About the recent Berkeley protest:
Kerry and I watched a live broadcast of it from some reporters standing in the midst of the protesters. It was a legit news channel though I forget which one. We heard the helicopters circling overhead, as our little house is only about a mile away from the Berkeley campus.
( We were both more amused than anything... )
( We were both more amused than anything... )
I agree that it's pretty likely these same protestors would protest the arrival of The Donald. But I wouldn't say it's a given - beyond examination - that a protest of Milo Yiannopoulos is equivalent to a protest of The Donald.
Nevertheless, The Donald weighed in by blaming the university, and threatening to deny them government funds for - what? - for not violently beating down a protest held by their own student body? Let's assume not, since asking for that would be a serious and textbook first amendment violation and appalling abuse of power. What does he want instead? He wants the university to demand that its own students protest non-violently upon risk of expulsion? Well that would make sense except the agitators who turned the protest violent were not students. So what the actual fuck was Trump's point with that statement?
I think it's pretty obvious, because it's a very well-repeated pattern. His words are intended to reinforce the divisive worldview that got him elected.
A view that is, at core, irredeemably racist, and is summarized as: The left is a bunch of coddled, self-hating "cucks" and their multiracial friends trying to destroy and dominate all the good white working-class patriots of America.
I imagine that sounds like hyperbole to you. But it pretty handily accounts for absolutely everything he's done and said in the last two years. And it explains why, to him and to so many others with his attitude, a protest of Milo Yiannopoulos is equivalent to a protest of The Donald.
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I think Trumps withholding funds tweet has more to do with the Mayor encouraging the riot, along with the stand down order to police.
The first amendment protects speech, not vandalism - there is a difference.
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Find me the quote where the mayor "encouraged the riot".
The stand-down order was a very wise move, by a police force who are more experienced in this sort of crowd-control than most city-wide law enforcement in this country. It saved money and very possibly lives as well. Who are you to judge it?
The first amendment protects free speech. I agree. It does not protect vandalism. I agree. All of the peaceful protestors who were there for hours before the vandals arrived - they agree too. Why do you insist on declaring these groups to be the same?
I understand that it's a convenient way to dismiss what the first group stands for. But why would you want to do that?
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Encouraged may be a stretch, but if you go by the timing of it - hard to deny he did anything to make the situation better.
Right or wrong, the groups will all be lumped together.
Results get more attention than intentions. Find someone, anyone at all - who isn't all for Trump or all against Trump - they'll tell you he came out of this looking better than his opponents.
As for Milo, you do realize that 100% of his popularity, his platform, and all the attention and sympathy that come with it, can be credited to those who hate him? He was a nobody, with no power, no influence at all - and the left has made him relevant.
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It's true that, the more negative press we give them, the more they are able to recruit believers. But it takes a certain type of person, to take on all that negative press and categorically dismiss it, leaving their own ideas utterly unchanged - or even strengthened. It's informative - it tells you their intentions. Trump and Milo and other rage-baiters are not seeking unity or truth, they are seeking attention, and if you can't hack it as an artist, and you're too timid to conquer a frontier, and you're too lazy to accomplish a great work, the easiest way to get attention is to espouse the extreme end of a nuanced view and publicly excoriate the opposite side.
If there was a nasty, entrenched war over which My Little Pony character was best, Trump would start slagging off Rainbow Dash and calling Twilight Sparkle a true patriot, or vice-versa. And Milo would launch a campaign titled "Applejack Is An Ugly Lesbian Bitch". And I would laugh quite hard. But alas, we live in less whimsical times.
I agree that if they were completely ignored and had no forum it would be the best outcome. But it is not liberals, or the left, that are giving them the forum. If it were up to the liberal contingent on those UC campuses - Davis, Berkeley - Milo would simply never be invited in the first place. It was the republican contingent that invited him, that paid for the extra security - knowing in advance it would be against the wishes of many, many other students - and that cried salty crocodile tears of victimization when he was driven away. UCLA had the benefit of seeing what happened at the other UCs, and they did deprive Milo of his forum, by rescinding their invitation. But would you consider that the best outcome, for purposes of free exchange?
No, neither would I. But nor am I going to take an entitled crap on the people who came out on a cold Wednesday night and stood in opposition to him, just because a bunch of other people - pissed off assholes, for sure, and deserving of arrest and prosecution - infiltrated the crowd and hijacked the protest.
Crowds will gather in support of Trump and his twisted worldview, and crowds will gather in opposition to it. I know which crowd I would rather be in. Some assholes broke windows and threw flares? That's horrible. But you want to compare apples to apples? Six people were shot dead, and nineteen injured, last Sunday by a Trump supporter. Why not make that comparison? Do you hear all those crickets in the mass media? That's that comparison, not being made. Instead it's UC Berkeley, 24-7, and hand-wringing over a few broken windows.
That's a real shame.
"Right or wrong, the groups will all be lumped together." By bystanders and self-important holier-than-thou types on the distant internet and in distant halls of power -- yes. But the question is, what are we personally going to choose to believe? As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a resistance movement anywhere in history that wasn't occasionally spiked by a collection of bad actors - sometimes even false-flag actors or hired thugs - whose antics made some moderates wag their heads in dismissal. "Oh they're hurting their own cause, how sad and pathetic." Well yeah. Fact. But every Martin Luther King movement makes cover for any number of Malcolm X agitators. Those moderates who would crap on the movement because of that, ... what good are they anyway?
