The New Vigilantes and Their Unaccountable Enablers

If you think there are no
consequences to hysterical, anti-corporate grandstanding
in Washington, pay attention to what`s happening across
the pond: "This
is just the beginning."

So warned a public letter signed
this week by a vigilante group called
"Bank Bosses are
Criminals." The thugs

claimed responsibility for vandalizing a former
financial executive`s home and car in Edinburgh,
Scotland. The bank official, Sir Fred Goodwin, was
excoriated by U.K. politicians for refusing to give up
company pension benefits dubbed
"obscene,"
"grotesque,"
"unjustifiable
and unacceptable." The vigilantes were stoked by

a former newspaper editor, one Max Hastings, who

wrote a diatribe 
exhorting citizens to violence:

"The time has come to address the entire robber banker culture.
Investment banks have been run not for the benefit of
society, customers or even shareholders, but exclusively
for the advantage of the bankers themselves. … This is
why we must stand outside their homes throwing rocks
through the windows until they do."

This is no marginal movement. Some
3,000 protesters from around the world are expected to
wreak havoc on the G20 summit next week in London. What
happened at Sir Fred`s house is a mere dress rehearsal.
Bankers are being told to dress down to disguise
themselves and avoid becoming riot targets.

Demonstrators are threatening to
hang effigies. Protest organizer and university
professor Chris Knight [email
him]vowed

worse: "We
are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the
Shred from lampposts on April Fools` Day, and I can only
say let`s hope they are just effigies. To be honest, if
he winds us up any more, I`m afraid there will be real
bankers hanging from lampposts, and let`s hope that that
doesn`t actually have to happen."

How soon before we see this same
kind of anarchic domestic terrorism on this side of the
Atlantic? It`s already here.

Animal-rights terrorists have firebombed
researchers` homes, Molotov cocktail-bombed their cars,
and been convicted of

inciting threats, harassment and vandalism against
employees of a private company engaged in animal
research. Environmental terrorists have

set private real estate developments on fire.

Self-proclaimed
"bank terrorist" Bruce Marks of the
government-supported Neighborhood Assistance Corporation
of America, whom

I reported on last March, has been

threatening bank employees in their homes and
harassing their children for years. And last weekend, of
course, the radical ACORN mob and its corporate
shakedown allies chartered a bus—with twice as many
outrage-stoking mainstream media photographers in tow—to

menace AIG executives at their homes.

Democratic Rep. Barney Frank
shrugged off testimony from AIG CEO Edward Liddy
concerning death threats leveled against the company`s
employees. GOP Sen. Charles Grassley recklessly called
on executives who accepted retention bonuses to commit
hara-kiri. Left-wing billionaire George Soros` ground
troops in the ANSWER coalition waved signs decrying,
"CAPITALISM IS
ORGANIZED CRIME! STOP AIG!" And 85 House
Republicans, led by Minority Whip Eric Cantor, abetted
the demagoguery by voting for the retroactive 90 percent
bonus tax.

Pundits on both sides of the aisle
demonized the business people whose sin was continuing
to work for a company that accepted taxpayer funding
from Chicken Littles in Washington who forked it over in
a blind frenzy. Washington scribe Mort Kondracke

joked about boiling the execs in oil. But the
families who received the following threats through
AIG`s website can`t afford to be so glib. Among the vile
messages disclosed this week in response to a Freedom of
Information Act request by Hearst Newspapers: 

• All you motherf***ers should be shot. Thanks for f***ing up our
  economy then taking our money.
   
• I don`t hope that bad things happen to the recipients of those
  bonuses. I really hope that bad things happen to the
  children and grandchildren of them! Whatever hurts
  them the most!!
   
• If the bonuses don`t stop, it will be very likely that every CEO @
  AIG will have a bull`s-eye on their back.
   
• We will hunt you down. Every last penny. We will hunt your children
  and we will hunt your conscience. We will do
  whatever we can to get those people getting the
  bonuses. Give back the money or kill yourselves.
   
• All the executives and their families should be executed with piano
  wire around their necks—my greatest hope.
   
• Watch your backs because someone will come to get you, you can be
  sure.

Federal authorities are
investigating and will take action against warped
vigilantes. But when will the enablers on the Hill, in
newsrooms and on TV sets be held to account?

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Michelle Malkin [email
her] is author of

Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores.
Click

here for Peter Brimelow`s review. Click

here for Michelle Malkin`s website.
Michelle Malkin`s latest book is "Unhinged:
Exposing Liberals Gone Wild."