(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) In a recent City Journal op-ed, conservative watchdog Chris Rufo warned that left-wing leaders may stoke riots again in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Alluding to the Black Lives Matter riots that dominated the summer of 2020, Rufo suggested that a number of causes could be used to justify the next round of violent and lawless protests, stoking political tensions as the pivotal 2024 election approaches.
Aside from the death of a minority at the hands of the police or unrest caused by the brutal economic conditions, Rufo said that the most likely source of such riots would relate to the ongoing lawfare attacks on former President Donald Trump.
Despite the fact that Trump has been indicted on a staggering 91 felony charges, all of them are for spurious reasons beyond what a reasonable prosecutor would consider.
If the cases themselves are not too flimsy to fail, they are likely to be overturned on appeal due to the overreach and prosecutorial abuses of special counsel Jack Smith and district attorneys Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg.
That, in turn, will trigger groups like Antifa, who are waiting in the wings waiting for such an outcome and likely hoping to instigate clashes with right-wing vigilante groups, who will once again be selectively scapegoated as dangerous domestic terrorists.
According to Rufo, this time, the riots could be even worse, given that the Left has spent the past three years preparing and coordinating “a constellation of institutions to support public demonstrations.”
Riots could once again be used as justification for changing the rules to the election, or to shield—via social-media censorship—other potential news revelations that could harm public opinion of the Left.
The Biden administration could even potentially use a declaration of martial law to completely suspend constitutional rights under the auspices of a pre-engineered “national emergency.”
Of course, one must not simply sit back and wait for riots to happen, Rufo argued. Rather, the appropriate approach would be for Republican leaders to pass legislation now, limiting the damage that rioters are able to do without swift legal punishment.
Citing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “zero tolerance” approach to rioting via the Combating Public Disorder Act, Rufo argued that, even if such legislation gets caught up in court, it sends a “strong signal” that if you riot, “you will pay the price.”
Aside from legal recourse, Rufo also suggested fighting riots via “air war”—that is, by way of trying to shape public opinion.
Such was Trump’s approach to the initial riots of 2020 while containing the better part of the destruction to leftist cities.
However, the former president appeared recently to second-guess his strategy during an Iowa campaign stop, saying that if re-elected he would work aggressively to put down violent urban protests with military force instead.
“The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” he told supporters. “Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”
With the benefit of hindsight, Republican leaders now have Democrats’ own precedent to follow as well when dealing with their political allies and enemies.
The Biden Justice Department has arrested more than 1,200 political dissidents who participated in the mostly peaceful Jan. 6, 2021 uprising at the U.S. Capitol.
Meanwhile, blue-run cities like Denver, Philadelphia and New York have issued multimillion-dollar payouts to left-wing rioters, claiming their civil rights were violated by the law-enforcement officers in the course of doing their jobs.
The city of Denver is paying BLM protesters $4.7 million for arresting them after they destroyed a city and burned buildings down on the same day Enrique Tarrio is sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for protesting an election.
George Soros and all of his minions are… pic.twitter.com/DgSi3DXxRy
— 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 (@Travis_in_Flint) September 5, 2023
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
