This feels like something that shouldn’t have to be said, but I oppose political violence. I opposed the antics on January 6, 2021 and I opposed the rioting and looting of the summer of 2020. I oppose the violence of the protests against deportations in L.A., which I saw firsthand. But my opposition to it is irrelevant. It has no bearing on anything. It’s entirely beside the point.
I’ve heard a dozen different versions of the argument that the L.A. protesters should follow the lead of the Civil Rights Movement, with its discipline and its commitment to non-violence and its camera-ready optics. I agree with that argument, in the exact same way I would agree with the argument that we should strive for peace not war, or that tornadoes and earthquakes are bad.
But I think it’s a category error. Maybe it’s because we’ve become so brainwashed by the conspiratorial thinking of twenty-first century politics that we reflexively assume that every mass protest is organized — that there are committees of people behind the scenes making strategic and tactical decisions that then manifest on the streets. That nothing happens spontaneously or organically anymore. So we assume from this that the “movement” is making poor decisions by “allowing” violent activity and other impolitic things like property destruction and waving Mexican flags.
This is a monumental misunderstanding, in my opinion, of what’s happening. I’ve been to dozens of left-wing protests in my life, maybe hundreds. When organized groups are behind them, they don’t tend to be shy about it. If SEIU is turning out members, they’re all going to be wearing purple SEIU shirts and carrying SEIU picket signs. Even groups that didn’t organize a given protest try to leave the impression that they did, by putting their valor-stealing activists at the head of the march with a huge banner with their name on it (ahem, International ANSWER).
This branding was not present in downtown L.A. on Sunday afternoon. More or less every sign I saw was handmade. There was no stage, no speaker lineup, no protest marshals. I can already hear someone pointing out that if you wanted to make a protest look organic, you would dress it up exactly that way. But if your theory is that this was some color revolution psy-op, then the burden is on you to prove it, not on others to disprove it. And so far the only attempt to offer such evidence is this incredibly weak shit from the terminally galaxy-brained Mike Benz.
The more obvious explanation is that what’s happening in L.A. is not organized by anyone. It’s a genuine, spontaneous outburst of anger and resistance.
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Author: Leighton Woodhouse
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