National Review: Why Democrats Need to Name and Isolate Violent Street Activists

I encourage our readers to read this important post at National Review by Dan McLaughlin aka “Baseball Crank”:

National Review:

“As I noted yesterday, Joe Biden has thus far skated on having to identify who in his party and on his own half of the political spectrum is responsible for riots, looting, arson, and other street violence over the past few months. This taps into a broader point I’ve been making for a while now, one that applies equally to radical Muslims, the alt-right, and QAnon, and even goes back to how the American labor movement handled Communists and how Bill Buckley dealt with the Birchers: You defeat dangerous extremist factions — whether on your own side or on the other side of the spectrum — by naming them as a distinct group and isolating them, not by allowing them to gain legitimacy and cover by blending into a broader movement. And the lead role in that process has to take place among their ideological fellow-travelers. The insistence on “there is no Antifa” and on allowing the Black Lives Matter movement (like the Women’s March before it) to blur the lines between its mainstream appeal and its extreme members is a recipe for the growth of the particular forms of extremism taking root there.

Individual members of those groups might be welcome into the broader mainstream movement — this is a democracy, so every mainstream faction will include some sketchy people in the ranks of its ordinary voters — but only once they see that doing so separates them from the radicals and weakens them. The typical defense of Biden is to argue that Republicans have struggled with this of late on account of Donald Trump’s inability to do just that, and his tendency to embrace conspiracy theories (such as Birtherism) and to amplify on Twitter the voices of all sorts of disreputable people. But then, if “it’s okay because Trump does it” is your defense, what exactly is your argument for your candidate? And more to the point, the time to quarantine the virus of extremism is before its spread in your own community becomes impossible to contain.”

This is a clear example of the norm of consensus antiracism.

The mainstream Right and mainstream Left agree to uphold antiracism as a norm and to stigmatize and isolate as an “extremist” anyone who violates that norm. The choice offered to voters in every election is between conservative liberalism (antiracism) or progressive liberalism (antiracism). As a result, there is never any meaningful political change on that front within the mainstream.

Dan MacLaughlin invites the mainstream Left to police the Far Left by marginalizing Antifa and Black Lives Matter. The mainstream Left responds by laughing in his face and accusing the GOP of “white supremacy.” MacLaughlin is a dope. The Far Left is represented in Congress. It is officially part of the Democratic coalition. It is represented in the “mainstream” by the Democrats who go on to say that America is racist to the core and must be dismantled. In fact, White America is “racist” by definition now. MacLaughlin is a privileged White male who suffers from White Fragility in criticizing the racial justice movement.

White Nationalists, the Alt-Right, “American Nationalists” (whatever label you want to use for the same constituency of racially conscious White voters) vote for the Republican Party. In exchange, the GOP stigmatizes and marginalizes them in American society by upholding consensus antiracism. They are never represented in the Republican coalition. Conservatives condemn “identity politics” by which they mean solely the legitimacy of White people having a positive sense of racial or ethnic identity and organizing to advance their group interests. In contrast, the American conservative liberal movement believes homosexuals and transsexuals are “mainstream” groups with legitimate interests.

What do White Nationalists get out of this deal? Nothing but the contempt of the GOP Congress which unanimously condemned them for Charlottesville while exempting Antifa and Black Lives Matter from any blame. The GOP Congress drummed Steve King out of Congress for wondering why Western civilization is taboo. Anyone who so much as breathes the word “White” is expelled from the party.

The Founding Fathers revolted against the British Empire over “no taxation without representation.” American Nationalists give their money and votes to the Republican Party. They are content to settle for no representation and being degraded in their own country.

Note: If you are like me, you probably hear several times a day from Donald Trump, Don Jr. Eric Trump, Lara Trump and Mike Pence asking for money. They never stop texting.