From Jonah Goldberg, formerly of the National Review:

Dear Reader (Not including “Via Getty,” the biggest jerk of them all),

They picked a specific, historically significant date to launch their attack. It was organized and coordinated. Officials knew an attack was possible but didn’t prepare. Four people were killed. Almost instantaneously, the attack became a political and ideological football.

I’m talking about the raid on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. The Obama administration, heading into a presidential election, dissembled, obfuscated, and lied about the nature of the attack. Officials pushed the idea that the attack was really a spontaneous response to an obscure anti-Islamic video. Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, even told the families of the dead that she wouldn’t rest until they brought the maker of the video to justice. They eventually arrested him on unrelated charges. Democrats and a cooperative media launched a major “national conversation” over the limits of free speech. The idea that mobs of terrorists were somehow or somewhat justified in murdering Americans if they were sufficiently offended was widely debated by Very Serious People.

On Wednesday, we saw a right-wing Benghazi. The analogy isn’t perfect; I don’t think Trump planned a violent attack on the Capitol. He was merely cavalier about the possibility. Though, I could be wrong. Thanks to Trump’s cowardly definition of manliness, he often winks and nods that he wouldn’t mind violence. And when people act violently on his behalf, he has a history of offering his approval. Indeed, if reports are true, he was reluctant to put an end to the siege once it started.

Regardless, it was obvious that violence was possible, even likely, especially after the president tweeted on December 19, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” All of the usual thugs, bro-warriors, and unaffiliated idiots had been flexing for weeks. “If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism,” a barbarian lacking self-awareness declared on the Red-State Secession Group Facebook page.

Most people on the right have condemned the violence. But much like those who wanted to make Benghazi about a rogue offensive video, much of the right-wing media complex is falling into its comfort zone, blaming the attack on the mainstream media, Twitter, and “elites” who don’t like Trump supporters.

It’s not that these people claim the violence was good. The “it was a video!” crowd didn’t actually endorse the attack on Benghazi, either. Rather, the insinuation is that this was inevitable and understandable because—fill in the blank: the elitists, media, Democrats, the establishment, Trump-bashers, or whoever else you can imagine said mean things about Trump supporters.

For others, the real issue is the double standard from the same crowd of elitists and wokesters who didn’t sufficiently condemn the violence from Black Lives Matter protesters. This is the slop they really love to wallow in.

The most cynical and grotesque form of this argument goes something like this: Trump supporters sincerely believe that the election was stolen, therefore mocking the idea that it was stolen is offensive, elitist, bigoted, condescending, or inciteful. The same people who giddily encouraged their viewers, readers, and constituents to believe a lie now argue that this is what you get when you call them liars or dupes. Here’s Pete Hegseth explaining why you need to understand the root causes of right-wing rage.


Brian Stelter
@brianstelter
Pete Hegseth, one of the biggest MAGA guys on Fox, says "this is the result of frustration that a lot of people feel. I frankly wasn't surprised. I am not saying it is okay, I'm not saying all those things, but images didn't shock me." Listen to him channel the rioters...
January 7th 2021

439 Retweets1,162 Likes
Well, calling Mohammed a pervert is offensive to Muslims, but that didn’t justify the Benghazi attacks. And none of the things these people want to talk about, including the left’s very real double standards on violence, make a mob assault on the Capitol more forgivable.

One of the central tenets of conservatism is that there’s a difference between an explanation and an excuse. I’m happy to concede that many in the mainstream media shamed themselves waving away violence during the BLM protests. I’m happy to concede that progressive elites have contempt for lots of regular Americans and Christians; I’ve probably written 100,000 words on this point over the last 20 years. All of these things can be true, it still doesn’t shave an onion skin from the layers of outrage we should feel about a mob beating a cop to death with a fire extinguisher. It doesn’t subtract a feather’s weight of opprobrium from a president orchestrating an effort to steal an election by peddling lies and conspiracy theories, never mind from his willful incitement of a crowd to act on that lie.

Condemning the media or Democrats for their inconsistency when it comes to violence is fine by me, but only if in the same breath you condemn the president for the same inconsistency. The president celebrated an attack on a reporter, pardoned war criminals, cheered militias intent on “liberating” Michigan, and the vice president had to cut him out of the chain of command to get the National Guard deployed to put down an insurrectionist mob that, again, murdered a cop and scrawled “Murder the Media” on a door inside the Capitol. If you don’t acknowledge these things, you’re just providing cover.

Also, let’s not overlook the profound category error that has run wild among Trump apologists for four years. Everything they say about the New York Times—or CNN, or the Washington Post, or the Kroger Coupon Sampler—could be 100 percent true. You know what still wouldn’t be true? The New York Times isn’t the president of the United States of America. You can look it up. The Times doesn’t take an oath to uphold the Constitution. It doesn’t have the power to deploy troops.

If President Biden were to say in his inaugural address, “Republicans are evil,” and Rachel Maddow replied in his defense, “What about what OANN said about Democrats,” the same Trump apologists who’ve been spraying pro-Trump flak into the airwaves for the last four years would scoff at such absurd whatabouttery—and they’d be right.

I understand that Trump has spent his entire presidency as an “outsider” media critic and Twitter troll, but that doesn’t mean the standards we apply to other media platforms is the standard we’re supposed to apply to the president. “What the orange did isn’t so bad, because the apple broke the rules” is a childish argument.

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