Quote of the Day
I’ve come to realize the left doesn’t actually oppose crime or violence on principle.
They only oppose it when it hurts their own agenda or allies. Otherwise, they actually cheer it on when it’s inflicted upon their enemies, or just ignore it when it can’t be exploited.
For example, killing is good when it’s a health insurance CEO or Charlie Kirk. But it’s bad if it’s Renee Good or George Floyd (for the purpose of this argument, we will assume, as leftists do, that George Floyd was actually killed and did not OD). And killing doesn’t register at all when it’s someone like Iryna Zarutska being murdered by a black man.
The same goes with violence and crime as a whole. Violence against ICE is good. However, violence against ICE protestors is bad. And violence between black gangs is simply unimportant.
Furthermore, stealing from Walmarts and other big chains is good, but “stealing” from indigenous people is bad. Somalis stealing from taxpayers, on the other hand, should just not be discussed at all.
Unlike most people, the leftist views violence and crime as morally neutral tools, with acceptability or importance wholly dependent on who or what these tools are being used against.
Now, you might say, the right acts similarly! After all, weren’t the ICE agent’s and Kyle Rittenhouse’s killings excused by conservatives?
But no, actually, these cases are not the same. The right doesn’t excuse these killings because they were perpatrated by conservatives against progressives, which is how leftists view these scenarios.
It is not the “who” that provides justification for these killings in the eyes of the right, but rather, the “why,” which is self-defense.
Regardless of the parties involved, conservatives, in general, recognize the right to self-defense. Leftists, conversely, might only recognize self-defense as valid depending on who is using it.
Case in point, according to leftists, the ICE agent was not justified in shooting as self-defense after being hit with a car at a protest. But somehow, self-defense has been the go-to defense for Karmelo Anthony, a black teen who stabbed an unarmed student after getting into an argument at a campus sports event.
Again, for the leftist, the justification for crime and violence comes not from “why,” but from “who.”
And so, why does this matter? Why is this worth discussing?
It matters because, as we saw with Charlie Kirk, regardless of how law abiding or moral you may otherwise be, as long as you are conservative, it means the left will support any and all violence or theft that befalls you. Unfortunately, the justification for harming you comes from who you are: their enemy.
This phenomenon also explains the leftist indifference to the crimes of minority groups, like Somalis, or trans people, or illegal immigrants, or whatever other protected class. Put simply, in the left’s belief system, if a crime happens, but there’s no way to use it to gain political power, has it even really happened at all?
Finally, with these revelations in mind, the right must stop entering into debates with leftists assuming they share the view that crime and violence are inherently bad, because though they may deny it, the truth is they do not.
Lauren Chen @TheLaurenChen
Posted on X, January 11, 2026
Interesting assertion. We see further evidence to support this assertion from the beginnings of the USSR:
The USSR created hoodlums just as the UK is creating them now and our political opponents in the U.S. appear to want to create. What is even more chilling is that in the USSR the political leaders openly wrote about how the thieves “were allies in the building of communism”. This was because they were the enemy of those who owned property.
One might claim this is contradicted by another model. But that other model measures something a little different than the actions of the political left. It measured the claims of political groups.
Prepare appropriately.
I reiterate myself once again, the criminal class is the natural ally (fellow traveler) of the political class.
Indeed, and that explains well why the political class aims to disarm honest people.
It was pointed out some years ago that Sullivan’s law — one of the first victim disarmament laws, in NY — is named after a Tammany Hall machine politician who advocated for it in order to protect his organized crime friends.
For that matter, the even earlier laws in the South disarming blacks were clearly intended to protect the KKK, to ensure they could continue their terrorist activities without fear of consequences from their intended victims.
“… the right must stop entering into debates with leftists assuming they share the view that crime and violence are inherently bad, because though they may deny it, the truth is they do not.”
So, were the Right to shut up and simply identify, investigate and fully prosecute “crime” on the basis of “actions relative to statutory non-compliance” – which, IIRC, has been a hallmark of civilized societies since…forever – the Left would go Chiroptera-excrement crazy.
It would make the Leftist Crazies easier to identify (like it’s hard now….) and, in all probability, would put them pretty far out on that plank over the sharks. Which Reasonable People would probably have no problem with sawing off close to the ship.
Seems like a good plan to me; when can we ramp up the process? (And, let’s not forget the “prosecute” part, that’s key.)
“I’ve come to realize the left doesn’t actually oppose crime or violence on principle.”
The same is true of the right. The mental gymnastics required to simultaneously call the J6 folks “peaceful” and say that Good “weaponized her car” and “hit” Ross are pretty elaborate.
The Good incident in particular illustrates how conservatives have moved from “Don’t tread on me” to “Always obey authority figures,” and have decided that violence is fine if it serves to advance their agenda.
There’s no principle at work here other than the use of raw power.
A couple points:
1. The J6 protesters were mostly peaceful; a few made trouble for one day and everyone got blamed. Contrast with Antifa/BLM protests: tens of thousands of rioters looted and burned businesses (and attempted on a federal building), torched cars, assaulted police officers and private citizens, for weeks, but nothing has happened.
Leftist rioters good, conservative protesters bad. (To say nothing of the mental gymnastics required to call the Antifa/BLM riots “mostly peaceful” with cars burning in the background.)
Also remember that Biden’s Justice Department testified under oath that they had no undercover assets or confidential informants among the J6 protesters, but it has now been released that they had dozens. But we’re supposed to ignore that because — again — Leftists lying to Republican-run Congress good, conservatives lying to Democrat-run Congress bad.
2. There’s a small but critical difference between “Always obey authority figures” and “Obey authority figures’ lawful orders“. An order to get out of the car while being detained (the legal definition of “detained”, not simply “stopped”), is generally lawful.
