I'm old enough to remember when a Bernie Sanders supporter shot a Republican congressman at a baseball practice. Is that an existential threat to the republic that should be laid at the feet of Bernie supporters?
You can't see the difference between a single lone wolf attack at a baseball game, and an entire mob instigated by the President of the United States, at the US Capitol? Taking place while Congress counted the votes of that President's political opponent?
> Most of the people at the Capitol were there for peaceful protest.
Okay, but there were many there that explicitly wanted violence, came prepared for it, and used the mob as cover.
> Trump did not tell them to kill politicians
Trump doesn't have to explicitly say "kill these politicians" to make the implication perfectly clear. He repeatedly told them he needed them to "fight" for him.
> His rhetoric was extreme, but arguably so is Bernie's
Bernie never incited a mob to storm the Capitol Building, while Congress ratified the votes for his political opponent.
> Bernie never incited a mob to storm the Capitol Building, while Congress ratified the votes for his political opponent.
His supporters most certainly include a fringe of people prepared for violence. I've even seen video evidence of such people working for his presidential election campaign.
Bernie Sanders also endorsed the (thankfully failed) Portland mayoral candidate who was an open Antifa supporter and worshiper of Stalin and Mao.
The question, for any political movement that has violent fringe, to what extent can the responsibility for that violent fringe be set at the feet of either the members of the movement or the politicians who lead it?
Bernie and his followers have never been broadly considered responsible for his radicals, despite his extreme rhetoric.
All summer long we had "mostly peaceful" BLM protests that included a significant minority of violent radicals (both BLM and Antifa) and yet no one took responsibility. In many cases people weren't even prosecuted.
Consider this: on election day, D.C. was boarded up, and it wasn't in preparation for rioting Trump supporters. These are people who generally speaking don't want to over through the existing order. They just want to see the existing order working.
Were they a part of a mob swarming the baseball practice? If so, then yes, they were all complicit for not stopping an escalation of violence. If not, then no, it was a single actor. It's not that hard to apply a tiny amount of critical thinking to avoid false equivalency.
Great, so am I! But I have been hearing people (both here and from the very politicians threatened on the 6th) excusing and downplaying the violent rioting that occurred over the summer.
This "gotcha" is an attempt to see whether one is dealing with someone that has a consistent set of principles.
Bernie didn't tell him to do what he did, and he was just one guy. This was a large mob, and Trump had just instructed it to do 90% of what it did. The possibility that violence could occur was clear. That's not at all a valid comparison.