Yesterday, former Twitter CEO, the aptly named “Dick” Costolo, made a bit of buzz on conservative Twitter by seeming to forecast a revolution in which his side, that would be techno-fascism, would win and gleefully portraying himself as some sort of latter-day Madame Defarge who will take video rather than knit as the Revolution consumes its enemies.

Time to realize: this is a real insurrection by communists who want to destroy the Republic https://t.co/QNZp6JUyXH

— Clare Lopez (@ClareMLopez) October 1, 2020

My colleague, Nick Arama, has the whole story here: Oh My: Former CEO of Twitter Tweets About Lining Up and Shooting Capitalists During ‘the Revolution’.

On the one hand one is tempted to dismiss it as an attempt at smack-talk by a flaccid, soft-handed twit who has never thrown or taken a punch. Not to say leftwing revolutions are full of such people compensating for their inadequacies by letting other people do the killing. But if we look at the way that political violence is becoming part of the landscape, maybe he knows something.

Over the past three or so months, firearms have become increasingly a part of Antifa and BLM riots and demonstrations. In Kenosha, a shot or shots fired by an Antifa thug is what set off the chain of events that left two Antifa goons dead and one without his girlfriend. In Portland, an Antifa wannabe street enforcer calmly ambushed and killed a man he did not know and who was not interacting with him because of clothing items worn by the victim.

What is going on?

A few days ago Politico posted an analysis of a handful of polls which asked respondents if political violence was ever justified in moving your political goals forward. What it shows is that the unrelenting and dishonest attacks on President Trump by the left and their bootlicks in the media has been very, very successful in making Americans see violence as a valid political tool.

POLL: A New @YouGov Poll Shows An Increasing "Openness To Political Violence". 36% Of Republicans & 33% Of Democrats Feel Justified In Their Political Parties Using Violence To Advance Their Political Goals. This Is Up From Just 8% For Both Parties In 2017! pic.twitter.com/OvJvAPok0U

— John Basham 🇺🇲 (@JohnBasham) October 1, 2020

This is from Politico:

While the pool of respondents between our datasets is slightly different, our questions have had the same wording. Here’s what we’ve found:

• Among Americans who identify as Democrat or Republican, 1 in 3 now believe that violence could be justified to advance their parties’ political goals—a substantial increase over the last three years.

• In September, 44 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats said there would be at least “a little” justification for violence if the other party’s nominee wins the election. Those figures are both up from June, when 35 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats expressed the same sentiment.

• Similarly, 36 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said it is at least “a little” justified for their side “to use violence in advancing political goals”—up from 30 percent of both Republicans and Democrats in June.

• There has been an even larger increase in the share of both Democrats and Republicans who believe there would be either “a lot” or “a great deal” of justification for violence if their party were to lose in November. The share of Republicans seeing substantial justification for violence if their side loses jumped from 15 percent in June to 20 percent in September, while the share of Democrats jumped from 16 percent to 19 percent.

• These numbers are even higher among the most ideological partisans. Of Democrats who identify as “very liberal,” 26 percent said there would be “a great deal” of justification for violence if their candidate loses the presidency compared to 7 percent of those identifying as simply “liberal.” Of Republicans who identify as “very conservative,” 16 percent said they believe there would be “a great deal” of justification for violence if the GOP candidate loses compared to 7 percent of those identifying as simply “conservative.” This means the ideological extremes of each party are two to four times more apt to see violence as justified than their party’s mainstream members.

All together, about 1 in 5 Americans with a strong political affiliation says they are quite willing to endorse violence if the other party wins the presidency.

While the realm of those most likely to rationalize violence are still on the left, it is pretty obvious that it will not take a lot of acting out by Antifa to put run-of-the-mill conservatives into catch-up mode.

More from Politico:

Everyone in a position of leadership in a democracy—whether in a neighborhood organization, a municipality, a political party, the Congress or the White House—has an obligation to renounce violence and explicitly dissuade their followers from turning to violent tactics or threats. Further, political leaders have a solemn responsibility to uphold and urge their followers to adhere to the essential norms of democracy, including the principles that the voters should freely decide who shall rule, and all valid votes should be counted toward that decision.

However, we fear we are now headed into such a severe downward spiral of partisan polarization that we cannot rely on the candidates and campaigns to pull us out of it.

This is just nuts. No one on the right is going to turn out or not turn out because someone in a “position of leadership” wants it to happen. That’s really not the way we work. As Antifa, as we all know, is just an idea, it is also unlikely to really care what Joe Biden says.

Thanks to the efforts of the people pushing the Russia Hoax and other nonsense, you have an energized conglomeration of leftists who believe they are the majority and, because of the participation trophy environment that spawned them, they believe they are entitled to have their way. Buffoons on CNN and MSNBC spend 24 hours a day winding them up with poll numbers that no sane or lucid person believes. If they lose, they will not accept it. These same media outlets have been pushing pandemic panic porn unabated for over six months. We are on the verge of conducting an election that is guaranteed to be fraudulent by its very design. Many on the right are not going to accept an outcome in which they have no faith and rightfully so.

No one knows what happens next. What we do know, though, is that in several Democrat jurisdictions elected officials have decided that armed and violent mobs are the way to move the political needle the direction in which they wish it to go. You can’t be surprised when a Portland thug, no matter how dim, perceives being arrested for assaulting a police officer three or four times and released without charge each time as an official sanction for attacking police. And you also lose the right to be shocked or dismayed when an equal and opposite reaction emerges.