The Democratic National Committee’s deputy chairman essentially endorsed the violent anarchists and communists of the subversive Antifa movement during a stop at a bookstore this week.
It is not every day that a top official of one of America’s two major political parties throws his lot in with an umbrella group that openly sides with our enemies in North Korea and seeks the violent overthrow of the United States government. It is a sign of just how radical Democrats became in the Obama era. Nowadays those who urge the extinguishing of American democracy and the murder of police officers are considered legitimate activists.
Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is part of this. Ellison is an admirer of convicted cop killer and leftist folk hero Mumia Abu Jamal as well as a former co-chairman of the Communist-linked Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Ellison, an in-your-face Muslim sympathetic to jihad, implicitly expressed support for the use of violence against President Trump in a tweet as he posed for a selfie with the cover of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, by Mark Bray.
“At @MoonPalaceBooks and I just found the book that strike [sic] fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump[,]” the DNC official tweeted Wednesday afternoon from Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, Minn. At press time the next day the tweet had received 9,261 likes and 2,539 retweets.
Ellison’s embrace of Antifa runs counter to statements House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made in August last year during a spate of Antifa violence in her home state.
“Our democracy has no room for inciting violence or endangering the public, no matter the ideology of those who commit such acts,” Pelosi said. “The violent actions of people calling themselves Antifa in Berkeley this weekend deserve unequivocal condemnation, and the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted.”
“In California, as across all of our great nation, we have deep reverence for the Constitutional right to peaceful dissent and free speech,” she said at the time. “Non-violence is fundamental to that right. Let us use this sad event to reaffirm that we must never fight hate with hate, and to remember the values of peace, openness and justice that represent the best of America.”
But most on the activist Left don’t take Pelosi seriously. They think she said what was politically expedient in the circumstances. They support Antifa with all their hearts and see Ellison as a courageous truth-teller.
Remember that this is the party that officially endorsed the violent, America-hating Black Lives Matter movement whose radical left-wing members accuse police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and brutality against black suspects.
In 2015 hundreds of delegates at the Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis approved a resolution that accuses American police of “extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.” In other words, since 2015 it has been official Democratic Party policy that there are roving death squads manned by police officers who specifically stalk and execute without trial black men, women, and children across America.
And so, unsurprisingly, there has been no outcry on the Left for Ellison to disavow Antifa, the self-styled anti-fascists who embrace fascist tactics and have gained new prominence in the post-Obama era. Like their forerunners, the Third Reich’s Sturmabteilung (SA), they use violence to intimidate political opponents and break up their meetings and rallies.
Author Mark Bray is a lecturer at Dartmouth College who describes himself as “a political organizer and historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe.” In addition to Antifa, he is author of the 2013 book, Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street, and was a spokesman for the pro-cop-killing Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. Last year on C-SPAN he justified Antifa’s violence by labeling it “preemptive self-defense.”
Amazingly enough in this era of political correctness, Bray’s school did not stand behind him. Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon condemned Bray for “supporting violent protest” which was “contrary to Dartmouth values.”
Ellison’s anti-Americanism and radicalism are nothing new, but they take on added importance now that he is second-in-command at the DNC. Activists and media types look to him. Ellison was a longtime fringe-dweller before he became a Democrat office-holder. He was a member of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. He described Farrakhan as “a role model for black youth,” “not an anti-Semite,” and “a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world.”
Ellison has links to Hamas. He is also a regular at events sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), two Muslim Brotherhood front groups the Department of Justice has identified as co-conspirators in terrorism financing schemes benefiting Hamas. It is also worth noting that in 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS), another Muslim Brotherhood Front group, to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
When Ellison won his first congressional election on Nov. 7, 2006, at his victory party several of his supporters shouted “Allahu Akbar!” which is the traditional battle cry of jihadists.
Ellison’s support for Antifa ought to terrify patriotic Americans, and chances are, it will drive voters into the arms of the Republican Party.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared first at FrontPageMag on Jan. 5, 2018.