Leftists Have a Long History of Advocating Violence to Advance Their Cause

 


There will be blood,” Democrat State Representative Douglas Geiss threatened from the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives in 2012 as its members debated legislation that eventually made Michigan the nation’s 24th right to work state. Union thuggery is not uncommon or new. It was Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., who said this about the Tea Party: “Let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”

The history of the labor movement in this country is a history of purposeful disorder. “As it entered the industrial age full blast in the 1870s, America had plunged into ‘the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world.’”1 Under the auspices of the first Education and Defense Society, “workers met regularly and drilled with firearms.”2 On May 4, 1886, during a labor rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, anarchists had thrown a bomb into police ranks, killing 7 policemen and injuring 70 more. The gathering had been organized to protest the killing of six striking workers at the McCormick Harvester plant.

At the trial for the anarchist leaders, the following treatise, written by Johann Most, a leading American anarchist, was entered into evidence: Science of Revolutionary War — Manual for Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitro-Glycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, and so forth.3 Most’s guide consisted of information he gathered from his experience at an explosives’ factory in Jersey City. “With a certain zest he contemplated using ‘hand grenades and blasting cartridges … the proletariat’s substitute for artillery.’ Larger bombs were even more promising: ‘That which reduces what had been solid rocks into splinters may not have a bad effect in a court or a monopolist’s ballroom.’”4

   

Like all romantic revolutionaries, these early social justice warriors believed that humanity could be saved only “with blood and iron, poison and dynamite!”5

In 1912, because of a dispute over unionization, the Los Angeles Times building was dynamited and 21 persons killed. “Sixteen packets of bombs were found in the New York Post Office in April 1919.
In June 1919, bombs damaged the houses of the U.S. Attorney General, the mayor of Cleveland and judges in New York and Boston.”6 In September 1920, a group of anti-capitalist anarchists set off a bomb on Wall Street, killing 38 people.

These tactics were copied during the turbulent 1960s. Abbie Hoffman, whose book Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), is shown with a rifle in his hand leaping for joy on the cover. Hoffman’s rhetoric about revolution was just a warm-up. In Steal This Book (1971), he gave instructions on how to build stink bombs, smoke bombs, sterno bombs, aerosol bombs, pipe bombs, and Molotov Cocktails. Hoffman’s updated version of the Molotov Cocktail consisted of a glass bottle filled with a mixture of gasoline and Styrofoam, turning the slushy blend into a poor man’s version of napalm. The flaming gasoline-soaked Styrofoam was designed to stick to policemen when it exploded. Helpful drawings on how to make the incendiary devices were included.

In Woodstock Nation, Hoffman updated his revolutionary tactics. This time, Random House published his book. Next to the publisher’s name on the title page, there is an illustration of a man using dynamite to blow up a house. This same illustration appears in Hoffman’s Steal This Book. The theme of both books is how to blow up the system — literally. “Righteous violence” was rationalized by the front-line New Left leadership in the 1960s: “The use of violence was justified, many in the New Left comforted themselves, because theirs was a violence to end all violence, a liberating and righteous violence that would rid the world of a system that deformed and destroyed people. Such glorious ends justified, even ennobled, violent means.”