Predictably, many on the left are rushing to shift the blame for the attack in Garland from the Islamic extremists who perpetrated it to the organizers and participants of the contest, an event intended to promote free speech.

Several leftist news outlets are essentially providing cover for the Islamic extremists who carried out the attack by painting the event organizers, the American Freedom Defense Initiative as an "anti-Muslim hate group" (as proof, the LA Times cites the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which until recently also listed Ben Carson as an "extremist").

Others online are being even more overt, calling for "hate speech" prosecution or blaming the attack on an "Islamophobic" conspiracy. Here are a few blame-the-victim examples from Twitter, including a tweet from a New York Times foreign correspondent specializing in Islamic extremism:

Image above: AFDI's Pamela Geller.

H/t PJMedia's Patrick Poole for collating several tweets.