The Left's Turn Toward Violence and Why It Matters

Mark A. LeVine, over at History News Network, points out a disturbing shift in strategy taking place on the Left. Even he, a confirmed Lefty, is upset about it. You see, he is a peacenik and the new direction is about promoting, not ending, violence. He notes:

a very disturbing trend within the Left that has emerged the last few years, and which has come to a head with the latest war: Many leaders of the movement are moving away from the commitment to non-violence that defined the struggle against the Vietnam War and the vast majority of protests against corporate globalization and the invasion of Iraq, and towards embracing violent resistance (think the Red Brigade, Bader Meinhof Gang or the Weather Underground) as a viable, and even the best way to check the capitalist war machine.

I saw the first glimmers of the change right after the US invasion, when senior members of the biggest anti-war coalition in the US told me that “it's all America now” and that the movement had to shift from anti-war to anti-imperialism as its focus. It's hard to endorse violence when you're anti-war, but if you're anti-imperialist there's a long history of violent struggles to “inspire” you (although supporters of this path seem to forget the most successful anti-imperialist struggles, such as Gandhi's in India and Mandela's in South Africa, were almost entirely non-violent, while others, like Algeria or Vietnam, produced corrupt and violent regimes in their wakes).

The situation was worse a year later, when Italian peace activists Simona Toretta and Simona Pari, whose brave commitment to non-violence and grass roots peace building I saw firsthand during my time in Iraq, were kidnapped by insurgents. At the very moment they were being threatened with beheading, leading anti-war activists attended a Hezbollah sponsored conference in Beirut where they declared the organization to be the best model of resistance against the New World Order, and proclaimed their support for the very Iraqi resistance that was threatening to kill their comrades.

Read it here.

At least the lines of conflict are beginning to come into focus and the threat from the left is becoming more apparent, even to wooly-headed people like Professor LeVine. The combination of a commitment to violence and waxing political influence cannot be ignored.

As the Left spins in ever more eccentric, and dangerous orbits, it is, as the Lieberman loss shows, gaining a serious foothold in one of the nation's major political parties -- one that will allow it to influence policy.

I cannot view these developments with equanimity. The moral idiocy of those who would ally with the most violent jihadis in order to weaken the West is too stupendous for me to comprehend. I only know that they must be fought, with every fiber of our being they must be fought, for they are no better than the mad, death-worshipping monsters whose cause they support.

Professor LeVine asks, "Has the Left Gone Mad?" My response would be that the Left has always been more than a bit nutty, but now their lunacy can no longer be indulged. The difference is between the natterings of the village eccentric and the actions of those who would abet a murder. So long as the lefties confined themselves to impotent posturing at the MLA convention and such silliness, they could be tolerated, but active support for violent jihadi movements cannot be allowed.