methinks the protesters doth protest too much
how much of modern activism is nothing but stage managed marketing?
it’s interesting how perspectives evolve over time. to be sure, the political protest movements of the 60’s had all sorts of problems and many of their leaders and followers were flawed and/or unsettled or unserious people just along for the ride, but there was a real, genuine nature to them as well. there were serious problems like jim crow or kids being drafted and shipped off against their will to fight in a foolish, contrived war in southeast asia and far from being just “noisy hippies” many of the luminaries of these movements were people with a point. (and often a good one)
these civil rights protests contained real values and real danger.
the regime did NOT like these people.
they infiltrated them with the FBI and police and CIA, arrested them, beat them, sicced the dogs on them, firehosed them, and arguably assassinated several of them (including perhaps a sitting president).
that’s how regimes behave when they actually fear protests: crack down and lock up, surveil and subvert, destroy and discredit.
the movements of the 60’s and 70’s were anti-state and largely right. that’s not something that burgeoning statists will tolerate, especially the “being right” part.
but a very interesting dichotomy has emerged of late with a new kind of protester that seems to be a “pro-regime” protester which has come to be nothing so much as a state sanctioned astroturf movement to lend a patina of legitimacy to propagandistic talking points emerging from DC and davos and downing st and wherever else modern media politics has infected governance.
the manner in which they are treated looks nothing at all like something regimes fear. the cops and politicos alike are stepping up to help in this made for media images collaboration LARP. they’ll carry you in a photogenetic way, stop for a minute to let people get better pictures while you smile and mug for cameras, then take you away to get some cocoa in the truck before they give you a faux summons that will get quietly dropped later.
they all do it. greta seems to know all her arresters by name and they actually scout locations for her “arrests” and work out the camera angles.
it’s as stage managed as a taylor swift concert.
it’s so bad that even the politicians that play along cannot remember to act subdued and wind up making hilarious mistakes that reveal that they were never actually handcuffed (or even really arrested) on their way to the smollet town jail.
these are not protesters, they’re a marketing division for government policy. they’re shills and hucksters secreted in the audience to make demand for the potions being sold from the colorful wagons of a charlatan look organic.
if you want to instantly see the difference, try a little A/B test:
glue your hand to a priceless artwork to protest climate change and see what happens.
next, pull a fire alarm in the capitol to protest the 2020 election.
see if you notice any differences in how you get treated.
yeah.
mostly peaceful burning and looting of cities gets you zero charges. hell, some of those protesters got paid settlements for taking over parts of US cities under force of arms and declaring them sovereign.
meanwhile, actually mostly peaceful “loitering in the US capitol while wearing a bison hat” gets you actual, no joke prison time.
burning a car dealership is speech, but bouncy castles to “truck fudeau” and you get the cavalry riding over you.
it’s not irony, it’s the iron law of lawfare and authoritarian systems:
“for my friends, everyhting. for my enemies, the law.”
in the end, what the law says does not matter, it’s those who get to apply this law who really determine what the law functionally is.
selective enforcement is dictatorship.
this practice has become so widespread and blatant that i think most people see it now. it’s clear, unavoidable “one law for me and another for thee” where they can block highways at rush hour and be home in time for avocado toast but you so much as jaywalk and
but the one that’s more subtle is the pet hobgoblin/controlled opposition side of this where the regime fosters (and may well have on the payroll) the very “monsters” with which it seeks to frighten its base into further belief and activism.
when you simply cannot trust the bad guys to act as you would like to portray them for your own partisan political purpose, it sure would be easier to just make up your own villains.
and this gets more than a little /sus.
it becomes quite striking how the provocations are always the same, perfectly on pitch, and the talking points instant and lockstep.
but nothing about this “patriot front” group smells right. if they are so dangerous and fearsome, then why is it that everywhere they go, the authorities help them? they never get arrested for real or followed home. they never get doxxed or outed. in fact, one of a suspicious bent might note that there is a truly striking lack of interest in who any of these people are, where they come from, or how they all seem to be males of a certain age and physique that sure do look and dress a lot like some other groups of males of a certain age and physique.
the arrive in clown car like trucks with the discipline of a spartan phalanx, march oddly unmolested, and are hustled off with police acquiescence later. every once in a while, there is some “search” or purported “arrest” (like this one for “conspiracy to riot” in coeur d'alene ) but this is basically not a real charge and court dockets seem oddly free of prosecutions.
was this a sting or a photo op?
were there any charges? trials? has anyone gone to prison? been put on probation? issued a stern warming and told not to do it again? sent to bed without supper? it seems not.
