Bullying Redux

Yesterday, in light of the assault on Steven Crowder during the Michigan right-to-work protests, justturnright wrote an insightful post about leftist bullying over on the Two Heads Are Better Than One blog. In it he observes:

So I find it a little troubling that, more and more, bullying tactics by the Left are excused, embraced or flat-out ignored. We’ve seen it with the voter intimidation in Philadelphia back in 2008; we’ve seen it with the Occupy Movement; we saw it with the Wisconsin recall aftermath.

And now we’re seeing it with the incident up in Michigan the other night.

[…]

If this is allowed to take hold, to actually become a lasting part of our national culture, THAT’s when we might as well make like the Von Trapp family and head for the proverbial mountains. Ask yourself: what is the only possible, eventual outcome? ‘Cause if history has taught us one thing, it’s that if one side can attack another with impunity, …it usually does.

Apparently, this bullying isn’t only confined to Union members or physical violence. Last night, Michelle Malkin was a victim of verbal bullying by rapper “The Game” and his followers on Twitter (I watched it unfold in real time, and it was surreal). In case you missed it, Twitchy documented the steady stream of obscenities and threats, and Michelle Fields has more. Here is a sample (content/language warning):

@michellemalkin SUCK A DICK BITCHH!! FUCK FOX 11 NEWS AND YOU BITCH, NOBODY FUCKS WITH @thegameFUCKIN GATHER YOURSELF YOU HOE!!

— EDIK KARAPETYAN (@DEEK212) December 14, 2012

Now we all know that Ms. Malkin is a strong woman and doesn’t back down from a bully, but this situation serves to further expose the mindset (or mindless droning, you decide) of the leftists. If you don’t agree with them, or dare exercise your First Amendment rights in a critical way towards them, they respond with irrational anger and threats (usually accompanied by racial/ethnic and misogynistic slurs). These types of people would rather try to shout an opposing view down, than engage it in the arena of ideas and public discourse.

Most of the time, to stop a bully, one stands up to the bully. However, leftists (with the help of their media propaganda arm) have that covered too. R.S. McCain describes how the media de-legitimatizes wrong-doing on the part of the left by accusing the victim of the wrong doing:

Perhaps you see a pattern here: Democrats and their political allies engaging in thuggish violence which no one could possibly defend or endorse. And in each case, liberals used a variation of the same distracting “Accuse the Accusers” defense: Whatever wrong was done by Democrats was minimized or dismissed as irrelevant in comparison to some greater wrong that liberals alleged had been done by the conservatives involved in calling attention to these incidents.

Call it “Wheelerization,” in tribute to the way Marcy Wheeler deliberately smeared Crowder as having somehow faked his own beating, simply because . . . well, James O’Keefe! Breitbart!

This is simply another form of bullying intended to discourage the victims of mistreatment from the left of bringing attention to the occurrence. Another example of this was recently demonstrated by the New York Time’s Robert Mackey. As reported by Dana Loesch, in an attempt to minimize/de-legitimatize the violence from union thug “Tony”, Mackey implies that since “Tony” was seen on video rising from the ground, somehow Crowder is responsible for the fall (despite all evidence to the contrary). Thus, “Tony” was “understandably” upset and his assault on Crowder was justified by this supposed provocation. Therefore, via these verbal gymnastics, Crowder is now the aggressor and “Tony” is the victim.

Of course, this strategy will make it more difficult to expose leftists’ misdeeds; however we need to stay strong in the face of such bullying. Controlling some additional media outlets wouldn’t hurt.

[UPDATE 12/14/12]

Fixed broken link in first paragraph.