A brief history of political violence

To further address radical left-wing violence, when Luigi Galleani and his followers, in 1919, detonated eight bombs in eight cities simultaneously, the bombs included fliers. The fliers read: “War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will be murder. We will kill, because it is necessary; there will be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.”

In 1920, they bombed the headquarters of J.P. Morgan, on Wall Street, killing 40 and injuring hundreds. These weren’t conservatives waging war on “powerful institutions” and Wall Street.

Fast forward to the 1960s, Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist and Castro sympathizer, assassinated JFK. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale created the Black Panther Party (BPP). In 1967, to intimidate, 30 armed BPP members walked in on the California state legislature while in session. From 1967 to 1968 there were a number of armed conflicts between the BPP and police, leaving casualties on both sides. Sirhan Sirhan (pro-Palestinian), on June 5, 1968, murdered Robert F. Kennedy. Add leftist groups, the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), rioted in Chicago during the Democratic National Committee in 1968. In 1969, the Weather Underground and the SDS created the Days of Rage riots.

Violence by the left in the ‘70s comes next.

This story was originally published July 22, 2017 at 10:22 AM with the headline "A brief history of political violence."