Monday’s massacre at the Islamic Center of San Diego was pure evil. Two teenage suspects reportedly opened fire outside the mosque at 11:43 a.m., and a school with kindergarten through third-grade children was on the grounds. Three men are dead, including a heroic security guard who stood his ground to protect those little kids inside. The shooters then turned their guns on themselves. It was cold-blooded murder.
This should have been a moment for simple, unambiguous moral clarity. Instead, before the blood had even dried, the familiar left-wing outrage machine kicked into high gear.
Police are investigating this as a hate crime after anti-Islamic writings were reportedly found with the suspects. That designation is fair and appropriate. But progressive activists, media voices, and groups like CAIR immediately pivoted to frame the attack as the inevitable result of “right-wing extremism,” “Islamophobia,” and a toxic national “climate of hate.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued strong statements standing with the Muslim community and warning of rising prejudice.
This is now standard operating procedure. When violence strikes a group that the modern Left has placed high in its hierarchy of the oppressed, the response is immediate, sweeping, and accusatory. Individual perpetrators are transformed into symptoms of a deeper conservative pathology. The entire Right stands collectively indicted.
Contrast this with the Left’s habitual reaction when the roles are reversed. When Islamist terrorists strike—as with the Pulse nightclub, the Boston Marathon, the Manchester Arena, vehicle attacks across Europe—the reflex is always the same: shield Islam. “This has nothing to do with true Islam. Islam is a religion of peace.” The real danger is “backlash” and “Islamophobia.” The killer becomes a “lone wolf” or mentally ill. Any discussion of doctrinal roots or failed assimilation is denounced as bigotry.
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The same instinct appeared domestically. After Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009 while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” the Obama administration classified the attack as “workplace violence” rather than terrorism, despite Hasan’s clear jihadist motivations and communications with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
In California under Newsom’s sanctuary policies, illegal immigrants with criminal records have repeatedly been released back into communities. Kate Steinle was shot and killed on a San Francisco pier in 2015 by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times. Newsom and sanctuary defenders offered little accountability for the policies that enabled it. Yet these same policies continue, with tragic results across the state.
After the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooting, Audrey Hale, who identified as transgender, killed six people, including three 9-year-old children. Much of the left downplayed Hale’s manifesto, filled with anti-Christian hatred, resentment of “preppy white kids,” racial slurs like “little crackers,” and attacks on “white privilege.” The focus immediately shifted to gun control.
In the August 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, transgender gunman Robin Westman killed an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old during back-to-school Mass. Westman’s manifesto contained anti-Catholic rants, antisemitic messages, and explicit calls to “Kill Donald Trump.” Once again, it was treated as a generic tragedy best used for gun control talking points.
But when two non-Muslim teenagers reportedly attack a mosque? No lone wolves. No hesitation. The blame is instantly pinned on conservatives, border enforcement, and the broader Right.
The same disparity appeared after the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk. The shooter, steeped in left-wing cultural poison, viewed Kirk as a source of hatred. Democrats issued generic condemnations of “political violence” but showed no interest in examining their own toxic rhetoric.
Neither Newsom nor Mamdani offered any solidarity with Turning Point USA or the conservative community.
This selective moral lens is consistent. The 2022 Buffalo supermarket massacre was rushed into the “right-wing extremism” category. Left-wing attacks on pregnancy centers, Supreme Court justices, or private businesses are routinely minimized as “understandable passions” or isolated excesses. The hierarchy of victimhood always dictates the intensity of outrage.
Even the reflexive Nazi analogies expose historical illiteracy. National Socialism was not conservatism—it was a totalitarian blend of socialism, racial identity politics, and state worship. It converged far more with modern collectivism than with limited government and individual liberty. The Nazis obsessed over Jews, not Muslims, and found tactical allies among some Muslim figures.
The San Diego attack was a hate crime and a profound tragedy. Its swift and partisan weaponization reveals the ugly truth: the modern Left does condemn violence—but only generically when conservatives are the victims. When one of their favored groups is targeted, the condemnation becomes highly specific, aggressive, and used to indict the entire right.
The Left loves Muslims as useful props in its endless war on the Right. It does not oppose extremism—it simply redefines extremism as anything that challenges progressive power.
This is not compassion; it is cynicism wrapped in moral language. And it is tearing the country apart.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
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