Of course it did.

Political violence is back big. If I were to apply a broad cultural brush, I would tie birtherism, the reaction by some to our first black president, the IRS scandal, and most recently Donald Trumps hate speeches all together here. One “Ugly American” package. AKA what happens when too many of the the best of us forget to call out the worst of us.

None of the following is surprising in principle, but is truly shocking in degree.

(Some edits above from earlier)

Scribd Document

In July, anti-abortion activist David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress began releasing a series of sting videos aimed at Planned Parenthood and organizations who partner with them. The videos claim that Planned Parenthood is selling fetal tissue, or “baby parts,” as Daleiden charmingly refers to them, and changing their abortion methods to get better specimens. The underlying accusation is that Planned Parenthood pushes abortions on women in order to get specimens. Neither of those things are true, and every state that’s investigated Planned Parenthood has turned up nothing. Daleiden and another CMP member have been indicted for fraud and are being sued in federal court by PP. The one place where the CMP has made a real difference: fueling hatred, violence, harassment, death threats, attempted murder and murder against abortion providers. The NAF writes in their annual threat assessment that this year, they were unable to track all the threats to their member organizations themselves. They had to hire a security firm to do it. They found a shocking increase in hate speech and threats, noting: They began their work in mid-November. With increased tracking capabilities, we were able to identify more than 25,000 incidents of hate speech and threats in just six weeks. We estimate that if enhanced tracking had begun immediately following the release of the illegally recorded videos, the number of online threats and hate postings would be well over 100,000.

More: National Abortion Federation: Violence Grew ‘Dramatically’ After Planned Parenthood Sting Videos