Ms. Good not only did not obey a lawful order, she hit the accelerator with an ICE agent in front of the vehicle. It may have been by accident or it may have been intentional — and I for one am willing to entertain both possibilities — but in the end it Does Not Matter; humans were in harm’s way and had the right to react to protect themselves.
The media initially ran with camera footage from angles most favorable to Ms. Good (read: most favorable to the Left’s agenda), but every subsequent release of footage from ICE and the Justice Department makes the shooting look more justifiable.
Leftists assaulting ICE agents executing lawful warrants good, ICE agents defending themselves from Leftists’ lethal-force attacks bad.
None of your examples refute the OP’s assertions, that crime and violence are treated by the Left as neutral tools and are only “good” or “bad” depending on who’s using them on whom. Rather, with just a little context and scrutiny, they all support it.
Spot on!
Along with a hearty. Hear, here! for the OP.
Yuri showed us that what we’re seeing is “communistic weaponized tribalism”. Based soley on emotion.
And John’s pose is little better than that, wrapped in a CCP-AI chatbot with a TDS app.
He’s as predictable as rain.
1. If you think J6 rioters were “mostly peaceful” I have some beachfront property to sell you. You’ll love the neighbors…there are 1500 of them with convictions, but don’t worry, they’ve been pardoned.
2. There’s plenty of legal precedent that an officer (I use that term loosely in this case) cannot create a situation where they could get hurt and use that to justify lethal force. Ross walked all the way around the car to get in front of it, and at that point lost any legal justification for shooting her. And let’s remember that the audio includes multiple conflicting orders (“get out of the way, move!” and “stop, get out of the car”) from multiple agents. Again, there’s plenty of precedent that lawful orders have to be clear and obeyable, officers can’t create a situation that doesn’t make sense and then use that as justification for force.
Also, speaking of inflammatory, “hit the accelerator” is a phrase that doesn’t match the video of her inching forward at 2mph. These folks saying “she hit him with the car” need to explain how he remained standing and in a position to place 3 shots directly in his target, two of which are from the side of the car, within milliseconds of being “hit” hard enough to constitute a lethal attack.
No, my examples don’t refute the OP assertions about the left having double-standards for violence. My examples show the right has the same set of double standards, but in this case is backing them up with the force of the state behind them…which is doubly hypocritical because the folks on the right claim to want maximum individual freedom from the state while simultaneously screaming OBEY at the top of their lungs. Funny how they weren’t screaming that at the J6 protestors….
The Atlantic has a piece today that speaks to the assertion that “the right must stop entering into debates with leftists assuming they share the view that crime and violence are inherently bad, because though they may deny it, the truth is they do not.”
The Right does not find crime and violence inherently bad either:
“For MAGA America, ICE is an instrument for cleansing violence. Visit ICE social-media accounts and you’ll see, again and again, videos of armed force against unarmed individuals, against a soundtrack of pumping music. There’s a montage of aggressive arrests in Minnesota of unarmed, nonwhite men, many of them thrown to the ground and cuffed, set to the 1977 hit “Cold as Ice”: “Someday you’ll pay the price.” A dozen heavily armed and armored agents round up a single unarmed woman in a T-shirt and two similarly defenseless men in California. In Indiana, armored agents throw handcuffs and ankle chains on a big haul of men and shove them in a cell, where they can be seen pacing, weeping, or with their heads plunged in their hands.
Rarely do these videos present a situation that couldn’t be managed with a couple of plainclothes officers bearing holstered sidearms. The point is to prove that the fearsome power of the American state is being wielded by righteous MAGA hands against despised MAGA targets.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/vance-defends-minneapolis-shooter-ice-maga-symbol/685584/
The OP does have one thing correct: the justification for violence on the right is “why” because they think they are righteous and therefore justified in any action regardless of the law. But it’s still a justification for raw violence, not law.
“MAGA Republicans do not reliably care about laws or the people who enforce them. One of Trump’s first actions upon entering office was to pardon more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, including many convicted of violent offenses against the police. He has denigrated the FBI and transformed the agency into a tool of retribution, and he regularly disparages prosecutors and law-enforcement officials if they fail to comply with his will.
… But letting protesters drive off unscathed, without punishing them for their disrespect, would let them “get away with it.” And that would be an intolerable affront to the MAGA vision of who must submit to whom.
By coming so vociferously to the shooter’s defense, Vance full-throatedly committed himself to the MAGA mission of enforcing respect by any means necessary. “
The OP does have one thing correct: the justification for violence on the right is “why” because they think they are righteous and therefore justified in any action regardless of the law. But it’s still a justification for raw violence, not law.
The difference is that the law takes into account the “why” and not the “who”, and DOES justify violence in certain, narrow circumstances.
Who on the Right is credibly claiming that any action is justified regardless of the law? So far, I’ve only seen actions justified under the law, and people — even on the Right — taking legally-unjustified actions being held to account.
(Also, remember that The Atlantic is historically NOT a neutral arbiter of truth. They’ve had a widely-recognized Leftist bias for decades, as evinced by the intentionally-inflammatory language in your pull-quotes.)
“people — even on the Right — taking legally-unjustified actions being held to account.”
Tell me more about the J6 protestors who vandalized the capitol, assaulted police officers, and tried to prevent congress from doing their work, being “held do account,” given they’ve all been pardoned. For that matter, shall we look at Trump’s list of pardons? You may want to give that a glance before claiming the Republicans are “holding people to account.”
I stopped reading after “The Atlantic”.
“Cleansing violence”? What sort of bizarre language is that?
It doesn’t make any sense to equate criminal violence with force used to enforce the country’s laws. Police have weapons because sometimes force is needed to enforce the law and apprehend perpetrators. That’s what ICE does. Use of force in law enforcement is not criminal action.