Joseph Klein, Frontpage Magazine, January 15, 2020

A paid Bernie Sanders campaign field organizer has been caught on video declaring “F***ing cities burn” if President Trump is re-elected. He also threatened violence if Sanders does not become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Project Veritas captured the staffer, Kyle Jurek, on camera touting Sanders’ “free education” policies because it would “teach you how to not be a f**king nazi.” He also expressed admiration for Stalin-style gulags, which, Jurek said, “were actually meant for, like, reeducation.”

Those people who don’t accept the revolution should be shot, Jurek warned. “You want to fight against the revolution, you’re going to die for it, motherf*cker,” he proclaimed. “Reign of Terror” appears to be one of his slogans of choice.

Whatever the Sanders campaign ultimately decides to do with this fanatic is beside the point. Sanders attracts dangerous radicals with his repeated calls for political revolution. Some of Sanders’ followers do not draw any line between hyperbolic rhetoric and violence. That should not be surprising since Bernie Sanders himself has a history of supporting violent left-wing Latin American political movements.

Sanders has praised Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Sanders remarked that people “forgot that [Castro] educated their kids, gave their kids healthcare, totally transformed the society.” Sanders forgot to mention the innocent lives lost as the cost of totally transforming society. Kyle Jurek’s praised what the Cuban revolutionaries did “to reactionaries.” He said cavalierly, “they shot them on the beach.”

Sanders also admired Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega. Sanders witnessed the celebration of the “Seventh Anniversary of the Revolution” at Ortega’s invitation, where the crowd chanted, “Here, there, everywhere, the Yankee will die.” After he returned from Nicaragua, Sanders said that he was “impressed” with the “intelligence and sincerity” of the Sandinista leaders. He remarked that the Sandinistas had “very deep convictions.” They surely did. The Sandinista government leaders’ deep convictions led them to align closely with Communist Cuba and other Soviet-bloc countries.

Also consider the radical left leanings of Sander’s top campaign officials. David Sirota was hired last year as a senior adviser and speechwriter for the Sanders campaign. Back in 2013, Sirorta wrote glowingly about the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s socialist policies, which Sirota credited with fueling Venezuela’s spurt of economic growth. “When a country goes socialist and it craters, it is laughed off as a harmless and forgettable cautionary tale about the perils of command economics,” Sirota wrote back then. “When, by contrast, a country goes socialist and its economy does what Venezuela’s did, it is not perceived to be a laughing matter – and it is not so easy to write off or to ignore.”

Venezuela’s economy has since cratered under the weight of the socialist policies pursued by Chavez’s successor, Nicholas Maduro. Venezuela’s economy today could be a foretaste of what may lie ahead for the United States under a socialist Bernie Sanders presidency with senior advisers like Sirora by Sanders’ side.

Sanders’ campaign manager is the radical progressive Faiz Shakir. Radical Linda Sarsour was beside herself with joy.

Shakir, along with Sanders’ foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, are Israel bashers. “In a climate of escalating Jew-hate, particularly coming from self-described progressives,” said Josh Block, a Democratic strategist and head of the Israel Project, “it is especially alarming that Bernie Sanders would put in charge of his presidential campaign and foreign policy portfolio two people so deeply at the heart of an anti-Semitism scandal and cancer that had to be cut-out from the Center for American Progress for engaging in vile Jew-baiting, including attacking pro-Israel Democratic members of Congress as ‘Likudniks’ and American Jews as ‘Israel Firsters.'”

Endorsements of Bernie Sanders by Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar demonstrate Sanders’ appeal to the extreme left of the Democratic Party. Sanders after all backed Omar when she was criticized for making anti-Semitic remarks. “We will stand by our Muslim brothers and sisters,” Sanders said at the time.

Far left progressive groups such as the Center for Popular Democracy Action, the Socialist Alternative Party, Democratic Socialists of America, Dream Defenders and Sunrise Movement have also endorsed the Sanders presidential campaign.

Bernie Sanders proudly wears the mantle of socialism. He has at times tried to make case that there are good socialists and bad socialists. But in the worldview of Sanders and his supporters, it comes down in the end to whether you are on the side of the “oppressor” or the “oppressed.” Jacobin Magazine, which has written glowing articles about Sanders’ candidacy, co-authored a book back in 2016 entitled “The ABCs of Socialism.” According to the authors, “In a world filled with exploitation and oppression, one has to differentiate between the violence of those fighting to maintain injustice, and those fighting against injustice.” The authors added, “we think there’s a difference between the violence of the oppressed and that of the oppressors.”

This is the same message that the Sanders campaign aide Kyle Jurek so crudely delivered in the video captured by Project Veritas. Bernie Sanders has surrounded himself with radicals willing to entertain violence in pursuit of his strident calls for revolution.