Boston Herald

Left playing a dangerous game, racking up victims

- By ERICK ERICKSON Erick Erickson is a syndicated columnist.

Debra Strop owns Uncle Loui’s Cafe in Duluth, Minn. Last week, a television news crew reached out to see if they could do their news program from the cafe. The program would be covering President Trump’s speech in Duluth. Ms. Strop agreed. That is when the progressiv­e thugs attacked.

The news program was “Fox & Friends,” and the progressiv­e mob had to punish Strop. Her family came under attack on social media. Organized mobs posted fake reviews of her cafe to rate it negatively. The store itself saw protests. All Strop did was allow a television news program to broadcast from her cafe. The anti-fascists and so-called democratic socialists are increasing­ly engaged in a sustained effort to harass those they disagree with while calling anyone who disagrees with them “Nazis.”

Federal law requires that children crossing the border between Mexico and the United States be placed in detainment facilities to be processed into foster programs. Though President Trump throttled up the program to separate parents from children, and reversed this policy last week, Presidents Bush and Obama were already placing children in these camps. The law requires that the children, many of them actually arriving without parents, be interviewe­d to ensure they are not being abused or trafficked into the United States.

The American media, overwhelmi­ngly sympatheti­c to progressiv­e causes, ignored reports of awful abuse of these children during the Obama years. In fact, when reports trickled out of serious abuse, reporters pushed the stories until they realized it all happened in the Obama years. But the reports mobilized the progressiv­e mobs even more. Irresponsi­ble media coverage fueled their cause, which progressiv­es increasing­ly wrapped in moral language. Trump, doing what Obama did, was somehow now a Nazi, though Obama was not, and Trump had to be stopped.

Actor Peter Fonda took to Twitter to encourage the kidnapping and rape of President Trump’s son. Liberal reporters reported the private cellphone number of White House adviser Stephen Miller. Other progressiv­e activists started posting pictures of Department of Homeland Security employees and their families, along with their home addresses. In Washington, left-wing activists stormed a restaurant to harass the secretary of Homeland Security until she was forced to leave. It turns out one of those left-wing activists worked in the Department of Justice, but moonlights as a member of the progressiv­e mob.

This is a dangerous game the left is playing. During the Bush years, the left-wing mob showed up outside Karl Rove’s house to intimidate his family. Now, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who dared roll back Obama-era regulation­s, has seen the mob attack him and his family. Individual government employees are being harassed. Now, even private citizens and private businesses are being targeted. The left is no longer just trying to drive Christian bakers out of business. Anyone who disagrees with them may be a victim of the mob. As they justify each attack as a moral act, they will only continue.

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