I & I Editorial BoardWhenever the far left in the U.S. loses an argument — called an election — it suddenly decides it’s time to take to the streets and get violent. Now is just such a time, as America experiences a new spasm of home-grown anti-Trump, anti-Musk terrorism. It shouldn’t be tolerated.
Whether it’s taking pot shots at the president, violently demonstrating in support of murderous terrorists, “swatting” people they don’t like, or destroying cars made by a person they now despise, our country once again finds extremists threatening us and our liberty.
And, no surprise, it’s nearly all from the far left side of the political spectrum, organized by supposedly “nonviolent” groups, quietly supported by the Democratic Party, and excused by the ultra-biased Big Media.
President Donald Trump’s reelection seems to have brought out even more extremist violence, which had already surged. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently found “domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined.”
So, yes, it’s very real.
As noted, we’re in the midst of a domestic terrorism outbreak right now, after a spate of what at first appeared to be lone-wolf crimes against Tesla owners and dealers, who only a year ago were the darlings of the so-called progressive movement.
But that was before Tesla chief executive Elon Musk joined Trump’s administration.
Today, Tesla dealerships and electric vehicles are being torched, bombed with Molotov cocktails, or vandalized and damaged beyond repair by people angry that Musk is helping to reduce government waste.
Imagine that: People committing terrorist acts to keep others from cutting government waste.
As if there’s any doubt, Attorney General Pam Bondi has declared the attacks against Tesla “domestic terrorism.” And she’s right.
“The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism,” she said. “The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences.”
These aren’t solo or isolated “protests,” as the left maintains. Indeed, Bondi said prosecutors are looking also for “those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”
There have been at least 20 separate attacks on Tesla vehicles and dealerships in the last three months. As the New York Post’s Karol Markowicz wrote this week:
Tesla dealerships are being firebombed and shot at, while Tesla vehicles are vandalized and their owners assaulted.
Trump-supporting influencers are getting ‘swatted,’ set up for dangerous police encounters by opponents who phone in hoax distress calls.
Relatives of Trump-aligned public figures — including the sister of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Elon Musk’s brother — are receiving bomb threats.
Musk himself believes these are well-planned acts of terror. “An investigation has found 5 ActBlue-funded groups responsible for Tesla ‘protests’: Troublemakers, Disruption Project, Rise & Resist, Indivisible Project and Democratic Socialists of America,” Musk wrote on X.
A group called “DOGEQUEST” is even doxxing “private home addresses and contact info of DOGE employees, their families, some private Tesla owners and Tesla stores.”
The toxic, and at times inciting, rhetoric in the media and by Democrats against Trump and his new administration has only encouraged the terrorism.
It picked up substantially after last June’s failed assassination attempt, when an aide to Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi posted: “I don’t condone violence but please get you some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time ooops that wasn’t me talking.”
Others on social media and elsewhere chimed in with similar “funny” remarks about the near-death of a presidential candidate.
Now Musk is coming in for some of the same treatment.
California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia told CNN that Musk is “harming the American public in an enormous way,” adding that it’s time for Americans to bring “actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy, for the future of this country.”
Get it? A real fight. Real weapons.
Since then, the violence has only grown, as the media have continued to make light of it. Late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel, for one, looked sarcastically into the camera and mockingly said “Please don’t ever vandalize Tesla vehicles.”
Meanwhile, MSNBC downplayed the violent attacks, calling them “protest.”
With all this support, a group called Indivisible is organizing a “Tesla Takedown” campaign for April 5 as revenge on Musk for daring to help shrink our bloated federal government.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them,” the group’s website says. “They’re taking everything they can get their hands on, and daring the world to stop them. On Saturday, April 5th, we’re taking to the streets nationwide to fight back with a clear message: Hands off!”
As Townhall recently noted, “Indivisible Project, a 501(c)(4) bankrolled primarily by Open Society Foundations (OSF), the nucleus of the Soros grantgiving nexus, is one of the main activist organizations behind the anti-Musk movement targeting Tesla showrooms all over America.”
But as we’ve already seen, nothing makes a “clearer message” than a few molotov cocktails, physical threats and destructive vandalism of private property.
The far left and its “progressive” billionaire supporters and top Democrats all silently support this activity.
Have you heard any prominent Democrats coming out and condemning the violence, as many Republicans did after the Jan. 6 riots?
We once again have domestic terrorists roaming our streets to cause mayhem and terrorize average people who might own — or even think of owning — a Tesla EV. Elected Democrats, supposedly “leaders” who have said nothing, richly deserve the blame for this rampant lawlessness.
Our suggestion: If you like living in a civil nation governed by laws, and not by street violence, remember this the next time you vote.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Correction: Attorney General Pam Bondi’s last name was misspelled and has been corrected.
Punishment. Swift and harsh punishment. It is a great deterrent. Somewhere along the way the notion that criminals should be punished got lost. Punish these hooligans.
“Come on, Man!” as a former President, what was his name?, was wont to say.
Domestic terrorists and lunatics are not confined to the fringe of the Democrats; recall the 40-50 of the lunatic and disgraceful Proud Boys and their ilk on J6, and the ultra right zealous religious nutcases “for God,” who will attack and kill at family planning abortion clinics. Republicans? Both sides have reprehensible and intolerant domestic terrorists.
Where do they learn such behavior?
