"This is a nonviolent movement and committed to being so."

Common Dreams

Author and activist Naomi Klein says that people should stand firm against anyone who tries to exploit for political purposes the horrific violence that took place Wednesday morning when a lone gunman targeted Republican lawmakers during practice for a congressional baseball team.

“I have no doubt that this horrific event is going to be exploited for political ends," Klein told Common Dreams by phone. "It already is."

Klein said nobody in the social justice movement that has converged to confront Trump and his agenda should be cowed into feeling responsible for the hateful violence of one disturbed man. "This person," she said, "has absolutely nothing to do with the values of the movement that I am a part of, and attempts to claim otherwise are lies. I think there will be cynical and dishonest attempts to associate this economic populist movement with this kind of hateful act. But there is no connection. And people just need to be very clear about that and not be bullied." snip But because "not everybody has the same interests" when it comes to battling against theses crises, she says, advocates of the dominant neoliberal order—which places corporate power and profit above all else—would use any opportunity to undermine those fighting back. And while she emphasized that Wednesday's attack is not the kind of event she thinks of when she talks about the "shock doctrine" formulated in her previous book—and warned against people viewing it as such—the idea that powerful forces would still attempt to take advantage of it was treated as a given. And so even as some on the political right were already trying to associate the isolated violence in Virginia with the countless non-violent citizens who for months have been mobilizing against Trump, Klein said, "I think people will have the fortitude to recognize how cynical that is."

What does foster hateful violence, as Shaun King points out in the Daily News, is this: