The Republican Party headquarters in one of the most left-wing areas in North Carolina  has been firebombed in an revolting act of political terrorism.

Gov. Pat McCrory Sunday called the weekend firebombing of a North Carolina Republican headquarters “an attack on our democracy,” while one GOP official called it an act of “political terrorism.”

In a tweet, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blamed “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina.”

Hillsborough police said somebody threw a bottle of flammable liquid through the window of Orange County’s GOP headquarters, setting campaign signs, supplies and furniture ablaze before burning itself out.

A swastika and “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else” were spray painted on the side of an adjacent building. No damage estimates were available.

“The firebombing of a local political headquarters in Orange County is clearly an attack on our democracy,” McCrory said in a statement. “Violence has no place in our society – but especially in our elections. … I will use every resource as governor to assist local authorities in this investigation.”

Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens said, “This highly disturbing act goes far beyond vandalizing property; it willfully threatens our community’s safety … and its hateful message undermines decency, respect and integrity in civic participation.”

Orange County is one of the most liberal areas in North Carolina—Barack Obama pulled more than 70% of the vote there in the 2012 Presidential elections—and the radicalized faculty, staff, and students of the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a reputation for being fanatically intolerant of any thought that strays away from lockstep progressive orthodoxy.

Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state GOP, noted that the weapon, a “significant Molotov cocktail,” was thrown through a window that once read “Freedom Spoken Here.”

Clearly, that message was not appreciated by the arsonist.

We should not be surprised that such an attack took place, not where it took place. North Carolina Democrats—often in conjunction with the Ku Klux Klan and the overt or tacit support of major news outlets in the state—have often resorted to political terrorism, up to and including open insurrection. Orange County is one of the most fanatically progressive areas in the state.

Wilmington, NC was the site of the only successful coup in American political history in 1898, where Democrats/Klansmen called “Red Shirts” overthrew the local Republican/Populist government in a massacre supported by the Raleigh News & Observer, which remains one of the largest (and most reliably biased) newspapers in the state.

Arson attacks of this kind are considered a deadly force attack.

It would presumably be legal third party self-defense in most circumstances to use deadly force against someone attempting to throw a Molotov cocktail at an occupied home, business, or political headquarters.