Explicit calls for political violence come from the radical left in Canada

Any mass murder in North America has ramifications beyond the transparent tragedy that accompanies the death of innocents in a society that is comparatively among the safest in the world.

In trying to make sense of the incomprehensible, there are some who will try to find a culprit beyond the obvious, sometimes without any rational basis. The atrocity perpetrated by demented killer Jared Loughner over the weekend in which six innocent people were murdered and Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded has, what seems to be, an obvious explanation. The perpetrator, whose public pronouncements suggest an incoherent, unbalanced madman, was mentally ill and acted out out of psychosis.

But one of the tragedies in this case, that compounds the original one, is that there are no shortage of people who are happy to exploit these deaths for political and ideological motives.

Because the central victim in is a Democratic legislator whose district was identified by Sarah Palin as a "target" for  Republicans to take, Democrats and others on the left, both in the US and in Canada, have ebulliently grasped the opportunity to lay blame on the former Republican Vice Presidential candidate,the Republican party and "right wingers" in general for allegedly creating a climate filled with violent rhetoric that supposedly created these events.

Nothing could be more absurd.

From The Democratic Leadership Council website

Despite preposterous suggestions from people like Paul Krugman in The New York Times, there is no evidence whatsoever establishing that anything Sarah Palin, or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh said that played any role in Loughner's deranged violence. Sarah Palin may be a bit of a buffoon more famous for celebrity itself than for political adroitness, but her use of political rhetoric never called for violence of any kind and it falls within the scope of discourse that typifies much of American politics.

Responsible conservatives are as opposed to violence as much as responsible liberals. We live in a democratic society where change can be achieved through persuasion and elections.


Sane people are appalled by and reject the idea of initiating transition by terror.

But what may be shocking to some is that in Canada, explicit calls for violence to achieve political ends are coming from none other than the radical left.

Or perhaps not so shocking. The most recent acts of publicized political violence in Canada came from The Black Bloc during Toronto's G20 conference. It was radical leftists who rioted and caused millions of dollars in damage to make a political statement.

But it doesn't end there. Prominent Canadian leftist Judy Rebick founded a Marxist-leaning website called rabble.ca. It's now published by the spouse of the NDP's Deputy Leader, Libby Davies and is mainly funded by Canadian unions like CUPW and CUPE. That site's discussion forum recently hosted a thread entitled, "When is the time for violent revolution?" in which its contributors made comments like:

"I was wondering when it would be ok to overthrow a government, violently if need be."

"Perhaps the reason the ballot box isn't working is because the ballot box isn't the way to the solution."

"I think 9/11 was just a test run. The people failed with flying colours. And I think it's an example of what's in store for the future if fascists back themselves into another corner."

"How many more decades should we wait? It appears that Canadians arent catching on, so should we suffer in silence for 30 more years? maybe a generation or three? Dont the better people of our society have a responsibility to the stupid?"

and worse.

Beyond that,  CUPE, CUPW, Independent Jewish Voices (an anti-Israel group) and the NDP's Socialist Caucus were all endorsers of a recent rally where one of the speakers called for violent revolution in Canada.

At a Toronto rally in support of convicted American cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamar, one of the speakers was an organizer from the Communist newsletter BASICS. Following a rambling speech about conspiracies and praising violent revolutionaries, he said "we haven't had any threat of insurrection or any, you know, revolutionary uprisings in Canada quite for, for quite some time, right? But that that doesn't mean that operation is not still in play."

This suggests that the Canadian radical left is not only advocating violence, but planning it.

This type of organized insurrection against democracy is far more dangerous than a lone madman. Violence for political means is deplorable, and no ideology or political movement has a monopoly on it. But its strongest proponents these days are not the "right-wingers" and "neo-Cons" but their opponents.