A decade ago, the media might have dismissed the Democratic Socialists of America as a fringe group. But not now, in the era of the squad.

The DSA is an increasingly powerful force in the Democrat Party. And here’s what the DSA in Portland had to say.

First, the DSA starts by claiming that harassing elected officials at their homes is a “nonviolent” or “peaceful” form of protest”.

The absence of violence is not the same thing as peaceful. They can check with Gandhi on this on. I can shriek obscenities in someone’s face and it is technically nonviolent. 

That doesn’t make it peaceful.

The analogy is rather relevant because that’s a major form of “peaceful nonviolent” protest practiced by Black Lives Matter and their radical allies.

Harassing someone at their home is nonviolent only in the sense that you aren’t physically assaulting them. It is far from peaceful.

But then the DSA escalates to insisting that looting is nonviolent and doesn’t hurt anyone.

“Looting, vandalism, etc. are also not violent. No people are being harmed. But we have seen many Democrats, Republicans, and the media condemn certain protests that contain these acts as “violent”,” it tweeted.

It ought to go without saying, to any functional adult, that stealing from people harms them. 

Destroying a small business deprives people of a living, makes them less able to support their family, degrades their health and shortens their lives.

But the same lefties who insist that hate speech is emotionally traumatic and therefore a form of physical violence also insist that breaking into somebody’s store, stealing everything, setting it on fire, and assaulting the owner if he tries to defend himself, is nonviolent.