The New Republic’s Brian Beutler has found Rudy Giuliani, et al guilty of “reckless rhetoric” in their remarks associating lefty politicians such as President Obama and New York mayor Bill de Blasio with last weekend’s murder of two NYPD officers.
In a Monday piece, Beutler stated that “on the radical fringe of the left…you might find the kind of revolutionary rhetoric that confirmed [cop-killer] Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s suspicions. But that’s not where conservatives went looking.”
Beutler asserted that it’s actually conservatives who “lionize fringe figures” (e.g., Cliven Bundy) whereas liberals don’t, and that “the irony is that in attempting to hold a mirror up to liberalism, Giuliani, [police union head Patrick] Lynch, and other likeminded critics became the only mainstream political figures in the country to serve up reckless rhetoric since Michael Brown was killed four months ago.”
From Beutler’s piece (emphasis added):
After Jerad and Amanda Miller killed two police officers and a civilian in Las Vegas this past June, we learned…[that] Jerad was a Cliven Bundy acolyte, but got kicked out of Bundy’s mini-militia for being a convicted felon. He was a Benghazi conspiracy theorist who hated the Affordable Care Act, but he’d also come to believe that law enforcement and IRS officers were agents of a fascist takeover of the country…
Brinsley had a criminal past and mental illness. He had convinced himself that police officers in America were unappointed executioners, putting down young black men without remorse, and that black men should get revenge for deadly police misconduct…
If your antipathy to government assistance or gun regulation metastasizes into a paranoid conviction that government agents will enter your home, confiscate your weapons, and imprison your family in FEMA camps, you might take preventive action. If your anger about racial disparities in the criminal justice system metastasizes into the belief that police officers are systematically murdering young black men, you might try to pick them off first.
But that’s where the implicit comparison conservatives drew between episodes like the Miller killings and the police assassinations in New York broke down. Or rather, when conservatives tried to bring politics into their argument, they had to dream up rhetorical analogies that don’t exist.
On the radical fringe of the left—in communist and anarchist propaganda—you might find the kind of revolutionary rhetoric that confirmed Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s suspicions. But that’s not where conservatives went looking…
…[de Blasio’s] big rhetorical faux pas was to admit that he’s taught his biracial son Dante to be “very careful” in encounters with law enforcement; to reveal himself to be a good parent, and restate a blindingly obvious fact about racial disparities in policing; and to say that the peaceful protesters—not the violent fringe—have a decent point.
Obama has expressed similar sympathies with peaceful protesters and black communities where distrust of law enforcement runs high. But he’s constantly prefaced those sympathies with severe condemnations of violence and stressed that the problems in these communities can be solved without radical change…
Liberal political leaders in America don’t lionize fringe figures. Republicans treated Cliven Bundy like a martyr until an embarrassingly predictable racist outburst made him politically radioactive. The right wing demands this kind of genuflection; the left does not.
When Obama or de Blasio or Al Sharpton says young black men should consider Second Amendment remedies to their Fifth Amendment grievances, then we can condemn liberals for engaging in irresponsible rhetoric. The irony is that in attempting to hold a mirror up to liberalism, Giuliani, Lynch, and other likeminded critics became the only mainstream political figures in the country to serve up reckless rhetoric since Michael Brown was killed four months ago.
