Scoop: DNC chair front runner praised riots, claimed that “white silence equals violence”
Ben Wikler's Twitter feed looks straight out of Berkeley; he is a leading contender to run the DNC.
One of the frontrunners to chair the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has falsely claimed that America is “systemically racist,” and that “white silence equals violence.”
Current chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Ben Wikler, is one of the leading candidates to succeed failed Senate candidate-turned-DNC chair Jaime Harrison as the head of the DNC
At the height of the 2020 George Floyd riots, Wikler wrote that “for 30 days since George Floyd’s murder, Wisconsinites have risen up against police violence & systemic racism. The uprising is vital, and overdue.”
A Democratic state senator was violently assaulted by Black Lives Matter protesters during the specific riot that Wikler praised. Along with his praise for rioters who “rose up,” Wikler said of the senator that “some actions last night were simply unacceptable—above all, the assault on Sen. [Tim] Carpenter,” he wrote. “We wish him a speedy recovery.”
Around the same time, Wikler also celebrated a statement from a Wisconsin Ethics Commissioner who claimed that “white silence equals violence.”
Republicans don’t appear overly concerned about Wikler’s potential future position. “Wikler’s Twitter feed looks indistinguishable from that of a gender studies professor at Berkeley,” a GOP strategist noted to the Washington Reporter, adding that “if Democrats want to ensure that Wisconsin stays in the GOP column, they could do a lot worse than Wikler.”
