Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn) posted a photo of himself on Twitter posing with the book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.” The book calls for violence as a tool of political advocacy. Ellison’s post said the book should “strike fear into the heart” of President Donald Trump. This guy, the only Muslim in Congress, is the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee. It drew pushback from Republicans who have criticized the movement’s at-times violent disruptions of speaking engagements and white supremacist rallies. After receiving well-deserved criticism, Ellison’s spokesman Karthik Ganapathy said that Ellison has not read the book, and has espoused nonviolence throughout his career. Do you believe that? Why would he appear to endorse a book he hadn’t read? Surely he knows what the antifa is and what they do.
The CBS outlet in Ellison’s home state wrote that the tweeted endorsement “drew pushback from Republicans who have criticized the movement’s at-times violent disruptions of speaking engagements and white supremacist rallies.” No Democrats think that their party’s leadership endorsing a group that wears masks and acts like brown shirts deserves criticism?
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but most of the news outlets reporting that a high ranking official of the Democratic Party advocated violence and a domestic terrorist group were among the so-called conservative press. The New York Times, for example, did not view this as news fit to print, since, I surmise, it might tip off the public prior to the 2018 elections that there is, in John Dean’s words, a cancer growing on the Democratic Party. One of many, in fact.
The Washington Post did run a short AP story on the photo yesterday. The headline was “Ellison tweet on Antifa handbook and Trump draws criticism.” A responsible headline would have been “Deputy Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Endorses Antifa.” The criticism isn’t the news. The implicit endorsement of violence is, and the headline doesn’t communicate that.
The Post—currently being celebrated in a major Hollywood movie!-— tells us that Democracy Dies in Darkness, and one of the ways democracy dies is when voters don’t know that a major political party’s leadership endorses fascist tactics and the intimidation of opposing views.
Is the DNC going to take any disciplinary action against Ellison? I doubt it very much. So far, no other Democratic leaders have spoken out against the photo. This is, inch by inch, increasingly what the Democratic Party is becoming. Its leaders endorsed the anarchic Occupy Movement as well as the racist and divisive Black Lives Matter. Now the deputy chair of the DNC smilingly poses with a how-to-beat-up conservatives book for his Twitter followers. That isn’t just a dog whistle, it’s a dog trombone.
And the mainstream news media does everything it can to make certain that Americans who would be alarmed and disgusted by this don’t know about it.
Hey, did you read about what “Fire and Fury”says Trump said?
[NOTE: This story upset me sufficiently that I initially published it without a headline, only the second time I’ve done that. Of course, I’ve also had enough cold medicine to knock out a Woolly Mammoth…]
Ethics Alarms 
Democrats inciting and encouraging insurrection?
Nothing new there.
Good point. So it isn’t news. I stand corrected.
Can’t wait for the spin.
Then again, I’d guess Ellison didn’t read the ACA either but endorsed it…
I am growing increasingly convinced that the world would be better off without Twitter. I can’t stand Trump vomiting through his thumbs, and Ellison isn’t much better in this instance. I also abhor the degradation of grammar, spelling, complete sentences, and coherent thought that I see in all the tweets make news. Worse, since those are the tweets that make the news, how awful are the ones that lurk in shadows, with only a few hundred followers? I don’t think reading a tweet should be an exercise of mental gymnastics, trying to determine if someone missed a crucial word, suffered from autocorrect, or simply doesn’t know how to channel thoughts into intelligible language.
Would the missing ‘s’ in ‘strikes’ have pushed him over the Twitter limit? Is he saying the book does strike fear, should strike fear, or will strike fear in the heart of Donald Trump? Is he affecting an accent? (This is what happens when you mix a mathematician with proper English…)
Frankly, without any further background on this message, all I would say is that Ellison is poking at Trump, in the manner that I might poke at my sister by saying how, at our local bookstore, I came across the latest book by Ann Coulter. It doesn’t mean I read it, and it doesn’t even mean I endorse it, but it does mean I think it will provoke a reaction.
My analysis is he’s acting in a juvenile, unprofessional manner unbecoming of his office, made all the more so by broadcasting his actions to the world.
“At (bookstore) and just found the book that strike fear in the heart of (Donald Trump)”
I mean… Fake News. When Trump feels threatened by something, he goes on a 20 part tirade about it, attempting to scorch and salt the earth it exists on. But more than that… How… Juvenile. I know that shouldn’t bother me in this insane new era where the POTUS is comparing nuclear button sizes with the leadership of North Korea, but “my enemies are afraid of a paperback book he probably doesn’t even know exists”? 2010 me wants his saner world back, please.
He’s not talking about the book, though. Do you really think that? He’s saying that the antifa should strike fear into Trump, because 1) he’s a fascist and 2) we’re coming to get you, and you should be afraid of us.
It’s not about a book.
I think it would be… logically inconsistent of me to point out that Nazis are a fringe movement, and their relative importance and reach should not be overstated, and then get really excited over a fringe movement with a relatively small movement with almost no importance or reach.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re stupid, petty, vapid and violent, and that’s an awful way to go through life. Every time they throw a brick, then need to be arrested. But I probably have more to fear from my excessive consumption of bacon than Trump does from Antifa.
