Murphy should denounce ANTIFA tactics against Space family

Democrat State Committee member Ben Silva is using ANTIFA tactics in an attempt to damage the Space family farm and business.  Silva, who identifies himself as the campaign manager for Democrat candidates Kate Matteson & Gina Trish, has been part of an effort to give Space Farms negative reviews on Facebook. 

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There have also been harassing calls made to family members and people who work there.  These have included threats of violence. 

Even the animals have been threatened... over their names.

One Matteson-Trish activist who admitted to calling and harassing employees actually compared Assemblyman Parker Space to Charles Manson. 

All this over a photograph from a tailgate party at a Hank Williams Jr. concert, in which a photograph was taken of the Assemblyman and his wife in front of a Hank Williams Jr. band banner called "The Hank Williams Jr. Rebel Flag."

What is happening to the Space family is happening all over America right now.  It's the most recent face of the old anarchist-communist movement -- now calling itself ANTIFA.  As the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, " Antifa activists also search for and publicize damaging information on their targets or opponents, or launch campaigns pressuring their bosses or companies to fire those opponents."

What Democrat Party officials like Ben Silva are doing to the Space Family and their farm business is right out of the ANTIFA playbook.  Here is more from Monday's Wall Street Journal report:

Antifa activists believe in censorship and don’t rule out violence, as they showed again Sunday. 

...They’re mostly anarchists and anarcho-communists, and they often refer to fellow protesters as “comrades.” Adherents typically despise the government and corporate America alike, seeing police as defenders of both and thus also legitimate targets.

The anti-fascist anarchist website CrimethInc.com recently summarized its philosophy: “In this state of affairs, there is no such thing as nonviolence—the closest we can hope to come is to negate the harm or threat posed by the proponents of top-down violence . . . so instead of asking whether an action is violent, we might do better to ask simply: does it counteract power disparities, or reinforce them?”

Antifa’s activists use the Orwellian-sounding notion of “anticipatory self-defense” to justify direct confrontation. That can include violence, vandalism and other unlawful tactics. Many draw a false moral distinction between damaging private property and “corporate” property.

Antifa activists have also developed their own moral justification for suppressing free speech and assembly. As anarchists, they don’t want state censorship. But they do believe it’s the role of a healthy civil society to make sure some ideas don’t gain currency.

So they heartily approve of the heckler’s veto, seeking to shut down speeches and rallies that they see as abhorrent. Antifa activists also search for and publicize damaging information on their targets or opponents, or launch campaigns pressuring their bosses or companies to fire those opponents.

Words don’t constitute violence, despite what Antifa activists believe. But there are dangerous ideas and practices, and the radical left has embraced several of them. Democracies solve conflict through debate, not fisticuffs. But Antifa’s protesters believe that some ideas are better fought with force, and that some people are incapable of reason.

Implicit in this view is that Antifa alone has the right to define who is racist, fascist or Nazi. It’s a guerilla twist on the culture wars, when a microaggression must be met with a macroaggression.

To read the entire Wall Street Journal report and view an interesting video on the subject, visit: 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-bedlam-in-berkeley-1503961537?mod=e2fb

CNN has an excellent report called "Unmasking ANTIFA".  You can access it here:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/unmasking-antifa-anti-fascists-hard-left/index.html

Democrat gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy should distance himself from these tactics.  His failure to do so counts as an endorsement of them.

Whose interests does erasing history serve?

Does the rise of a neo-Nazi movement in America indicate that we are failing to teach history in our schools?  Or are we teaching it in too simplistic a fashion, as a kind of sci-fi story with poorly-written characters that are too clearly good or evil?

We like our history served up to us plain and unequivocal.  Give us gods and monsters or give us no history at all!

But history is complex, and within each soul of us there exists the potential for both good and evil.  So beware of history served up like an old western -- with cardboard cutout figures wearing black or white hats.  It is too easy, and explains nothing.

Within the lifetimes of most Americans, the Taliban went from being "freedom fighters," battling the Soviet Union, to the enemy harboring Osama Bin Laden.  As always, Hollywood tried to shape history and made movies to glorify them...

But we forget this as we forget everything that is uncomfortable.  We want "goodies" and "baddies" -- gods and monsters -- and we want to leave it at that.

