I won’t link to them because the speculations contain a dollop of hysteria, but last night and this morning I have seen a spate of stories that ask the title question of this post.
The school shooting in Nashville is the common inspiration for these stories. The common contention is that the shooter was a radicalized transgender who resorted to gun violence in a crusade against Christianity.
Other than the events themselves — the shooter indeed was a woman who identified as a man, and she shot up a Christian school — there is scant evidence to support the claim that a leftwing Helter Skelter has begun. This is because the shooter’s manifesto is in police custody and we have yet to learn much about her from other sources.
Still, without exploiting this latest of sad moments, the title question seems a legitimate one to me.
We know from history that leftwing political movements characteristically turn violent. We know from current events that the threat of rightwing terrorism is often exaggerated. We also know from science that ideological liberalism correlates with mental illness and that the highest rates of gun violence occur in left-leaning political jurisdictions.
Add in the George Floyd riots and the impishly destructive antics of Antifa protestors and we have enough to formulate the hypothesis that radical-left terrorism has become a discernable problem in our society.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
The problem is very clear. You spend way too much time perusing garbage media. And worse, actually believing the nonsense they spread. You should try to stop.
Besides . . .
It’s the guns, stupid.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Until you can show where a gun can travel and shoot by itself, I would carefully consider who you call stupid.
LikeLike
RE: “You spend way too much time perusing garbage media.”
You spend way too much time making me the problem. I am personally irrelevant, but apparently you can only shoot at easy targets.
LikeLike
“. . . apparently you can only shoot at easy targets.”
You got that right.
Your grasping at straws in a lame attempt to come up with a “whatabout” to offet the FACT of right-wing violence, insurrection and terrorism IS a very easy target.
LikeLiked by 1 person
RE: “Your grasping at straws in a lame attempt to come up with a ‘whatabout’.”
There is no “whatabout.” Here is my assertion: “we have enough to formulate the hypothesis that radical-left terrorism has become a discernable problem in our society.”
LikeLike
“. . . we have enough to formulate the hypothesis that radical-left terrorism has become a discernable problem in our society.”
And that is a DOA hypothesis that is offered as a whatabout.
Hypotheses are easy. Supporting them with actual facts is quite a bit harder. That is the part that you completely fail. The “facts” you do offer are pulled out of your ass or are laughable non-sequiturs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
RE: “Hypotheses are easy. Supporting them with actual facts is quite a bit harder. That is the part that you completely fail.”
You’d have a point if I set out to prove the hypothesis, but I didn’t so you don’t. Rather, I find it newsworthy that leftwing terrorism is a matter of discussion after the Nashville shooting. Legitimately so, in my opinion.
LikeLike
“You’d have a point if I set out to prove the hypothesis, but I didn’t so you don’t”
You set out the “facts” that you think make it a reasonable hypothesis. You can quibble about whether you think that is proof or not.
LikeLiked by 1 person
RE: “You can quibble about whether you think that is proof or not.”
You are the one who is quibbling. My use of the word hypothesis was direct, intentional and accurate.
LikeLike
How many bombings and attacks have there been on Abortion clinics and providers? That ain’t left wing extremism.
LikeLike
RE: “How many bombings and attacks have there been on Abortion clinics and providers?”
A recent National Abortion Federation report says, “Since 1977, there have been 11 murders, 42 bombings, 196 arsons, 491 assaults, and thousands of incidents of criminal activities directed at patients, providers, and volunteers.”
I don’t say there is no rightwing terrorism, only that it is often exagerated. NAF, for example, uses percentage increases to make violence against abortion providers look especially bad.
https://prochoice.org/national-abortion-federation-releases-2021-violence-disruption-report/
LikeLike
Every time there is a successful shooting or a foiled bomb plot and they find the guy’s browser history is full of content from the usual extreme right figures, you all brush it off as irrelevant. It’s a mental health issue; it’s a policing issue; it’s a gun control issue; etc.
Now that it appears a shooter is a member of a group that happens to be the right’s enemy du jour, suddenly it is time to ponder serious questions about whether the shooter’s ideological leanings (which have not been established beyond “he was trans, duh”) represent “a discernable problem in our society.”
LikeLiked by 3 people
That’s about the size of it. And?
LikeLike
Well, it’s hard to tell with you sometimes. If we were all still posting on PilotOnline, your premise would be understandable. It would reach many more people who might not notice the ham-fisted sleight of hand you’re attempting. If you’re acting as a propagandist (in the original sense of the word) and your goal is to pull fence-sitters to your side, fine. But here, where everyone more or less knows each other, and has high levels of media literacy, why with this pablum?
LikeLiked by 2 people
What “ham-fisted sleight of hand” are you referring to?
I assert straightforwardly that “we have enough to formulate the hypothesis that radical-left terrorism has become a discernable problem in our society.”
