My article from the Dec. 25, 2014 issue of FrontPage:
Backlash Against de Blasio
By Matthew Vadum
Cop-bashing New York mayor Bill de Blasio seems genuinely surprised at the ferocious backlash against him in light of the execution-style weekend killing of two local cops.
After spending the past year in office attacking police, the mayor is now scrambling to put the pin back into the grenade he threw into the local body politic. His crusade against the police goes back at least to his election campaign last year when he caustically criticized then-mayor Michael Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policy.
De Blasio is appealing for calm and for a temporary suspension of the ugly anti-police protests his incendiary rhetoric has spawned.
Strangely, this far-left radical who, like his ally in the White House never puts politics aside for the benefit of the community, is now asking New Yorkers to do precisely that.
So far the New York Police Department isn’t in a mood to forgive de Blasio who has teamed up with racial arsonist Al Sharpton to lay waste to what’s left of civil society in the Big Apple. Before the two murders Sharpton had been leading marches where the demonstrators chanted, “What do we want? Dead cops.”
Taking cues from the Westboro Baptist Church, Sharpton followers showed up at one cop memorial service chanting and heckling the mourners.
NYPD union leaders have asked de Blasio to skip police funerals and a large gathering of cops turned their backs on the mayor as he showed up Saturday at the Brooklyn hospital where the lifeless bodies of officers Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, had been taken after they were shot dead by an adherent of the Religion of Peace.
The shooter, Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, was a Muslim apparently upset at what he believed were the racist killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and Eric Garner in Staten Island. He indicated he was planning to kill “pigs,” and as Robert Spencer notes, “Brinsley’s Facebook page featured a photo of the Qur’an open to the eighth chapter, where Allah exhorts the believers to ‘strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah‘ (8:60).“
Since de Blasio was sworn in last New Year’s Day, New Yorkers have, in fits and starts, begun to realize that they elected a dangerously erratic Sandinista-loving radical as mayor. Although de Blasio’s reaction to the cop murders strikes many in the punditry as incompetent, they are being charitable. De Blasio’s behavior reflects his pathological, hateful, profoundly anti-American ideology. He can’t conceal his contempt for those whose job it is to promote law and order.
This is what happens when a small-c communist becomes mayor of the nation’s greatest metropolis.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who helped turn New York from a crime-infested urban jungle into the relatively crime-free city his successors inherited, said it was “shameful” for politicians to drive a wedge between police and the communities they serve.
“Police misconduct is a minor part of the problem. Community, serious violent crime is a much bigger part of the problem,” Giuliani said.
“The people who are saving black lives in the city are [you] the New York City Police Department. I’m not doing it. President Obama’s not doing it. Mayor De Blasio’s not doing it. He’s not out at night walking down housing developments and trying to save children from being killed. Police officers are doing the most, right now, in these very very poor communities and sometimes they’re white communities, but where there are black communities and police officers are doing the most to save the children that are at greatest risk. The politicians with this propaganda separating the community from the police, are doing something that’s shameful and they have to stop doing that. The vast majority of police want to help and the politicians’ rhetoric should reflect the truth, not propaganda.”
But de Blasio isn’t anything like Giuliani or even like Bloomberg, his immediate predecessor, a micromanaging Big Gulp-grabber who now seems like an exemplar of common sense compared to the current mayor.
De Blasio is in many ways President Obama’s “mini me,” except unlike Obama, he has loud critics in the media who for the most part has not been giving him a free ride.
But de Blasio hasn’t generated all of this racial hostility and antipathy toward cops on his own. He’s had a lot of help from President Obama who has been trying to kickstart a wave of civil unrest since even before he took office. The president’s policy of trying to foment violent civil unrest is finally paying dividends.
Attacking the police, as Obama has been doing for years, isn’t exactly a courageous act. The police are easy targets for leftist agitators. Riling up minorities over real and imagined abuses is child’s play. Even Al Sharpton can do it.
On the 2008 campaign trail, the president belittled small town Americans, implying they were racist, a time-honored leftist smear of conservatives. “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.“
Not too long after his inauguration in 2009 the new president mocked Cambridge, Mass. police by saying they “acted stupidly” by arresting Obama’s close personal friend, black liberal academic Henry Louis Gates Jr. This led to the seemingly pointless public relations event known as the so-called beer summit between James Crowley (the arresting officer), Gates, and Obama. There was never any evidence that Gates’s arrest had anything to do with his skin color. Arrester and arrestee agreed to disagree yet Obama succeeded in scoring points with his radical base.
Campaigning in 2010, Obama demonized non-Latinos.
“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us’ — if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election — then I think it’s going to be harder. And that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2nd.”
The same year he invoked Rosa Parks and segregation in order to ridicule Republicans. “We don’t mind the Republicans joining us,” Obama told the faithful. “They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”
In 2012 Obama suggested if he failed to win reelection minorities would suffer.
“The notion that we’re all in this together, that we look out for one another–that’s at stake in this election,” he said. “Don’t take my word for it. Watch some of these [Republican] debates that have been going on up in New Hampshire.” Later that year he added Republicans “want to take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.”
In 2012 he needlessly inserted race into the Trayvon Martin saga by saying, “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.“ Although the shooter who was eventually acquitted, so-called white Hispanic George Zimmerman, wasn’t a police officer, he was an authority figure of sorts as a neighborhood watch volunteer.
Working with Sharpton, the Obama administration sicced the left-wing community organizers of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service (CRS) on the unsuspecting people of Sanford, Fla. after the death of Martin. Evidence established that Martin attacked Zimmerman, who avoided legal liability because he acted in self-defense.
Even after the acquittal Obama insisted on meddling. He said that “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” and gave yet another lecture on race.
Obama vigorously milked the August death of Michael Brown at the hands of white Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson.
Brown, an 18-year-old black male, was killed after he beat Wilson and tried to grab his handgun. Brown’s defenders characterize him as a gentle giant even though a few minutes earlier he was captured on video committing a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store, roughing up a much smaller clerk in the process.
At autopsy Brown’s height was 6′ 5″ and his weight was 289 lbs. The autopsy results were consistent with witness accounts that Brown reached for Wilson’s gun during their fateful altercation.
Obama dishonored his country by giving a speech at the United Nations citing Brown’s killing as something Americans should be ashamed of. After the grand jury refused to indict Wilson, Obama ramped up his rhetoric, claiming that racism is deeply rooted in American society.
A major difference between de Blasio and Obama is that the mayor doesn’t have the president’s silver tongue. Serious calls for de Blasio’s ouster are now coming from civic leaders throughout New York.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for de Blasio to resign. Radical leftists rarely give up power without a fight.