This article was written for the Charles Carroll Society by Idaho Senate candidate Alex Barron.

Shawn Vestal is a Spokesman-Review opinion columnist. He wrote a hit piece about me this Sunday. Shawn Vestal constantly savages President Trump, Washington Representative Matt Shea, Idaho Representative Heather Scott, and most other conservative Republicans. He defends the violent actions of the communist black shirts known as Antifa, and other Democratic Socialists fringe groups…

Last Tuesday, 20JAN2020, 25,000 people showed up in Virginia to protest the tyrannical local government attempt to take their firearms…

I was asked to speak about gun rights and decided to talk about how this tyrannical nation attacked the gun rights of Americans of African descent for many, many years. I spoke about the truth that Martin Luther King requested “permission” to carry a firearm for self-defense. Because his State did not have Constitutional Carry, his local sheriff was able to deny his request. As all know, he was later murdered.

I spoke about how the Black Panthers (and yes they had communist ties, but they were still American citizens) carried long rifles to protect their communities from a tyrannical government, and that both Democrats and Republicans got together to pass gun control to remove the ability of those black men to carry firearms in public (open carry). A Republican governor signed that gun control Bill. And it is still in place today.

My speech is on the web, and you can listen to it directly. When Shawn Vestal heard that I had spoken about many black leaders and our desire to be as armed as possible, including noted abolitionist Fredrick Dongles who said the “Every slave hunter who meets a bloody death in his infernal business is an argument in favor of the manhood of the black race”, Shawn Vestal, socialist authoritarian progressive, was not pleased.

On Twitter, Shawn Vestal said to me, “Yes, you’ve really intelligently grasped the spirit of the day and of the great man himself. Got it. The RWNJ attempt to co-opt MLK is unassailable!” Then he followed up with “…I bet you’ve got a *super* wise take on Malcolm X, though.” [Bard Note: What is RWNJ anyone?]

I was like: this white, communist progressive is lecturing me about my own black history? This white progressive is calling me stupid? I do not need to take one word of advice from a white progressive about my own culture and history. See, “I is be able to read and stuff.” My walk through life is much closer to our great black icons than this arrogant progressive fool. My walk through life has proven to me that autocratic progressives and their failed policies have led the black community (and in more general terms all poor people) to death and destruction. This is why I am such a motivated and passionate fiscal and social conservative Republican. I want to try to take a different route. And I told him as much. Shawn Vestal told me to shut up.  The other white progressives online thought that was funny.

Thus Shawn Vestal decided he was going to “show this uppity negro” a thing or two. Remember these leftists, who claim to value diversity, hate diversity of opinion. All they care about is attempting to “get a scalp” on the wall. Shawn Vestal, the Democrat progressive, decided he was going to use the power given to him by the Spokesman-Review to take that “arrogant conservative negro” down a peg or two. And thus, a few days after this heated Twitter exchange, this socialist, in cooperation with liberals from both Spokane and North Idaho, writes this hit piece. Expect more. Understand that liberals inside and outside of the Republican Party will share this article and try to define me and my campaign in the most negative way possible…

This is not the first time black veterans have to fight white-owned newspapers. After War World, I, the KKK, and other violent Democratic groups savaged returning black veterans. They felt men who had stood up to protect their nations were particularly dangerous to the American Apartheid system (Jim Crow). “Many of the city’s white-owned newspapers fanned the flames of terror, reporting on fabricated instances of black men assaulting white women. In one case, The Washington Post ran a front-page story advertising the location for white servicemen to meet and carry out further attacks on black people in the city. Now punks like Shawn Vestal and the Spokesman-Review continue this pattern of “fanning the flames” against minorities who walk off their racist progressive modern plantation of decay, single-parent homes, poverty, welfare, death, and destruction. They now use terms like “Look, a dangerous and potentially violent negro is among you. FEAR!”

“Black people [formed] ad hoc self-defense organizations to try to keep white folks from terrorizing their communities,” says Simon Balto, a Professor of African American History at The University of Iowa and author of Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. “Black veterans were instrumental in that.”

Black veterans were a large part of what made the summer of 1919, in the words of historian David F. Krugler, the year that African Americans fought back. “This is the country to which we Soldiers of Democracy return. This is the fatherland for which we fought!” W.E.B DuBois, a civil rights activist and prominent intellectual, wrote in Crisis Magazine in May 1919, a month after the earliest event of the Red Summer, a riot in Georgia where six people—two white officers and four black men—were killed at a church: “But by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.” Veterans in Chicago formed militias to defend black homes, neighborhoods, and families, when the police and government refused. In the time following Williams’ death, one group of black veterans broke into an armory and stole weapons. They then used them to beat back a white mob. “Because many of them have actually seen battlefield combat, they are willing and capable of using violence for the purpose of self-defense,” says Balto…

Click here to read the entire article at Charles Carroll Society.