[guest post by Dana]
Last night, Tucker Carlson’s wife was at home alone when a mob of approximately 20 individuals congregated in front of the Carlson’s Northwest D.C. home and pounded on the front door, terrifying Mrs. Carlson:
“I called my wife,” Carlson told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “She had been in the kitchen alone getting ready to go to dinner and she heard pounding on the front door and screaming. … Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door.”
His wife, thinking it was a home invasion, locked herself in the pantry and called 911, Carlson said. The couple have four children, but none were home at the time.
But it wasn’t a home invasion. It was a **protest.
According to reports, those claiming responsibility are part of an already familiar group of agitators called Smash Racism D.C.:
According to now-deleted social media posts shared by Smash Racism D.C., a local anti-fascist organization whose members have been tied to other demonstrations against prominent Republican figures, activists showed up outside Carlson’s home Wednesday and they had a message for him.
“Tucker Carlson, we are outside your home,” one person could be heard saying in the since-deleted video. The person, using a bullhorn, accused Carlson of “promoting hate” and “an ideology that has led to thousands of people dying.”
“We want you to know, we know where you sleep at night,” the person concluded, before leading the group to chant, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”
Clearly hypocrisy and irony is lost on these imbeciles.
Carlson described the events:
Carlson said the protesters had blocked off both ends of his street and carried signs that listed his home address. The group called Carlson a “racist scumbag” and demanded that he “leave town,” according to posts on Twitter. A woman was also overheard in one of the deleted videos saying she wanted to “bring a pipe bomb” to his house, he said.
“It wasn’t a protest. It was a threat,” said Carlson, who is often denounced by critics, particularly liberal ones, for his rhetoric about immigrants and minorities on his Fox News show. “They weren’t protesting anything specific that I had said. They weren’t asking me to change anything. They weren’t protesting a policy or advocating for legislation. … They were threatening me and my family and telling me to leave my own neighborhood in the city that I grew up in.”
On social media accounts, the activists made their point clear:
On Twitter, Smash Racism D.C. accused Carlson of spreading “fear into our homes” every night, taking particular issue with his comments about the migrant caravan.
“Tonight you’re reminded that we have a voice,” a now-deleted tweet read. “Tonight, we remind you that you are not safe either.”
…
“Fascists are vulnerable. Confront them at their homes!”
“Protecting ourselves and our communities means interfering with those who make a platform for hate,” the statement said. “So we will go to their homes and their workplaces, and find them in restaurants.”
According to Brian Stelter, who viewed the police report:
The police report describes the incident as a “suspected hate crime” and says the motivation was “anti-political.”
One would think that a reasonable people would universally, and unhesitatingly condemn the illegal actions of moral cowards intent on terrorizing a family because they hold views different than their own. Because that’s what good and decent people of all stripes do. Or did, once upon a time. So while it may have once been the norm, it no longer is:
How hard is it to put yourself and your family in the Carlson’s shoes? If your loved ones were being threatened and frightened in a similar manner, would you not be enraged and upset and determined to see those guilty brought to justice? Would you not, with absolute clarity, allowing nothing as mundane and temporal as politics to obstruct your view, know, unequivocally, that this behavior is wrong and should be condemned? You would see it clearly if it happened to you. You would feel the rising nausea as you envisioned your own spouse crouched in abject terror. If it happened to you. The wrong of it would be a brutal slap of reality to your smug, closely held views of politics, race and the state of America. But reasonable people, who still know right from wrong and whose inner-selves are not polluted with political deceit and deception, would know this without it having to happen to them. That there are many who are not condemning what happened, is disturbing. That others believe what happened is a justified form of “rough justice” because they don’t like Carlson and his ideas, is even more disturbing. Something is terribly broken inside any individual who believes this is little more than a political strategy, or an effort to shed light on bad ideas. But not even these individuals deserve to ever have this happen to them. How has this become so hard for people to understand?
And this works both ways, on both sides of the political aisle. It should all be equally condemned:
An Arkansas man was arrested Tuesday for allegedly making death threats against CNN anchor Don Lemon. According to a press release from the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office, 39-year-old Benjamin Craig Matthews has been charged with “terroristic threatening” (five counts in the first degree, four in the second) and harassing communications (nine counts).
In one of his calls to CNN, Matthews allegedly threatened to beat up Lemon. It didn’t end there, the Baxter Bulletin reports:
The next day, Matthews is accused of calling the network six times in the span of 23 minutes. During one of the calls Matthews reportedly asked to be directed to Lemon’s “dead body hanging from a tree.”
During another call in that short span, Matthews reportedly asked the operator to help kill Lemon.
One Nov. 2, the next, Matthews is accused of placing another six calls to the network during another 23-minute time span. In three of those calls, Matthews is accused of asking his calls be directed to “pipe bombs for Don Lemon.
Helpful hint: If you despise the politics and ideas of Tucker Carlson (or Don Lemon), then do the hard work of persuading them of the rightness of your views, do the hard work of demonstrating why they are wrong, challenge and compel them to re-think beliefs and ideals. Of course, it really goes without saying that cowardly pussies are just that, and incapable of doing the real hard work.
Preemptive strike: It is equally condemnable that Christine Blasey-Ford and her family have had to move four times because of threats and harassment from horrible people. I shouldn’t have to note this, but this is where we’re at…
(**Clearly it all depends on what your definition of protest is.)
(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)
–Dana
