Political violence by the left has become familiar. The trend has picked up momentum in the past four to six years. It wasn't that long ago when conservatives marveled at the sheer amount of degeneracy exposed by a few well-controlled shots from the rifle of Kyle Rittenhouse.
While protecting businesses from BLM and Antifa protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rittenhouse was forced to defend himself, killing two and injuring a third man, all of whom were pursuing him. A fourth pursuer fired a handgun into the air.
After the dust settled, we learned that all four of the leftists who chased and/or attacked Rittenhouse had serious criminal backgrounds.
Joseph Rosenbaum was the first to be shot. He had been convicted of multiple sex crimes against boys aged between nine and eleven years old, often sodomizing the victims. The pedophile died quickly after four shots at close range.
Anthony Huber was the second to be shot. In 2012, Huber was convicted of domestic abuse strangulation and false imprisonment with a dangerous weapon, both felonies. Huber held a butcher knife to his brother's neck and threatened to “gut him like a pig”, and threatened to burn his house down with family members inside. In 2017, Huber attacked his sister in a case of domestic violence. He died of a single shot to the chest.
Gaige Grosskreutz pointed a firearm at Rittenhouse and paid for it with his bicep. Since 2015, he has been convicted for firing a weapon while intoxicated, domestic violence, felony burglary charges, and drunk driving (the latter two charges were oddly dismissed).
Joshua Ziminski was not shot, but fired his sidearm into the air as the situation in Kenosha escalated. Ziminski's rap sheet includes robbery with use of force, a hit-and-run, misdemeanor battery, disorderly conduct (domestic abuse related), marijuana possession, and child support nonpayment.
As the Kenosha County Eye reported last year, Ziminski is "An evil man with the word 'SIN' tattooed on his head, an upside down crucifix on his forehead, and teardrops under his eyes". He was sentenced in 2023 to three years in prison for two felony case files.
2020 was, in many ways, a national primer on the new left: a violent and even evil breed of metastasized liberal. The chances that all four of Rittenhouse's pursuers were also violent criminals seems unfathomable, but it was indeed the case.
In 2024, we have seen ample evidence that Kenosha wasn't a one-off, but part of a broader trend. The two failed assassins of Donald Trump lived embarrassing lives, caught up in the throes of leftist ideology.
Despite online efforts to muddy the waters about Thomas Crooks' motive, the facts have slowly taken shape, revealing a bullied, book-smart loner. Crooks donated $15 to Joe Biden through ActBlue on January 20, 2021, the day of Biden's inauguration. He was allegedly regularly harassed at school, had a very small social media footprint, and was raised in a questionable style by parents who are both social workers.
As reported by the Daily Beast [emphasis ours]:
Crooks, 20, also frequented the shooting range. There, he reportedly practiced hitting targets as far as 561 feet away, which is more than 100 feet farther than he was from Trump...A definitive motive behind Crooks’ attack has not been released by the FBI, but Google searches suggested he was intrigued by previous killers like Lee Harvey Oswald and the Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley. Other searches suggested he may have suffered from major depressive disorder. Thomas Crooks worked at a nursing home and lived with his parents...He didn’t go to a four-year college, despite investigators revealing he scored high enough on the SAT to be accepted into Ivy League schools. The FBI descended on the Crooks’ family home shortly after the attack, where agents said they recovered 14 firearms, explosives, and a phone, laptop, and hard drive that belonged to the gunman.
Gab CEO Andrew Torba added to the conversation around Crooks when he revealed that the shooter had an account on the social networking site.
X users were quick to comment and speculate.
Social worker parents. Bullied at school. Biden supporter. Not headed to college despite excellent test scores. Guns galore. What did Crooks' parents know? They've hired prominent attorneys from Pittsburgh to represent them.
As Elon Musk noted cryptically, it wouldn't be hard to radicalize a young man these days, given the political rhetoric that rises to incitement of violence, a strongly implied dare.
However, it is the Rouths, father and son, who complete the true picture of the modern Democrat. Their achingly progressive appearance could be straight from the pages of the Babylon Bee, but they are all too real.