The Taliban provides an interesting lesson in the attempt to erase history.  They are monument destroyers.  They wish to forget the past, erase it, and behave as though it never was:

It seems they have something in common with this crowd:

Here in America, there are those who want to cleanse the past from memory too, as the Turks have attempted to do with regards to the Armenian Holocaust.  The difference between how the Turks and the Germans accept their respective pasts is instructive and should hold a lesson for America.

Last week, we wrote about the need to remember, when Assemblyman John Wisniewski joined Democrat candidates Kate Matteson and Gina Trish at the former Camp Nordland in Andover Township, New Jersey.  We noted that it was a member of the local political establishment back in the 1930's, Newton lawyer William Dolan, who handled the land transaction that granted an American Nazi group control of the land that became Camp Nordland.  Mr. Dolan was then the sitting State Senator of Sussex County, a Democrat, at a time when each county had one state senator. 

According to a scholar at the University of Michigan, "New Jersey Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, Republican of Sussex, noted that New Jersey State Senator William Dolan, a Democrat, had aided the Bund in buying Nordland and that the Democratic Township Committee of Andover had granted Nordland a liquor license." 

According to historian and author Warren Grover, Camp Nordland in Andover Township was incorporated in March 1937.  Fritz Kuhn, the American Fuehrer himself, was one of the eight trustees of Camp Nordland.  When the camp formally opened in July, State Senator Dolan was introduced by the American Nazi Bund's New Jersey Bundesleiter, and he greeted the "swastika waving" crowds. 

Dolan was a political enemy of Franklin's Alfred "Bike" Littell, who went on to take his place as State Senator and to serve as Senate President.  Littell, whose education at Princeton University had been interrupted for service in an artillery regiment in World War I, went to war with the American Nazis.   Alfred Littell was the father of Senator Bob Littell, father-in-law of NJ Republican Party Chairwoman Virginia Littell, and the grandfather of Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose.

Wikipedia notes:  "Camp Nordland was a 204-acre resort facility located in Andover Township, New Jersey. From 1937 to 1941, this site was owned and operated by the German American Bund, which sympathized with and propagandized for Nazi Germany in the United States. This resort camp was opened by the Bund on 18 July 1937.  In the years before the Second World War, the Bund held events at the facility to encourage pro-German, pro-Nazi values—many of these events attracting over 10,000 visitors. On 18 August 1940, it was the site of a joint rally with the Ku Klux Klan...  While much of its history and notoriety has faded over the last 70 years, many local residents of Sussex County still refer to the area as the 'bund camp.'"

Here is a short video that provides something of a history lesson for Assemblyman Wisniewski and the Democrats:

The writer Sinclair Lewis published a satirical novel in 1935 called, It Can't Happen Here, two years before it did happen here -- right here, in Andover Township, New Jersey.  It is high time for the Township to acknowledge that history -- as a warning against an ideology that sent so many millions to their deaths.

It was one heck of a venue for Assemblyman Wisniewski and the Democrats' to choose.  Especially given their party's history in establishing the camp.

Maybe the Assemblyman can propose a resolution to memorialize what happened in New Jersey and the attempt here to normalize Nazism?  Lest we forget...

Phoebus fires staff for Thanksgiving

"Your services are no longer required.  Your position is hereby terminated, effective immediately."  (Gail Phoebus to her employees)

Happy Thanksgiving!  Merry Christmas!

Assemblyperson Gail Phoebus sent terse, one paragraph letters to the career civil servants at her legislative office staff and fired them all.  In their place, she is hiring personal friends with no legislative qualifications and questionable backgrounds in the skills needed to handle constituent services.

We haven't seen this kind of indifference to the humanity of employees since Leona Helmsley -- the Queen of Mean! 

It also marks another flip-flop or lie by Phoebus.  When Alison Littell McHose announced that she would not be seeking re-election in 2015, Phoebus personally solicited the support of legislative staff members with the promise that their jobs were safe with Phoebus as their new boss.  Apparently that promise wasn't worth very much, as it has now been broken.

Phoebus refused to meet with her employees before firing them, did not provide a reason for their firing, and did not give them notice face-to-face.  The firings did not provide for the customary two-week notice. 

One source described Phoebus' actions as a "cruel and undiplomatic way of thanking loyal employees."  Another noted that Phoebus' friends need and want the money and the taxpayer-funded benefits (health care and pension), so she's put them before the needs of her constituents. 

Either way, Assemblyperson Gail Phoebus has made for a miserable Thanksgiving for her employees' families.  That's not very nice.