and why, if this group is so terribly devious and dangerous and threatening are we not being informed of who they are? when have you ever seen people arrested like this and not unmasked?
precisely what sort of police procedure is this?
take these masks off and do a perpwalk and this whole movement would evaporate like a death valley raindrop.
i wonder why they don’t do it.
it certainly seems both unsound as law enforcement and unlikely to serve the public interest. they are thrilled to frogmarch walk a jan 6ther to their show trial in full public view but this terrible scourge of white supremacy somehow gets to stay masked on their way to who knows where to get charged with nothing?
seems curious.
this sort of masking for cameras is common practice for police and paramilitary all over the world to keep ID’s safe for undercover work and prevent reprisals. (go back and look at the cops in the greta video)
it does make you wonder.
the FBI could track every poor bastard that was just trying to go to the gym or to church or open a bar during covid, but somehow these patriot fronters get about as much federal attention as the list of attendees to epstein island.
the federales have lists of memelords, but somehow this prolific group of purported white supremacists are faceless ciphers?
just what is being protected here and from whom?
to be clear, i’m not sure any of this rises to the standard of proof, but it’s certainly plenty interesting to warrant some very pointy questions that the US media seems oddly disinclined to ask like:
who are these people?
who really leads them?
who funds them?
where did they get all those snazzy outfits in law enforcement blue?
not exactly grad-school level journalism, is it?
the claim is this group was founded by a teenager named thomas ryan rousseau. this level of funding and organization and discipline does not just appear. somewhere in here is significant backing and connection. i struggle to imagine there is not more to this story.
a third grade reporter for the elementary school gazette would know to ask this.
and yet, crickets.
and it’s not like they are not “newsworthy.”
they get miles of press inches.
everyone wants to spill ink about “how scary! how awful! you should be outraged! our enemies are evil! we need government to do something!” but when it comes time to dig a bit into who the bad guys are, everyone seems to lose interest.
such incuriousness seems doubly odd from a group so enamored of the “name and shame” tactics of post modern cancel culture.
i mean, look, maybe i’m wrong here and just have some sort of acute conspiracy poisoning from playing with too much crumpled up tinfoil, but:
at a certain point, silence becomes indictment.
is this a protest movement or a weekend troupe of hobgoblins for hire moonlighting as mercenaries for narrative shaping?
is patriot front just a nasty group cozy with nasty authorities or is it quite literally a false flag by a regime to desirous of stirring up the impression of the very danger they will cite when demanding extra-constitutional powers to save us therefrom? (and are they laughing up their sleeves about having called it a “front”?)
given how devoted the regime seems to be to the idea of narrative and controlling the narrative, is it really such a stretch to imagine that the nexus of US protest culture has essentially become the WWF with the script writers controlling both the heroes and the heels to make for compelling and captivating drama?
there are lots of reasons to do so:
it frames the seeming social discourse on the axis you want
it makes it appear that there is vigorous debate and dissent
it lures in dissidents and gets them to reveal themselves
but it keeps the conversation within certain bounds and off of other topics
this all encourages friends, discourages foes, and manufactures a media event driven zeitgeist that you can tailor tune to make yourselves look popular and your opponents look marginalized. it frightens your allies into supporting you and cows your foes by distorting their views into pastiche and taking them too far so that they must disavow them or be tarred with orthogonal ideas and intentions linked by media association.
old game. nasty. effective. or at least, it used to be.
increasingly, this is a propeller driven fighter plane in a jet fighter era. social media is gutting this like a trout. too much reality spills around the edges, too many candids and behind the scenes shots emerge. you just cannot stage manage well enough anymore. narrative cannot be kept unified and public trust is at all time lows and dropping.
this cycle is going to see a truly incredible unravelling of narrative and narrative shaper alike.
grab a chair. this will be one for the ages.
During the trucker protest in Ottawa there were photos - impossible to find now - of the lone, Nazi flag-carrying young male of a certain physique (*cough* cop *cough*) that was spotted entering the Chateau Laurier in downtown Ottawa, the swankiest hostelry in town. The flag looked brand new, still creased as if it had just been taken out of the box. That individual was used to smear the entire protest and its participants, and the media had a field day with it. During the convoy protests, that hotel was the headquarters for federal and provincial police who were busy stomping on old ladies and deflating bouncy castles.
That individual was never caught or identified to this day.
“Keep voting Democrat ... One day they will restrict your freedoms, restrict your history and restrict your safety. All in the name of professional victims that don’t understand the consequences of their ignorance.”
Ronald Reagan
That seems prescient....and pretty easy to predict given the Left has always believed the government is the safety net of first resort rather than individual responsibility.