Shortly after Charlie Kirk took his dying breath, now-former MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd uttered the words on live cable TV that cost him his job, while also providing Americans with a chilling illustration of one of the most common ways the Left legitimizes and thereby encourages political violence against its opponents.
“He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in,” Dowd declared in a conversation with MSNBC host Katy Tur (emphasis added).
Shortly after those comments were broadcast, MSNBC issued an apology, followed by Dowd’s termination.
Dowd began his career as a political strategist working for multiple Democrats, but he switched to the GOP to help President George W. Bush win re-election in 2004. More recently, Dowd returned to the Democratic Party and tangled with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) with remarks in 2019 for which he subsequently apologized.
Hate as a label
To see how precisely Dowd captured one of the Left’s most terrifying convictions, re-read the italicized words in his statement. Note the progression: Hateful thoughts produce hateful words produce hateful actions. That progression has long been at the heart of the Left’s sabotage of the First Amendment’s guarantee of every American’s right to freedom of expression and opinion.
Here’s how they do it: Nobody questions that people can be prompted to act recklessly on what they hear. Crowds of Ku Klux Klansmen, for example, were indeed incited during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras by horrendously false accusations to lynch innocent black men.
What the Left does in this process is redefine what constitutes “hate speech” as anything espoused by those opposed to the Left. Thus, Matthew Dowd reframed Charlie Kirk’s message — about the love of Christ, the blessings of individual liberty, and the need for civil debate and tolerance of divergent views — as the worst hate speech that produces hateful, violent, actions. This is how Dowd comes to the position that Kirk’s speech brought on his own assassination. The assassin who pulled the trigger was merely responding to Kirk’s alleged provocation. Thus, the real perpetrator of political violence is actually the victim of hate speech by the Left’s opponents.
The aggressor as victim
The Matthew Dowds of the world can make such connections because they operate in the context of the Left’s mindless ideological obsession with identity politics, especially those rooted in critical theory. For example, Americans are constantly told by lawmakers on the Left, multicultural “experts” in academic and bureaucratic circles, and mainstream media talking heads that all American cultural, economic, legal, and political institutions are products of a deadly “white supremacy.”
Critical race theory (CRT) argues that America has been a racist society since before its inception; indeed, according to The New York Times and the 1619 Project, it is impossible to conceive of the present America without understanding that white supremacy and chattel slavery are the root of all the country’s major institutions and societal structures.
“The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history by making explicit how slavery is the foundation on which the United States of America is built, and by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as the nation’s birth year,” according to the Times.
Note the qualifier, “reframe American history.” Several generations of American college graduates were thus filled with the CRT version of American history, and typically with no serious examination — that is, fact-based rather than ideology-based — of alternative analyses of the nation’s colonial roots, the Constitution, and the historical development since.
The drive for race-based “reparations” to black Americans for the sufferings of their enslaved ancestors is a direct product of the CRT view that everything about this country has been the result of the abuses by the white majority of the black slave populations and their descendants down to the present day.
A number of states, including California, Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey, either presently have or are considering establishing official panels for exploring approaches to race-based reparations. Multiple cities have functioning reparations programs, including San Francisco, Palm Springs, Providence, Asheville, and Evanston. Benefits range from $25,000 for housing expenses and investments of tax funds to minority neighborhoods and businesses, to direct lump sum payments and targeted job opportunities.
But the vast majority of states and municipalities have no interest in establishing race-based reparations programs. How long before teams of screaming leftists point to the marked absence of reparations programs, condemn American society as irretrievably racist, and incite riots, insurrection, and mayhem in major cities across the country? When it happens, the Left will tell us all that it’s our fault, not that of the rioters.
Let us instead follow the example left by Charlie Kirk in his continuous civility and reasoned engagement with those who disagreed with him, as Scripture instructs us in 1 Peter 3:15: “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand.
Mark Tapscott is The Washington Stand’s senior congressional analyst.
