Seattle Mayor Backs Anti-Christian Riot: This Is the Face of the Left
I’ll never forget my first visit to Seattle, which will likely be my last. As you’re already aware if you’ve been reading The Brew the last few days, Antifa recently attacked a group of Christians gathered at a public worship event — and the mayor defended not the Christians, but Antifa.
I was there in 2022 to take part in a forum with Eric Metaxas at the wonderful Westgate Chapel a few miles outside the city. We stayed downtown in the Arctic Club, a lovely relic of more civilized times built by retired polar explorers. We dined at a steakhouse with people from the Discovery Institute, the organization that fights Darwinian materialism and promotes science-based research on Intelligent Design. It was a really wonderful evening, which took a sudden, disturbing dark turn.
After dinner, we got ready to walk the four city blocks back to the Arctic Club. But we heard loud chanting and drums beating, as if some hunter-gatherer tribe had taken over the streets — because one had. The restaurant host informed us that Antifa was marching nearby, and he didn’t think it was physically safe for us to walk back to our rooms. The way we were dressed (in coat and tie) was likely to get us attacked, he said.
So we actually had to get a ride to go the quarter of a mile back to our hotel in order to avoid the violent activists Seattle lets run rampant. (Remember when radicals seized part of the city during the riots of 2020 and declared an entire neighborhood to be an independent Marxist enclave called “CHAZ,” patrolled by armed militants that was rife with arson, rape, and assault?)
That was unsettling. So was the homeless man who lurked in an alley near the hotel and spent the entire night shrieking obscene threats of violence at all passersby, which echoed off cavernous walls through the closed windows of my room on the eleventh floor. I didn’t get much sleep. The next day when I blearily greeted the good people at Westgate, several were shocked that Eric and I had stayed downtown. One said, “We used to love downtown. But we haven’t set foot down there in … years.” Downtown was a no-go zone, like the neighborhoods in Paris now full of sullen jihadi “refugees.”
This isn’t Frasier and Niles Crane’s Seattle. It’s more like Robert Mugabe’s Harare, Zimbabwe. And it’s what the Left wants to make of every city in America.
A Cargo Cult with Ideological Idols
Seattle is an example of what happens to cities when totalitarian movements driven by hate shove their way into power and trash the fragile system of ordered liberty our ancestors worked and bled for. As a post-Christian cargo cult, the woke worldview fashions idols salvaged from the heritage it destroyed: It waves around words like “marginalized,” “equity,” “diversity” and “justice,” stripped of context and finally content.
In fact, the woke are driven by the same dark motives that have animated gangsters, tyrants, and intolerant mobs through our fallen human history: powerlust, the herd instinct, intolerant zeal, and fantasies of revenge. From the mobs who hooted as Christians died in the Colosseum to the Nazi brownshirts who smashed up synagogues on Kristallnacht, the face of mass fanaticism never changes much. And now it’s showing itself in Seattle, with the full support of the local government.
[T]he grassroots movement #DontMessWithOurKids gathers thousands of believers together in every state to pray for a move of God to protect America’s children and turn around the U.S. education system. …
From the start, organizers faced opposition for wanting to gather peacefully and pray at the Seattle event which was scheduled on May 24th.
Organizers from Mayday USA told KOMO News they initially sought to hold their event at Pike Place Market, but the city denied that permit and redirected the group to Cal Anderson Park – an area with “the most prominent gay neighborhood.”
In response to the rally, numerous rioters set up in the park at the same time including the “Radical Women Seattle” group which told the local news affiliate that they were there to protest “fascist family values.”
One of the organizers of Mayday, Bunni Pounds, recounts the hate-driven chaos that ensued when Antifa and its sister organization Trantifa attacked the prayer meeting.
In the end, we saw 23 arrests, a riot that broke out as we worshipped and Christians praying and worshipping for hours to push back the darkness in the atmosphere. Families with children boldly stood rather than leaving or pulling out of danger. These Washington state Christians amazed me as we were later accused of “fascist family values” by the Seattle Times.
Lewd Acts and Flying Bodily Fluids
Rioters surrounded families with small children, threw water balloons full of urine, and terrorized the peaceful Christian worshippers — while others committed “lewd acts” in the plain sight of little kids. Here’s footage of the attack:
The city’s mayor, Bruce Harrell, sided with the rioters and condemned the beleaguered Christians, saying:
Seattle is proud of our reputation as a welcoming, inclusive city for LGBTQ+ communities, and we stand with our trans neighbors when they face bigotry and injustice. Today’s far-right rally was held here for this very reason – to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values in the heart of Seattle’s most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood.
When the humanity of trans people and those who have been historically marginalized is questioned, we triumph by demonstrating our values through our words and peaceful protest.
He blamed “anarchist” infiltrators for the violence, but offered the victims no apology.
Trump Team Takes Action
CBN reports that the federal government, for a change, is weighing in on the side of the Christians — in case you didn’t believe that elections have consequences:
Dan Bongino, the FBI’s Deputy Director, wrote on X Tuesday, “We have asked our team to fully investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups at the Seattle concert. Freedom of religion isn’t a suggestion.”
And Pastor Paula White-Cain spoke out from the White House, saying, “The White House Faith Office condemns the violent disruption of Seattle’s MayDay USA worship event. We affirm the fundamental rights to free speech and religious freedom for all Americans, as protected by federal law. Public officials must protect the inalienable rights of all citizens, regardless of their faith or religious beliefs. We urge the City of Seattle to uphold these rights at all faith-based events, safeguarding the ability of people of faith to gather and express their beliefs without fear of harassment or violence.”
If the Secret Committee Formerly Known as Joe Biden or Kamala Harris had won the White House, the FBI would be investigating, all right. It would be targeting the Christians.
The talk I gave on the outskirts of Seattle three years ago is surprisingly relevant to the dismal events of this past Sunday. I talked about the intimate connection between gun rights and religious freedom for Christians — and explained why the enemies of the Second Amendment are also foes of the First.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.