Snipers V. Mobsters

Roadkill recently made an interesting comment about Left and Right Wing violence. The WTO climate change summit is melting down in Copenhagen and it didn't end up like the "Battle in Seattle" that erupted at the WTO conference a decade ago. RK's point is well taken.

The Left made a lot of noise about the TEA Party and the guns its members were legally bringing to rallies. There have been cops killed, a variety of lone-nut-job killings this year and a variety of examples of violent episodes against minorities. But then again, in Copenhagen there have been the protesters going head-to-head with the police in riot gear...like we saw at the 2008 GOP convention in St. Paul.

Road Kill thinks there is a lack of reporting on the violence coming from the Left and an over-emphasis of potential violence on the Right. I got no clue as to what is being reported on "mainstream media" and cable news...I don't watch either...I don't have cable or satellite TV. I daily try to read a couple of newspapers -- St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Wall Street Journal. I'll check out Business Week, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, Unte Reader, Yoga Journal and a few other periodicals at my local library. I download a variety of pod casts from Left, Right and Center sights and listen to them on the MP3 player in my car. I don't feel qualified to weigh the balance scales of reporting of Right and Left violence. However, I can find examples of the reporting on both ends of the ideological media spectrum.
That said, I've been thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that the type of violence erupting from the Left and Right may reflect the ideological ideals of the two sides. I see much of the Right violence being pigeoned holed into the single-gun type. Since the Right emphasizes the "individual," won't you expect that type of "individualist" violence? On the Left we see the collective violence of protesters en mass against the police in riot gear. This types of violence often films well and happens around gathering like WTO conferences and political conventions. When things go astray at the mob protests of the Left, the "bad apple" excuse generally gets dragged out. Evidently, the 99 percent of those protesters were there to put flowers in gun barrels.

Of course, the extreme Left likes to do individual things like Earth First tree spiking and PETA lab destructions. Save the trees and lab rats and to hell with the humans!

Just a few thoughts on Roadkill's comments. Below are some pictures and thoughts related to Roadkill's comments and my thoughts...

"If you think the conservative "Tea Party" movement is daunting, take a look at a new report issued by the Department of Homeland Security that says right-wing extremism is on the rise throughout the country.

In the report officials warn that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country's first black president to recruit new members to their cause..."

Source: Huffington Post

Meanwhile, this week in Copenhagen, police are dealing with the violence of left-wing extremists:


"By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent "economic downturn" and the "general state of the economy" for stoking "right-wing extremism." One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report -- which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified "resurgence in right-wing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity" is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and...the historical presidential election."

Michelle Milikin
Conservative blogger


"Why? Well, it's a document that discusses the potential threats that we can expect from "rightwing extremists" (no hyphen, for some reason) in the coming months; there's the usual stuff about guns, illegal immigration, and disgruntled war veterans, plus the new wrinkle of our having elected an African-American President. The report concludes, unsurprisingly, that we have to worry more about "lone wolves and small terrorist cells" than anything else."

Moe Lane
RedState.com

"...the media likes to focus on violence in protest, but I think what’s useful about this to know is that it’s a reflection of the silencing of civil society’s voice that’s happening, that the Danish government is so intense on cracking down and silencing critics of the talks that they’re even resorting to pushing violence on very explicitly nonviolent protesters..."

Joshua Kahn Russell
Rainforest Action Network organizer
on Copenhagen protest