High school teacher CANCELED for reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’



Former President Joe Biden and the rest of his left-wing comrades may be out of office, but cancel culture is still alive and well — especially in states like Washington.

The case of Matthew Mastronardi, who is a Spanish teacher in Washington state, couldn’t make this clearer. Mastronardi was “canceled” for reading from the book “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Specifically, he quoted a passage that contained the N-word.

“It takes a special person to appreciate context, and that’s really what is necessary to understand this story,” Mastronardi tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“On April 17, I was walking around my classroom, pacing the room, and the students were working on an independent assignment,” Mastronardi continues. “I overheard this conversation between these two girls, and they were talking about the book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’”


The girls were discussing the book since they’d been assigned to read it in their English class, and Mastronardi overheard them say they were forced to skip over a certain word.

“And I just thought, ‘That’s silly.’ Like, you are told to read these books, and you’re told to skip words, and as a lover of literature myself, I think that undermines the historical context. You distance yourself from what the author intended you to feel,” he explains.

“So I just sort of calmly expressed disagreement, and it started a whole conversation about it,” he continues. “And a girl asked me point blank in front of the class, ‘Well, if you were reading the book, would you say the word?’”

“And I sort of laughed, but I said, ‘Of course, I would read every word if I was reading from the book,’” he says, explaining that’s when another student whipped out his copy and asked him to read it.

That’s when Mastronardi did it, as he wanted to show his students that “you can read books honestly.”

“So I was secretly recorded, and that video made its rounds, and now I’m facing the loss of my job,” he tells Gonzales. “I received a verbal reprimand, saying that I behaved unprofessionally and uncivil with students.”

“I thought that was the end of it, I disagreed with it, but at least I still had my job,” he continues, noting that it's only escalated since.

“Now, I’m facing my final appeal at the school," he says, adding, "Pray for me."

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Cancel culture destroyed my life; here's how I built a new one



Have you been canceled? Have you lost your family, your social circle, your job, your reputation?

I have.

People who had known me for years, including people I’d met in real life, mused online about how I was likely to become a 'spree killer' who murdered women.

Just like the countless Americans who had their lives and livelihoods uprooted or destroyed over the past five years or so, my story is unique. But also depressingly familiar.

Today, I want to talk about how I came out on the other side.

Painful lessons

There’s no sense in sugarcoating the issue: It absolutely sucked. It was one of the hardest periods in my life, and I am not the same person I was before it happened.

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Corbis/Getty Images

After seeing clearly for the first time how duplicitous, selfish, and downright evil humans can be, there's no going back. For me, it won’t be possible to trust other people, including loved ones, the way I did before.

But painful life lessons have their compensations.

What we call the woke left has been around for a long time. While the most egregious abuses by radical leftists occurred during the past 10 years, the problem started decades ago. You might say that the seeds planted in universities in the 1960s by leftist European Marxist intellectuals finally reached full flower by 2020.

With the alleged pandemic, those with actually fascist inclinations in their hearts made themselves known, and for many of us, that group turned out to include family and friends.

Spoiler: The liberals are the real authoritarians.

Closet Marxist

Back in the 1990s, I was studying at the most liberal of liberal arts schools, Sarah Lawrence College in New York State. If you haven’t heard of it, the school is hard leftist like Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and similar small colleges.

What I didn’t know when I attended was that it was Marxist, and so was I. The intellectual architects of postmodernism — the idea that there’s no such thing as the truth, that everything is only about oppressor and oppressed — were the mainstays of the curriculum.

We studied Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and many others. These “intellectuals” are the patron saints of the radical “queers,” “trans” activists, and other seething malcontents who believe all of their problems are because of capitalism instead of their own resentful laziness.

Among the libs

After graduation, I spent a few years as a newspaper reporter during the last period in which any semblance of actual reporting and objectivity was still valued. Then, I took a job at a nonprofit consumer organization. Yes, I entered the dreaded NGO sector.

The group I worked for was a consumer education organization focused on helping grieving people plan funerals and burials without going into debt. With the average American funeral costing $10,000 easily, financial heartache gets piled onto grief for many families. The mission was a worthy one, and I don’t regret my time working to better protect people in mourning from aggressive mortuary sales pitches.

But while the organization was officially nonpartisan, it was staffed and governed almost exclusively by Democrats and hard liberals.

That was “fine” when I was one of them, but if you’ve ever disagreed with a liberal, you know how fast a disagreement can turn into a bloodbath.

