Johnson in Wall Street Journal: I Won’t Be Silenced by the Left ‘This isn’t about race. It’s about riots.’
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Monday expanding on his recent comments regarding the Jan. 6 protests.
The piece can be found here and excerpts are below.
I Won’t Be Silenced by the Left
Ron Johnson
Wall Street Journal, 3/15/21
I’m amazed but not surprised. Those who seek political advantage by dividing the nation hurl the worst possible accusations to silence anyone who challenges their left-wing agenda.
In a recent radio interview on the Joe Pags Show, I explained why I wasn’t concerned by the Trump supporters who came to Washington on Jan. 6 to protest peacefully. Thousands of protesters—no one knows the actual number—marched to the Capitol. Only about 800 people illegally entered the Capitol. Still fewer engaged in violent acts. I condemned those lawbreakers at the time and continue to do so. But I feel compelled to push back as Democrats and their media allies try to equate the two groups by implying that all present were “armed insurrectionists” determined to overthrow the government.
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Leftists who want to memory hole last summer’s political violence immediately started lecturing me that the 2020 protests were mostly peaceful. Apparently they’ve forgotten that, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, 570 leftist protests became riots last year. Twenty-five people lost their lives and 700 law enforcement officers were injured. Braying about “peaceful protests” offers no comfort to those victims or the other innocent Americans whose homes, businesses and property were destroyed. The same people fail to see the damage they do by pushing a narrative designed to portray the 74 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump as potential domestic terrorists or armed insurrectionists.
We should all be disgusted at the cynical way antifa and other leftists hide behind the banner of equality—a goal we all share—even as they carry signs calling for an end to America or talk of burning cities down. It was also sadly predictable that liberals would hurl the accusation of racism. This isn’t about race. It’s about riots. The rioters who burned Kenosha weren’t of any one ethnicity; they were united by their radical leftism.
Their politics, together with their taste for violence—so different from the Trump supporters I know personally or the Trump rallies we all saw carried out peacefully—should concern us. There’s a reason why the boarded-up windows in the downtowns of major cities came down soon after Joe Biden won the election: Nobody was worried what Trump supporters would do if their guy lost; they were worried about what Biden supporters would do if their guy didn’t win.
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