JONATHAN TURLEY: Nothing says 'Big Tent' like a good communist pogrom
Hasan Piker, a close ally of Abdul El-Sayed, is calling for "Marxist-Leninist" punishment for those who criticize Michigan’s Democratic Senatorial candidate. As radicals and antisemites like Piker flood the Democratic Party, establishment figures are struggling to justify their alliance with extremist candidates.
Ironically, Democrats are now fulfilling the false narrative that they used against President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville protests. They are maintaining that there are "many fine people" in the Democratic Socialists of America party, despite its leaders seeking to destroy our constitutional system, open our borders, defund the police and embrace virtual anarchy. Now, some of these fine people are calling for moderates to be purged as radicals take over the Democratic Party.
In 2017, the media manufactured a controversy by suggesting that Trump had praised neo-Nazis and Klansmen in 2017 as "fine people" in Charlottesville, Va. It was demonstrably false, but became the accepted truth in the media. In reality, Trump condemned the neo-Nazis, and the statement about "fine people on both sides" was in reference to the people on both sides of the debate over the removal of historic statues.
That narrative took on an added hypocrisy when some of the loudest voices later endorsed a candidate with an actual Nazi tattoo who allegedly assaulted women, mocked wounded veterans and praised terrorists. However, he promised to deliver Maine and bring figures like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren back to power.
Democratic Party leaders like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg brush off El-Sayed’s allies, including Mohammad Baqer Qazwini, a prominent Muslim cleric who gave a sermon that called for followers to vote for El-Sayed while also calling upon them to pray for the death of President Donald Trump and to celebrate the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Then there is the Democratic House candidate in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a prison abolitionist who boasted about how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.
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Chevalier and other DSA candidates are being welcomed in the Democratic Party despite anti-American views and a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency and the Senate. Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent antisemitism.
When asked about the extreme agenda of these candidates, Schumer and others repeat the mantra that they need to win in the upcoming elections. In other words, the DSA is opposed to the core institutions and values of this country, but it could be useful in returning them to power.
What is interesting is that the establishment does not appear to care what these radicals represent for their party, but the radicals care deeply about what the establishment represents. This week, former DNC Vice Chair David Hogg told establishment figures that the "big tent" of his party is not big enough for them. When asked about Democratic moderates, Hogg replied, "They don’t have the right values."
Piker has even grander plans for our post-constitutional republic, calling for mass arrests, demanding pledges from establishment figures to "arrest and prosecute every prominent member of the Trump administration" who engaged in what he views as corruption as well as "every ICE agent who committed crimes on the job."
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Piker also wants to purge any Democrats who do not support El-Sayed, calling them "haters" who deserve to be punished.
"There are haters in our ranks. Notice how whenever someone comes out and says, ‘Yeah, that’s actually a bad association,’ immediately it’s weaponized by the Republicans. You can’t be out here saying like, ‘Oh, I’m a centrist Democrat. And I think Abdul is a bridge too far.’ That must be punished."
Piker, who likes to parade around in a Mao jacket, seems to be longing for the good old days of party purges under Stalin and his contemporaries in the Comintern.
He notably accused critics of the sin of "factionalism." Since the Jacobins of the French Revolution, factionalism has been the scourge of revolutionaries. In my book, "Rage and the Republic," I discuss the difference between the American and French Revolutions. Where James Madison saw factions as a natural part of a democratic system, the Jacobins sought them as a traitorous and reactionary element. Madison saw compromise as the best solution to factions, while the Jacobins saw the guillotine as the final solution.
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Piker is right out of that Jacobin tradition, calling moderate Democrats "Koch payroll liberals" and "irredeemable." (Notably, the Jacobins also pushed for some of the same DSA demands, such as a unicameral legislature).
Of course, conservatives can show the same intolerance for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but there is an added menacing element to communists calling for mass expulsion or punishment of moderates from their party. It is chillingly familiar.
Mao regularly purged the Communist Party of those not following the party lines, declaring, "Serious offenders should be punished by law, and when they are Party members they should also be dealt with according to Party discipline."
Establishment figures continue to use the "big tent" narratives to brush off questions about the radical agenda and associations of these candidates. The only thing that they have in common is the desire for power. Once these candidates win, figures like Schumer will discover that this tent is not nearly as big as they think.