Ed Brodow: The Left’s Divisive Strategy Behind the Capitol Assault

The assault on the US Capitol, spurred on by leftist agitators who were bussed in, was staged by Democrats with the collaboration of mainstream and social media. “The purpose of the entire circus was to provide a propaganda opportunity for the Left,” wrote Daniel Greenfield in the Jewish Press. This strategy was based on two main objectives: (1) destroy President Trump’s legacy by accusing him of instigating violence, and (2) create a diversion away from massive circumstantial evidence that the election was rigged.

Their first objective was an instant success. The Capitol assault was followed up immediately by blacklisting of the president on social media together with demands for his impeachment. Former CIA Director John Brennan demanded that anyone who ever supported President Trump seek “national redemption” by denouncing the president and his policies so that America may “eradicate” the “malignancy” that Trump represents. Forbes Magazine advocated the canceling of all Trump staffers. “Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie.” Stalinism, pure and simple.

Many Republicans who have been Trump supporters—Nikki Haley for example—tried to distance themselves from the president in order to save their own skin. “Within an hour,” said political commentator Dennis Prager, “every leading Republican I know of condemned in no compromised terms what happened at the US Capitol.” The implication of their actions is that Trump was responsible for the violence.

Left-leaning Big Tech lost no opportunity to join the attack against Trump and his supporters. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg alluded to Trump’s role in the Capitol attack. But Tesla CEO Elon Musk blamed Facebook. “The shocking rampage on Wednesday was the culmination of years of political and ideological polarization fueled by social media platforms, primarily Facebook,” Musk said.

Sen. Lindsay Graham and Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz came to Trump’s defense. Pointing out the unfairness of social media’s blacklisting of Trump, Graham said, “The Ayatollah can tweet, but Trump can’t. Says a lot about the people who run Twitter.” Dershowitz said on Newsmax TV that the president cannot be blamed for the actions of rioters. "It’s part of the core theory of the First Amendment that you prosecute the actors, you don’t prosecute the speaker,” Dershowitz said. “The speaker has a Constitutional right to advocate … advocate, not incite … advocate, which is what President Trump did.” He told supporters to express their dissatisfaction with the election, but at no time did he instigate violence. Trump eventually told them to go home, for which he gets little or no credit from the media.

Dennis Prager went after the Left’s hypocrisy. For seven months, he explained, Democratic mayors and governors refused to take action against the violence that destroyed our cities. “You have to look pretty hard to find Democrats condemning fires, riots, violence, looting, stealing, burning police cars,” Prager said. When leftists took over the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, there was no condemnation from Democrats. Prager’s conclusion: If you only condemn what Republicans do, and applaud what was done daily by leftists, then you don’t care about truth. “Violent protests, including those targeting public officials and legislative bodies, had been championed and normalized by Democrats and their media over the last four years,” Daniel Greenfield wrote in Jewish Press. “Now, as the Democrats expect to take power, they suddenly decided that rioting is bad.”

Providing further evidence of the Left’s intention to divide the country along racial lines, President-elect Biden said that if the mob at the Capitol had been black, they would have been treated differently by the DC police. “Where have blacks been treated differently?” asked Dennis Prager. Blacks were not treated differently when they did far more damage earlier in the year, he said. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro agreed with Prager, saying that "the entire media apparatus, the entire governmental apparatus, cities around the country allowed BLM free reign in their cities.” Biden’s remark was an emotional appeal to demonize Trump and his supporters, Shapiro said.

In 2020, Greenfield recalled, Black Lives Matter thugs vandalized the Lincoln Memorial and the WWII Memorial, along with statues of Gandhi, General Kosciuszko, and Andrew Jackson. They marched through Washington starting fires, including at an historic church, and tried to besiege the White House. “The double standard was obvious and blatant,” Greenfield said. “The Democrats and media had cheered Black Lives Matter violent protests. They had colluded in previous invasions of Congress and the harassment of elected officials. But now they wanted a violent riot they could condemn. And such a riot would helpfully put to bed any further questions about a rigged election.” And that is exactly what happened. The strategy of diverting attention away from the issue of election fraud seems to have worked. Since the Capitol assault, there have been fewer arguments that the election result was the product of ballot tampering.

Instead, we are seeing statements like this one from election law expert David Becker: “[President Trump] could not process the idea that he lost an election." On the contrary, it is the Left that can’t process the idea that the election was stolen. After the Capitol assault, said Dennis Prager, the country now takes the idea of election fraud less seriously. “The Russia collusion was a lie,” Prager said, “yet we pursued it for three years—but we can’t pursue for a few weeks the notion that there may have been tampering of ballots, especially when half the country believes it. People have to believe their votes matter.”

The impact of Prager’s parting shot makes my skin crawl: “Every institution has been corrupted by the Left,” said Prager. “Every part of American life has contempt for the person who reveres this country, and that is half of us.”