Liberal Group Says to Murder Republicans in Response to FL Shooting
An extreme left Facebook group with tens of thousands of members has encouraged mass shooters to murder Republicans in the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting, Truth and Action reports.
This isn’t the first time that the admins of Milkshakes Against the Republican Party — a troll group with over 27,000 members — have threatened murder against conservatives.
While the group’s general seriousness may be questioned (its name seems to derive, if images on its Facebook page are any indication, from Master Shake, a troll-like character on the stoner-toon “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”), the language of the threats is clearly meant in earnest anger.
“Parents in the waiting area for today’s school shooting in Florida,” the first one reads.
“You remember the shooting at the Republican baseball game? One of those should happen EVERY WEEK until those NRA-funded sons of b*****s do something about this.”
Just a short time later, Milkshakes Against the Republican Party released another statement egging on potential shooters to reenact the attack that nearly killed House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise.
“Dear Crazed Shooters,” the Facebook post began.
“The GOP has frequent baseball practice. You really wanna be remembered, that’s how you do it.
“Signed, Americans tired of letting our politicians bathing (sic) in the blood of the innocent for a few million dollars from the terrorist organization NRA.”
Lovely. Both of the messages had been removed as of Sunday morning, perhaps because it’s generally unwise to be seen as suborning the murder of politicians simply because of their views on gun control.
Here are the images below (WARNING: Some language):
However, this isn’t the first time that Milkshakes Against the Republican Party has used the Scalise shooting to call for an assassination. A cursory search revealed it had been used in the past to suggest President Trump be shot:
For younger and/or Common Core educated readers, Jodie Foster is a reference to attempted Reagan assassin John Hinckley, who shot the president to prove his love to the actress; “Our American Cousin” is the play President Lincoln was seeing when he was shot and killed; and the last one is a reference to the Kennedy assassination and (I’m guessing) the ending to “Thelma and Louise,” in which the eponymous protagonists plunge to their death off over the cliff of the Grand Canyon in a convertible.
Another post by the tolerant folks in Milkshakes Against the Republican Party showed that they thought that the shooting was perpetrated against “a few idiots” and was best ignored by the media:
The post closes with the ceterum censeo “Hey GOP…go f*** yourselves.” Way to prove your point!
What’s amazing is that, while they decided to remove the posts which seem to call for Republicans to be shot and killed, they didn’t bother removing the other violent messages off of their page.
Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that, even as these messages have gotten significant play on social media, Facebook hasn’t shut down the group. These are people who ought to be investigated by the authorities for openly calling for people to die. Yet, here they are, operating openly on Facebook.
Remember when Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting was essentially blamed by the media on a target graphic on her district on a Sarah Palin webpage that the shooter hadn’t seen? This is literally a group that’s been calling for violence against Republicans for well over a year, lurking in plain sight. Yet, while the messages have made their way around Facebook and Twitter, there’s almost no coverage in the mainstream press.
It’s no surprise that, in the wake of an event like the Parkland shooting, that the quality of discourse on social media has taken a dip; it invariably does. That said, calling for assassinations on Facebook is beyond unacceptable — it’s at the very least borderline criminal, no matter how trollish or comedic its progenitors feel that it is. And it’s the media’s duty to report on it.
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