How The 1960s Riots Foreshadow Today’s Communist Weaponization Of Black Pain By Katharine Gorka for The Federalist
Many would have us believe that the riots and violence sweeping across America’s cities this year are spontaneous. But history and current evidence tell us otherwise.
Leaving the White House grounds recently, I knew I would encounter protestors. You could hear them throughout the evening, trying to disrupt.
Most of the protestors were to the east and north of the White House, so staff directed us to exit out the west gate. A security guard offered to accompany me and my husband south to Constitution Avenue to meet our Uber driver, and we went safely home.
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We heard numerous stories the next morning of guests who had been threatened and endangered. One friend with whom we had walked out of that west gate actually decked a foul-mouthed biker. The biker had veered too close to our friend’s wife while shouting threats and obscenities, and the husband then acted as a man might reasonably be expected to — he punched the guy.
Elsewhere, dozens of angry protestors surrounded Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and his wife Kelley as they left the White House grounds. Eventually, more police officers arrived and escorted the couple to the safety of their hotel.
Sen. Paul later reported: “After we got back to our hotel room and some safety we heard something frightening. The ‘protesters’ were staying on our floor — including the room next door to us. They were talking about their mob activities and even saying they thought we were here on this floor. We had to develop a 3 a.m. plan with the Capitol Police to get to safety.”
Paul asks, “Who are these people? Who paid for their hotel rooms? Who flew them in?” What he saw that night led him to conclude, “It’s organized. It’s paid for. It’s violent.”
Several days later, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf announced the Justice Department had launched an investigation into the organization and funding of the violent protests that have wracked cities across America for months. On Sept. 10, 50 members of Congress signed a letter, calling on Attorney General William Barr to investigate the groups responsible for the ongoing attacks against our republic.
How Do Communists Start a Riot?
This calls to mind a similar moment 60 years ago. President Dwight Eisenhower had planned a state visit to Tokyo in August 1960, but a series of demonstrations and riots by Japanese communists against the visit led the president’s security team to cancel. DeWitt Wallace, founding editor-in-chief of The Reader’s Digest, asked two pivotal questions: “All the newspapers say these are communist-inspired riots. How do we know? If you’re a communist, how do you start a riot?”
Wallace’s questions ended up on the desk of a 26-year-old journalist from Georgia named Eugene Methvin. Starting his research at the Library of Congress, Methvin looked up books on riots. He could find only one — a U.S. Army field manual from 1882 that had been written in response to the 1879 C&O railroad strikes.
In 1960, there were no riots in the United States, only in foreign countries. But that quickly changed. By 1965, America’s cities were imploding. By 1968, there had been more than 150 riots or major disorders. In 1967 alone, rioting left 83 people dead and 1,800 injured.
