Saturday, October 6, 2018

Now That The Preliminaries Are Over...

     ...the Left can get down to what it’s held in reserve ever since Donald Trump denied Hillary Clinton the presidency. Make no mistake: it’s coming:

     We are now learning that left-wing domestic terrorism groups are openly discussing “kill team” tactics on Twitter and Facebook, discussing methods of carrying SBRs (short-barreled rifles) under their clothing, blending in with crowds, then popping out of the crowds to assassinate prominent conservatives such as U.S. Senators, Supreme Court justices and prominent conservative radio personalities. All this was first reported by PJ Media.

     Fair use rules limit what I can excerpt from the linked article, which is relatively short but rich in links to other sources. Please read it all, and follow as many of the embedded links as you can stomach.

     The truly horrifying thing about this is that it started with the abuse of language: more specifically, the conflation of “conservative” with “Nazi” and the hurling of wholly fictional accusations at innocent men – who, when they became angry and defended themselves, were then castigated as monsters for daring to do so.

     Bookworm has some thoughts for us:

     The Kavanaugh defamation is a terrorist tactic leading to real violence. So far today, three people have sent me a link to James Simpsons’ article The Kavanaugh Allegations Are Psychological Terrorism, And It’s Time They End. The article is long, but well worth reading because it talks about the way the Left uses these tactics both to drive good people out of the public square and to incite the masses to actual violence:
     The charges do not need to be true, or even credible. People do not recoil because of the charges themselves (although, as we see, the left spares no effort to dream up the worst accusations they can think of). People recoil out of fear.

     This tactic relies on the human herding instinct. People naturally shy away from anyone so vilified, whether the charges are credible or not, simply out of fear of being smeared with the same brush. They don’t want to be ostracized by the group.

     Such excommunication has real consequences on reputations, jobs, relationships, even survival. The real goal is to threaten the rest of us into silence. How many people, for example, never used Donald Trump yard signs or bumper stickers out of fear of ostracism, or even property destruction?

     Indeed. Fear is the dominant characteristic of a low-trust society – and ours has been descending into that abyss for some time.

     Consider also this incisive observation from Laird Wilcox:

     In order for a ritual defamation to be effective, the victim must be dehumanized to the extent that he becomes identical with the offending attitude, opinion or belief, and in a manner which distorts it to the point where it appears at its most extreme. For example, a victim who is defamed as a "subversive" will be identified with the worst images of subversion, such as espionage, terrorism or treason. A victim defamed as a "pervert" will be identified with the worst images of perversion, including child molestation and rape. A victim defamed as a "racist" or "anti-Semitic" will be identified with the worst images of racism or anti-Semitism, such as lynchings or gas chambers.

     That has been the core rhetorical tactic of the Left for several decades. A peek at the Left’s hysteria over Susan Collins’s decision to support Brett Kavanaugh should be enough to confirm that.


     Thanks to Bookworm’s piece, I was reminded of something I wrote four years ago:

     Confusion can only benefit him who seeks to prevent accurate perception and thought. The Left must confuse its targets for a simple reason: the Leftist agenda, to the extent that it's persistent in character, is wholly at odds with human nature and the laws of reality. In practice it conduces to misery and destruction. No hyper-charismatic leader and no amount of tinkering can "make it work," the representations of Leftist mouthpieces notwithstanding. Moreover, this could never be concealed from a person of ordinary rational capacity...if he were equipped with accurate symbols for the key components of the socio-economic-political tableau and were permitted to employ them in thought unobstructed by cant about "inequality," "exploitation," "racism," "patriarchy," "institutionalized bigotry," and the like.

     Add to the trigger-words listed above the words “rape” and “survivor,” both of which have been added to the Left’s arsenal. What do those words mean? What constitutes a “rape?” What does it mean to call someone a “survivor” – and is it not the case that the great majority of rape victims survive the experience, at least physically?

     Without publicly-agreed meanings for the words we use in our discourse, we cannot have a stable conception of truth. Have a snippet from an even earlier, equally apposite piece:

     Truth is an evaluation: a judgment that some proposition corresponds to objective reality sufficiently for men to rely upon it. The weakening of the concept of truth cuts an opening through which baldly counterfactual propositions can be thrust into serious discourse. Smith might say that proposition X is disprovable, or that it contradicts common observations of the world; Jones counters that X suits him fine, for he has dismissed the disprovers as "partisan" and prefers his own observations to those of Smith. Unless the two agree on standards for relevant evidence, pertinent reasoning, and common verification -- in other words, standards for what can be accepted as sufficiently true -- their argument over X will never end.

     An interest group that has "put its back against the wall" as regards its central interest, and is unwilling to concede the battle regardless of the evidence and logic raised against its claims, will obfuscate, attack the motives of its opponents, and attempt to misdirect their attention with irrelevancies. When all of these have failed, its last-ditch defense is to attack the concept of truth. Once that has been undermined, the group can't be defeated. It can stay on the ideological battlefield indefinitely, preserving the possibility of victory through attrition or fatigue among its opponents.

     Add this, from an Eternity Road essay I wrote in 2003:

     In commenting on the importance of objective truth, columnist Maggie Gallagher once noted that if truth does not exist, then the exchanges of statements among men amount to nothing but assertions of power, attempts to use one another. The same observation applies with equal force to those who hold that there is no absolute right or wrong. It licenses them to do anything they please to whomever might be made to serve their ends:
  • They may use force whenever it would be favorable to them.
  • They may lie, defraud, and break promises whenever it would be to their advantage.
  • They may excoriate others in the vilest possible terms for daring to obstruct them.
  • They may demand that different standards apply to those that agree with them and to those that disagree with them.

     ...for, if there is no wrong, then these things cannot be wrong. All that matters are the practical questions:

  • Will it get me what I want?
  • Can I get away with it?

