by Lew Rockwell, Lew Rockwell:
Democracy is not the best political system, and its defects have been amply exposed in Hans-Hermann-Hoppe’s great book, Democracy: The God That Failed. But we do live in a democracy, for better or worse, and in this system, the winner of an election is entitled to take power. The Left doesn’t accept this. If they oppose a candidate, they will subject him to venomous hatred and suggest that it would be a good thing if he was killed. We saw this is the barrage of anti-Trump attacks shortly before his attempted assassination, such as brain-dead “President” Joe Biden’s call to put Trump in a bull’s eye. I’ll cover some of these threats to Trump later, but first, I’d like to give some historical examples of how the Left operates in “democracies.”
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In the 1930’s, the rightist Calvo Sotelo gave a fiery speech in the Spanish parliament denouncing Communists. The notorious Spanish Communist and prostitute Dolores Ibarruri got up and yelled “You have given your last speech!” Sotelo was assassinated shortly after that. Here is an account of the assassination: “That same day, and after that intervention by Gil Robles, deputy José Calvo Sotelo, leader of the right-wing Spanish Renovation party, took the floor, pointing out the government’s responsibility in the face of these disorders exposed by the CEDA leader. Calvo Sotelo, who was possibly already threatened with death, stood up to the left: “I say what Santo Domingo de Silos replied to a Castilian king: ‘Lord, you can take my life but you cannot do more. And it is preferable to die with glory than to live with vilification.‘” To give us an idea of the level of bullying on the left at that time, in that same parliamentary session, the communist deputy Dolores Ibárruri, “La Pasionaria”, sentenced Calvo Sotelo: “This man has spoken for the last time.” Truck number 17 then headed towards the General Directorate of Security. Along the way, his captors pulled his American jacket back to immobilize Calvo Sotelo so that he could not defend himself. Finally, a socialist who was sitting on the fourth bench of the van, Luis Cuenca Estevas, a member of the PSOE youth and ‘La Motorizada’, fired a shot in the neck of the deputy, with exit through the left eye and loss of brain mass, according to the forensic doctors, doctors Piga and Águila, in the autopsy carried out on the morning of the day 14th.[1936]” See here.
Although, fortunately, this doesn’t involve an assassination, we saw an example of how the Left operates during the 1964 presidential campaign. The Left denounced Barry Goldwater, who in domestic politics was a moderate anti-New Dealer, as a “fascist,” “Hitler” and “insane,” Clearly, the voters wouldn’t be allowed to select him, and you can be sure that if his prospects for victory had looked better, they Left would have targeted him for death. Here are some examples of how the Left compared Goldwater to Hitler: “• Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We see dangerous signs of Hitlerism in the Goldwater campaign.”
- Civil rights activist Roy Wilkins: Goldwater’s election “would bring about a police state.”
- California Governor Pat Brown: Goldwater’s acceptance speech “had the stench of fascism…. All we needed to hear was ‘Heil Hitler.’”
- Jackie Robinson: “I would say that I now believe I know how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.”
- San Francisco Mayor John Shelley: The Republicans “had Mein Kampfas their political bible.”
Many in the press happily joined the chorus. Columnist Drew Pearson, for example, wrote that “the smell of fascism has been in the air at this convention.” The Chicago Defender ran the headline: “GOP Convention, 1964 Recalls Germany, 1933.” Not to be outdone, Daniel Schorr of CBS News simply made up a story—or passed along a rumor too good to check—that Goldwater was in touch with the right wing in Germany. The London Observer, usually a sober publication, found “disquieting similarities” between Hitler and Goldwater. The media made much of a trumped up “poll” of 1,189 psychiatrists who thought Goldwater was “psychologically unfit” to be president. (Goldwater later won a libel suit against the magazine publisher behind this stunt.)” See here.
Now, let’s look at the man of the hour—Donald Trump. We all admire his heroic reaction to the attempt to kill him, but the Left had been threatening him with death long before his fateful speech at the Pennsylvania rally. Here is a good account of many of them. I admit that when I was researching this article, even I was surprised about how many of them there are: “Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, has been involved in numerous security incidents, including assassination threats and attempts. The first known attempt occurred before Trump was the official Republican nominee, at a campaign rally during the 2016 presidential election. The latest attempt, which is being treated as an assassination attempt, occurred at a campaign rally during the 2024 presidential election.
2016 Las Vegas rally incident
On June 18, 2016, Trump was giving a speech at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada as part of his presidential campaign. During the speech, Michael Steven Sandford, a 20-year-old British man, attempted to grab a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer’s pistol. The officer quickly subdued Sandford and he was arrested and handed over to the United States Secret Service, where he expressed his desire to murder Trump, claiming if he (Trump) were on the street tomorrow, he would try this again. Sandford was later sentenced to 12 months and one day’s imprisonment, along with being fined $200. After becoming eligible for early release, Sandford was released and deported to the United Kingdom in May 2017.
2016 Reno gun scare
On November 5, 2016, three days before the presidential election, Trump was speaking at a rally in Reno, Nevada when a man in the crowd screamed ‘gun’, causing Trump to be rushed off stage by security and the man to be tackled by surrounding members in the crowd. The man, identified as 33-year-old Austyn Daniel Crites, was subdued by Secret Service agents and searched, only to find that he was unarmed. Crites, who was a Republican that opposed Trump, was holding up a sign shortly before that stated ‘Republicans against Trump’; Crites stated others attempted to grab the sign and were booing him. After the scene was cleared and identified as safe, Trump returned to the stage minutes later and finished the speech without incident.
2017 forklift attempt
On September 6, 2017, in Mandan, North Dakota, Gregory Lee Leingang stole a forklift from an oil refinery and attempted to drive it toward the presidential motorcade while Trump was visiting to rally public support. After the forklift became jammed within the refinery, he fled on foot and was arrested by the pursuing police. While interviewed in detention, Leingang admitted his intent to murder the president by flipping the presidential limousine with the stolen forklift, to the surprise of authorities, who suspected he was merely thieving the vehicle for personal use. Leingang pleaded guilty to the attempted attack, stealing the forklift, related charges and several other unrelated crimes on the same day. Consequently, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. His defense attorney noted a ‘serious psychiatric crisis’.
