Douglas Murray: Liberals turn killers, racists, and haters into martyrs

Why do parts of the left and the media keep asking for sympathy in all the wrong places?In recent months we have had to put up with crazed activists like Taylor Lorenz claiming that Luigi Mangione is a “revolutionary” and a “morally good man” because she finds him “handsome.”Unfortunately he is also on trial for gunning down a father of two in cold blood on Sixth Avenue.In the eyes of many people that still counts against a man.And then there has been the bizarre defense of absolutely anybody who ICE has tried to deport.

It doesn’t matter whether the people being deported are gang members, violent criminals or serial abusers, if ICE wants them out then the illegals must be defended.In quick succession we went from protestors and Democrat lawmakers objecting to ICE taking illegal aliens from their homes, then to protesting when they are taken to a courtroom.Then there was the case of Hannah Dugan, the Milwaukee judge who was arrested in April.She is accused of aiding an illegal alien to evade arrest.

But rather than see the law take its course, Democrats kept suggesting that it was the Trump administration that had broken the rules, not the judge, and the judge who deserves our sympathy.Wisconsin Gov.Tony Evers claimed that the Trump administration was “undermining the judiciary” and Chuck Schumer called her arrest “an attack on the separation of powers.” But isn’t it a bad idea for a judge to try to help someone evade the law? Doesn’t it “undermine the judiciary” for a judge to apparently help a man accused of battery to slip out of her courtroom through a side door so that waiting federal agents could not detain him?And if you think so, then why make a hero of Dugan? Why pretend that what she is accused of doing is in any way excusable? Why not at least wait for the law to take its course — and not make heroes of people who have done deeply unheroic things?It is the same here in New York, where the authorities, student groups and ...