The case of the Utah man who was killed by FBI agents who arrived at his home in the early morning hours on Friday with a battering ram, to serve a warrant issued as a result of social media postings he made containing threats he made against President Joe Biden and other politicians is still being discussed on the airwaves and interwebs, as people try to make sense of it all. There are still many questions as to what happened during the conversation between the individual and members of federal law enforcement.
But, predictably, at least one activist media outlet seized on the story as an opportunity to unfairly smear supporters of former President Donald Trump. In a highly-deceptive op-ed, MSNBC columnist Frank Figliuzzi exploited the story to convince readers that a significant number of Trump supporters want to use violence to advance the former president’s political agenda:
No one should be surprised by this development. In fact, I’d be surprised if we don’t see more violent threats against government officials, given the incendiary rhetoric from Trump and his supporters. Robertson’s threats against those officials appear to be an end result of stochastic terrorism, generally defined as the public vilification of a particular group of people that randomly and unpredictably leads to violence against members of that group.
The fact that Figliuzzi uses the term “stochastic terrorism” tells us what we need to know about his agenda. Folks on the hard left have been throwing that word around for the past few years to portray opinions that contradict progressivism as possible incitements to violence.
The author goes on to cite statistics bolstering his claim that Trump supporters are violent domestic terrorism bombs just waiting to go off:
According to a July report from the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, “From April 6, 2023 to June 26, 2023, Americans agreeing that ‘the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency’ increased from 4.5% to 7%, or the equivalent of an estimated shift from 12 million to 18 million American adults.”
That research institute found that the increase “likely reflects the response of more intense commitment to Trump following the announcement of the federal indictment against him for mishandling 3 classified documents on June 9, 2023 — about two and a half weeks before our June 26, 2023, survey.”
The article details some of the threats the suspect made in relation to Biden, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and several others who are targeting the former president and also brings up the Jan. 6 protests at the U.S. Capitol, which was totally not predictable, right?
Figliuzzi ends the hit piece by blaming Trump’s rhetoric for the supposed increase in Trump supporters supporting political violence. “But the poll indicating that millions of Americans think it’s OK to commit violence on behalf of Trump is why his inflammatory language, and that of his proxies, is so dangerous. And why law enforcement can’t afford to be less than vigilant.”
It’s not all that tough to see the flaws in Figliuzzi’s argument here, is it?
Let’s say the numbers on Trump supporters’ attitudes are accurate. Why would the author only discuss these percentages without including some from the other side of the political train tracks? Luckily, I just happen to have some of those numbers right here. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in 2022 showed that a whopping 22 percent of Democrats believe that the use of political violence against their political opposition was “acceptable.”
Even further, the University of California, Davis, published the results of another 2022 survey showing that, overall, about one in five Americans, regardless of political affiliation, believes the use of violence is justified to “advance an important political objective.”
If I were to use Figliuzzi’s logic, this means that a little over 34 million rabid Democrats also want to murder people for disagreeing with them politically. Who should we blame this on? Biden? Sanders? AOC?
See? Numbers are fun when you can manipulate them to say what you want them to say, aren’t they?
On a serious note, this article is the type of dishonest tripe one should expect from MSNBC or other left-wing propaganda outlets. For starters, the author doesn’t bother to discuss the broader context related to Americans’ growing acceptance of political violence. He simply uses the matter to score a few cheap political points against those dastardly MAGA Republicans Biden keeps rambling on about.
Secondly, he deliberately cherry-picked data to prove his point. Yet, it took only a few minutes to look up surveys and polling showing that plenty of Democrats are on board with the use of physical force for political ends. He could have used this as an opportunity to take a good-faith look at this phenomenon. But nope, it was more important to shout “Orange Man Bad!”
It’s for this reason that Figliuzzi never bothered to examine the root causes of these attitudes. Even a cursory look at the situation shows that this is a national issue, not a partisan one. Yet, the author went the partisan route anyway because political violence is only wrong if a Republican does it, right?
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why people no longer trust the elite media. Instead of trying to get to the bottom of the issues, its members would rather exploit them to advance a political agenda.