Growing up

By 2020 to 2021, I had changed my mind politically. Today, I’m a conservative traditionalist. The shock of watching transgenderism capture children, and the lying and hatred directed at conservatives in general and Donald Trump in particular, pushed me to belated political maturity in my 40s.

RELATED: Why is the media out to get Jonathan Keeperman?

Jonathan Keeperman

In 2021, I launched a weekly show called "Disaffected" with a friend and business partner. The show looks at politics and culture through the frame of warped personal psychology. In brief, I believe that the same narcissistic and unstable personal characteristics that drive domestic and child abuse (the same characteristics that ruled the home in which I grew up) drive the left.

"Disaffected" directly critiques transgenderism, anti-capitalist agitation, fake victimhood for attention, and warped states of mind such as Trump derangement syndrome.

Cast out

When volunteers and staffers at my job discovered what I put out in my private time, they engineered a coup from within. Satellite offices put out press releases calling me a misogynist and a bigot who was a danger to “trans” people and women and a public health menace for my stance against forced vaccination.

At the same time, my online friendship group circled the wagons and made sure my reputation was thoroughly trashed. People who had known me for years, including people I’d met in real life, mused online about how I was likely to become a “spree killer” who murdered women. These were the people I thought of as friends.

At the end of 2023, I finally lost my job. It’s true that I resigned, but had I not, I would have been fired. My board of directors would not defend me, and only a handful of colleagues from two decades of working together sent any messages of support.

Fighting back

Did it hurt? Yeah. It also scared the daylights out of me. For the first time in 20 years, I didn’t have a steady paycheck. My name was ruined in the consumer advocacy field; there was no point in even showing my face in the nonprofit sector. Not only did these people cancel my job, but they made sure I was unemployable even though I was the top legal expert in consumer burial and funeral law in the country.

What to do? I spent a few months in despair and depression, but that can’t last forever. You have to put your life back together but in a new way.

Here’s what I did:

  • Lying and duplicity exercise me to the point of hot anger pretty quickly. I channeled that into exposing the abusive practices of the left even more acutely on my weekly show.
  • I launched a Substack blog to supplement the show and offer essays on topics that didn’t make it "on air."
  • After 20 years of counseling grieving people by phone on the worst day of their lives, I started a private coaching and consulting practice. Now, I offer private conversations and advice for those facing social and family ostracism in abusive or leftist (I repeat myself) households. Clients can come to me for affordable funeral planning, too.
  • When one door closes, another opens. I used to be a screeching leftist liberal, and now I write a weekly column for Align (hello).

Going from a biweekly paycheck with health benefits to working four or five freelance jobs is a hell of an adjustment. Work isn’t guaranteed when you make your living this way.

But that’s the price of actual freedom. And I am free today mentally, emotionally, and politically in a way I never had been before as an unreflective “Democrat from birth.”

Hard as it was, I wouldn’t go back.

This Christian claims he was fired by Trump admin for anti-LGBTQ views



The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a D.C.-located performing arts center partially funded by taxpayers that features theater, dance, musical performances, and educational and outreach programs.

Now, the former vice president of development at the center, Floyd Brown, is claiming he was allegedly fired for speaking out against gay marriage and standing up for his Christian beliefs.

According to Brown, he was fired on May 28 after being contacted by CNN regarding past statements that he had made about “homosexual influence in the GOP.” In those past statements, he’s made clear that he believes homosexuality is a “sin” and a “punishment that comes upon a nation that is rejecting God.”


“The only explanation is the one given to me at the time of my firing. ‘Floyd, you must recant your belief in traditional marriage and your past statements on the topic, or you will be fired.’ Needless to say, I refused to recant and was shown the door,” Brown wrote in a post on X.

“I haven’t seen any statement from Rick Grennell about this, so we cannot confirm or deny whether this is true, but it does seem that CNN is taking credit for the firing of Floyd,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey comments on “Relatable.”

After the firing, CNN published an article titled “Far-right activist with history of anti-gay comments fired from leadership role at Kennedy Center after CNN investigation.”

“So it seems to me that this is Floyd’s interpretation of what happened. I don’t know for sure if his interpretation is correct,” Stuckey says. “But as a Christian conservative who shares these principles about the definition of Biblical marriage with someone like Floyd Brown, this is a troubling report.”

“I hope that we find out what is actually true, and I just want to say, if you are a Christian who holds fast to the natural and Biblical definition of marriage, and if you work for the Trump administration, do not allow this to intimidate you,” she continues.