Ryan Routh is of course the failed assassin in attempt number two, on the outskirts of the Trump International Golf Course near Mar-a-Lago. Routh was apprehended by local police and his AK-47 taken into evidence on the afternoon of September 15th. He was charged in court for the assassination attempt yesterday, along with a slew of gun-related charges, plus the assault of a federal officer.
Routh proudly displayed contradictory flags in his social media profile: pro-Ukraine, which is a Jewish-run state, but also pro-Palestine, which is against Israel. Pro LGBT and trans, but pro-Palestine, which is not a state supportive of gay or trans culture. "Anti-Nazi," though Ukraine is home to the openly pro-Nazi Azov battallion. Routh truly is the poster boy for the modern left: confused, passionate, and violent.
Routh's son Oran may not check the violent box yet, but he is an avid fan of another pastime of the New Left: child pornography.
Pedophilia seems to be another staple of the new left, a strange and profoundly sad sickness. From Rosenbaum in Kenosha to Jeffrey Epstein to ultra-liberal German politicians seeking to make "pedosexuality" a protected characteristic, pedophilia is ubiquitous. Oran, who claimed that he and his father both hate Trump--and that his dad is not violent--also claimed that he was unaware that his father owned a gun.
This, despite Routh's arrest in 2002 when he barricaded himself inside his roofing business with a fully automatic firearm (the case notes don't specify whether submachine gun, long rifle, or other) and a "weapon of mass death and destruction," as reported by the New York Times:
Mr. Routh was charged with “possessing a weapon of mass death and destruction,” a felony. Court documents reviewed by The New York Times on Tuesday describe the weapon as a “binary explosive with a 10-inch detonation and a blasting cap.”
More disturbing than the weapons, however, was Routh's sentence: he received 60 months of supervised probation.
This revelation set off a number of conspiracies online, most notably, that Routh is a federal agent.
However, in North Carolina, it is possible that Routh could have legally owned the machine gun, based on state law. But as noted above, the explosive device was a felony charge. Who gets five years of parole for a felony after a police standoff?
In the spirit of inclusivity, we would be remiss not to point out the trans community's contributions to the New Left's violence. Beginning in 2018, a pattern began to form. From National Review:
Four mass-casualty shooters in recent years — the Aberdeen/Perryman, Md., shooter, one of the two STEM School shooters in Denver, the Club Q shooter in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Covenant School shooter in Nashville, Tenn. — were transgender or “non-binary,” and the Perry High School shooter in Iowa apparently aligned with the cause of trans advocacy. Just this week, police in Montgomery County, Md., arrested a transgender high-school student in connection with alleged threats to shoot up an elementary school.
Again, with the trans community, we are faced with a group of people who share certain characteristics. They are definitely confused, that's the definition of dysphoria. Part of it is likely puberty, but any sense of a young person with dysphoria is blood in the water for progressive teachers looking to "crack an egg". What would have been merely a phase years ago is now a new identity with the promise of new community and the seduction of being trendy.
Passion comes into play the longer an individual has embraced the trans lifestyle. One becomes invested. Not only would it be socially awkward to go back, especially if any surgeries have been performed, but detransitioning is also a source of much tension in the community.
When some peers ostracize or bully the dysphoric individual--who may be further confused if taking hormones, the likelihood of a violent episode may increase. The reality is, of course, that one can never change from a boy into a girl or vice-versa, no matter how many treatments they endure. That eventual realization can be devastating.
In the Audrey Hale "manifesto" (it was really more of a diary), we see a remarkably immature individual who scheduled time on "Death Day" to spend with her stuffed animals before driving to the Christian academy. Hale was 28. That childishness contrasts sharply with her coldblooded desire for a high body count. That too contrasts with a moment approaching sanity when she writes, "I'm sorry people will innocent lives will be taken".
The act of crossing out of "people will" in order to state explicitly that her victims will be innocent is noteworthy enough. She saw what she was going to do, and knew it was wrong. But the passive "will be taken" is the most telling detail. It's as if the act of mass murder is not only fatal, but fatalistic.
As if she were confused, but passionate...and violent. As if she had no control.
It's compli, er, commutarded....