Are Mobs Still Bad When Their Target Is Brett Kavanaugh?

O ne reason why the January 6 Capitol riot was so shocking is that it involved street mobs — on the political right. Mobs of many kinds that shut down the operations of government and business, intimidate individuals, or engage in riots and violence have long been a common tactic on the left. January 6 finally brought a lot of people on the center-left and left to decry mob protest tactics. For those of us who have spent years decrying such tactics, it was welcome company. But we did not expect that company to last, given how deeply ingrained mob tactics are in the world of left-wing activism and how often the opinions of voices on the left side of the political spectrum are entirely situational.

Monday evening, pro-abortion protesters from a group called ShutDownDC came to the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Had they been bent only on free speech, they could easily have protested outside the Court itself. Indeed, during the past term of the Court, Kavanaugh was the only justice working there, as the others worked from home. The crowd, drawn by protests over the Court declining to strike down the new Texas abortion law before it went into effect, chanted at Kavanaugh’s house that he should resign.

Some sense of the surreal extremism of ShutDownDC can be gleaned from the “P.S.” to its email summoning the mob:

P.S. A few notes for attendees: 1. Please try to be as inclusive as possible in your language. Women and girls are not the only people who can get pregnant and need abortions. 2. Please avoid comparing U.S. abortion-restricting politicians to the Taliban. The former are a distinctly homegrown phenomenon and ignoring that in favor of such comparisons is Islamophobic. (Yes, oppressive right-wing factions are a problem wherever they are.)

“Treat elected American officials and federal judges with more hostility than a terrorist-sponsoring tyranny that America has been at war with for 20 years and is currently beheading children” is a pretty good summary of how extremists talk themselves into extreme measures.

The crowd was, by the standards of left-wing mobs, small and not particularly unruly, although they did berate police for showing up to protect Kavanaugh’s home from invasion:

Still, the point of going to the home of a public official, especially one with children, is intimidation, not persuasion. The same group had previously organized protests at the homes of Senator Josh Hawley and Donald Trump’s secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf. Worse, a Texas Right to Life staffer was recently bombarded with threats after being doxxed by Planned Parenthood in a court filing.

To their credit, Senators Dick Durbin and Patrick Leahy condemned the march on Kavanaugh’s home. More vigorous efforts to push back at these sorts of tactics by the Left, which were mostly met with silence in the progressive commentariat, would be welcome. Street mobs are deep in the DNA of left-wing activism, following principles laid out by Saul Alinsky, the famous activist who was the subject of Hillary Clinton’s college thesis and the inspiration for the PIRG groups that taught Barack Obama community organizing. Just a partial roster of such protests in the past decade:

• In September 2018, more than 200 protesters were arrested at the Capitol during the Kavanaugh hearings, including several who interrupted the hearings themselves. “Disrupting the hearings was a way for us to go directly into the homes of the American people to say, ‘We will not be silenced and you need to be as outraged as we are,’ said Linda Sarsour, a co-chair of the Women’s March and one of the organizers of this week’s protests.”
• Later that same month, two protesters physically cornered Senator Jeff Flake and tried to follow him into a Senate elevator to pressure him to vote against Kavanaugh.
• Also in September 2018, heckling anti-Kavanaugh protesters forced Ted Cruz and his wife out of a restaurant where they were having dinner.
• In October 2018, anti-Kavanaugh “protesters broke through Capitol Police barricades and rushed up the steps to the Capitol Rotunda.” “Nearly 300 protesters were arrested.”
• Also in October 2018, additional protests disrupted the Senate vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
• Also in October 2018, as part of the anti-Kavanaugh protests, “A throng of protesters pushed past a police line, storming up steps to pound on the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court” following his confirmation.
• In January 2017, “Six police officers were injured and 217 protesters arrested . . . after a morning of peaceful protests and coordinated disruptions of Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony gave way to ugly street clashes in downtown Washington.”
• In April 2021, protesters disrupted the Oklahoma legislature while it was debating bills regarding filming of police and obstructing public roads.
• In May 2017, pro-illegal immigrant protesters disrupted a session of the Texas legislature debating an anti–sanctuary-cities bill.
• In June 2013, in support of Wendy Davis’s filibuster, “Hundreds of jeering protesters helped stop Texas lawmakers from passing one of the toughest abortion measures in the country, shouting down Senate Republicans and forcing them to miss a midnight deadline to pass the bill.”
• In January 2021, “Eight reproductive rights activists stormed into St. Joseph Cathedral Downtown [Columbus, Ohio,] during its Respect Life Mass. . . . Protesters were escorted out by police and diocese officials after they marched through the sanctuary shouting about abortion rights being under attack and holding signs such as ‘fund abortion not cops.’”
• In December 2014, “An interfaith prayer service at a church in South Los Angeles was interrupted . . . by demonstrators, protesting the grand jury decision in the Michael Brown shooting.”
• In August 2015, Black Lives Matter protesters prevented Bernie Sanders from giving a speech, a month after disrupting a debate between Sanders and fellow Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley.
• In October 2015, Black Lives Matter protesters disrupted a Hillary Clinton speech, shouting down the candidate.
• In June 2021, “The first in-person Des Moines City Council meeting in more than 15 months was cut short . . . after crouching council members voted on dozens of agenda items amid the din of crowd chants and dropped a planned public comment period.” The protesters were angry at the police.
• In November 2020, “‘Chants of “Black Lives Matter!’ and ‘No justice, no peace!’ echoed through the Schertz [Texas] City Council chambers. . . . More than 40 protesters flooded the aisles, waving flags and hoisting signs, forcing a 15-minute delay in the council’s meeting until order was restored.”
• In February 2017, “The Stockton City Council meeting Tuesday turned into a shouting match, and police in riot gear cleared 50 protesters from City Hall. It [was] the second time this month that protesters have disrupted the meeting. Protesters upset over police shootings chanted throughout the council session, holding Black Lives Matter signs.”
• In December 2015, Black Lives Matter protesters disrupted a Phoenix City Council meeting.

This is only a small sampling, but you get the idea: Nothing is safe from the heckler’s veto and the in-your-face, in-your-house approach of left-wing protest — not the Capitol, not state legislatures or city councils, not churches, not even Democratic presidential candidates. I have not even touched here on the massive Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. And that’s before we go further back in history to ACORN protesting in bank lobbies and at the homes of bank executives, or ACT-UP disrupting Mass to throw condoms, let alone some of the things that happened in the 1960s and 1970s. Nor have I addressed here political violence from the left such as the Congressional baseball shooting or the Family Research Council shooting.

“Civility” in politics is sometimes misunderstood. It does not mean we need to treat politics as if it were a parlor game. It does not even mean you should pull punches from calling the other guy a rogue, a scoundrel, a liar, and a festering blight on the buttocks of humanity. But it does mean that contending sides let each other speak, let the democratic and legal process do its business, and not stalk people to restaurants and their homes. If we are going to avoid perennial repeats of January 6 or escalation from home protests to assassinations, we are going to need people on the left side to talk down their own protest tradition.