Police-tolerated Attack on Michelle Malkin Has Troubling Historical Precedents
Login to Listen
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

There are many sad ironies to the Sunday assault on conservative commentator Michelle Malkin. First is that she was in Denver to speak at a pro-police rally, yet the police present had orders preventing them from protecting her. There’s also how the incident is yet another example of “college culture,” with its accosting of conservative speakers, bleeding into the wider society.

Then there’s this: If asked, “What group attacks political opponents in the street in order to silence them?” the only way to know the answer is ANTIFA/BLM and not Hitler’s Brownshirts is the question’s present tense.

For some background, Malkin was speaking at the 6th Annual Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, which was meant to be “family friendly.” The “event was underway at Civic Center Park when BLM activists and others wearing black-bloc and armed with collapsible batons — Malkin identified them online as Antifa — crashed the stage,” reports BPR.

{modulepos inner_text_ad}

“Malkin can be heard in the video of the attack screaming at the violent mob to get back” (picture of a terrified Malkin below), the site continues. “Not mincing words, she called the woman attacking them ‘b*tches’ in a tweet, and said she was sprayed in the face with aerosol string and another man was beaten with a longboard.”

Here is a video of the incident Malkin tweeted out to her 2.2 million followers (warning: coarse language):

Then there’s the following video, which reveals more of what transpired (the situation heats up at 1:33):

The good news is that, as best I know, no one required hospitalization. Yet this is perhaps ideal from the MLM thugs’ standpoint: They suppressed dissent by preventing Malkin from speaking — she ultimately was ushered away — without incurring a serious assault charge.

Anyone conversant with history knows where this comes from; anyone who can project the lines knows where it’s going. The more naïve once remarked that politically correct college snowflakes would be in for “a shock” upon entering the “real world,” only to be shocked when these social-justice warriors brought college into the “real world” (newsflash: college is part of the “real world,” which is why these things matter).

Thus did “cancel culture” intensify in corporate America, silencing millions of voices via career-destruction threats. And thus do we see attacks on conservative speakers — long a problem on college campuses — now being launched beyond them to silence the voices that cancel culture can’t.

Is this surprising? Just as the apocryphal saying informs that today’s school teaching is tomorrow’s politics, the college-activism tactics of one generation become the societal-activism tactics of the next. Youth long mistaught will yield a land unrest-fraught.

It’s a red flag when colleges cultivate such barbarism, but you’re in the red zone when it metastasizes into the wider society. Consider history: Adolf Hitler’s SA — also known as “Brownshirts” or “storm troopers” — would also intimidate and assault political opponents, aided by media propaganda (as ANTIFA and BLM are today). This began in the 1920s, and by mid-1933 the Nazis were in power.

This was only possible because the weak Weimar Republic could not or would not ensure domestic tranquility, which gave the mobs free rein. Our mobs are likewise enabled by morally and intellectually weak politicians and business leaders. Just consider how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently shrugged off mob action by saying, “People will do what people will do.”

This phenomenon was evident in the Malkin affair, as the police were issued a “retreat order” (radio interview below).

This is no surprise, though, given that Denver police chief Paul Pazen appears sympathetic to mob miscreants, as the video below showing him in a phalanx with them indicates.

This has become common in leftist jurisdictions, too, as I reported here and here. In fact, a Virginia mother besieged by a mob last month was actually told by a police dispatcher, “We can’t do anything, ma’am.…We would suggest you call up city hall to let them know about your frustrations.”

The bottom line is that an America long “demoralized” — which refers to the undermining of a nation’s morals — is now being destabilized. Do note that these phenomena, demoralization and destabilization, are the first two stages of communist subversion, as outlined by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov.

The next stage is “crisis” — also known as revolution.

Whether matters degenerate to that point is up to us. But an eternal truth is relevant here given our Left’s irrational, uncompromising nature. To wit: People who can’t be reasoned with can only be fought.

Conservatives should expect violence from the Left and be ready to defend themselves. For as long as the leftists’ violence continues being rewarded and effective, it will only increase.

Image from rally: YouTube video by Michelle Malkin

Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.