Capitol riot was a one-time thing. But we could go back 20, 30, 40, 50 years or more to see how the activist left led by professional agitators have used violent protest as a tool to manipulate public sentiment in order to get what they want.”
There is so much wrong with this statement.
Jan 6 was a peaceful protest of a stolen election until the paid for agitators, FBI, CIA insighted the crowd after the police shot protestors with rubber bullets, tear gassed them , and murdered 2 women
Clearly NOT a comparison.
And please, stop giving print to the View and Morning Joe
They are ignorant , paid for dumbasses…
I am only aware of one woman murdered during the “insurrection” and one who died of natural causes. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
Before we call people ignorant, we should exercise care in differentiating between insight and incite.
Getting beat on by the Capitol police isn’t natural causes.
Ashli Babbitt was shot by a police officer.
Rosanne Boyland was beaten unconscious by Capitol Police, then crushed as police forcibly herded protesters out of the tunnel.
The Swamp disputes this claim… the same Swamp that claims demonstrators killed Officer Sicknick, a man who walked away from the demonstration and had dinner with his family that night.
Protesters killed nobody. Police killed at least two. The government and the media lied about both… then gave a commendation to the murderer they couldn’t hide.
It’s official now.
The Democrat Party is more antisemitic than Al Sharpton.
Remember when antisemitism was merely calling people “Hymies?” Good times. Now you have to threaten to exterminate an entire country just to get onto the scoreboard.
Of course, he would never work out this equation with the BLM riots included despite much more property damage and loss of life.