‘Every once in a while, you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary,” Rep. Michael Capuano (D., Mass.) told a February 22 union rally in Boston. Even if union members and their supporters missed Capuano’s call to mayhem (or his subsequent tepid apology), many of them are on the same brutal wavelength.
Although Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.) still is recovering from a January 8 assassination attempt, the Left’s post-Tucson civility campaign has vanished like gunsmoke in a desert breeze. Rather than make nice, labor activists and fans star in YouTube videos, preaching and perpetrating violence.
Advertisement
On February 23, unionized government employees held a Providence, R.I., “solidarity rally.” As columnist Michelle Malkin reports, a local TV cameraman named Adam Cole was recording the event. After about seven and a half minutes, a YouTube video shows a pro-union thug screaming at Cole, “I’ll f*** you in the ass, you faggot!” whereupon he forcefully smacks Cole’s camera with his right hand.
Holding a sign that reads “CWA — Taking a Stand for Justice,” a Communications Workers of America member protested that day at the Washington, D.C., offices of pro-market FreedomWorks. As its employee Tabitha Hale recorded him exchanging words with an opponent, the CWA member physically attacked her, as her iPhone video confirmed.
Tea Party Express activist Rodney Stanhope, former executive director of the El Dorado County, Calif., Republican party, was among a group of limited-government advocates who rallied at the state capitol in Sacramento on February 26. MoveOn.org members, Teamsters, and other Big Labor types gathered across the street. For about an hour, Stanhope says, the tea partiers yelled, “We pay your salaries,” while the unionists replied, “Fascists, go home!”
YouTube shows a young, bullhorn-wielding Teamster heading menacingly toward Stanhope.
“I told this guy, ‘You need to leave,’” Stanhope recalls. The Teamster then “took a punch and knocked me back about two to three feet. I felt my hand was in pain. I stepped back up, and he threw another punch at my throat.”
After eventually getting local police to issue a battery citation to Teamster Richard Andazola, 28, Stanhope received first aid for his swollen hand and headed for a hospital.
“I went to the emergency room and got X-rays,” Stanhope says. “It was not broken, but I had contusions.” Four days later, his hand still hurts after a few hours of typing on his computer keyboard.
In Atlanta that day, Dr. William Greene and several other free-marketeers protested near the Georgia state capitol in favor of Gov. Scott Walker (R., Wis.). According to Greene, two pro-union activists at a competing MoveOn.org demonstration crossed their anti-union picket line.
“Out of nowhere, all of a sudden, I get slammed to the side against a wrought iron fence and down onto the pavement, by one of these guys who wanted to push through,” Greene said online. “The guy came through and cold-cocked me from behind,” Greene recalled, and the blow slammed him into an older woman who stood nearby. “When he shoved me, he shoved her, too.”
“I have been involved in activism at the grassroots level for many years,” Greene added. “This is the first time that I have ever been physically assaulted personally at a protest or counter-protest.”
At another protest, an interviewer asked what should be done with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “Put him back in the fields,” suggested Don Wallace, former head of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles. And what about the leader of Fox News? “Roger Ailes should be strung up,” Wallace proposed. “Kill the bastard.”
Like a Labor Day parade in reverse, unions are losing ground. They represent a shrinking share of America’s workforce. When their Democratic allies in state legislatures decide to show up for work, they have started losing votes to right-size their privileges. The “labor” movement looks like a leisure movement, given union activists’ evidently infinite time to abandon their classrooms and other work sites so they can scream in the streets. And now they have revealed themselves as the Brownshirt element in America’s public life.
— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.
OK, GOP, can we take advantage of these goons? You know, the way the libs did in Arizona. No, the media won't co-operate. BUT GETTING THE MESSAGE OUT IS YOUR JOB! Do your job, GOP operatives. Or continue to exist without my money.
Are the police unable or unwilling to get union violence under control? If unwilling, would that have anything to do with the police belonging to unions themselves?
Excellent column by Murdock. It's vital that Americans understand how deeply Big Labor is rooted in coercion, intimidation and violence. What it can't get through peaceful means, it gets through political means, enlisting the coercion of the state to help foster unions and keep dissident workers from leaving them. And it frequently resorts to violence against individuals who don't follow orders (such as workers who prefer to continue working during a strike) and people who publicly protest against pro-union policies that pick their pockets.
There is nothing wrong with voluntary worker associations that seek to peacefully negotiate for improved pay and working conditions. Alas, the labor movement gave up on peaceful methods long ago.
There you have it! Violence and threats are ok as long as there beneficial to the left and obama's agenda! What if the private sector stood up and protested the downfall of the economy that's only affecting them? The govt would surely stifle them in a heartbeat! This govt and administration only works for the people when it's to their best money interest! I'm calling on everbody to contact your congress person and your local media to protest the bias thats going on in news reporting!