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This isn't really how it's seen. A bunch of peaceful protestors show up to protest against Milo being allowed to speak. A bunch of thugs show up during the protest, using protestors for cover, and actually shut down the speech using violence. The protestors celebrate that the speech is shut down.
There wasn't any attempt by the protestors to prevent the thugs from using them for cover and it certainly doesn't help that the protestor who gave her name for the Guardian article said, “It’s absolutely acceptable to use violence. They are 100% certain to use it against us.”
If protestors want to stop having their message hijacked by the black bloc thugs, they really need to stop providing them with cover. If they really want the high ground, end the protest or move to a different location when these thugs show up. By that time, they've gotten their message out, so it's not like that will be lost, instead what will be gained is that they will actually be seen as opposing the vandalism these thugs bring rather than enabling it and celebrating the results of it. This would play way better in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
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But are you asking these protestors to not only show up and confront a line of armed cops, but also violently engage with anyone else who comes in to hijack their gathering?
Wouldn't it make just as much sense to admonish the Berkeley College Republicans, the group that paid to have Milo show up, for not diving in to the crowd of protestors to wrestle the violent types to the ground? It's their event; why can't they take responsibility for policing it, hmm?
Or maybe there's a reason we leave these things to the police?
I do not think that the way forward, is for people to cancel public gatherings and abandon their right to peaceably assemble just because there's a chance some assholes will get wind of it and show up, or play tag with them all over town. Some of them do fight back when those assholes appear. Some of them did in this very protest. You can see how well that worked out for them on a mass-media scale: Even you, interested in improving the situation and refining their cause, never got any word of the crowd's attempts at self-policing. Honestly, it's just not the sort of thing that makes the news.
I've been in marches and protests in and around Oakland for years now -- Occupy, Ferguson, BLM, Trump, etc. Compared to the sheer number of people that show up, the places they go, and the magnitude of the changes they demand, the level of violence is astonishingly low. But for all you might read about it in the nationwide press, every single gathering of more than 50 people anywhere in Oakland is a riot, and a shame, and a waste, and self-defeating, et cetera.
I've learned more about this stuff from the inside than I ever thought there was to learn about it when I was outside, and the experience changes you. After a while it becomes clear there will always be a contingent of people who are ready and willing to condemn you from a distance, without understanding what it's like living in this dense, multi-faceted, very vocal, and very confrontational city -- so you just stop caring about reaching them. There are other people to reach instead -- people who aren't obsessed with reviewing a movement like it was a restaurant on Yelp.
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Um, no. My suggestion was. "If they really want the high ground, end the protest or move to a different location when these thugs show up. By that time, they've gotten their message out, so it's not like that will be lost, instead what will be gained is that they will actually be seen as opposing the vandalism these thugs bring rather than enabling it and celebrating the results of it."
No violent engagement needed. I know, it'd suck to have your event cut short because some violent thugs show up. If moving the protest or ending it are too much, how about asking folks to wear white, and maybe film anyone wearing black? This would be a pretty good way to differentiate yourself from the thugs. Until then, expect that people are going to remember the broken windows and fireworks being shot at buildings instead of the large number of people peacefully protesting
All of these would seem pretty doable and would take less organization that setting up protests for 3.2 million people across the country wearing pussy hats... which was actually pretty impressive.
"It's their [College Republicans] event; why can't they take responsibility for policing it"
Well, the protest wasn't their event, although they did provide extra security. The campus and city provided extra police, paid for by the taxpayers. What did the protestors do to prevent themselves from becoming cover to the violent thugs? Celebrating the results afterwards wasn't a good answer.
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Any plan that protestors make ahead of time to distinguish themselves from invaders - clothing, makeup, passwords, etc - is quite likely to be intercepted by people who are not fully with the program - whether they intend to act violently just because they're dicks, or because their goal is sabotage. Nevertheless these groups do make it very clear in their planning stages that they intend a non-violent protest, and attempt to educate each other about how to keep it non-violent as it's happening. That's a part of the process and it goes all the way back to the 60's and MLK's "self-purification" steps.
And, at the same time, these protests also attract a sizable chunk of people who heard about it last-minute and are keen to show peaceful support. Vulnerable people - senior citizens, women tending to children, teenagers who were just passing by, et cetera - who don't have the benefit of experience or training. These things are messy and community-based in a way that you cannot entirely plan for. That's the way it is especially nowadays, when social media can spread word of your event much, MUCH farther than you ever intended.
So ... your ideas may not be as "doable" as you think. But it's easy to critique.
(Also - did you just ask for a large, diverse group protesting a white supremacist to show up wearing all white?? :D )
I understand that you find the violence of the event distasteful. Just about everyone you (or your words) will ever come in contact with, on or offline, will agree with you there. But there are no trivial solutions, and, I think this last year a lot of people have taken up civil disobedience for the first time in their lives, and that's complicating things.
You might wanna try it yourself if you haven't already - it's very American, and it's also quite refreshing and uplifting. :)
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