Justifying Bad Behavior for the Sake of the Cause

There have been at least two armed attacks on ICE facilities in the last few months, one in Portland, Oregon, and the other in Alvarado, Texas. These attackers are not just disgruntled American citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble and make their voices heard. These people are organized and have a dangerous agenda. I think it is now becoming clear to most Americans that the agenda of these armed protesters is not really about protecting the rights of illegal immigrants, but about something far more nefarious – tearing down the rule of law, which will then break down society, and ultimately create complete social and economic collapse.

So, who besides certain America-hating Democrats would want that to happen? I think a reasonably good guess would be organized groups of anti-capitalists, anarchists, and Marxist-sympathizers. To see if I guessed correctly, I set about doing a little research and discovered several radical, Left-leaning, political organizations I was not familiar with.

One of those organizations is the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), which was formed in 1975 as an anti-capitalism, Maoist-type Communist party within the United States. They believe the only way for citizens “to liberate themselves” is through Communist revolution to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Additionally, the RCP does not believe that citizen participation in elections is the way to “change” government policies and platforms, so they do not participate in elections. Instead, they advocate for REVOLUTION, armed or otherwise, which is also the name of their biweekly magazine. The group’s longtime leader, Bob Avakian, has faced multiple charges for confrontations with police.

The RCP’s extreme Leftist roots go back to the late 1960’s when the Communist Party USA and Bay Area radicals from Berkeley, San Francisco, and Palo Alto joined forces to form the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU), which later splintered into several other radical organizations. A cornerstone of RCP’s political platform is resistance against the “capitalist-imperialist system.” On the RCP website, they have even announced a draft proposal of a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic of North America, so they clearly have some lofty goals. 

According to a WorldNetDaily article from the November 16, 2010, issue, the “RCP has facilitated numerous activist organizations, including Refuse and Resist and the October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality. They also have demonstrated their willingness to engage in violent confrontation, most notably with their support for and involvement in the Los Angeles riots of 1992, in which more than 50 people were killed and 4,000 were injured.” The RCP is definitely an organization that freedom-loving Americans need to keep watch on.

Other organizations I researched fall into the anarchist category. A list of 20 of these organizations can be found at: Anarchist organizations in the United States. 

The organization I was most familiar with on this list is the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which is also a designated terrorist group in the US. ELF is an ecoterrorist, environmental group best known for driving spikes into trees tagged for logging. If someone hits a spike while cutting down the tree with a chainsaw, they could be potentially killed or seriously injured from the bounce back of the saw blade. ELF members essentially operate anonymously in local cells.

The last category I researched was anti-fascist groups in America. One such group that made a big name for themselves in the 1980s was the Black Panther Party, which was especially active in civil rights issues. The Black Panthers are still active in certain Democrat cities even today.

Another group CFP readers have become more familiar with recently also falls into the anti-fascist category. That is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who are headquartered in New York City, and advertise a membership of 80,000. The DSA has members in the U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, and other local government offices. Zohran Mamdani, who earlier this month won the Democrat mayoral primary in New York City, proudly proclaims membership in the Democratic Socialists of America.

When I started my research, I had expected to find Antifa listed as an anarchist group, but it wasn’t. Antifa is listed as a decentralized, left-wing, anti-fascist group. The website I consulted said that Antifa accomplishes it goals by direct action, incivility, and violence. We have certainly seen plenty of evidence of this in watching videos of Antifa groups engaged in direct action and violence in various US cities over the last five years.

After researching these left-leaning, radical, political groups, here are my concluding thoughts. Even though some of these groups may appear to have somewhat dissimilar goals, their long term goal is always the same. They want power and control, and they don’t care what they need to do to obtain it. One of the big problems with socialism, communism, and even environmentalism is that our rights as citizens will always be sacrificed for the cause.

“The cause” reigns supreme, even if this means private property is destroyed and people are injured. “The destruction of Tesla dealerships was a totally irrational response to the anger some Americans were feeling when President Trump and Elon Musk teamed up to uncover “waste, fraud, and abuse” within our federal government. However, the perpetrators of this destruction felt “justified” to do what they did because they convinced themselves “their cause” was righteous. This holds true for the actions of all of the groups discussed herein; they have convinced themselves that their actions are justified because their cause, whatever it may be, is noble and righteous, and the ends justify the means.

The bottom line is that all of us need to educate ourselves about not just major political party platforms, but also about extreme, radical political groups, so we do not get fooled by their fancy words and enticing websites. Evil takes many forms, including justifying bad behavior for the sake of “the cause.”