Charles Krauthammer in “The danger of political thuggery,” March 19, begins with a long dissimulation about the riots at the Democratic convention Chicago in 1968. He repeats the conservative myth that Chicago was a protester riot. Krauthammer was not in Grant and Lincoln Parks that summer. I was. It was a police riot.

On the last evening when 5,000 National Guardsmen marched down Michigan Avenue five abreast, rifles at their shoulders, and came to a halt between protesters and amassed police, the guardsmen all turned and faced down the police. They did it to a loud and thankful cheer from the protesters peacefully behind them. That night there were no attacks because, unlike Krauthammer, the guardsmen knew who the rioters were.

In those days television convention coverage stopped at 9 p.m., an hour when curiously the hundreds of policemen facing protesters removed their badges, hiding those identifying numbers away. At 9:01, the street and park lights went “magically” out and the police attacked.

The following morning the park would be covered with broken cameras and strips of photographic film. The film had been pulled from the canisters exposing and destroying it. That film did not pull itself from those metal cans and the protesters did not smash their own cameras.

Chicago 1968 was a carefully orchestrated police riot. Krauthammer is mischaracterizing it to blow smoke in the eyes and give credence to his use of “Bolshevik” for anti-Trump protesters and his tepid “varying degrees of subtlety” characterization of Trump’s vile statements.

Phillip Davis

West Gardiner