POLITICS: After Tyler Robinson, the left must finally quit encouraging political violence

From all early signs, Tyler Robinson’s “reasons” for taking Charlie Kirk’s life came straight from the lefty disinformation machine that has been screaming about right-wing fascism for at least half the confessed assassin’s life.

At least two “anti-fascist” messages on the cartridges; a relative noting how in conversation he insisted Kirk “was full of hate and spreading hate” — all horribly in tune with the many lefty talking points uttered after the assassination suggesting Kirk was asking for it.

Yes, the extreme right has its own sicko extremists, but Robinson didn’t have to dunk himself into the sewers of the Internet to imbibe the incessant refrain that President Donald Trump and anyone who supports him is a clear and present danger to American democracy.

Leading political and cultural figures spread that message of hate all over TV and the rest of our major media.

It has become a commonplace across the left — including the center-left — to compare Trump, Trump voters and Republicans generally to Hitler, Nazis and fascists.

From the “very fine people” hoax that falsely quotes Trump as praising white supremacists at Charlottesville, to highbrow magazines like The Economist and New Yorker depicting Trump as a Klansman, to late-night host Jimmy Kimmel repeatedly calling the president a “fascist” to Johnny Depp musing whether he ought to emulate John Wilkes Booth, the connection has become commonplace.

Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Al Gore have all agreed that Trump is a fascist.

And what is the proper response to rising fascism? Countless sci-fi shows and “What if?” scenarios discuss the imperative of using a hypothetical time machine to “kill Hitler.”

It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to draw the obvious conclusion from all this chatter.

And it’s not all just winks, nods and “dog whistles”: Left-of-center voices offer plenty of open praise for political violence.

Amid the 2020 George Floyd rioting, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) announced, “There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives,” a sentiment common among progressives and sympathetically indulged by Bidenite “moderates.”

Zohran Mamdani offers the pseudo-profundity that “violence is an artificial construction”; his buddy Hasan Piker calls on “liberals” to “gut” conservatives and “let their intestines writhe” after they are “sliced and diced.”

Denial of insurance claims, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez informed us after the murder of health insurance exec Brian Thompson, can be seen as an “act of violence” — plainly sympathizing with that assassin.

Dozens of Democrats have denied that terror-faction Antifa really does much of anything, and smirked that its critics must be pro-fascism.

Polls show that ever-more younger Americans actually believe that words “can be violence” — a claim embraced across much of academia that plainly leads to thinking it’s just self-defense to shoot someone who says things you don’t like.

You don’t even have to hear the “hate speech” yourself: It’s apparently enough to read a few online posts claiming so-and-so, say, “calls for stoning gays.”

It’s great that Sen. Bernie Sanders and some others on the left are making strong statements condemning political violence. But that much should be obvious.

And Bernie’s fellow socialist Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in a Thursday on-camera chat with Medhi Hasan smugly insinuated that Charlie Kirk invited his own death through his “words and actions.”

Will Sanders condemn her?

We pray that the murder of Charlie Kirk — a peaceful man who never encouraged or countenanced violence — will mark a turning point in our public conversation.

That doesn’t mean vague calls for “everyone to tone it down”: It means liberals and principled progressives must finally start policing their own side of the aisle and stop pretending “there is no enemy to the left.”