A Project Veritas video published Tuesday purportedly shows a Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) campaign staffer musing about a ban on private property ownership in the United States as an alternative to mass killings.
A man identified as Mason Baird, a Sanders field organizer in South Carolina, is seen telling a Project Veritas journalist that he believes a “militant labor movement,” working in tandem with a Sanders administration, should “strip power” away from capitalists.
“We would need a federal government and labor union movement that is working together to strip power away from capitalists and preferably directing violence toward property,” the man says. “At the end of the day, this kind of stuff will come out through practice, through the work and it’s hard for me to talk about it in the moment we live in, ’cause I think China today is not what Mao envisioned, right — it was through the practice of Chinese people doing the work to create the China today.
“So, it never – we’re never going – I think a lot of the stuff – a lot of these answers are going to come through practice – we’re going to try things – things aren’t going to work – we’re going to move on to the next thing,” he continues. “And we’re going to try to be as conscious and intentional about those things, but when you get into a certain level of detail, and depth, it’s like, that’s kind of my ‘cop-out’, it comes through the work, you know. The answers come through the work.”
“It would, it’s gonna take, you know, it’s gonna take militancy, like a militant labor movement that’s willing to strike, and if necessary, you know, just destroy property and things like that,” he adds.
The man then turns his attention to landlords, arguing in favor of sparing their lives after they are eradicated from the system.
“After we abolish landlords, we don’t have to kill them, that’s my feeling. I think it’s damaging to the soul, but there were plenty of excesses in 1917 I would hope to avoid,” Baird says, referencing the Russian Revolution.
The Sanders staffer adds: “Labor, I think that’s a big source of power for us, and just try to gain as much leverage and power in the short time that we have. You know, Lenin didn’t have the Internet, they were a peasant society, and, I mean, it was like, so, you know, I would hope that, like, that we would – we’d have – we’d be doing a bunch of prep work before the capitalists got hip to what we were doing, I guess. I’m not excited about the prospect of armed struggle.”
In another part of the Project Veritas video, another purported Sanders staffer says he believes “plans for extreme action” must be made — even if his candidate becomes president.
“We have all this momentum, where do we go, regardless of the outcome, after it’s all over? Change won’t come easily, regardless. Even if Bernie is elected, change will not come swiftly or easily, so the connections we make now in the campaign with people, and volunteers, it’s important we retain that regardless of the outcome,” says a man identified by Project Veritas as Daniel Taylor, a Sanders field organizer in South Carolina. “It’s unfortunate that we have to make plans for extreme action, but like I said, they’re not going to give it to us even if Bernie is elected.”
Tuesday’s video release is part of an ongoing Project Veritas effort aimed at exposing radical staffers inside 2020 Democratic campaigns.
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