“What you believe is not only right, but it also matters,” she adds.

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Progressive castoffs don’t get to define the right



When woke mobs began chasing off guest speakers from college campuses and elite institutions started investigating scientists over minor infractions against gender orthodoxy, a certain class of moderate progressives realized its reign was ending. Figures like Sam Harris, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shermer weren’t conservatives by any stretch. In the George W. Bush or Barack Obama years, they would have qualified as mainstream progressives. But they couldn’t keep pace with the radical left.

These disaffected progressives needed a new label. But they couldn’t bring themselves to align with the “backward” conservatives they’d spent careers ridiculing. Venture capitalist Eric Weinstein coined the term “Intellectual Dark Web,” which Weiss attempted to popularize in the New York Times. But most settled on “classical liberal” to describe their stance. The problem? They had spent years rejecting classical liberalism.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right.

“Classical liberal” serves as the ideal label for repackaging Obama-era liberalism in a way that reassures Republicans while keeping a safe distance from the woke left. It sounds moderate compared to identity politics. It evokes America’s founders — Washington, Jefferson, Adams. If you want to appear reasonable to conservatives while shielding yourself from attacks on your right flank, aligning with the founders is a smart move.

Whether the branding strategy was intentional remains debatable. What’s not in question is how badly this self-description distorted classical liberalism.

Some members of the Intellectual Dark Web drifted right. Most did not. They held tightly to progressive instincts. Many were atheists. Some had built careers in the New Atheist movement, penning books mocking Christianity and debating apologists for sport. Several were openly gay, and most championed same-sex marriage. These were not defenders of tradition — they spent decades undermining it.

They didn’t oppose the revolution. They led it — until the mob turned on the parts they still cherished, like feminism or science.

Toleration of all ... except atheists

When the Intellectual Dark Web embraced the “classical liberal” label, it did so to defend free speech. Most of these disillusioned progressives had been canceled — for “misgendering” someone, for not parroting the latest racial orthodoxies, or for refusing to bow to ideological litmus tests. They longed for an earlier version of progressivism, one where they still held the reins, and radical activists didn’t dictate the terms of debate.

This shared frustration became the rallying point between conservatives and anti-woke liberals. Free speech offered common ground, so both sides leaned into it. But classical liberalism involves far more than vague nods to open dialogue.

Some trace liberalism’s roots to Machiavelli or Hobbes. But in the American tradition, it begins with John Locke. Much of the Declaration of Independence reads like Thomas Jefferson channeling Locke — right down to the line about “life, liberty, and property,” slightly rewritten as “the pursuit of happiness.”

In “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” Locke argued for religious toleration among Christian sects. He even entertained the idea of tolerating Catholics — if they renounced allegiance to the pope. But Locke drew a hard line at one group: atheists.

“Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God,” Locke wrote. “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist ... [they] undermine and destroy all religion can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.”

For Locke, atheism was social acid. It dissolved the moral glue holding a nation together. A silent unbeliever who kept to himself might avoid trouble — but even then, Locke saw no reason to trust such a man with power. Atheism, in Locke’s view, posed a civilizational threat.

Indispensable religion

Now, consider the irony. Many of today’s self-declared “classical liberals” rose to prominence attacking religion. They led the New Atheist crusade. They mocked believers, ridiculed Christianity, and wrote bestsellers deriding faith as delusion. These weren’t defenders of liberal order. They launched a secular jihad against the very moral foundation that made liberalism possible.

Their adoption of the “classical liberal” label isn’t just unserious. It’s either historically illiterate or deliberately deceptive.

It’s a mistake to treat America’s founders as a monolith. They disagreed — often sharply — and those disagreements animate much of the "Federalist Papers." But one point remains clear: Their understanding of free speech and religious liberty diverged sharply from modern secular assumptions.

RELATED: Labeling you ‘phobic’ is how the left dodges real arguments

sesame via iStock/Getty Images

Even after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified, several states retained official churches. Courts regularly upheld blasphemy laws well into the 20th century. Some state supreme courts continued defending them into the 1970s. Blue laws, which restrict commerce on Sundays to preserve the Sabbath, remain on the books in several states.

John Adams put it plainly: The Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The founders, and the citizens they represented, expected America to function as an explicitly Christian nation. Free speech and religious liberty existed within that framework — not apart from it.

Skin suit liberalism

So when non-woke liberals claim that “classical liberalism” demands a secular or religiously neutral government, they misrepresent history. That idea would have struck the founders as absurd. The Constitution was not written for New Atheists. Adams said so himself.

