Shadow of Political Violence Still Dogging Democrats

Has one side of the political divide finally accepted and normalized direct physical assault on its opponents?

The left’s “No Kings” protests went off without any violence or vandalism to speak of, which probably surprised a lot of Americans. That was a good thing. Peaceful protest is part of the fabric of this country, not to mention a constitutionally protected right. Still, the Democratic Party has a political violence problem. A couple of candidates running under its banner in consequential upcoming elections have been caught out by their own past communications, in which they flirted with violent fantasies aimed at political opponents. There’s a big red flag here – and it’s not just the extreme nature of such comments that should concern everyone.

Virginia Democratic Attorney General candidate Jay Jones in 2022 had some pretty awful things to say about then-Speaker of the Virginia House, Republican Todd Gilbert, his wife, and children. In texts to Republican State Delegate Carrie Coyner, Jones, who had recently resigned his office as a state delegate, wrote:

“Three people, two bullets

Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot

Gilbert gets two bullets to the head

Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time”

Some Things Just Can’t Be Walked Back

“Jay, please stop,” Coyner replied. Jones has issued an apology, but only after the text messages surfaced. How much does such an apology really mean anyway? Jones didn’t just throw out some flippant remark. He took the time in a text message to not once but twice state that Gilbert was more deserving of a bullet to the head than either Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot, the Cambodian socialist revolutionary who is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of up to three million of his own people after he came to power.

It is hard to buy any sincerity in an apology for that level of vitriol.

In a separate exchange, Jones also wished that the Gilberts’ children, whom he described as “little fascists,” would die in their parents’ arms.

Then there’s Graham Platner, who is running as a Democrat for a Maine Senate seat. In 2018, Platner posted on the Reddit social media platform that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.” He said if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”

The obvious irony in the comments from both Platner and Jones is their party’s long-standing efforts to restrict Second Amendment rights. The political left frequently scoffs at conservatives for pointing out that America’s traditionally permissive attitude toward gun ownership is rooted in the belief that citizens can and should, if necessary, use arms to defend themselves against government tyranny. Here’s a Democrat candidate for office expressing that exact sentiment.

Platner has since deleted all his Reddit posts, in which he railed against the police and described himself as a communist.

Despite his clear penchant for political violence, Platner, who served in the Marine Corps and is allegedly a combat veteran, has tried to wriggle out of a potential scandal. In a statement to Politico, he said:

“As I told CNN, I was f—king around on the internet at a time when I felt lost and very disillusioned with our government who sent me overseas to watch my friends die. I made dumb jokes and picked fights. But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired sh – poster.”

Is Platner being honest now? It is possible. Then again, has he really gone from an avowed communist who belonged to a socialist subreddit to “of course I’m not a socialist”? Or is that just a ruse to get elected? Has he gone from seemingly certain that political violence is necessary to effect change to no longer believing that? And playing the sympathy card by blaming the government for sending him to a conflict zone is especially weak sauce. Those of us who have seen combat understand that you can’t sign up and then complain about being sent into combat. That is the job, after all. If you join the military just for the benefits – especially a boots-on-the-ground fighting force like the Marine Corps – then you have no business being there.

Normalizing Political Violence

The previously mentioned big red flag in all of this is that Democrat officeholders are dancing around the remarks made by Jones and Platner. No calls from that side of the aisle for either man to drop out of their respective races. Not even any direct and unequivocal condemnations of their remarks. Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who hopes to be Virginia’s next governor, is still endorsing Jones.

What does this say about the current state of the Democratic Party? The political left has now spent so many years calling conservatives and Republicans fascists, Nazis, and bigots who are out to destroy democracy that it seems elected Democrats have convinced themselves these insane accusations are accurate. That means they no longer feel the need to condemn calls for political violence against such evil opponents. To leftists, the ends always justify the means, and if political violence is the means to achieve their desired ends – an America without those they have bizarrely convinced themselves are fascists – then no condemnation of that violence is necessary, beyond some general platitudes for the media to quote.

America truly has come to an inflection point in political discourse – or lack thereof. It may have taken the murder of Charlie Kirk to wake everyone up to that reality. America is not new to political violence, but it is new to that violence being tacitly – or perhaps openly – accepted by one side of the political divide. And when one side normalizes it, the other side, for the sake of its own survival, will surely follow suit, sooner rather than later.