Late liberal icon Daniel Patrick Moynihan once noted, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” Today’s leftists clearly disagree, though. Exhibit A is left-wing pundit Juan Williams, who, after being confronted with examples of left-wing violence and finding himself struggling to cite conservative ones, mentioned a non-violent constitutionalist organization instead: The John Birch Society
Greg Gutfeld pointed out that virtually all today’s violence emanates from the Left.
The brain-cramp blurt occurred on the Thursday edition of the Fox News show The Five during a discussion of political violence. After talking about Democrat politicians who’ve recently issued rabble-rousing comments, host Greg Gutfeld pointed out that virtually all today’s violence emanates from the Left. He mentioned that on the Right there’s no equivalent to Occupy Wall Street, the Steve Scalise shooting, mobs chasing people from restaurants, or Netflix employees harassing media figures (Brian Kilmeade).
Leaping to the Left’s defense, Williams then exclaimed, “What kind of one-sided presentation is this? This is the guy (Trump) who was at rallies this week, and he’s got the crowd yelling, ‘Lock her up!’ — not about Hillary; it was Dianne Feinstein” (video below).
There is no equivalence, of course. Whether or not Feinstein should be “locked up,” the Trump crowd was calling for action by law enforcement. In contrast, leftists such as Hillary Clinton, Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are either wittingly or unwittingly encouraging mob action.
Williams really went off the rails a bit later, however, after Gutfeld exclaimed that the Left has “the Weather Underground, the SLA, the Black Panthers, the Manson family, Antifa — Republicans have nothing like that!” Struggling for a retort, Williams said, “You have white nationalists, you have the kla… — how about the John Birch Society back the…?”
Much as with the fake “right-wing” hate crimes periodically in the news, Williams’ risible answer evidences how relatively peaceful conservatives actually are. The heyday of the KKK (a Democrat group, mind you) was the 1920s; today the organization is down to just a few thousand members, 10 percent of whom are said to be FBI informants. And it hasn’t factored notably into the violence statistics in ages.
But mentioning the JBS was a true “what’s wrong with this picture” moment, much as when radio host Michael Savage was placed on the U.K. government’s “banned from Britain” list along with terrorists and criminals. Let’s be clear:
The JBS, which is marking its 60th anniversary in December, has a stellar record of peaceful, lawful, patriotic, educational activity. Six decades of heroic, non-violent perseverance in the face of constant vilification and slander by the Left, the media, and even by fake, timid, or misinformed conservatives. Over that time span of sixty years, hundreds of thousands of JBS members have honorably carried out the Society’s educational campaigns in cities, towns and rural communities in all fifty states. Nothing can be shown in that extensive record to even remotely justify Juan Williams’ defamatory remark comparing the JBS to Antifa, the Weather Underground, and other leftwing terrorists.
In reality, the JBS advocates faith, family, and freedom and is defined by constitutionalism. Unlike those who just talk a good game (most), however, the organization actually understands the Constitution.
Moreover, the JBS has never either explicitly or implicitly advocated violence; what’s more, its founder, Robert Welch, even discouraged protests because he knew such events could spiral out of control and could provide opportunities for agents provocateurs to discredit from within. Members of the KKK, Nazi Party, Communist Party, and other violent, racist, and anti-Semitic groups have always been refused membership, and JBS members are immediately expelled if they later join those subversive organizations, or if it is discovered that they had hid their involvement with those groups when they joined the JBS.
Also note that the JBS never had any type of racial or ethnic agenda. Reflecting this, past JBS National Council members include Alfred Kohlberg and David Eisenberg, and a current one is Andrew Dlinn, all of whom are Jewish. It has black members as well, a prominent one being Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny (BOND) head Jesse Lee Peterson.
Then there’s Delmar Dennis, an underground FBI informant who combated the Klan and was instrumental in bringing to justice those involved in the infamous 1964 “Mississippi Burning” case. He was a JBS member.
It’s easy to assign Machiavellian motives to Williams, but he’s more in the way of a useful idiot. When he was fired from National Public Radio in 2010 for saying that he feels nervous when boarding a plane and seeing people in traditional Muslim garb (video below), conservatives rallied to his defense. Yet never realizing that he was hoisted with his own petards — having been bitten by the politically correct monster he helped nurture — he continues with his blind leftism.
In reality, though, whether the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards, prelude to the Spanish Civil War, Khmer Rouge in the ‘70s, or anti-Trump actions today, violence has always characterized the Left.
Attempting to refute this, Williams also cited on The Five the Dylann Roof church shooting in 2015; the Washington pizzeria shooting in 2016 (in which no one was hurt); and the Charlottesville violence in 2017, where reports indicate that the Left initiated the confrontation and one nut was responsible for the lone death.
Yet there’s again no equivalence. Virtually all the rare “rightist” violence is the result of lone wolves, and there’ll always a random unhinged individual here and there in a country 328-million strong. But like Islamic jihad, leftist violence is organized, continual, and effected by actual groups such as Antifa and BLM, and wide-scale movements such as the “resistance.”
In fact, Democrat operates were caught on hidden camera in 2016 talking about how they purposely incite violence at Trump rallies. One of them, Scott Foval, admitted that they even use mentally ill people for this purpose and boldly stated, “We’re starting anarchy here.”
There is no analog among conservatives — anywhere. As Greg Gutfeld put it referencing political violence, “When it comes to Republicans, it’s a bug in the system; when it comes to the Left, it’s the system.”
Image of Juan Williams: Screenshot of Fox Business youtube video
Correction: As originally published, this article stated that “no JBS member has ever been convicted of or implicated in political violence.” But although that certainly applies to anyone working within the Birch agenda, as with any large body — whether political, religious, or otherwise — individuals have engaged in activities running contrary to the beliefs of a group to which they may have belonged. For instance, the U.S. Army was no in way responsible for Nidal Malik Hasan’s murderous rampage when he killed 13 people at Ft. Hood in 2009, even though Hasan was a major in the U.S. Army at the time. The article has been changed to reflect this reality.