Perhaps, they learn this destructive intolerance from elite universities and from their spineless Presidents, Provosts, and clueless Trustees who allow them to misbehave destructively and criminally on campus, and then award them with a BA degree to go forth into our world to be domestic terrorists? (And to be newspaper editors, too?) Is college where these intolerant domestic terrorists are nurtured in both political parties?
The overwhelming majority of angry, violent and destructive acts in America, are carried out by the democrat party and their anti-American supporters. To suggest otherwise is childish.
How you can equate proud boys or anti abortion advocates to the antifa firebombing tesla communists is telling- That you yourself are probably an indoctrinated academia suckled progressive. Sad.
As some once crowed, “we are a nation of laws”… What happened to enforcing the laws that address violence against citizens, destruction of property and interference with the daily lives of Americans? Require that demonstrations be peaceful (not “mostly”), orderly and not an interference with commerce and transit. Hold all people accountable to these standards and have real and actual punishments for violating them and we’ll see a decline in such common hooliganism.
Where the did you come up with “hooliganism?” That’s not even an American term. It’s eurospeak for rampaging soccer rioters.
And check out your Texas flag, do you have any idea how Texas was created from Mexico? By civilian violence, for the right to keep the slaves settlers had brought to Mexico against Mexican law. You sure do know how to step in it!
Exceptions don’t prove the rule!
Yes, there was violence at Jan 6th-and some of it was done by rioters. But as far as I know, no one on the right brought or used pistols. As a matter of fact the only one shot and killed was Ashley Babbit, a female Air Force veteran.
The insurrectionists in my opinion were the January 6th committee and the DOJ-inspired and contracted law suits against Trump. Trump didn’t kill Democracy-but the Democrats nearly did.
Moreover, I’ve never heard of a cadre of “religious zealots” who stormed abortion clinics and then engaged in violent behavior. Maybe I missed it-but if so it’s because it happens infrequently.
Saying the left and the right are equally guilty of violent behavior is like saying murderers and jaywalkers are the same because they both broke the law. There are a lot fewer violent malfactions on the Right than there are on the Left.
Why? Because the Left feels (choose one) entitled, self-righteous or morally superior.
Refusing to call out left wind lunatics (like BLM and antifa, a few years ago, or the anti-Tesla crowd of today who are not only destroying other people’s cars (and one of these days a child or pet will be in the car and die), but who engage also in doxing (a domestic terrorist tactic in these cases, I believe) or swatting conservatives (swatting is like calling 911 when there is no problem whatsoever, and lying and saying there is a problem and hoping for a swat-like violent engagement where both the police and the conservative are killed) is myopic.
And saying they are the same is playing with words. Pretty soon the Leftists will say that Nazis and American Soldiers are the same because they both kill.
Some day, if these tactics (funded I believe by left-wing plutocrats who let the rabble and felon-wanna-be’s dirty their hands) are continued there will be deaths. These new hi tech maneuvers have to be nipped in the bud.
If there are no consequences for engaging in such violent behavior (or inciting it) there will never be any deterrence.
“President Donald Trump’s reelection seems to have brought out even more extremist violence, which had already surged. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently found ‘domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined.’”
“So, yes, it’s very real.”
The second paragraph of the CSIS report clearly states: “To better understand the trends in U.S. domestic terrorism, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) compiled a dataset of 725 terrorist attacks and plots in the United States between January 1, 1994, and April 30, 2024.” This database ends mid-spring, 2024, and simply doesn’t cover Trump’s reelection.
It is obvious that the Soros Foundations and all it’s tentacles are not taxed high enough and the tax shelters they use to inflame and agitate need to be audit and closed down. Maybe if the U.S. taxed them at a much higher rate they would move to another country. That father and son team are constantly behind the troublemakers.
This is weak tea for an Editorial Board, reflecting that people who read these online op-eds have for the most part read almost no US history, or any serious non-fiction history for that matter, and are probably lacking in education in the humanities to boot.
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Any healthy nation will & should have a large dose of dissent and protest and anger over many issues or unpopular characters, and very much more so in a democracy, and the freer the democracy the greater the expression of anxiety and anger, including violence and property damage. When the state is able to so control public activity that in necessary protest peripheral damage to property is impossible, a police state ensues. A government given a police state will never relinquish it.
Some destruction of private or public property, some interference with the social order, and even some loss of life is to be expected (and welcomed) out of a healthy nation with 300,000,000 citizens clamoring and jostling for improvement. Violence is therefore a sign of health in a democracy, and that is what history demonstrates. This how American youth ended the Vietnam War, and it is how Frenchmen overthrew their King. It is in fact only under public uprising that societies see positive change. See Theordore Draper’s “A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution” on how, in the British North American Colonies in 1775, the now beloved, “Sons of Liberty” used violence equal to terrorism, including arson theft destruction of property and threat of lynching to overturn British rule.
The opposite, pure law & order, is only ever attained in a police state, in a totalitarian society, under onerous official violence that is worse than anything public protest can summon. Read and learn the truth about the operation of societies from the living prose of literature and history, not from the stale cardboard of editorial board op-eds.
“Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.” – Carlos Fuentes (b.1928 d.2012).
“It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.” – Czeslaw Milosz (Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat, author of “The Captive Mind.”)
“Biondi”
heh-heh
Bondi, not Biondi.