You know it’s campaign season when the Left starts trotting out their special victim groups in order cast the partisan opposition as comic book villains and themselves as angelic saviors with “But WE Care” magic wands. The Nation doesn’t disappoint.

Americans’ attitude toward people sleeping on the street has become angrier, crueler, and more overtly violent. Blame a right-wing propaganda campaign.

Oh, but certainly The Nation author of this piece, Ned Resnikoff, isn’t engaging in any propagandistic language from the get-go. See, Americans are unable to see with their own eyes the rise in homelessness in their neighborhoods. They never experience any downside to having drugged-out, mentally ill, violent criminals blocking sidewalks and taking over public parks. Nope, nosiree, gentle reader. Americans are being sucked in by … drum roll … rightwing propaganda! RHEEE

The killing of Jordan Neely this spring and the subsequent valorization of his killer, Daniel Penny, who was recorded choking Neely to death on a crowded subway car, dramatized a process that has been playing out in subtler ways across the country. In San Francisco, a man was recorded attacking random unhoused people with bear spray. Another San Franciscan, expressing frustration with a spate of car robberies, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he wanted to burn down the encampment where the alleged carjacker lives. Nationwide, murders of unhoused people are climbing; every week, this country is producing more Daniel Pennys.

Mentally ill and VIOLENT Jordan Neely is now of the company of Saint Criminals who FAFO’d?

Does Neddy have any real experience with the people he describes merely “unhoused”? He certainly is fast with calling anyone who points out the squalor, violence and criminal activities of these poor-wittle-victims-of-capitalism as “fascists”.

For years, a network of right-wing demagogues has been depicting unhoused people as subhuman, parasitical, and intrinsically criminal.

Despite the fascist overtones in this message, they’ve been able to garner a sympathetic audience in the cultural mainstream.

See, it’s fascist to object to your children having to step around needles and drugged out addicts on their way to school.

Now ask yourself this question would you want your children to walk through this squalor just to get home from school? @JoeBiden @VP @SpeakerPelosi @SenFeinstein @LondonBreed @SFPDChief #DoBetter #democrats #politics #Police #DRUGS #SanFrancisco #California #crime #DoYourJob #NA pic.twitter.com/ZBa8PApgtC

— Ricci Wynne (@RawRicci415) July 8, 2022

Don’t you dare object to getting stabbed, either, you fascist! How dare you not feel sorry for that violent criminal? How mean of you not to hand over some money when he demanded it. He obviously needed it more than you.

And don’t forget, fascists, if you defend yourself or others from Saint UnHoused’s pefectly understandable rage, you too should be persecuted as a murderer.

And that’s the crux of it. Neddy-boy knows about the “unhoused”. It’s his bread and butter, in a six-figure job as a director at California YIMBY, a group ostensibly dedicated to moar housing. Though you’d be forgiven looking through their policy points concluding that they are more about the Leftwing “property is theft” ideology and that the unhoused make a great tool to get there. They are against historical districts, Prop 13, ‘gentrification’ and any sort of vagrancy law. They want to sweep away property rights and impose high density urban housing and if you complain about how it effects you?

You’re a dupe of rightwing propaganda

Professional gadfly Michael Shellenberger, who had made his name through an association with the ecomodernism movement, took a hard pivot into urban policy with the 2021 book San Fransicko: Why Progressive Ruins Cities, which appropriated much of [Christopher] Rufo’s argument and extensively cited him. The message spread through other right-wing channels: the Cicero Institute, a think tank started by Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale; Rufo’s colleagues at the Manhattan Institute, most notably Heather MacDonald; PragerU, which coproduced a 23-minute video on homelessness with the Cicero Institute; and, of course, Fox News.

Neddy dismissing Shellenberger as a “professional gadfly” is pretty risible considering what desk Ned is flying these days. But hey, The Nation stopped being a serious publication long ago. Shellenberger has actually gotten out on the streets, interviewed countless homeless people.

It's reasonable to ask whether I'm seeking out outliers, but I met James 5 minutes after parking my car and he was the first person I interviewed, and Ben, below, was the 4th person we interviewed after ~20 minutes on the street doing interviewshttps://t.co/kVQW0q9y5D

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) February 9, 2022

The Left doesn’t care about the homeless. There is nothing compassionate in letting people wallow in squalor, to prey on others and suffer the rise in medieval diseases. Handing over cash or free crack pipes is little more than encouraging this behavior to go on.

We don’t just need to reopen mental health facilities, we need the will and the laws to enforce involuntary commitment to such facilities along with bringing back anti-vagrancy statutes. That means learning to tell Ned and his fellow travelers, when they trot out the fascist slander, to go pound sand.

And stop electing Democrats.

featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license