     I see it all coming together now. Can you see it, Gentle Reader?


     It’s time for serious preparation. If there is to be politically motivated violence, it will be impossible to “play defense.” The attacker can come out of nowhere at any time or place, and his target cannot look in every direction at once. Should there be any such assaults, and should there be reasonable evidence of Leftist coordination in such events, it will be time for decent Americans to go on offense: to hunt down AntiFa, BlackBloc, and similar miscreants and hurt them badly, possibly even mortally.

     Yes, I’m talking about a shooting war, with other (supposed) Americans as the enemy. If there is such a war – and the indications are that we’re teetering at the edge of one – I’m determined to win it.

     Are you appalled by the prospect? I am. But that doesn’t alter the calculus of survival.

     Think it over.

13 comments:

sykes.1 said...

If we do get widespread political violence, worse than the 60's/70's, we will also get a military dictatorship, and we will be glad.

xmaddad1 said...

If the left chooses to begin the political assassinations, does that not open the door for retaliation on their media/political fellow travelers?

Pascal said...

The behavior of the arrogants and their line of thinking regarding truth runs parallel to Dosteyevsky's “If God does not exist, everything is permitted."

The difference is Fran, as you've read my allegedly simplistic conclusion, is unlike Raskolnikov they do what they do with a clear conscience. I fear that unless each alleged defender of decency clearly understands that the enemy's morality is a paradigm opposite of what he believes to be his own, he will wind up doing what the enemy wishes despite his principles.

The greatest fear a man should have who claims to be God-fearing is how much of that claim will be deemed merely lip-service when he is challenged about those matters to which he diverted his eyes. Silence is agreement.

NITZAKHON said...

@Pascal:

It's not just a clear conscience.

They truly believe themselves to be missionaries set on a HOLY QUEST to create heaven on earth through socialism. And now that we're not just standing in the way, but actively pushing them back, they're unhinged. They're on the side of the angels, don't you know - and anyone fighting their achievement of socialism and its ending of hunger, and poverty, and disease, and hatred, and want, etc., MUST BE EVIL TO OPPOSE THAT.

And now that we've pushed back against that sacred mission of theirs, they WILL get violent. They cannot NOT be violent, their entire upbringings have wiped the idea of restraint from their personalities.

G-d help us all.

Joseph said...

In view of the Left's support for gun control, is the purpose of those discussions to provoke gun control?

Joseph said...

Please recall that it was a bluff when they warned of a "long hot summer" full of urban riots if Reagan were elected. It was a bluff when they threatened to make the country ungovernable if Bush were re-elected. It was a bluff when they claimed the Israeli crackdown on Palestinians would intensify the terrorism.

The "root cause" of terrorism is the belief that the Establishment will back down in response to intimidation. If it doesn't the terrorism will disappear.

Francis W. Porretto said...

I wish you were right about that, Joseph. Unfortunately, you're not.

The Left got much of what it sought from its tactics. Some of the rewards will take a little while before they can be "cashed in." The critical factor, which is easy to overlook if you focus only on the present, is the severe and enduring change in incentives that will henceforth govern decisions about whether or not to express oneself, to enlist in some cause, or to stand forth for public office.

People are going to be hurt. Indeed, it's already happening.

NITZAKHON said...

@Joseph: I must agree, as much as it pains me, with FWP. I feel, in my gut, that things are different.

In prior times they could, even with a setback, be patient as they could see their arc progressing towards their goals - and rest assured that the Right was asleep to their "slowly, slowly" infiltration.

Now, they can see their arc being bent back on itself, and they can see that we are "woke" to their kulturekampf. This is IMHO a very different situation.

Linda Fox said...

The violence is part of a last-ditch effort. Americans are just not easily pushed to violence. Remember, when the Weathermen and other Leftists chose violence?
It didn't end well. Some died. Some were imprisoned for long periods of time.
It ended OK for Ayers and his wife - well-connected, privileged Elites always land on their feet.
In fact, though, most of the allies of the Hard-Core Left evaporated. They returned to real life, found jobs, raised families.
And, maybe, nostalgically remembered those days when they were young, and fighting "the enemy".
But, no desire to go back to those days. Maybe, wrote a letter to a politician. Maybe, gave a few bucks to an organization that promised Action!
But, not otherwise involved.
The exceptions were those who used their academic contacts to burrow into the colleges and universities. Like a cancer, they grew, infesting younger people with tired cliches, bad scholarship, and inability to function outside of the university. Those are their storm troopers.

Linda Fox said...

The women will fold, running back to their suburban homes the first time someone bitch-slaps the smug right out of them.

daniel_day said...

If I may put up a tweet by Jack Murphy, who I never heard of before:
https://twitter.com/jackmurphylive/status/1048663612552830976
"I’m at the anti Kavanaugh rally.
They keep telling everyone to chase down Trump supporters where they eat, work, and live.
These aren’t idle threats. They are rallying a nationwide mob.
Believe me. They mean it."

NITZAKHON said...

I think we're dealing with the 80/20 rule. Yes, Linda, I agree that the vast majority will, when faced with actual physical consequences, flee back to suburbia.

But there's a hard-core nugget in the center. They believe it is THEIR TIME, and they won't be denied. It's them I truly worry about.

D. Gottfried said...

Perhaps I am an alarmist, but in this day, a civil disruption on the scale of a "war" , for this country, would be a windfall opportunity for numerous outside interventionists. Whether this is in the form of outright physical invasion or, more likely, a co-opting of infrastructure, resources and communications, a big man is best taken down when he is already on his knees. This is a big place to fall over "bang", but I would think it will be more of a giant prolonged rolling over so that those in charge can maneuver to the top while they sell out the peasants. For all its problems, this place still looks like a plum to the rest of the world.