A Marquette County Republican Party official faced a storm of protest online after he wrote on Facebook that “another Kent State” might be the solution to recent campus protests.

Dan Adamini was, of course, referring to the 1970 massacre at Kent State University when Ohio National Guard members opened fire on anti-war protesters, killing four and wounding nine, including some bystanders.

Adamini, the former Marquette GOP chair, now the secretary of the party’s executive committee, wrote: “…I’m thinking another Kent State might be the only solution protest stopped after only one death. They do it because they know there are no consequences yet.”

In the present, he was referring specifically to the recent student protests that grew violent at the University of California Berkeley in response to a planned on-campus speech by Milo Yiannopoulous, a right-wing writer for Breitbart and a notorious online troll.

Adamini

Adamini followed up with a tweet: “… Time for another Kent State perhaps. One bullet stops a lot of thuggery.”

After receiving a barrage of angry responses, Adamini took down the Twitter post and deactivated his personal Facebook account.

Adamini, who runs a radio show called “In the Right Mind,” now faces scrutiny from his Republican colleagues, according to Doreen Takalo, a Marquette County GOP member. Tokalo told The (Marquette) Mining Journal: “The majority of us do not advocate for violence.” In an interview with the newspaper she added that she doesn’t believe “he meant it exactly the way he said it.”

In an attempt to defend himself, Adamini said he was calling for an end to student violence, not a deadly response by law enforcement authorities.

Michigan Democratic Party Brandon Dillon said Adamani’s words were “sickening, inhuman and indefensible.” According to Eclectablog, Dillon said in a statement:

“The statements made yesterday on social media by Dan Adamini are sickening, inhuman, and indefensible. There is no ambiguity or alternative interpretation. To call for ‘another Kent State’ and declare that ‘one bullet stops a lot of thuggery’ is to clearly and openly advocate for the murder of unarmed college students, simply because they don’t share his beliefs or point of view. Mr. Adamini should immediately apologize and then resign from any public or political party positions he holds.”

Marquette County Republican Party Chair Brendan Biolo said this morning that he was not aware of the situation.

“I’m not on Facebook,” he told the Mining Journal. “I never look at it … I think it should be outlawed.”

Thursday’s incident marked the second time in recent weeks that Adamini has made salacious comments online.

When Democratic Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, an icon of the civil rights movement, opined that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president, Adamini said in a tweet that the lawmaker’s statement was due to “too many blows to the Head during protests.”

 

Photo: Wikipedia

John Filo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the Kent State shootings.