A little disappointed in this column. I think the "brownshirts" thing is pretty ridiculous: it's the standard terminology that is inappropriately used by BOTH parties, all the time.
While the unions are scum and their protests are vile, and I realize that the general point of the article (so much for peace loving libs, here they go being violent again) is true, it's way overstated. The "Iphone video attack" is a nasty bit of business, but I would not say that a man smacking my Iphone out of my hand is literally a physical attack. It's rude, outrageous, and unnecessary, and makes him look like a churlish beast, but it's not like he punched her in the face.
I just feel like Murdock could have done a better job of realistically portraying the facts, and letting the facts speak for themselves.
The media will not cover these incidents because they would conflict with their tea party = violent racists meme. The rest of us see it all too clearly thus driving home the pointlessness in paying any attention to the lamestream media. My only complaint with Deroy's piece is that I call them purpleshirts instead of brownshirts. Such a joy to watch the implosion of the democrat party!
Why would the police get the unions under control when the Attorney General of the United States refuses to prosecute voter intimidation thugs. Violence in the name of politics is okay if it comes from the left. I agree with George Leef and I can remember when Unions were important in the workforce, even though they had thugs then too. The hypocrisy is this: I saw a video of protesters simply being asked why they are there and what it means, and they could not answer. Truly mystified, they had to call the union boss over for another inarticulate answer. Which is to say that the Unions are now perfect Astroturf. I cannot imagine anyone from the Teaparty unclear on the concept of why they are protesting. We have to get a handle on this as a country. But, of course, the media plays a big part in not exposing reality.
Katherine, I get what your saying. The actions in themselves are not excessively violent. So, using the term brownshirt isn't appropriate.
OK, how violent must the action be before the action can be called "brownshirt"? Death? Hospital admittance? Medical assistance?
Does one such action with little or no penalty suffice or does it take 10? Or 100?
If you and your husband we're leaving a political event which was being protested by union/acorn types and you were attacked by participants of the protest leaving you with a broken leg and your husband with bruises and cuts, could I call decribe the actions by the protestors "brownshirt" like? Or is that going to far?
Real journalism by real people. Keep those phones on and cameras running people. The Democrats are losing the truth battle and this is why they are calling for control over the media and talk radio.
OSUNick-
c'mon. I think my post was pretty clear. While I think the protesters have been awful, and that the left is completely hypocritical on the issue of violence, I don't think that the violence of the protesters cited in this article is on par with that of a paramilitary organization in the Third Reich.
I think using that terminology actually weakens Mr. Murdock's otherwise exellent argument.
All of the turmoil and strife in this nation of over 300 million people and this is all the labor violence Malkin and her ilk can come up with? Doesn't seem so bad. Seriously, the working class in this nation is under so much economic stress and faced with so much insecurity--none of their own making by the way--who can blame a few malcontents for acting out. I'm surprised we haven't been faced with a full-fledged working-class insurrection yet. Just a matter of time. One more thing. Are these teabaggers such wusses that they don't know how to fight back? They must have got their butts kicked at recess way back when.
"A little disappointed in this column. I think the "brownshirts" thing is pretty ridiculous: it's the standard terminology that is inappropriately used by BOTH parties, all the time.
While the unions are scum and their protests are vile, and I realize that the general point of the article (so much for peace loving libs, here they go being violent again) is true, it's way overstated. The "Iphone video attack" is a nasty bit of business, but I would not say that a man smacking my Iphone out of my hand is literally a physical attack."
1) Hitler's SA (the "Brownshirts") began things like this. They didn't magically form into a paramilitary organization overnight. It began with beatings of those who disagreed with them. You'll note that to date, there have been no beatings at the hands of people in the Tea Party movement. It is a misapplied phrase in one direction. It is closer to the truth in the other. See also SEIU beatings and racial epithets in St. Louis, etc. Now, will this kind of crowd go as far as Ernst Roehm's merry band went? Nope, since murder makes waves these days. However, with chuckleheads like no_neocons there making excuses for acts like this, can it get worse? Yep.
2) Someone smacking another person's hand and causing them to drop a camera or phone is assault, pure and simple. Would any man tolerate his wife being smacked like this? Should she have to tolerate that because it wasn't a full-on shot to the face? You look at which side is talking about violence, and then you see violence tolerated, condoned, even cheered, and you seem to think that there's some sort of parity here?
(One other note: The no-neocons_4_u troll is hysterical in its lack of depth and subtlety. I mean, c'mon....not so obvious next time. Isn't Al Gore's TV network on, or something?)
"One more thing. Are these teabaggers such wusses that they don't know how to fight back? They must have got their butts kicked at recess way back when."
Right. And as soon as one does THAT'S what will end up on the news as evidence of the violent nature of the Tea Party.
On February 23, unionized government employees held a Providence, R.I., “solidarity rally.” As columnist Michelle Malkin 
