[TheZman] Street protests and street theater are largely useless as political tactics in the modern age. A century ago, a gaggle of prim-faced scolds marching through the middle of town, demanding the end of alcohol, not only got people’s attention, it changed their minds about the issue. The street protests projected strength and suggested that the numbers on the side of the marchers were larger than assumed. The men in charge responded by giving women the franchise and banning alcohol. The downward spiral started soon after.
Today, people know that the street protest is a made for TV event and that the “protesters” are often paid to show up and make noise. Alternatively, it is assumed that the true believers are batshit crazy and best ignored. In other words, it’s just another TV show in an age where we are awash in TV shows. For the most part, the street protest is for weak losers desperate for attention. The only impact they have on the larger public is to confirm that the “movement” is impotent and can be ignored.
That does not mean street theater is entirely worthless. The alt-right showing up at Berkeley to beat up the Antifa losers was entertaining and it did scare the people in charge of the place. So much so they moved heaven and earth to block Ann Coulter’s speech last week. Make no mistake, the reason the school went to all this trouble is they feared a bunch of dudes in home made battle gear beating the hell out of the Potemkin Protesters the Left now hires to do their protesting for them. A replay would be embarrassing.
Berkeley is the epicenter of West Coast progressive lunacy so for the true believers at the center of the hive to feel this uncertain is suggestive. They have been in charge for so long they just take it for granted. The narrative says they are the ones in the street fighting the man. When the roles are flipped and they are suddenly the man, their go to move is to shut it all down. They have no choice, as to do otherwise would mean facing up to the reality of their situation and that’s never going to happen with true believers.
The real lesson, the one most useful to the alt-right, is seeing the controlled opposition confirm what many have been pointing out for years now. As soon as things got a little tough, the College Republicans folded their tents and blamed the “extremists” of the alt-right. The Young American Foundation, a Conservative Inc. racket to recruit college students, made a show of “defending free speech” but made sure they did not offer any material support. It was just another way to raise money for their racket. More at the link
#2
The most effective pieces of street theater have been those in which some of the protesters got hauled off to the hospital or the morgue: Selma, Kent State, etc. Putting on black masks and forming a mob to threaten Heather McDonald and Ann Coulter puts the left in the Bull Connor position. That doesn't draw a lot of sympathy. Even that young "lady" who ate a fist for the cause a couple of weeks ago got more of a "What a maroon!" reaction.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/01/2017 9:49 Comments ||
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#3
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country...and the Winter Soldier.
As z-man said, these riots on TV are just another competing TV program. People are satiated and weary of this.
[American Thinker] Farming in South Africa is the most dangerous occupation in the world. Farmers there suffer more murders per-capita than any other community on earth outside a war zone. Since the dawn of democracy in the country, farming South Africa has been slaughtered by black South Africans in ways that would do Shaka Zulu[*] proud.
The Transvaal Agricultural Union's numbers (purported to be the most reliable), are bolstered by Genocide Watch. (I wrote about this here.) By this assessment, South African farmers were being exterminated at the annual rate of 313 per 100,000 inhabitants, 3,000 since the election of the sainted Nelson Mandela (1994), two a week, seven in March of 2010, "four times as high as is for the rest of the [South African] population," in th words of Genocide Watch's Dr. Gregory H. Stanton.
The number of farmers martyred on land many their families had farmed since the 1600s has since been revised downward by the African National Congress (ANC) government, its police and lickspittle social scientists. This is good if true; bad if doctored for the purpose of diminishing the facts.
The Democratic Alliance used to dispute any crime statistics issued by the South African Police Service (SAPS). The tiny, tokenistic, opposition to the "all-powerful black majority party" puts the ostensible drop in crime down to the fact that 51 percent of victims no longer bother to report crime, given that corruption is rife, arrests rare, and prosecutions and convictions still rarer. Findings suggest that the SAPS’s optimistic, homicide statistics are not to be believed. According to the Economist (citations in Into the Cannibal's Pot), the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation has confirmed the existence of a "pervasive pattern of (police) manipulation of statistic."
Every year, millions in taxpayers’ money are forked out to private security firms to protect ... the new South Africa’s police stations. "South Africa’s protectors can’t protect themselves," they can't protect the country, and they probably can't count. The orgy of crime in South Africa reflects the capabilities of this reconstructed police force.
[Real Clear Defense] The wars against Islamist militants inimical to secular democracies will not end until the West and its genuine friends forge the will to shut down the factories and sanctuaries that generate and sustain the most abominable strains of Salafi-Wahhabi jihadists.
For over four decades Pakistan has been a breeder and sponsor of Islamist terrorists. 20 designated terrorist organizations operate in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, while seven are based in Pakistan. These wars will not end until the U.S. and like-minded states shut down Pakistan, as the foremost producer of Jihad Inc.
Pakistan, with the abetment of a number of Gulf States, has been the principal, persistent, prodigious, and most pernicious producer of apocalyptic Islamist fanatics.
What a delightful sentence. And true, too.
It continues to be the most prolific factory and sanctuary for the world’s largest constellation of murderous militants, for the longest time. To be sure, other states and non-state groups have contributed and continue to contribute to the proliferation of jihadists either advertently or inadvertently, including the U.S. with its nearly blind support of the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War, and with the unfathomably addled decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Iraq catalyzed and attracted militants in excess.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
05/01/2017 09:07 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistain Proxies
#1
Anywhere we attacked after 9/11 would have catalyzed and attracted militants in excess, it seems to me; and the other two candidates -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- were and are allied countries. Would Congress have issued an official declaration of war against either ally? And how much nastier would the Peace Now crowd's response have been in that case?
Here's hoping that President Trump significantly renegotiates Pakistan's deal now -- I agree that the writer is correct that the current indulgence needs to stop.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Real Clear Defense] The wars against Islamist militants inimical to secular democracies will not end until the West and its genuine friends forge the will to shut down the factories and sanctuaries that generate and sustain the most abominable strains of Salafi-Wahhabi jihadists.
