Practical Reason Why Not To Demonize Your Opposition, #3445
By Myopist Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Because it always seems to end up with you dazedly watching on as your jackbooted, black-wearing street thugs attempt to stomp folks exercising their First Amendment rights.
Read on.
The link is moving: the relevant WaPo link is currently here.
12:12 p.m. ET
Not So Peaceful Peace Rally
Hundreds of people gathered at both ends of Meridian Hill Park in Northwest Washington for a peace rally sponsored by the D.C Antiwar Network.
But there were interlopers: Thirteen members of ProtestWarror, supporting the Bush administration and its policies in Iraq. When the Bush supporters arrived, about 20 black-clad, self-described anarchists emerged from the crowd, shouting profanity and epithets and demanding that they leave the peace rally.
When the Bush supporters refused to leave, the anarchists tore the signs out of the Bush supporters' hands and stomped on them. When ProtestWarrior leader Gil Kobrin objected, several male anarchists knocked him to the ground, kicking him in the back and punching him. Other anarchists punched and shoved Kobrin's 12 colleagues.
After D.C. Antiwar Network members broke up the fight, the Bush supporters heeded their order to leave the park. Kobrin then called D.C. police, who are now guarding them at the entrance of the park as they hold up their pro-war signs. "We're going to hang tight," Kobrin said. "We're expressing our freedom of speech just as they are expressing theirs." --Robert MacMillan
Mind you, I have no illusions that Protestwarrior isn't in the business of provoking entertainingly uncivil reactions from the more unbalanced section of the Activist Left. And I look upon them getting actually physically attacked in much the same way that I do upon, say, the same happening to alligator wrestlers; which is to say that I'm honestly sorry to hear about such things, but they're hardly surprising. So stipulated.
Doesn't let the protestors off the hook, though. They wouldn't have had jackbooted thugs stomping away in the first place if they hadn't invited them to come along and play in their sandbox, and they wouldn't have invited them if the protest movement wasn't so willing to believe the very worst of the Republican Party. Because people ignored this rather obvious concept, the anarchists have managed to dribble yet another little dollop of feces onto what little is left of the good name of the protest movement, which means that it also gets smeared on the antiwar movement, seeing as you can no longer tell where the former ends and the latter begins. If indeed you ever could. And so short-term gain (permits and numbers) is yet again neatly trumped by long-term loss (self-marginalization).
Note to the Democratic Party: try to pay attention, 'kay? For once in your seemingly and eternally clueless existence? Because these folks are swirling the drain, and I presume that you don't want to follow them...
(h/t Glenn)
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Practical Reason Why Not To Demonize Your Opposition, #3445 5 Comments (0 topical, 5 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
There are a certain quantity of stupid people on both ends of the political spectrum, plus stupid people who are stupid just for sport. This is a universal constant, and most people realize this. With the Internet, stupid people can get a huge audience if they just do something stupid enough to get attention of people with agendas like Glenn Reynolds.
The problem isn't so much the stupids (since nobody can do anything about them), but those who see their actions as somehow representative of anything but themselves. Reporting about 99% peaceful protests by giving attention to the other 1% just isn't good reporting.
As the far left anarchists are not representatives of the left, neither are the far right "God hates fags" that I presented in my story on the inauguration representative of the right. Both sides should isolate their extremes and and recognize that the do not represent any major slice of Americans.
This means admitting that there are peaceful protesters, in fact most are peaceful. And admitting that being agasint gay marriage is not the same as hating gays or being homophobic.
The media is not much help. They play up the extremes. Rather unfortunate if you ask me.
ANSWER is not the Democratic party, and though I think we can't disavow them enough, I think we've done a pretty clear job of making them about as persona non grata as Lyndon LaRouche.
An intolerant illiberal mob in Seattle forced a US Army recruiter off of a community college campus.
On the second day of my honeymoon, I went to Faneuil Hall in Boston to protest Ashcroft's address on the Patriot Act to various MA police and law enforcement groups. My wife is extremely tolerant.
There were a number of anarchists there. Maybe 150, in a crowd of a couple thousand. Most of them looked to be about 18 years old, at most. They all wore black scarves around their face so that "the Man" wouldn't be able to identify them. Lots of artfully torn shirts, lots of leather jackets from the secondhand shop with a big red "A" in a circle on the back. Mostly, they were annoying.
At one point the crowd began spontaneously singing "My Country Tis Of Thee". The anarchists offered a kind of running Chomskyite commentary. We would sing, "land of the Pilgrim's pride", they would counter, "oh yeah, the Pilgrims were genocidal colonialists!". Etc etc. It was actually kind of funny. They were sort of human mosquitos, buzzing around and getting on everyone's nerves.
Fortunately, there were no fights on that occasion. The kids seemed content to run around playing radical dressup. Sorry to hear about the dustup in DC.
Cheers -