On Tuesday night, Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC’s All In, railed against far-right extremism, while ignoring recent far-left violence. The rant came just hours following the third shooting in Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Organized Protest Zone,” which has become a far-left extremist zone that has occupied blocks of the city, claiming to be independent from the United States.
Hayes argued that Antifa, and other far-left organizations were not going to cities across the country, when in fact, they have been seen taking down statues, looting, and rioting all over the nation, including Washington D.C. President Trump responded to the left-wing extremism, and Hayes mocked it:
The president predictably, you know getting along with this, heightening the tension, the fear threatening anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such federal property, like say pulling down a statue of a confederate traitor on public land with ten years in prison.
Hayes described the far-left violence in Washington D.C., but dismissed it because he agreed with the anti-Andrew Jackson sentiment of the crowd:
You might’ve seen that yesterday, in Lafayette Square, just outside the White House, U.S. Park police officers, in riot gear, pepper sprayed protesters who were attempting to topple statue of President Andrew Jackson. If you don’t remember Jackson; Jackson is the guy who ordered the violent ethnic cleansing of nearly 4,000 Native Americans in direct violation of a Supreme Court order not to.
The host forgot to mention that Andrew Jackson was the first president elected from the Democratic Party.
Later, Hayes began to go into his claims of far-right violence:
That said, there has been a real story of organized, concerted, planned terrorist violence undertaken and plotted, sometimes successfully, to take advantage of this moment. It is right wing violence. The genuine organized terror we have seen recently in this country is coming from white supremacists. When a sheriff's deputy in California was killed earlier this month, conservatives tried to tie the suspect to Antifa. As it turns out, the suspect, who’s also been charged in the shooting death of a federal security officer in Oakland, appears to be connected to far-right white supremacists fringe group called the boogaloo boys.
It cannot be stressed enough that these statements from Hayes came after many acts of violence and destruction from the far left. The destruction of statues of our nation’s founders, such as George Washington, were organized acts of vandalism from the left that Hayes completely dismissed. Instead Hayes found it more important to discuss a claim that white supremacists are rapidly planning violence, to distract is viewers from the acts of violence and vandalism that have been coming from the left on a daily basis.
Click "Expand" to read the full transcript:
MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes
06/23/2020
8:46:18 PM
CHRIS HAYES: The story the right has been telling about this moment about marauding anti-fascist mobs from Antifa, as the president calls them, coming to your town to cause mayhem, to start riots, to tear down your statues, to take everything you love and hold dear. The president predictably, you know getting along with this, heightening the tension, the fear threatening anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such federal property, like say pulling down a stature of a confederate traitor on public land with ten years in prison.
You might’ve seen that yesterday, in Lafayette Square, just outside the White House, U.S. Park police officers, in riot gear, pepper sprayed protesters who were attempting to topple statue of President Andrew Jackson. If you don’t remember Jackson; Jackson is the guy who ordered the violent ethnic cleansing of nearly 4,000 Native Americans in direct violation of a Supreme Court order not to. Now that statue did not come down in the end. While statues have come down across America, the country is not being overrun. Across the country, people in 41 cities and towns were so scared by false rumors spread on social media saying that Antifa was coming to their area, we started seeing some amazing images like these from Washington state, showing white men in tactical gear, carrying long guns, ready to defend their local Ross Dress for Less and Hobby Lobby from the Antifa mob.
Of course, the mobs never showed up, because they were never coming. Antifa does not even really exist as a coherent organization in any traditional sense, certainly not in the way the president and right wing imagine. That said, there has been a real story of organized, concerted, planned terrorist violence undertaken and plotted, sometimes successfully, to take advantage of this moment. It is right wing violence. The genuine organized terror we have seen recently in this country is coming from white supremacists. When a sheriff's deputy in California was killed earlier this month, conservatives tried to tie the suspect to Antifa. As it turns out, the suspect, who’s also been charged in the shooting death of a federal security officer in Oakland, appears to be connected to far-right white supremacists fringe group called the boogaloo boys.
