re: #401 Killgore Trout

So, here’s what we have after 3 weeks of OWS:
1) Radical Marxist, Leninist and Anarchist organizers with a history of antisemitism.
2) Statements and signs supporting communism, advocating violence, condemning Jews
3) violent attacks on police

Makes the Tea Party look pretty reasonable in comparison.

That statement would be so much more reasonable if it weren’t for Tea Partiers establishing long-term cuddly relationships with nativist militias, white supremacists, anti-abortion militants that terrorize doctors, Christian supremacists, backer of reparitive treatment for gay, sovereign citizens, Neo Confederates, and a Whitman’s sampler of racists—up to and including pastors belonging to the Hagee tradition that the Holocaust was intended to make the Jews return to Israel. Shit—their appointed, enthroned spokesperson was Glen Beck.

I have very little nice to say about these protests. I laid out exact why I dislike these kinds of protests many, many posts ago: people present without a strong agenda will be appropriated by those with radical agendas as being in agreement, even when the aggregate nature of the crowd. The Anti-Zionism, Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitism I roundly condemn; if I were present at one of these protests, I’d walk away after some very loud, choice words. That’s what I did in 1999. The smorgasbord of Marxists is as inevitable as slugs after rain, and just as annoying…though god help me I know enough of them to understand that most are naive rather than militant. The anarchists genuinely worry me, because they don’t care about the crowd they’re in any more than they do the people they’re protesting…they’re just looking for a chance to start something with the authorities.

But what’s good for the goose if good for the gander: I have exactly zero truck with gloating over people being injured, armchair authoritarianism, or pornographic self-righteousness. Whether it was called for, by the book, or whatever is an entirely different subject than your presentation of that subject, which is self-indulgent . I will not side with you or support your comments.