North Dakota teenager Cayler Ellingson appears to be the latest victim of left-wing terrorism incited, then ignored by the national media. The lack of curiosity in the press about his senseless and apparently political murder is predictable, but what is surprising is the way local police appear to be following their lead.
Shannon Brandt, 41 and the accused in this case, told the authorities that Ellingson, 18, was a “Republican extremist” and that the two had been in a “political argument” before Brandt ran Ellingson over with his car late one night in September. Brandt told police that he feared Ellingson was calling other people to come and hurt him. But in a perplexing update, the North Dakota Highway Patrol stated there was “no evidence” of a political motive, or even that Ellingson was a “Republican extremist.”
How can the police say there is “no evidence” of a political motive when we have Brandt’s own words suggesting that it was politically motivated? And what is the purpose of the strangely gratuitous statement contradicting Brandt’s subjective, baseless characterization of Ellingson as an “Republican extremist?” The police almost appear to echo, if unintentionally, Brandt’s apparent belief that Ellingson’s murder would have been justified if he were a right-wing extremist. Ellingson’s politics, if he had any at all, are only relevant to the extent that Brandt’s perceptions of them motivated Brandt to kill.
Brandt’s paranoid, drunken rambling is that of a deranged man who sees neo-Nazis around every corner. “He’s [Ellingson] subdued. I was scared to death but he’s subdued, he can’t do anything to me now,” Brandt told police. What was Brandt scared of? Ellingson’s mother told police that her son, in her last conversations with him, considered calling up his “posse.” Did Brandt fear that an armed right-wing militia was on the way? If so, then Joe Biden has blood on his hands for stoking Brandt’s delusions.
This murder happened in a small town, and Brandt and Ellingson’s parents apparently knew each other. There’s a lot we don’t know. But as of right now, nobody has been able to answer this simple question: If the murder was not political, then why did Brandt say it was?
Some have speculated that Brandt tried to paint Ellingson as a right-wing extremist as a hastily conceived defense. But what would this “defense” say about Brandt? Would it suggest he is the kind of person with a strong distaste for political violence?
Brandt can find solace in this, at least: dehumanizing “MAGA Republicans” is a part of mainstream liberal politics in the Biden era, and to an increasing degree, it’s encoded in our justice system as well.
Last November, after an anti-white terrorist rammed his car through a crowd of Christmas revelers in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the police there rushed to deny what everyone could see with their own eyes. “This was not a terrorist event,” police chief Daniel Thompson said of the racialist bloodbath. The media were singing the same tune, even going so far as to blame the incident not on the attacker, but his SUV. It was pure gaslighting. When another black nationalist had fatally rammed his car into a Capitol Police officer on Good Friday months before, Metropolitan police chief Robert Contee rushed to declare, “it does not appear to be terrorism-related.”
Is the pattern repeating in the Ellingson case? Brandt was initially released on $50,000 bail before his charges were finally upgraded to murder, days later. The police are making what looks like a slipshod PR effort to defuse political controversy by suppressing rudimentary facts. The lefist media are all too happy for the help.