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The American Revolutionaries literally tarred and feathered people for drinking tea or reading the wrong newspaper. Robespierre used the power of the state to kill people. BRET IS SO BAD AT THIS!!!!
To the extent that the Jacobins has fans in the US in the 1790s, they were the most ardent admirers of....Thomas Jefferson. 
It would be good if Bret read a recent history book on the American Revolution. It was far bloodier and nastier, more like a Civil War, than we had recognized before.
I mean, the Patriot mob destroyed the press of James Rivington in NYC. Not saying that was a shining moment in American history, but it was such tactics that contributed to our formation as a nation.
If you had a bot read 500, 5th grade textbook chapters on the American Revolution from books published before 1990, and then had it watch a year of Fox News, this column is what it would come up with.
There's an even deeper irony I want to draw out here. By using an assault perpetrated by 2 people as evidence of some deeper, nefarious tendency on "the left," Stephens is, himself, engaged in Twitter mob behavior.
But this anti-leftist mob being whipped up on the right in response to the actions of 2 people is not the same as the folks in civil society calling Bret names...it's supported by people with political power.
We are seeing a concerted effort on the right to use an assault in Portland as a pretext for shutting down groups & speech with wch they disagree. Bret claims to revile Trumpism, yet his piece echoes a talking point used by those calling for state action.
Here's an earlier, ridiculously long (but worth it, IMHO) thread I did on mob action during the revolution and what it can teach us about today's Twitter mobs. It was written in the context of the Northam kerfuffle, but still feels relevant.
Anyone who has watched past conservative pile-ons in regard to fictional "cement milkshakes" or "partial birth abortion" (which is not a thing) can tell you that the right has absolutely no problem with mobbing as a tactic.
Bret is upset because people in civil society called him names he doesn't like. I seem to remember people like Bret in the 90s telling people that campus speech codes were bad because n*gg*r and f*gg*t were just words and the people who were offended should just toughen up.
On this July 4 when our President, who regularly attacks the press, is hosting a military parade in his own honor in DC, Bret chooses to identify Twitter leftists as the REAL threat to free speech in America. cpj.org/blog/2019/01/t…
