The country is bracing for another nationwide wave of “No Kings” protests this weekend, a coordinated left-wing mobilization organizers say will span thousands of cities to oppose what they call presidential overreach. This isn’t a local disagreement — it’s a mass political operation backed by major progressive groups and built to draw headlines and manpower across America. Millions of Americans deserve to know who is organizing these marches and what their true aims are.
On the ground and online you’ll already hear the revisionist line: if the radicals trash a few windows, well, they’re just being patriots like the Boston Tea Party. That talking point is being pushed by some activists and social posts trying to rebrand destructive tactics as some honored American tradition. Don’t let the propaganda fool hardworking citizens — borrowed Revolutionary War imagery doesn’t turn lawlessness into virtue.
Let’s be clear about what the Boston Tea Party actually was: a targeted political act in 1773 aimed at a very specific grievance — taxation imposed without representation — carried out by colonists who then accepted the political and legal consequences as part of a broader struggle for independence. The Founders’ act was rooted in civic responsibility and principle, not the random vandalism and intimidation we see from radical street crews today. Context matters, and history does not reward cynical comparisons.
Antifa, by contrast, is a loose, decentralized network whose methods often include intimidation, doxing, harassment, and in some instances violence and property destruction — tactics aimed at silencing opponents rather than engaging in constitutional debate. That ideology and playbook are fundamentally different from the measured, political grievance the Sons of Liberty pursued; one is a movement of civic resistance, the other is a pattern of coercion dressed up as activism. Americans who value order, property, and free speech should reject the moral equivalence being sold to them.
Conservative voices like Glenn Beck have rightly pushed back on this false equivalence, pointing out that romanticizing violence and chaos does not make it patriotic and that the people who bust windows and harass small-business owners are not heirs to our Founding Fathers. Beck has been a vocal critic of the left’s street tactics and has used his platform to warn that this rhetoric is part of a broader effort to normalize lawlessness as “resistance.” Citizens should listen to the warning signs when a movement tries to paper over radical ends with nostalgic language.
Republican leaders and many conservatives are rightly skeptical of a nationwide campaign that repeatedly insists on its righteousness while large parts of its base flirt with or excuse destructive behavior. Democrats and the media will cheerlead and call criticism “attacks on democracy,” but honest debate requires calling out hypocrisy when it appears and defending the rule of law. The fight for American liberty is not advanced by tearing down American towns in the name of a manufactured history lesson.
If patriots care about liberty, we should defend the right to peaceful protest while refusing to let violent factions hijack the message. Stand for the rule of law, stand for free speech, and stand against those who dress up mob tactics in Revolutionary garb. Our founders fought for a republic of laws and responsibilities — not for a chaos that feigns sanctimony while menacing neighbors and small businesses.
