The term for this is “civility bullshit”. When the Left is in power the smiley face is ripped off and the opponents get the shit kicked out of them – as Mr Shor discovered. When not in power it’s all cries for “mercy”, “compassion” and “empathy”.
…
It gradually dawned on him that the Party takes stances not because it cares about them—although it may—but because it is useful for the Party to do so.
…
It’s rather like his Leninist forebears in 1900’s Russia whining about the cruelties of the Okhrana, the Czar’s secret police – only to set up a vastly more evil secret police, the Cheka, as soon as they got hold of the levers of power.

An intriguing article from Samizdata that contrasts the same groups having two different takes on violent protests in 2020 compared to 2025, with one man at the centre of the debate, one Omar Wasow, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who had conducted research into the success of violent vs non-violent protests in the 1960’s:

He found that when protesters were violent, it prompted news stories focused on crime and disorder, and shunted votes to the Republican party, which was viewed as promoting law and order. A wave of violent protests after Martin Luther King’s assassination in April 1968 even tipped the election to Republican Richard Nixon, Wasow concluded.

Now I’d already noted this guy in posts four years ago:

But here’s the real kicker: they start off by quoting an article published recently in The Guardian about what makes some protests succeed and others fail, (that’s the first quote above) with this conclusion:

A body of research shows that non-violent protests appear more effective than violent ones. “That’s one of the most robust findings,” says Mueller, who published a handbook for activists this year (The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists). But when authorities violently repress protests, it backfires and appears to strengthen movements.

Great, but what the Left, via one of its main MSM organs, is now accepting, was precisely what they rejected in 2020.

Samizdata makes a point I did not:

Shor’s so-called “racist” tweet consisted of quoting factual research by a political scientist – one who is of mixed race himself. Shor’s aim in tweeting it was to help the Black Lives Matter protests and other Democrat causes be more effective. Why were the American Left in 2020 so desperate to believe that violent protest worked better than peaceful protest that they punished one of their own merely for pointing out the tactically useful fact that it did not?

But they don’t answer their own question. My answer to their question is that there are two features of the Left that are permanant:

  • Use any-weapon-to-hand that is suitable for the moment and screw principles, including the principle of non-violence, and destroy anybody who argues against this, even if they’re from your own side.
  • “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the Revolution.”

Right now we’re seeing from the US Left the smiley-face of non-violence, oozing with compassion and caring, from the likes of that Episcopalian Bishop, Mariann Budde, who lectured President Trump and VP Vance in the National Cathedral the other day about “mercy” for illegal aliens and transgender kids. Aside from the sermon itself the whole approach is best captured by a former mega-church pastor, one Aaron Niequist, who was “moved” by it:

First, she was fearlessly gentle. Donald Trump is not afraid to brutally attack his critics, so Bishop Mariann must have felt some concern in speaking truth to power. Yet she didn’t overcome her fear through bravado and speaking louder. She was gentle. Humble. She embodied the mercy of which she spoke.

You may be moved by that as well, probably in your stomach and bowels.

Even here, Budde was not being a unifier but just exploiting all the same old divisions to fight Trump. It wasn’t uplifting, it was just another whining reprimand and attempted guilting and shaming. She was not giving a religious sermon but a political speech, as she showed by running to that reliable Lefty-Democrat mouthpiece, CNN, and doubling down on all that she had said. She had done this before in her outrage about protestors being tear-gassed in…. 2020 (there’s that year again).

Keep in mind that the people she’s defending in that clip were cleared out of Liberty Square because they were rioting. Why it’s almost as if Budde’s religious positions are simply dictated by whatever the current left-wing issue is. Who knew? Here she is again in 2020, crying for justice for St George Floyd and saying that “I’ve given up speaking to President Trump. We need to replace President Trump”.

Knowing her background, any number of people let her have it right between the eyes about her sermon, showing that they weren’t fooled by this pious bullshit, and I liked two responses in particular.

First up is Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent:

She regurgitated the tired trope of the fears of the LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities. On November 5th, President Trump received record support from the gay and lesbian community and shattered voting records with Hispanic voters. Her reductionist views were shocking as she described illegal immigrants as those who “pick our crops, cleans [sic] our office buildings, labor in poultry farms…”

More importantly, the Bishop showed no empathy to the American citizens who have seen their communities overrun, their children die from cross-border drugs and their wages crushed by illegal immigration. 

It’s not just her religious positions that are dictated to by whatever the left-wing current thing is, but everything else about her, including her vaunted “mercy” and “empathy”. Leftist first, Episcopalian Bishop second.

Second up was Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, who is actually a Colombia-born immigrant:

As a Catholic & legal immigrant, it’s outrageous that some woke Bishop would lecture President Tump about deporting illegals. It’s an insult to all of us who came to this country the right way. If you don’t have borders, then you don’t have a country.

Ah yes, the Catholics. It wouldn’t be fair to damn only one Protestant group for their woke bullshit and one-sided “compassion” when Pope Francis is preaching the same things (he said that Trump’s deportation plan is a a “disgrace”). As such I very much liked the response of Trump’s Border Czar, Tom Homan, who is also a Catholic and one no longer prepared to just swallow whatever leftist crap Francis is pushing:

Well, let me give a message to the Pope. I’m a lifelong Catholic, born Catholic, I’ve been through Catholic doctrine. He oughta] concentrate on fixing the Catholic Church. First of all, he’s got big problems there. And the Vatican, they have a wall around the Vatican. And if you illegally enter the Vatican, the crime is serious. You’ll be charged with a serious crime. Be jailed. So he can protect the Vatican where he lives. He can build a wall where he lives, but American people are not allowed that?

No, secure the border, save lives. He needs to understand that when we secure the border, less people come, less women get raped by the cartel, less children die in the river, less Americans die from fentanyl overdoses. He ought to stick to the Catholic Church and fix that. That’s a mess.

I wouldn’t say the following of the Pope but with regard to Budde, the writers of that Guardian article and the rest of their ilk the term to be applied to them is “civility bullshit”.

Worse, when the Left is in power the smiley face is ripped off and their opponents get the shit kicked out of them – as Mr Shor discovered. When not in power it’s all cries for “mercy”, “compassion” and “empathy”. Nothing new there, their Leninist forebears in 1900’s Russia whined about the cruelties of the Okhrana, the Czar’s secret police – only to set up a vastly more evil secret police, the Cheka, as soon as they got hold of the levers of power.

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See also:
LeninThink and the Modern Left
Lenin Should Have Died Sooner
Do you have a warrant?