Former CIA head John Brennan expressed concern about the extremist of the left-wing as well as Antifa during a conversation with a Harvard Kennedy School professor.
The story: Brennan, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and is now a senior intelligence and national security analyst for NBC and MSNBC, took part in a virtual conversation hosted by the Edward M. Kennedy Institute last week. During his appearance, Brennan discussed a number of topics with Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Juliette Kayyem who is a former Assistant Secretary at DHS and a Security Analyst for CNN.
The two spoke about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as well as white nationalism and domestic terrorism.
What he said: When Kayyem mentioned left-wing radicalization, Brennan said that certain left-wing rhetoric “concerned him.”
“Again, I think ideologues on both ends of the political spectrum are dangerous, and there are individuals on the Left who are engaging in vigilantism themselves that fall under this broad rubric of Antifa, anti-fascist elements. But I do think that ideologues are just blind to reality, and they do not look for ways to allow people from across that political spectrum to live peacefully together,” Brennan said.
“I am concerned that, including some politicians in Congress who are far left, are just, I think, almost stoking these concerns that people have that America is sliding into a socialist state,” Brennan later added.
“I don’t believe it is, but I think the rhetoric and the words that politicians use need to be very carefully crafted because some of the statements that are made tend to provoke counterattacks from the other side and that, again, just separates us into left- and right-wing in this county,” he said.
You can watch the full conversation here:
Worth noting: Last month, Brennan said that he is becoming “increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days … in light of what I see of my other white males saying.”
He made the remarks in response to former Democratic Missouri U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill’s claim that she has “never seen so many whiny white men calling themselves victims” until the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference.
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