Remembering James Hodgkinson

As I noted earlier, James O’Keefe released a series of videos today that feature a Bernie Sanders campaign worker named Kyle Jurek. They are in the usual undercover format used by Project Veritas. Jurek says many shocking things. He promises that Milwaukee will “burn” if Sanders doesn’t get the Democratic nomination, and vows to attack police officers. He endorses the Soviet Gulag in particular, and Communist re-education camps in general. He talks about “revolution” and suggests that anyone who opposes the Bernie Sanders revolution will be shot. He comes out against free speech. Jurek advocates sentencing billionaires to hard labor “breaking rocks” and approves of Antifa. His language is vulgar and threats of violence are interspersed through his conversation.

Democrats are already in damage control mode on Twitter. You can see the Project Veritas videos as well as some of the Democrats’ responses on O’Keefe’s Twitter feed. Democrats describe Jurek as a volunteer, which he isn’t. He is a paid staffer in Iowa (or was until today). He was described as a “top-tier organizer” by Sanders’ senior campaign officials in Iowa, who have now closed down their social media accounts.

One Democrat on Twitter described Jurek as “a random, drunk, low-level organizer for Bernie.” That’s really the question: how typical of the Bernie movement is this thoroughly disgusting creature? O’Keefe says the Jurek videos are only the beginning, and he hints that there are more videos coming, featuring more Sanders employees and volunteers. We will see.

Meanwhile, there is one thing we can say for sure. To paraphrase John Lennon, Kyle Jurek may be a violent Communist dreamer, but he’s not the only one. James Hodgkinson, another Bernie Bro, has already done some of the worst things that Jurek threatens. The liberal press has tried to bury the fact that Hodgkinson, a Sanders volunteer and hard-core labor unionist, shot up a group of Republican Congressmen, and would have succeeded in murdering the House Majority Whip, but for the miracles of modern medicine. In that case, Sanders was quick to condemn political violence. If asked, I suppose he would distance himself from Jurek, too. But how many more are there where Hodgkinson and Jurek came from? How extreme is the Bernie Sanders movement, really?

Many are asking whether during tonight’s debate, a reporter will ask Sanders about Jurek, Sanders’ Iowa operation, the closing down of his Iowa social media accounts, the threats to attack police officers and “burn” Milwaukee, or his followers’ propensity toward violence. I can answer that question: No. No liberal reporter wants to remind voters of the deeply-buried story of James Hodgkinson, or connect Democratic presidential candidates with Antifa. (What is Sanders’ opinion of the fascist street violence carried out by Antifa? I don’t know, someone should ask him. But don’t hold your breath.) No reporter will ask Sanders about the fact that he spent his honeymoon in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics either, or his absurd paean to food lines as a sign of socialist superiority.

But maybe it is time to ask: how radical are Bernie Sanders and his supporters, anyway?

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