The radicalization of Virginia politics continues apace. Now former Governor Terry McAuliffe, nobody’s idea of a conservative, is getting the Joe Biden treatment — criticized by Leftists for his reactionary views, and getting respectful media treatment for it.
McAuliffe was plugging his new book at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., yesterday, when his book signing was disrupted by four residents of the People’s Republic of Charlottesville. In a 20-minute exchange that became heated at times, according to WAMU radio, the protesters took particular exception to McAuliffe’s defense of police actions during the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville two years ago and his promise to donate proceeds from the sales of his book to the Virginia State Police Association fund.
States WAMU: “At one point, a protester moved toward McAuliffe airing her concerns and then chanted, ‘Cops and the Klan go hand in hand.’”
“You’re using this book as a means to raise money for a contingent of people who contributed to terrorizing antiracist activists,” said Constance Paige Young, who said she was injured in the attack that killed Heather Heyer. “Please explain to me why you believe it’s appropriate to raise money for the very people who fail to keep us safe, and contributed to terrorizing us that day.”
“I cannot speak to specific acts of what the police were doing or how they were doing it,” McAuliffe responded. “Our goal was to try and do everything we possibly could keep people safe.”
The protesters also called on McAuliffe to “stop using black folks as political currency” and “stop denying white supremacists are in the police force and government.”
“The book was hurtful,” said another woman who did not give her name. “There’s a lot of things that we need to explain to you, as a white man, when you say that [phrases the white supremacists were saying] were surprising to you, it’s because you have the luxury of it being surprising to you. You have privilege.”
Bacon’s bottom line: Perhaps I’m making too much of this. There were only four protesters, and there is no way of knowing how representative their thinking is of Virginia’s rising left-wing movement. One thing cannot be denied, however: The media does not treat them as kooks or outliers, as it would if protesters had held similarly extreme right-wing views. WAMU (American University radio) reported the protesters’ statements even-handedly. I expect we’ll see more and more of this kind of thing in Virginia.
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