Agreed. But they managed to provoke an impeachment vote because Trump dared to say that there wasn’t any moral superiority between the white nationalists and the hooded thugs who attacked them and who sparked a riot.
What WE should fear is a major party led by people who approve of the group, not the thugs themselves.
You should read what their apologists write.
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/inthesetimes/drawing_equivalencies_between_fascists_and_anti_fascists_is_not_just_wrong8212its_dangerous/#comment-3688744898
Way more relevant though when the leader of the Democrat party endorses them and their conduct.
Unfortunately the leader of our country also endorses violent conduct against his opponents.
Not a rationalization. A lament that there is no sane party in the US today.
Which I should have figured out in 2016.
This is why we have President Trump. This is why we almost had Senator Roy Moore.
Ellison may think he is sticking it to Trump, but what he is really doing is reminding people like me that Kurt Schlichter is right.
I’ll remember this. I’ll remember how their response to Milo Yiannopoulos was to riot. I’ll remember how they kept Ann Coulter from speaking.
If his only response to the arguments and words of Milo and Ann are to sucker-punch their supporters – just how ideologically bankrupt is he?
I will remember Keith Ellison’s failure to master basic grammar.
Guide to fighting fascism by Antifa? It could have just been one sentence: “Act like a fascist.”
I’ve lost my ability to be troubled by this. It’s just a reality that the news media is protecting Democrats and doing everything they can to harm Republicans. No doubt it is a violation of every ethical maxim of their profession, but frankly, it is what it is. Thanks for pointing it out, but I confess numbness.
The question is, can the media continue to do this credibly forever? At some point, all this stuff is going to seep gradually into the consciousness of America. Whither then go the Democrats, who have defiled themselves so completely? I know the media will try to prop them up, but can this really succeed forever? I wonder.
It has been said that the “Big Lie” will come to be believed by everyone, if properly executed, but even if that was true in the days of World War II, I rather doubt it’s true today. Eventually, maybe not soon enough, but eventually, this will hurt the Democrats.
I know that there will always be clueless, reason-rejecting “My feelz are all that matters” folks in our republic. It’s a fact of life. I can only hope, perhaps in vain, that they haven’t completely disabled their ethics alarms. As troubling as this is, I still hope that it will blot the Democrat’s collective copybooks to the point of serious electoral damage. It’s only what they deserve, and karma has often shown itself to be a bitch.
I’m going to repeat what I just posted 3 days ago on Ethics Alarms on Zoltar Speak’s COTD thread.
I consider ANTIFA far more dangerous. than any of the NAZI / far right / white supremacists. Zoltar Speaks nailed the ranking on the list perfectly. Through cognitive dissonance, ANTIFA advocates and participates in #5 – actual physical violence – in response to #2 – “Hate speech”. In their mind, they reversed the two in ranking.
As if that were not bad enough, those on the right that are not actual racists distance themselves from the extremists. The left seems to embrace the extremists on their side and sees no issue with their behavior.
We don’t have to worry about right wing extremists taking over social media, education, Hollywood, corporate HR departments and so on. But the radical leftists are nearly complete in their coup to do just that.
I bolded the part that this blog entry is a perfect example. No one on the left will distance themselves from ANTIFA’s behavior. This is another example of left wing cognitive dissonance. The right is tarred with “NAZI”, “Fascist”, “Racist”, “Xenophobic” and many other slurs, where the left attempts to associate the badly behaving extremists of the far right. The majority of those on the right want nothing to do with the extremists. Then you have ANTIFA who is actually violent, actually FASCIST in their conduct where they attempt to intimidate their political opponents through illegal conduct. Does the left attempt to distance themselves from ANTIFA? Nope. Because the illegal, intimidating conduct is aimed at their opponents they are silent. They’re displaying broken ethics alarms.
Where’s Chris?
Ellison is an embarrassment, and on top of the fact that his actions in promoting Antifa would be unethical regardless of who he was, the fact that he’s endorsing a violent movement while being the only Muslim congressman adds an extra layer of irresponsibility here.
Yeah, should I have mentioned that? I clutched. He should be held to no different a standard than any Congress member because of his religion, but you would think he would be a bit extra careful in this regard.
Soviet disinformation is still influential in mainstream leftist circles. Beginning after WWII, the Soviets began a campaign to marginalize anyone (beginning with Eastern European church leaders) who had opposed both Nazis and Communists during the war. This was done by creating a narrative that ignored or muddied what these people did against the Nazis, and emphasized what they did against Communists, and by then sending it out via compliant leftist media in the West. In this world, anyone who opposes a Communist is a Fascist and any anti-Fascist is good.
Humpty Dumpty is very unlikely able to be put back together again.
Their real goal is to behave like thugs toward the goal undoing the rule of law and Constitution as well as operate with the cover of the news media’s fear mongering and accusations in order to neutralize people who would otherwise be inclined to legitimately fight them. After all to fight them would mean you are a racist, fascist, hater. And since nice people don’t want to be called those things, enough will sit idly by as they and their neighbors’ rights evaporate.
It’s a war without the persistent, wide spread, overt violence. But make no mistake, it is a war.