On Saturday, a gang of self-proclaimed “anti-racist” thugs burst into a Tinley Park, Illinois restaurant, where they alleged some “white supremacists” were having a dinner, and attacked them with hammers, iron bars and batons. Several people were injured (including Mike Winston, the restaurant manager, who tried to defend his patrons). The website antiracistaction.org is openly boasting about this.

When I blogged about this gang attack, I mentioned that this kind of thing can happen to any conservative. But, in what I supposed must be called a reversal of Martin Niemoller’s famous “first they came...” statement, the first targets for this kind of aggression are anyone who’s identified (by the attackers) with Nazis, fascists, racists etc.

The controversial British historian David Irving has been a big target for the anti-fascist crowd. Back in 2000, there was an attack on an appearance by him in the Chicago area:

CHICAGO ANTI-FASCISTS DISRUPT APPEARANCE BY DAVID IRVING Anti-Fa Info Bulletin, Number 268, September 2000 ON Tuesday, September 19, [2000] the internationally despised Holocaust denier and historical revisionist David Irving was scheduled to speak at a secret meeting in Chicago regarding "Truth in History." ... At the same time, a group of masked anti-fascists stormed into the restaurant through the rear kitchen entrance. This militant action further disrupted Irving's presentation, as tables were knocked over, food was thrown and Irving's literature ripped and scattered. Irving himself was struck with a chair! [More]

Apparently, no one was arrested.

On November 23, 2009 a similar gang tried invading another Chicago-area David Irving dinner. But this time Irving’s friends had anticipated an attack, laid a police trap, and had five of them arrested. Irving’s website reported:

Eight masked thugs dressed in black invaded the restaurant on November 24, 2009, and ran slap into a police ambush prepared by Mr Irving's staff. Five were captured and held all night at Norridge Police station, where they refused initially to provide identity details — it now becomes apparent why. [December 8, 2009]

Jeremy Hammond, aside from his hobby of assaulting people with whom he disagrees, is a criminal hacker. He subsequently went to jail for hacking into the private intelligence service Stratfor. And he’s done a lot of other hacking—including, according to Irving, wrecking Irving’s own website.

From Wikipedia’s entry on Hammond:

On March 25, 2010, Hammond was sentenced to four days in the Cook County Department of Corrections, for taking part in a confrontation with the controversial Holocaust writer David Irving. Five Chicago residents, Hammond included, pleaded guilty to one count each of disorderly conduct on March 24, 2010 at Rolling Meadows Court House before Judge Edward Pietrucha.[28][31] Wearing black masks, the five had stormed the Edelweiss restaurant in Norridge, Illinois and "threw glasses and kicked over chairs" to drive out Irving's guests[32] during which another restaurant patron was struck by a bottle.[33]

So Hammond was not in the flashmob at Tinley Park because he’s physically in jail, but for hacking—not for his multiple physical attacks. [Chicago man in Anonymous hacking case biding time in jail by reading - Chicago Sun-Times, May 14, 2012]

Irving noted on March 24, 2010 (scroll down) that the attackers had been “let off with slaps on the wrist.”

The slaps amounted to

Probation, except for Hammond was already on “supervised release” at the time of the gang attack, and was sentenced to five actual days in jail

Community service, about five days worth.

There is a tactic in law enforcement called “exemplary sentencing.” The idea is that harsh sentences send a message. For example, the British Establishment has long congratulated itself that the long jail terms imposed on whites involved in the 1958 Notting Hill Riots crushed British working class resistance to Third World immigration. Nothing like that happened in 2011, when a different set of people rioted in England.

“Exemplary sentencing” is not what happened to the Chicago “anti-fascists” who attacked Irving.

That’s why they’ve done it again.

Now look at this:

Source: Group beaten at Tinley Park restaurant were white supremacists BY JANET LUNDQUIST AND NATASHA KORECKI Sun-Times Media, May 20, 2012 7:07PM A law enforcement source Sunday said the group beaten at a Tinley Park restaurant Saturday was made up of white supremacists, and those who assaulted them were protesters attacking their beliefs. [More]

Edith Efron noted as long ago as 1971 in her book The News Twisters the tendency of the media to refer to physical attacks on conservatives as “protests.” “Hecklers Throw Empty Drink Cans At Wallace” was one of the headlines she pointed to, noting that throwing things at people is not the same as heckling.

A more impartial headline is this one, from a competitor:

Tinley Park Group Beaten Over Beliefs: Source,NBC Chicago - ?13 hours ago?

Fox News weighed in with

Anti-racist group claims credit for hammer attack at Illinois restaurant FOX 4 News - ?May 20, 2012?

“Claims credit”?

Five of the Tinley Park attackers have now been charged—and also two of their victims. The victims were not charged with maliciously defending themselves, but with unrelated offences. One was arrested on an outstanding child pornography warrant, another for being a “felon in possession of a weapon.” [Charges filed against seven in Tinley Park restaurant attack, Myfox Chicago, May 21, 2012]

These charges may be true, although if the police really don’t like you, then anything they find in computer is illegal pornography, and anything they find in your pocket is a weapon.

If the Chicagoland police can’t (or wont) protect unpopular people from attacks like this, then we have what the late Sam Francis called “anarcho-tyranny”—the state of affairs where the police can’t possibly do anything about burglary, armed robbery etc., but they can keep homeowners and store clerks from being armed, and charge them with murder when they defend themselves.

(Instapundit still insists that someone should have shot the attackers in Tinley Park, but I’m pretty sure that would lead to criminal charges against the victims who fought back.)

The Leftist Nicaraguan government in the Eighties used to have government-controlled youth mobs called turbas divinas that would attack people who resisted the government. The real Fascisti of Italy in the Thirties did this too.

When there was white minority rule in the Jim Crow South, the Ku Klux Klan was unlikely to get in trouble with the authorities.

These anti-racist people are the same thing.

And they’re Obama’s kind of people. Except for their notable pallor (these "anti-fascists" are as white as the Tea Party and their kindred Occupy Wall Street types) they’re exactly the type of “community” that “community” organizers organize.

They’d be as happy, if organized in a sufficiently large community, to tear into a Republican Convention as a Nazi gathering. They really don’t see any difference. Remember all the Bush=Hitler signs?

Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle points out that being a conservative requires Ann Coulter "to take the stage with bodyguards" and Glenn Beck "to wear a bullet proof vest and carry a handgun."

Tom Tancredo also has a bullet-proof vest because of many specific, serious, threats against his person.

Ann Coulter is not paranoid—she has a well-founded fear that if you're a conservative speaker, people will mount the stage to attack you physically, liberal pundits will cheer them, and the police will do nothing, because all this has already happened to her. See her articles

If an adorable blonde person like Ann Coulter can’t get justice when she’s attacked, how much chance do neo-Nazis, or anyone who can be called Neo-Nazis, have? (If they’re blonde at all, they’re blonde in entirely the wrong way.)

And if that leads to all dissident meetings being closed down, because restaurants and hotels are afraid of the consequences (as has repeatedly happened to the American Renaissance conferences, with a mysterious lack of reaction from police and press) then “anti-fascism” will have brought real fascism to America.

James Fulford [Email him] is a writer and editor for VDARE.com.