The Washington Post published an article by Perry Stein on Thursday titled “What draws Americans to anarchy? It’s more than just smashing windows.” The op-ed could have been an eye-opening inside account of the rioting anarchists who partner with other radically violent groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
Instead, WaPo, where democracy dies in darkness, used the piece to sanitize the brutal rioters and even glamorize the violent activities the anarchists engage in.
Stein opens the article by letting you know these violent rioters could be your friends and neighbors.
By day, they are graphic designers, legal assistants, nonprofit workers and students. But outside their 9-to-5 jobs, they call themselves anarchists — bucking the system, shunning the government and sometimes even rioting and smashing windows to make a point.
Using baseball bats and bike-locks to assault people and destroy their neighbors’ property is “bucking the system.”
Their motivations are never called into question. Stein implies that the reason is simple, it is all because of Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory.
But their anarchist community made a fiery entrance into the Trump presidency on Jan. 20, when they organized thousands of people to protest his inauguration by blocking security checkpoints and marching in the streets. Hundreds of them, clad in black clothes and masks, rioted through the downtown.
They used wooden poles and pieces of concrete to break storefronts and smash newspaper boxes, according to an indictment in D.C. Superior Court. More than 200 people were arrested and six police officers were injured. City officials tally the damage from the rioting at about $100,000.
Instead of condemning the acts of violence, the article searches for common ground with left-wing protestors and anarchists.
What the court documents call “malicious” and “violent” acts, the anarchists see as a necessary way to draw attention to poverty, racism, educational inequality and other problems.
Though Stein makes it clear that the anarchists were planning on protesting a Hillary Clinton presidency, he seems to blame all of their rage on Trump.
Clinton was an establishment Democrat with fairly traditional political views, her flush campaign propped by corporate donors — everything they stood against. Then Donald Trump was elected. The anarchists ramped up for a more radical response.
Stein does mention how the inauguration day riots were denounced, briefly mentioning the destruction and chaos that the anarchist “community” brought upon the city, but does not offer his own criticism.
The rioting brought swift rebukes.
On Inauguration Day, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser — a Democrat who has criticized many of Trump’s policies — condemned the rioting, tweeting that while the city welcomes protesters, officials “cannot allow you to destroy our neighborhoods.”
Stein discusses the arrests that followed the riots, writing almost sympathetically about the rioters who were caught wreaking havoc on our nation’s capital.
Not once does the article denounce the violence or the destruction that the anarchists and their left-wing allies brought down on the city. In fact, the article seems to be admiring the “cause” and lamenting the fact that the criminals could go to jail on felony charges.
The op-ed gives excuses for the men and women that it profiles, blaming their violent tendencies on poverty, inequality, suppression, and ultimately on President Trump.
It is blatantly obvious that The Washington Post is using Trump as an excuse for this brutal kind of violence despite the fact that six police officers were injured by the rioters who caused over $100,000 worth of damage and destroyed local businesses, according to Fox News.
National Review senior correspondent Jim Geraghty described the fake news best on Twitter.