Faced with these historical facts, critics usually pivot. They argue that America has morally advanced beyond its founding values. Today, we tolerate non-Christian religions, recognize women’s rights, and legalize same-sex marriage. These changes, they claim, bring us closer to “true” American principles like freedom and equality.

Classical liberalism was a real political tradition — one that helped shape the American founding. It deserves serious treatment. Watching it get paraded around by people who reject its core values is exhausting. If Locke or Adams saw progressive atheists wearing classical liberalism like a skin suit, they’d spin in their graves.

The secular liberalism of the 1990s and early 2000s is not classical liberalism. It isn’t even an ally of conservatism. The non-woke left served as useful co-belligerents against the radical fringe, but they were never true allies — and they should never be allowed to lead the conservative movement.

Some have earned respect. Carl Benjamin, Jordan Peterson, and others have taken real steps to the right, even toward Christianity. That deserves credit. But let’s not kid ourselves. Many who still fly the “classical liberal” banner don’t believe in the values it represents. They reject its religious foundation. They rewrite its history. They co-opt its label while advancing a worldview its founders would have rejected outright.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right. And they certainly don’t get to lead it.

LA Chargers rep shuts down CNN after outlet asks if animated promos are going 'too far': It's okay to 'make a joke'



The Los Angeles Chargers' director of social media defended the team's right to make humorous content after other teams removed posts that were determined to be "insensitive."

The controversy started when the Indianapolis Colts took part in what now seems like a tradition for NFL teams to release lighthearted videos to announce their upcoming schedules. The Colts apparently went too far, however, when they turned Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill into a cartoon dolphin and mocked his 2024 run-in with Miami-Dade Police.

'Luckily we work at a place that values social [media] and the ability to make a joke.'

The perceived backlash — which apparently no one could pinpoint — was enough that the Colts took down their video and issued an apology.

"We removed our schedule release video because it exceeded our rights with Microsoft and included an insensitive clip involving Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill. We sincerely apologize to Microsoft and Tyreek," the team said in a statement.

The retraction included an apology to Microsoft due to the Colts' video animation style mimicking Microsoft's game Minecraft.

In fact, the video seemed strikingly similar to that of the Chargers, who actually acquired permission from Microsoft to use their intellectual property in their schedule release video.

Given the similarity and the subsequent apology, CNN asked the head of the Chargers' social media about the content of their video and the reaction the Colts had received, wondering, "How far is too far?"

RELATED: Indianapolis Colts cave to invisible mob, delete hilarious video poking fun at Tyreek Hill despite his approval

Allie Raymond (left) and Megan Julian (right) of the Chargers' social media team. Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Dolphins reporter Joe Schad said the Chargers' social media head defended making a joke and putting out witty content.

"Luckily we work at a place that values social [media] and the ability to make a joke," said Megan Julian, director of digital and social media for the Chargers.

"Not everything has to be serious all the time," she added.

— (@)

It did not take long for fans to react positively to the refreshing take from Julian, which was seemingly the inverse of how the Colts organization handled the situation.

"We desperately need that mind set for the social media team with the Dolphins," one fan replied.

"Make America joke again!" another fan chimed in.

A photojournalist for a Fox outlet added, "A lot of NFL organizations could learn from this."

RELATED: NFL cancels DEI event, yet still makes ridiculous diversity statement about its fans and hiring women

The Chargers' social media team produces content at Chargers HQ on Friday, May 9, 2025 in Los Angeles, CA. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

"If you're going to go for the joke, and take a page from the Chargers' social media, just go for it," sports reporter Alejandro Avila told Blaze News.

He added, "I have no idea why the Colts would take that down," as it did not seem to offend anyone.

Not even Hill, the apparent victim in the ordeal, took offense to the video.

"He laughed about it and didn't think they needed to take it down on his account," Hill's agent, Drew Rosenhaus, stated.

The agent noted that his client was also willing to accept the Colts organization's apology, even though it was not necessary.

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Indianapolis Colts cave to invisible mob, delete hilarious video poking fun at Tyreek Hill despite his approval



The Indianapolis Colts have bizarrely apologized for a seconds-long video that portrays Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill as a cartoon dolphin.

The Colts participated in a social media trend in which NFL teams created unique videos to launch the release of their upcoming schedule. For their video, the Colts decided to use the stylings of the ultra-popular video game Minecraft and animated it accordingly. For their Week 1 matchup against the Dolphins, the Colts included a short video that mocked a 2024 incident involving Hill.

