Nothing says "peaceful protest" quite like rolling up to a federal building in Lower Manhattan with flammable liquid and a cart full of weapons on a Monday morning. As USA Journal reported, a man walked up to 26 Federal Plaza, poured an accelerant outside the entrance, and lit the whole thing on fire. In broad daylight. On camera. With witnesses. Really committed to the bit, this guy.
The suspect, who has been arrested, is believed to be a protester with a documented history of anti-ICE activity. Two people suffered minor injuries. The fire was put out before it reached the building itself, which happens to house ICE, the FBI, and an immigration court. So he basically tried to set fire to the one building in New York City where every federal agency that would investigate him keeps an office. Strategic genius right there.
The FBI is investigating the incident as domestic terrorism, which seems like the appropriate category when someone shows up at a government building with fire and a weapons cart like they are running errands from the world's worst to-do list.
Here is where context matters. The "Abolish ICE" movement has gone from fringe bumper sticker to mainstream Democratic talking point over the past several years. Sitting members of Congress have championed it. Progressive media has elevated it. Activist networks have embedded it into the infrastructure of the political left. When you spend years telling people that federal immigration agents are essentially an occupying army, eventually someone is going to treat them like one.
Tom Homan, who has spent two years as the public face of federal immigration enforcement and has watched his agents get rammed by vehicles and attacked at courthouses, responded to the video exactly how you would expect. The man has not been known for his subtlety, and this was not the moment he decided to discover it.
Marco Rubio stood before 65 foreign delegations just last week warning that far-left extremist violence was reaching levels not seen in decades and that the United States intended to treat it as terrorism. A week later, a guy with a jug of accelerant showed up at Federal Plaza and proved the point for him.
The prosecution of this individual will matter. The investigation into how he got radicalized will matter more. For years, a certain segment of the political class insisted that groups like Antifa were "just an idea." Well, Monday morning that idea materialized outside a federal building in Lower Manhattan carrying flammable liquid. And because this gentleman apparently wanted to make the prosecution as easy as possible, every single frame of it was captured on video.
Sometimes the jokes write themselves. This time, they also filmed themselves.
Read more conservative news commentary at: USA Journal News
