Liberal Lynch Mobs

Almost one hundred years ago, Leo Frank was taken from his Milledgeville prison cell to be hanged from an oak tree in Marietta, Georgia.  Frank was almost certainly innocent of killing Mary Phegan, but that did not deter a crowd bent on exacting justice.

 Frank was a northern Jew accused of murdering a southern Christian and that was all the evidence the lynch mob needed.  Today we are witnessing a revised version of this mentality.  Today, liberals aspire to criminalizing white police officers accused of killing unarmed blacks.

When Grand Juries in Ferguson Missouri and State Island New York refused to indict those involved in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, vehement protests erupted across the nation.  These alleged injustices cried out for retribution.

It mattered not what the facts were.  These counted for as little as they did in the Frank case.  Despite testimony that Brown never held his hands up or said don’t shoot, thousands of marchers lifted theirs in emulation of a fictitious event.  Many more parroted Garner’s last words about not being able to breath, even though in speaking he demonstrated that he could breath.

These activists would not be satisfied with anything less than convictions.  Sadly, in the case of Ferguson, it is likely that had Officer Wilson returned to duty he would have been assassinated.  Despite the ballyhooed compassion of liberals, none was directed toward the police.  It was as if they were not human.

The question is why?  Why are contemporary liberals so bloodthirsty?  Why do they behave so irrationally?   And make no mistake: whatever their rhetoric, they are irrational.

History offers some clues.  Why, for instance, were southern whites so ready to believe the worst of an outsider?  And why did they feel the need for a final solution?  Why, for that matter, were my ancestors in Bialystok Poland forced to barricade themselves in their apartment lest rioting Poles hang them?

What these instances have in common was that the perpetrators were under stress.  Most were poor people who had little hope of redemption.  Moreover, their victims, i.e., their scapegoats, were perceived as perpetuating their misery.  The hope was that in punishing them, they could relieve their own distress.

The same is true of today’s liberals.  Thus, many are young people who are out of luck and out of hope.  Things are not going their way; hence they need someone to blame.  Who better to crucify than the police who purportedly represent a repressive establishment.

On a larger scale, politicians and media types are likewise experiencing distress.  Liberalism is a dying ideology.  As a result, its acolytes are dismayed.  Their cherished polices keep crashing down around their necks.  So extensive is the wreckage that denial will no longer suffice.  They must now lash out more aggressively.

ObamaCare is a failure, the stimulus did not revive the economy, scandals wrack the Democratic administration, foreign policy is a mess, and liberals lost the bi-election.  Hope and change have therefore been revealed as empty slogans.  What to do?  A diversion is needed.  Not just a diversion, but an emotionally charged one.

Ergo: blame the bad guys!  Blame the conservatives!   Better yet, blame the police for upholding the status quo.  They are clearly impeding progress and need to be shunted aside.  Only then can the liberal millennium arrive.

But notice something important. This is wholly negative project.  Liberals who have run out of ideas are now compelled to deflect attention from their disappointments.  It’s the other guy’s fault.  “We progressives are faultless paragons of virtue; we never make mistakes.  In fact—look at us—we are fighting for justice!”

Liberals are essentially manufacturing a crisis—one they do not intend to waste.  Despite causing much of the current political consternation, they invoke this as an excuse to reconstruct our social institutions along collectivist lines.  “You, the dim-witted public, may be alarmed, but we know what is best.”

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University