LikeLike
And I am asserting that, given numerous observations of these acts being committed by worshipers of Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, et al., you never seem to “have enough to formulate the hypothesis that radical-[right] terrorism has become a discernable problem in our society.”
If you want to try to speak like a scientist, it’s not unreasonable to expect you to think like one.
LikeLiked by 3 people
…”“we have enough to formulate the hypothesis that radical-left terrorism has become a discernable problem in our society.””
And all the while you DENY the existence of radical right wing terrorism. Or ignore it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think left-wing terrorism is a thing, but I’m not so sure this was it.
Incels and transexuals are very unhappy people. Most have other mental problems, autism in particular. They have a very high suicide rate, and combine that with their anger and a certain percentage are going to choose suicide by cop.
That this particular one embraced a left-wing cause is pretty much coincidence, and the same is true when one of these suicides by cop are by someone embracing a right-wing cause.
The problem is the mental illness, and tarring liberals or conservatives when one of these sick people lashes out is inaccurate in both cases.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One of the fairest assessments of our current lives by you that I can recall.
LikeLike
“I think left-wing terrorism is a thing”
Of course you do. Even when it is not. Hooliganism by a very few is not terrorism.
But leaving that aside, your attempt to be “fair and balanced” seems reasonable except that it is the leaders and influencers on the right – such as your Dear Leader – who constantly use inciteful and violent language in their public utterances. You have not heard a Democrat refer to anyone as, for example, “enemies of the people.” And it is that hate-filled rhetoric on the right that is an obvious explanation for the fact that so many more of the disturbed people committing such crimes turn out to be right-wingers of one sort or another.
LikeLike
TDS again?
Its Democrats who call for violence
LikeLike
“Its Democrats who call for violence”
Dishonest and/or stupid bullshit.
Yours are the halfwits playing army man in the woods. Not Democrats. Yours are the insurrectionists. Not Democrats. Yours is the leader promising death and destruction if he is held accountable for his crimes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yet you have them in their own words.
I guess you didn’t follow the link again.
Oh, and there’s this
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-marshals-were-told-not-arrest-protesters-supreme-court-justices-homes-unless-absolutely-necessary
LikeLike
“I guess you didn’t follow the link again.:
Actually, I replied before it turned into a link.Now I have seen it, I just have to laugh. One of Trump’s lying liar lawyers – is he in jail yet? And Maxine Waters? Again? Really? The lying about here has been refuted uncounted times but there it is again.
As for not arresting non-violent protesters – what is your problem with that? What goes around, comes around. Those Justices who were the subject of demonstrations green lit intimidation at abortion centers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There is a Federal Law against picking judges, as they are not politicians, they are technicians.
LikeLike
Not as simple as it seems:
https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/may/13/it-legal-protest-outside-justices-homes-law-sugges/
Judges are technicians? They are also selected by their ideology which, in our country, is divided between two parties. Those parties run on promises of picking judges that very much align politically with the party. So, the reality is that the judges are indirectly politicians that are elected through the party in power at the White House and Senate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Democrat appointed judges are ideologues, Republicans appoint originalists who look only to the letter of the law as understood by the legislators who passed them or the citizens who ratified them.
LikeLike
Sure.
Don, they are all ideologues if they are selected based on passing the litmus tests each side provides. And they are.
Sometimes a jurist will rise to the office or surprise the party. Souter comes to mind. Roberts, too, to a degree.
Roe was a good decision. It had all the compromise one could want. And now we see the ridiculous fragmentation that makes doctors and women felons in one state and providers with patients in another. And the consensus of the country is that Roe was fine. But so long as we have a Senate beholden to small, conservative states, that majority is stifled.
I think this current abortion issue will sort itself out, but a lot of injustice and suffering will be the price.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Whether Roe was a good decision or not is irrelevant.
The problem is that it was not their decision to make. The court is not a legislature.
LikeLike
No, but it can rule on the Constitutionality of states’ laws.
LikeLiked by 2 people
But that isn’t what they did,
They didn’t just strike down the Texas law being challenged, they went on to legislate a nation wide alternative from whole cloth,
LikeLike
Judging by the mess we have now, the Court was right.
Equal rights for women is new. Voting, careers, workplace protections, property laws, etc. were non-existent up until the 20th century.
Yet we are still fighting over who controls child bearing, the woman or the state. I predict that it will take tragic events to stir the collective conscience enough for a national law.
Yet, we have yet to act to save children from the gun, so it might just be the same for women of childbearing years.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Again, it doesn’t matter if Roe were perfect, it was not their place in the Constitution to impose it.
Why so lazy?
If you want abortion protected nationwide, Amend the Constitution, If you want to ban guns, Repeal the 2nd Amendment. The Constitution contains the means to change it.
But if you appoint justices who will act outside their authority because it is easier, then you have thrown the Constitution in the garbage as it no longer means anything.
LikeLike
First, banning guns is not the issue. The warped interpretation by SCOTUS is. Activist judges?
That was easier wasn’t it?
Don’t need to amend Constitution for abortion rights. Just pass a federal law. Barring that, respect reproductive rights for women as a right to privacy, per Roe.
But let’s not waste time. Women, as per the pending Texas lawsuits, are already suffering grievous harm from hospitals and doctors who don’t want to take a chance for prosecution by vague laws.
If you don’t care about harming women, then so be it. They will vote next year, you can bet on that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Half the aborted babies would have grown into women.
A law passed by Congress would seem adequate to me, though Federalism is superior for finding the best compromise.
But again, trying to get what you want by sneaking around the Constitution ends very badly. It won’t always be your guys doing it once it becomes SOP.
LikeLike
Try Heller before you so cavalierly throw cow pies on the left.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Try reading Scalia’s opinion, his reasoning in separating the prefatory clause from the active clause is spelled out and supported by contemporary documents.
I know you want the 2nd to be interpreted differently, but Heller is correct, and it is the only view that was ratified at the time.
Ratification is what makes law,
LikeLike
“Republicans appoint originalists ”
Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourself that. But no “originalist” would have ignored the full text of the Second Amendment as Scalia did in Heller. No “originalist” would have involved the Court in “Bush v Gore.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
“There is a Federal Law against picking judges, as they are not politicians”
(“picking” =”picketing”)
A clearly un-Constitutional law. Based on the same logic that the Justices used when they allowed the continuing intimidation of women and doctors by “Christian” terrorists.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Try reading Scalia’s opinion . . .”
I have read it. Several times. I think Scalia coined the legal phrase “argle bargle” which describes it very well. The dissent in this 5-4 ruling by activist justices was the real “originalist” document.
LikeLike
Radical-Left Terrorism? Skip the jargon. You’re talking about the Biden White House, right?
LikeLike
So now we have two active trolls. Please do not feed them.
LikeLiked by 2 people
C’mon, Bruce. Are you really that dense?
LikeLike
RE: “You’re talking about the Biden White House, right?”
I suppose so. They are like the management of the Stasi.
LikeLike
Modern left wing terrorism started in the 60s-70s Vietnam era with the Weathermen, SLA, etc bombings, kidnapping, Tate and La Bianca murders and other terrorist activities. Left wing terrorists tend to “sleep” only to re-emerge to cause mayhem, death and destruction on a monumental scale in the name of “social justice”, socialism, Marxism, anti-police, politics among others as evidenced by recent riots that destroyed large swathes of cities that haven’t recovered to this day. Funny thing is they attempt to normalize extreme left wing ideology by claiming they are “main stream”. So is left wing terrorism a thing? Absolutely. It has been for over 60 years and is now stoked with impunity by Democrats in government.
LikeLike
Here’s a good link
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-left_politics
LikeLike
The Weathermen certainly, and SLA kinda. The Manson murders were not left-wing violence. Manson was a white supremacist who was trying to instigate a race war. That’s just a point of fact; but for the sake of the conversation, we can just focus on the Weathermen.
Do you remember one of the first things the right freaked out about when Obama was gaining prominence? It was his tangential relationship with Bill Ayers. Ayers is very much “retired”–a professor living in a wealthy Chicago suburb. Nonetheless, Obama disavowed him, and I believe Ayers has since said he believes Obama should be tried for war crimes. My point is, asserting that left-wing terrorism is still a common threat in America is factually untrue, and makes you all sound like a bunch of hysterics.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Left wingers are terrorists. Right wingers are patriots. Just ask Mr. Smith.
LikeLike
Manson’s radical ideology at the time was adored by left wing activists. He was a hero of the Weathermen, communist sympathizers and anti-war activists. He wanted a race war not because of racism but he thought blacks would win the war and he would emerge as their leader. He may have changed over time but he was squarely a left wing terrorist at the time.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/11/charles-manson-1960s-radicals-loved-him/
LikeLike
Also, Obama launched his political career at a fundraising event at Ayer’s home. No, Obama and Ayer’s are old pals.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/28339-obama-and-bill-ayers-together-from-the-beginning/amp/
As far as left wing terrorism today, it is on full display through violent protest, riots, arson, looting, etc every time a conservative event is held.
LikeLike
“As far as left wing terrorism today, it is on full display through violent protest, riots, arson, looting, etc every time a conservative event is held.”
You gotta a cite for that? Or are you just ranting because it is what you do?
There was just a rally in Waco for some guy running for the GOP nomination for President in 2024. Pretty conservative event, right? Very conservative area, agreed? I didn’t see or hear of any riots, looting, protests or arson. I did read that after about 30 minutes, the assembled masses started leaving in droves.
LikeLike