'We sincerely apologize to Microsoft and Tyreek.'

The animation lasted just six seconds but featured a pixelated dolphin in the ocean with "Hill" captioned above it, wearing the wide receiver's No. 10 jersey. A Coast Guard boat then approaches the dolphin/"Hill" as an officer rings a siren.

The short video was meant to mock Hill's 2024 police encounter during which Miami-Dade Police handcuffed and placed Hill on the ground during a traffic stop before a home game. Traffic citations against Hill were later dropped.

RELATED: 'Get out of the car!' Miami Dolphins' Tyreek Hill considering legal action after release of intense police bodycam footage

Tyreek Hill addresses the media after he was apprehended by police before a game. Photo by Don Juan Moore/Getty Images

According to ESPN, not only did the Colts retroactively find its Hill segment to be mean, but also the team said it may have violated Microsoft's intellectual property at the same time. Minecraft is owned by Microsoft, and the near-identical animations may have been enough to get a warning from the software giant, but that much is unclear.

"We removed our schedule release video because it exceeded our rights with Microsoft and included an insensitive clip involving Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill. We sincerely apologize to Microsoft and Tyreek," the team said in a statement.

Interestingly, the Los Angeles Chargers made a similar video for their schedule release but indicated through a disclaimer that they had Microsoft's permission to use their animation style.

RELATED: NFL star Tyreek Hill sued by plus-size model who says he broke her leg performing offensive lineman drills in his back yard


Hill's agent, Drew Rosenhaus, relayed to outlets that Hill actually thought the Colts' video was funny and did not support its removal.

"He laughed about it and didn't think they needed to take it down on his account," Rosenhaus said.

'The Colts bailed on their gag like cowards.'

Sports reporter Alejandro Avila certainly was not one of the allegedly offended parties, and he told Blaze News that if a team is going to attempt a joke like that, it should "go for broke."

"Tyreek has landed himself in enough trouble over his bad decisions that we can all point and laugh," Avila added. "The Colts bailed on their gag like cowards. Don't take down a heavily produced video and apologize for it. Don't apologize! If the joke doesn't land, own it."

Pouring a little more salt on the wound, Rosenhaus told the Associated Press, "Tyreek accepts the Colts' apology."

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DNC moves to oust rising star David Hogg just months after he was elected



The Democratic National Convention voted to void David Hogg's election in a late-night vote on Monday, just months after he was elected to serve as vice chair in February.

Hogg has been the subject of scrutiny both on the national stage and within the DNC. In recent weeks, reports of infighting and criticisms of Hogg have circulated, indicating an increasingly tense and disorganized Democratic Party.

'I ran to be DNC vice chair to help make the Democratic Party better, not to defend an indefensible status quo that has caused voters in almost every demographic group to move away from us.'

Despite reports suggesting Hogg's leadership was unwelcome, the DNC said the vote to void Hogg's election was based on a procedural challenge, arguing that he was improperly elected in the first place.

Hogg disputes this claim, saying that he was challenging the status quo within the DNC and attempting to reform the party, which outraged old-guard Democrats.

"Today, the DNC took its first steps to remove me from my position as vice chair at large," Hogg said in a statement. "While this vote was based on how the DNC conducted its officers' elections, which I had nothing to do with, it is also impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party, which loomed large over this vote."

"I ran to be DNC vice chair to help make the Democratic Party better, not to defend an indefensible status quo that has caused voters in almost every demographic group to move away from us," Hogg added.

After the Democrats' devastating loss in the 2024 presidential election, Hogg emerged as a reformer aiming to identify the DNC's shortcomings that contributed to President Donald Trump's landslide victory. Hogg's damage control consisted of harsh pivots and even flat-out rejections of political and cultural norms, like cancel culture and wokeness, which Democrats have strongly supported in the past.

In a recent appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher," Hogg said Democrats hemorrhaged young men because their party was too judgmental and caused them to feel as though they were constantly walking on eggshells.

"We've created a culture where we say, well, if you say the wrong thing, you're excommunicated," Hogg said. "And that's just not how human beings work. Nobody is perfect."

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MLB legend Keith Hernandez refuses not to use the term 'drag bunt': 'I know you're not supposed to say it'



Two-time World Series winner Keith Hernandez raised eyebrows by alleging it is politically incorrect to use the term "drag bunt" during a broadcast.

The New York Mets broadcaster and former player was commenting on a game between the Mets and the St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday, the second game of a doubleheader, which the Cardinals won 5-4.

