“Both Sides,” Now?

     The world of Internet acronyms moves much faster than I can track it. Just a few days ago, I learned about DARVO: “Deny And Reverse Victim and Offender.” It’s easier to pronounce than many of the others, which is a blessing. The tactic to which it refers is a strictly Leftist thing, well exemplified by Leftists’ insistence that the murdered Charlie Kirk was a “fascist” and that assassin Tyler Robinson is merely a “troubled kid” who needs “help.”

     Owing to the rise of popular fury over that assassination and other attempts to gun down Republicans and conservatives, the DARVO gambit isn’t getting much traction lately. So the Left’s spokesmen are trying another, which – so far as I know – doesn’t yet have its own acronym. The new mantra is “Both Sides Are Responsible.” (BSAR, anyone?)

     Given the reported acts of violence of recent years, that’s more than a little disingenuous. At least, I can’t name a conservative who’s targeted a Leftist. While the initial attempts to characterize Tyler Robinson as a MAGA fan failed miserably, the attempts themselves are a giveaway of the Left’s rhetorical desperation. “Racist,” “fascist,” “homophobe,” “Islamophobe,” and “xenophobe” haven’t been carrying their weight lately. The first two have been brutally overused, whereas the other three simply haven’t gained traction.

     Political polemicists have to work with what they’ve got. On the Left, that’s precious little. They’ve striven to equate the murder of a popular conservative by an AntiFa-aligned killer to an intemperate statement from the chairman of the FCC. If that doesn’t suggest desperation, I can’t imagine what would. Still, the chant has gone up that “both sides are responsible” for political violence in the Twenty-First Century United States.

     As the major channels of communication continue to be far more friendly to the Left than the Right, there haven’t been many prominent slapdowns of the BSAR assertion. One must stand for many: Greg Gutfeld’s evisceration of Jessica Tarlov yesterday night. A choice snippet:

     The left calls Trump a hate monger. They’ve called me a hate monger because I ridicule the left. I ridicule protesters. I ridicule academia, Hollywood, the news media. I make fun of The View every day. I make fun of the UN. Guess what? No one acts on the things that I say because my side doesn’t do that!
     We say people are stupid, we say people are wrong, but we don’t say they’re evil. That is YOUR game!
     And then you come and you say, ‘This is a mentally ill loner.’ Well, who do you think does this stuff? It’s not Ben Affleck, it’s not Tom Brady…People who do this stuff are always that way.
     The question is, who points them in that direction? Why pick ICE? Why pick Charlie Kirk? Why target TV stations and put bombs under FOX trucks? Why vandalize memorials? Why kill kids in Catholic schools?”

     And indeed, both the vicious rhetoric and the consequent violence are emitted solely by the Left. The Right has produced no James Hodgkinsons or Tyler Robinsons. But even one act of violence from a conservative against a popular Leftist could provide BSAR the grounding it seeks. The Right must be careful not to provide even the slightest substantiation for the Left’s calumnies against us. Else BSAR’s ceremonial tune will resound from coast to coast. The Right, with its far lesser media presence, will be hard pressed to counter it.