(Screenshot from a Facebook page by Indiana Progressive Liberals)

Will the media ever face accountability for its irresponsible incitement to violence against ICE?

When you repeatedly compare the border patrol to the Nazis while falsely claiming that detaining illegal aliens is like the Holocaust, can you really evade accountability when your listeners take you seriously and try to act on your hateful disinformation?

Police in Washington state say an armed man was shot and killed early Saturday after trying to attack a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center.

The Seattle Times reported that the unidentified man appeared outside of the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma with a rifle and threw incendiary devices at both the facility and nearby propane tanks, at one point setting a vehicle on fire.

Officers responded to the incident around 4 a.m. and called out to the man before shots were fired. It was not clear how many shots were fired or whether the man fired at police.

The shooting took place hours after a rally in front of the detention center to protest planned mass deportation raids around the country. 

Here’s the kind of incitement the media had been putting out about the facility.

Migrants describe hunger and solitary confinement at for-profit detention center – CNN

Will CNN apologize? Will social media put a stop to this disinformation which has resulted in an armed attack? Will this story be treated the way Pizzagate was? Don’t count on it. There are special rules for lefties.

Meanwhile the media is covering the attacker very sympathetically.

A friend of Van Spronsen said that she thinks he wanted to provoke a fatal conflict, the Seattle Times reported.

Deb Bartley, who told the Times she has been a friend of Willem Van Spronsen’s for about 20 years, described him as an anarchist and anti-fascist, and believes his attack on the detention center intending to provoke a fatal conflict.

“He was ready to end it,” Bartley said. “I think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs . I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.”

She said that she and other friends of Van Spronsen got letters in the mail “just saying goodbye.” He also wrote what she referred to as a manifesto, which she declined to discuss in detail, the Times reported.

Van Spronsen was accused of assaulting a police officer during a protest outside the detention center in 2018, The News-Tribune reported. According to court documents, he lunged at the officer and wrapped his arms around the officer’s neck and shoulders, as the officer was trying to detain a 17-year-old protester June 26, 2018, the newspaper reported.

According to court documents, police handcuffed Van Spronsen and found that he had a collapsible baton and a folding knife in his pocket. Van Spronsen pleaded guilty to the charge of obstructing police, and was given a deferred sentence in October, the News-Tribune reported.

It goes without saying that this is not how a right-wing attacker would be covered.