Following a bunt play by Cardinals outfielder Victor Scott II, Hernandez surprised fans by saying the term "drag bunt" is not supposed to be used.

"And this is a perfect bunt. This is shades of Bud Harrelson, who was a terrific," Hernandez said on the broadcast. "I know you're not supposed to say it, but it's — they call it a different term. But in our day, it was a 'drag bunt.' And nothing you can do. You did everything right. It was a perfect."

According to the Baseball Almanac, a "drag bunt" got its name from the appearance that the batter is "dragging" the ball as he sprints to first base. In this scenario, the batter is bunting for a base hit as opposed to a sacrifice bunt, and it is typically performed by left-handed hitters.

Keith Hernandez with Jerry Seinfeld at Shea Stadium on May 22, 2005. Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

Hernandez's comments confused fans, most of whom could not imagine any viewer had taken offense to his remarks.

"Who is watching a baseball game today and thinks 'drag bunt' is offensive? I seriously don't understand. This wouldn't even be a story if he didn't reference some fake cancel culture," one viewer wrote.

Another viewer replied, "It's never anyone actually watching, it's keyboard warriors the next day."

Who is watching a baseball game today and thinks “drag bunt” is offensive? I seriously don’t understand. This wouldn’t even be a story if he didn’t reference some fake cancel culture.
— Ross Read (@RossRead) May 4, 2025

It is unclear whether or not Major League Baseball has issued a directive to announcers to stop using the term, but Hernandez has not since made public remarks regarding the usage.

There did not appear to be any mention of a changing of the term on the MLB website or affiliates, and there has not been any semblance of outrage online connecting the baseball term to drag performers, who are typically homosexual men performing as caricatures of women.

Hernandez has broadcasted for the Mets since 1999 and has worked for both the MSG network and subsequently SNY since 2006.

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It’s Time For Us All To Say, ‘Eff The F-Word’
play icon

It’s Time For Us All To Say, ‘Eff The F-Word’

I think it’s time to give Mr. F-word a little F-uneral, don’t you?

One standard for them, another for us — this is ‘forgiveness asymmetry’



Left-wing terrorism is back. Tesla dealerships and charging stations are the targets of a firebombing campaign, quietly supported by opponents of the current administration and their inability to accept political defeat.

While the White House has declared these arsons to be domestic terrorism, the opposition is in no rush to condemn the attacks. Indeed, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) even framed them as legitimate protest, with zero pushback from his CNN interviewer.

The old ruling class and its left-wing allies will forgive, rehabilitate, and even idolize perpetrators of the worst kinds of political violence.

We shouldn’t be surprised. This sort of thing has happened many times before.

Luigi Mangione, facing life behind bars for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is considered a folk hero by many on the left. Legacy media, Democrats, and even some Republicans declared their sympathy for the motivations of staggeringly violent Black Lives Matter riots in 2020.

A few months after the “Summer of Love,” those same people framed the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as an unforgivable “insurrection” against democracy.

It’s all a symptom of what I call “forgiveness asymmetry.”

On the right, many conservatives will enthusiastically purge people who are nominally on their own side, often over mere words — offensive jokes, remarks, and fringe viewpoints.

Meanwhile, the old ruling class and its left-wing allies will forgive, rehabilitate, and even idolize perpetrators of the worst kinds of political violence.

Consider the wave of left-wing terrorism that swept across America in the 1970s and 1980s. In those years, a variety of far-left organizations carried out thousands of bombings, armed robberies, prison breaks, and shoot-outs across the country. These included the killing of police officers, plane hijackings, and the bombing of government buildings.

Despite the widespread death and destruction, many Americans are completely unaware that it happened. Given the partisan slant of the education system, it’s unlikely that you heard about it in a high school history class. You’re also unlikely to have heard about it in college, especially if you attended a campus where the former terrorists were awarded professorships.

Professorships. But first, the history.

Aftermath of a bomb explosion in the U.S. Capitol building on Nov. 8, 1983.Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

When terror was commonplace

As Vanity Fair correspondent Bryan Burrough recounts in his 2015 book, “Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence,” left-wing political violence was routine 50 years ago:

"People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States," notes a retired FBI agent, Max Noel. "People don't want to listen to that. They can't believe it. One bombing now and everyone gets excited. In 1972? It was every day. Buildings getting bombed, policemen getting killed. It was commonplace.”

The violence emerged from the political froth of the 1960s student movement, when a radical faction of the far-left protesters decided that sit-ins and placards were not enough to achieve revolutionary change. New methods — violent methods — would be necessary.

