In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, the Alexandria City Council issued a statement on inclusiveness as part of the left’s hysterical response to Hillary Clinton’s loss.
“Alexandria, Virginia, is a city of kindness and compassion,” the statement began. “Our city declares itself to be a hate-free zone. We are an accepting and embracing community where we treat each other with human dignity and respect. There is no place for intolerance in our community. This is a core value of our city. In recent times, many of our neighbors, families and children have expressed fear and apprehension, and there has been an increase in hateful and dangerous speech and acts nationwide. Recognizing everyone’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we are also dedicated to freedom from fear.”
Seven months later, a baseball field full of Republican members of Congress was gunned down in the city’s Del Ray neighborhood by a Democrat activist. No one was killed, thank God, but five people, including then-U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, were shot. Scalise nearly died. He was rushed into emergency surgery and overcame serious obstacles to walk again. Capitol Police officer Crystal Griner was also shot. The community mostly pretended it hadn’t happened.
When The New York Times published a story about the Del Ray neighborhood where the assassination attempt occurred, it described it as “very quiet, very charming and very liberal.” The article featured a sign in the neighborhood written in English, Spanish, and Arabic that told readers that no matter where they are from, they are welcome.
Everyone but Sen. J.D. Vance and his young family, that is.
Not So Welcome
When the Ohio Republican moved his family to the neighborhood following his 2022 election, the supposedly quiet, charming, and tolerant neighbors of Del Ray put signs in front of his house letting him know that he and his family were not welcome.
The Ku Klux Klan used burning crosses to get their “you’re not welcome here” message across, but the Del Ray citizens use “yarn bombing.” The neighbors knit kitschy signs promoting abortion, bisexuality, transexuality, and homosexuality and placed them on poles outside the Vance home.
The neighbors posted on Facebook their delight at the attack on the family, calling them “not so welcome signs.” Charming, indeed!
One woman, the wife of a prominent free-market think tank leader, posted pictures on her Facebook with the note, “Yarn bombs for the new neighbor … a real Del Ray welcome if there was one.” The woman noted how Trump officials in the neighborhood such as Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, had been at the receiving end of “big and disruptive” home protests and that she had “every reason to believe this could turn into the same” for Vance. “He obviously knew he was buying in a politically active and very liberal neighborhood,” she added, as if she and other liberals in the neighborhood are incapable of being tolerant of those with differing beliefs.
Last week, a local news website reported that the pocket park immediately adjacent to the Vance home would be closed for security reasons at the request of the Secret Service. On July 13, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Two days later he chose Vance as his vice presidential running mate.
There were no protests when Alexandria indefinitely closed the same pocket park for Covid-19, or when schools and their playgrounds were shut down for years. Alexandrians are normally very happy to obey government orders to close public places for “safety.” This closure, however, sparked protest both online and in person.
The former president of Del Ray Citizens thought it “weird” that a Republican would buy a house next to a small park named for a Blue Dog Democrat who had once lived in the neighborhood.
Democrat activist Kevin Saucedo-Broach suggested that the entire family be moved from their home rather than temporarily close the park. Journalist Meghan McCarthy, who couldn’t stop posting about her visceral hatred of Vance and the location of his family home, said in a now-deleted post that he never should have moved his family to a location with a park nearby. One neighbor with “be good to people & animals” in his X bio called for protest. Others were similarly outraged.
Neighbor Becky Hammer, a left-wing environmental attorney and local official, organized and publicized a political protest at the park last Saturday on the eve of its closure. The political nature of the protest was explicit. She announced that there would be “Kamala friendship bracelets” and “cat lady costumes” along with other anti-Trump and anti-Vance features.
She then posted a picture of the gathering on Bluesky, her social media network of choice, and identified the Vance home. She didn’t do this on X, which she claims is “owned by a white supremacist who is actively spreading disinformation.”
Local media covered the event, saying Del Ray citizens struggle to balance their self-conception as welcoming of all people with their unbridled hatred for Republicans. Another local media outlet used anodyne language to describe the neighbors’ hatred of Vance and desire to make him feel unwelcome. That story ended with news that the yarn bombing intimidation tactics against the Vance family, which include children aged 2, 4, and 6, have continued.
Authoritarians with a Blind Spot
Del Ray leftists aren’t alone in their authoritarian tactics — or in their inability to recognize their authoritarianism. Luke Conway is a Grove City College psychology professor who runs a major lab studying authoritarian tendencies in populations. He recently wrote about how authoritarian tendencies can be found on both the left and the right but only those on the left had a huge blind spot about how authoritarian they are.
To score high on Conway’s authoritarianism scale, respondents tend to agree that the country needs a strong leader, that “the leader should destroy opponents,” “that people should trust the judgment of proper authorities,” that people should “avoid listening” to dissidents, that “tough leaders” who can “silence troublemakers” should be put in power, and that “society should strongly punish those they disagree with.” They also tend to deny that their opponents have a “right to be wherever he or she wants to be” and “support the statement that the country would be better off if certain groups would just shut up and accept their … proper place in society.”
“When conservatives agree with those items, they subsequently admit (accurately) that they are authoritarian,” Conway wrote. “When liberals agree with those items, they actually are more likely to say they are not authoritarian.” The more authoritarian they are, the less they believe they are authoritarian, he notes.
Conway explains in a recent article why left-wing authoritarians are uneasy with acknowledging their authoritarianism, but he notes that “a political party is particularly dangerous when it claims the loudest that it is not authoritarian.” That’s because you can’t address a problem you don’t realize you have.
“We’ve tacitly raised a generation of liberals who think that it’s normal for Disney to fire actress Gina Carano for having a political opinion that some people don’t like, and yet also think they aren’t authoritarian for doing so,” Conway writes.
In Del Ray, there are armies of liberal bureaucrats and activists who think it’s normal to attack neighbors for having political opinions they don’t like, yet they also think they’re not authoritarian for doing so.
Hate’s Home
That 2017 New York Times story ended with an intriguing anecdote. One of Del Ray’s most beloved locations is the Dairy Godmother custard shop. President Barack Obama visited the store during his presidency. Liz Davis opened the store 23 years ago, after falling in love with the “neighborhood of beatniks, artists and creativity.”
But as the neighborhood land values began to climb, she noticed it lost its diversity and affordability and became stiflingly conformist. The Times article explains that the “homogenizing of the neighborhood” was part of the reason she sold the store and planned to move. “There is no diversity here,” she said. “She is uncomfortable in a neighborhood she now feels is unwelcome to anyone on the other side of the political aisle,” the Times wrote. “You shouldn’t have to have a sign in the yard to be kind,” Davis was quoted as saying, referencing the ubiquitous virtue signs in the neighborhood.
The story ends with her publicly announcing to a neighbor that she is coming out as a Republican.
Del Ray truly is a charming neighborhood in many respects. It is also the home of the 2017 assassination attempt on Republican members of Congress. And it is the place where neighbors cheer each other on as they try to make the wrong kind of neighbors feel unwelcome. Unfortunately, hate definitely has a home here.
