The Barbershop: Dennis Byrne, Proprietor

Here’s your daily dose of BS: “Most of the violence lately is right-wing extremism”

Were those right-wing fanatics attacking police at Buckingham Fountain?

Where do I start?

This blind-as-a-stone assertion came from Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a group dedicated to nailing right-wing extremists for today’s violence.

Her full quote is, “Most of the violence lately is right-wing extremism, but that doesn’t mean that groups on the left aren’t using social media….Everybody’s using social media in this way. … Why wouldn’t that exist on the fringes of the left?”

In other words, while the left is increasingly employing social media to spread hate, the right is much worse.

So, the people shot and killed, the fires that destroyed businesses and homes, the attacks on police and their headquarters, the weeks and weeks of uninterrupted juvenile delinquency in Portland, the gun-totting “guards” keeping the police out of the “summer of love” fortress in Minneapolis, and on and on. Clearly it’s the far right, don’t you see?

Beirich’s quote showed up in a Washington Post article, “Violent memes and messages surging on far-left social media, a new report finds: Such images have increased, raising once again whether social media companies can keep up with threats on their platforms“

Oh, wow, I thought to myself. A Washington Post article seemingly holding the left accountable for its transgressions. This I got to read.

Read I did, only to discover that it was a thinly veiled attacked on right-wing groups that are abusing social media, extensively quoting like-minded liberals about the dangers of right-wing tweeting.

Here’s another piece of it:

Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, said there are stark differences in the types of direct action promoted online by left- and right-wing extremists.

“It is overwhelmingly the far right — not the far left — that makes direct incitements for terrorist attacks and celebrates mass shooters as heroes to the movement,” she said. “Far-left activity usually doesn’t extend beyond destruction of property — that being arson against police vehicles, sabotaging infrastructure and similar activities.”

Never mind the two cops who were shot point-blank in Los Angeles.

I am reminded of the late 1960s and 1970s when the left was on a rampage of violence, including murder, bombings, kidnappings, bank robberies, riotous “days of rage” and more. The left is as capable of violence as the right. Sure, that was decades ago, but to ignore the evidence of current left-wing violence right before our eyes?

Why does the Washington Post publish this rubbish?