The most famous terrorist faction was the Weather Underground, which carried out a string of bombings in the 1970s. Its targets included the Pentagon, the State Department, and a Chicago memorial for fallen police officers. The Weathermen praised the Manson family murders and debated the ethics of killing white babies to avoid bringing more “oppressors” into the world.

The Weather Underground last rose to public attention in 2008 due to then-candidate Barack Obama’s palling around with its co-founders, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. It’s the only time I can remember leftist terrorism breaking into the national news cycle, and it only happened because Republicans forced the issue. It’s not as if legacy media wanted to talk about it.

There were many other groups that are now largely forgotten. There was the May 19th Communist Organization, which bombed government buildings and conducted bank robberies in the 1980s. There was also the Black Liberation Army, which murdered numerous police officers and even hijacked a passenger aircraft in the 1970s. And there was the United Freedom Front, which bombed at least 20 corporate and government buildings in the same decade.

These disparate groups shared a common ideology, born from the radical left-wing politics of the 1960s. It was a potent cocktail of communism, “anti-imperialism” (though not necessarily anti-Soviet imperialism), black liberation, and women’s liberation — the forerunners of what we now call wokeness.

Isn’t it funny that the same people who brushed this decade-long insurgency under the historical rug want us to be mad about one day of trespassing on Jan. 6, 2021?

M19CO, for example, was so named because May 19 was the birthday of both Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X. In its public statements, the Weather Underground promised to “lead white kids into armed revolution” on behalf of black people, against “capitalists” and “imperialism.” The UFF said its bombings were motivated by “racist imperialism in South Africa.”

When we think of wokeness today, we think of black Vikings on TV and transgender activists in Bud Light ads. In the 1970s, it would have conjured images of pipe bombs and police shoot-outs.

The terrorist wave set a trend of targeting high-profile targets. Leftist terrorists bombed the U.S. Capitol building — twice. They bombed the State Department. They bombed police stations, prisons, and banks. The target was always the U.S. government and Western corporations. Corporations, cops, and America itself were the enemy. As stated in a variety of public declarations, their goal was the violent destruction of the racist, capitalist, imperialist United States.

Isn’t it funny that the same people who brushed this decade-long insurgency under the historical rug want us to be mad about one day of trespassing on Jan. 6, 2021?

From terrorists to professors

What’s remarkable about the 1970s terrorism is how quickly its perpetrators were forgiven. Ayers and Dohrn, the pair who started it all, barely suffered any consequences. The FBI investigation of Ayers coincided with public revelations about the bureau's use of illegal wiretaps and warrantless property searches. When it emerged that these tactics were used against the Weather Underground, charges against Ayers were dropped. He never spent a day in jail.

Over the following decades, Columbia University accepted Ayers into its grad school, the University of Illinois awarded him a professorship, and the American Educational Research Association appointed him its vice president for curriculum studies.

School curricula. For your kids.

Dohrn received little more than a slap on the wrist. When she turned herself in to the authorities in 1980, she received a $1,500 fine and three years’ probation. Had she not refused to testify against fellow terrorist Susan Rosenberg, she would have served no time in jail. In the end, she was behind bars for a mere seven months.

A few years later, Dohrn was hired by the prestigious multinational law firm Sidley Austin, even though she had never practiced law before. Asked about this hiring decision, the head of the firm (a pal of her father-in-law) casually remarked, “We often hire friends.” Despite failing to obtain a law license — over lack of contrition for her past actions — she remined at the company for years. The alumni of the FBI’s Most Wanted List, who never showed much contrition in later years, also ended up teaching America’s youth as a law professor at Northwestern University.

And then there’s Susan Rosenberg. A member of M19CO, Rosenberg was an accomplice in one of the most notorious acts of that era’s terrorist wave: the 1981 Brink’s robbery, in which members of M19CO and the Black Liberation Army stole $1.6 million in cash from an armored truck, killing one of its guards and wounding another. Tracked down by police, the robbers killed two officers and wounded another.

Rosenberg did suffer consequences for the Brink’s murders, as well as her role in the 1981 U.S. Senate bombing. Arrested in 1984, she was sentenced to 58 years in prison but only served 16 of them behind bars. Bill Clinton pardoned her on his final day in office in 2001. Kathy Boudin, another participant in the robbery, was paroled soon after.

Yes, the left shamelessly rehabilitated its terrorists and cop-killers. But what can we learn from it?

What did they do later, you ask? Rosenberg, whose M19CO organization also broke serial cop-killer Assata Shakur out of prison in 1979, joined the board of directors of the Thousand Currents Foundation. The foundation played a leading role in getting Black Lives Matter off the ground. The same Black Lives Matter that sparked a season of rioting and violence in the summer of 2020. Those riots left 25 people dead and caused roughly $2 billion in property damage, proving that 1970s ideology is still more than capable of causing death and destruction.

As for Kathy Boudin, Columbia University granted her an adjunct professorship, because who's gonna stop them? Former left-wing terrorists get to be university professors and teach America’s kids. Those are the rules.

Speaking of Kathy Boudin, have you heard of her son, Chesa? He is the now-former district attorney of San Francisco, recalled from office in 2022 because his policy of letting repeat criminals out of jail was too much even for that notoriously progressive city. The scion of terrorists and bank robbers was, for a harrowing moment, in charge of the law.

Both of Chesa’s parents were incarcerated for their role in the deadly 1981 Brink’s robbery, but that didn’t spare him the fate of being raised by militants. The pair who stepped up to be his guardians were none other than Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

The radical upbringing went as expected. Chesa may not share the tactics of his parents and guardians, but boy does he share their radicalism. Before he set his sights on freeing every felon in the Bay Area, Boudin worked for the socialist government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, translating the regime’s propaganda into English.

Should we even be talking about Chesa? It’s wrong to tie children to the crimes of their parents, isn’t it? Of course it is — unless their parents are right-wing critics of Islam. Then, even if they’re completely apolitical themselves, they get doxxed by Taylor Lorenz and run out of their jobs.

Ah yes, the asymmetry of it all.

Supporters of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gather outside Manhattan Criminal Court.Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Forgiveness asymmetry laid bare

This brings us to the final, most essential point. It’s all very well to point and sputter. Yes, the left shamelessly rehabilitated its terrorists and cop-killers. But what can we learn from it?

The first is a warning from history. The radical left has no problem with violence. Leftists celebrated the murder of United Healthcare’s CEO. They celebrated the riots of 2020, even though dozens were killed. They celebrated the terrorism of the 1970s and ’80s and worked tirelessly to rehabilitate its perpetrators.

As a recent Pirate Wires story demonstrated, many on the left have no problem with terrorism if it’s used for a “good” cause. There are no principled restrictions on tactics, only targets.

But don’t take my word for it. Read Bill Ayers:

I’m no tactician, but I know that tactics are neutral in themselves — Nazi soldiers blowing up a bridge in occupied France to stop an Allied advance is despicable; partisans blowing up the bridge to prevent the Nazis from overwhelming a village and slaughtering its inhabitants is both defensible and righteous. So it is with insurrections: the goals and purposes matter. January 6, 2021 was a white supremacist insurrection against state power — part of a long American tradition that includes the secessionist insurrection of 1861, the uprising by the White League seeking to overthrow the biracial Reconstruction government of Louisiana in 1894, the violent toppling of the government in Wilmington North Carolina in 1898, and more. Each of these insurrections was in naked defense of white power. By contrast, the Haitian and Cuban revolutions, for example, were emancipatory insurrections designed to move human society forward.

The second thing to consider is how do we respond to these attitudes, which are apparently widespread in politics, the legacy media, and elite academic institutions?

As a bare minimum, we can stop playing their games.

Here’s a thought experiment: Consider the worst kind of right-wing behavior that might be uncovered about someone. Maybe the person dropped the N-word on a livestream. Maybe the person was a member of the Proud Boys or was arrested on Jan. 6, or dabbled in the alt-right in 2016. Maybe the person said something like “normalize Indian hate.”

Of course, it’s fine to disagree with all that. But before you jump behind a campaign to destroy their careers, consider the following: Is it as bad as blowing up government buildings? Is it as bad as murdering cops? Is it as bad as trying to overthrow the United States and replace it with a “decolonized” communist dystopia?

No?

Then I hope you’ll join me in disavowing cancel culture as we’ve come to know it. As Elon Musk said when he rehired DOGE staffer Marko Elez despite his unequivocally racist posts, “To err is human, to forgive divine.”

The thing about unequivocally racist posts is that they’re not bombs and they’re not bullets. And in a world where Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Kathy Boudin get to be college professors, Marko Elezabsolutely gets to be a DOGE staffer. After that, who knows? Maybe we can get him tenure somewhere.

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from a post that appeared originally on X (formerly Twitter).