Well well, another change of plans. This week’s column, full of incisive commentary on stuff, is delayed by events in Berkeley.
By the time this goes to press it may be over and we’ll know more. Or maybe not.
Curiously I could find nothing on CNN or FOX about this. The New York Times does have an article filed by their San Francisco bureau, which seems oddly restrained in the light of the videos one can find on conservative sites and the foreign press.
Briefly, two right-wing rallies were scheduled for the weekend, a “No to Marxism in America” rally in Berkeley and a Prayer Patriot “Freedom Rally” in San Francisco to support free speech.
The Berkeley rally was denied a permit by the city, but Mayor Jesse Arreguin, urged residents to gather on the streets to show their “rejection of bigotry and white supremacy.”
The San Francisco rally was cancelled after organizers received threats. Counter demonstrators walled off the park to make their point,
In Berkeley they got it anyway as black-clad masked Antifa supporters swarmed the streets and attacked people wearing Trump supporter gear, invariably described as “far-right,” or apparently anyone who just looked like one.
There are reports of journalist being assaulted as they took pictures and video, and of fights breaking out between different factions of demonstrators. There are videos of people getting beat downs by the mob.
The police ceded parts of the city to rioters. Berkeley police chief Andrew Greenwood defended the decision, calling use of force “problematic.”
Good information is also “problematic.” Some accounts have it the demonstration was peaceful at first until invaded by Antifa soldiers equipped with shields emblazoned with flowers and puppy dogs and the legend “No hate” after which things went to that place people go in handbaskets.
The term “white supremacists” gets thrown around a lot, though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence from video of Nazi or Klan symbolism being flaunted, unlike Charlottesville.
It is worth noting Prayer Patriot founder Joey Gibson, who is by the way Asian-American, has disavowed racism.
OK, what’s happening and why should it matter?
I mean after all this is the People’s Republic of Berkeley and San Francisco we’re talking about. These are the national mental asylums we’ve all agreed to call cities.
What it looks like to me is that gang culture has come to the middle class.
Antifa is made up of white middle-class youth steeped in far-left politics vaguely Marxist and left anarchist. They have an uneasy alliance with Black Lives Matter, which is not poor ghetto youth but middle-class college educated.
They have stated up front they despise free speech and democracy.
On the right you find those who are committed to free speech and democracy. They are the ones who cancel rallies because of the threat of violence.
But the right is compromised by the presence of a white identity movement which formed in response to identity politics on the left – and is anyone surprised at that? I’m only surprised it took this long once the political advantage of organizing around race and ethnicity became obvious.
At present most middle class white people are repelled by them and still committed to the ideal of a nation founded on a creed rather than ties of blood.
That could change.
A largely left-of-center media sweeps leftist violence under the rug and tars all of the right with the white identity brush. That could backfire badly. Among other reasons because there is an alternative media which can present video evidence of leftist violence, totally discrediting the legacy media.
Many police forces have invested in tacti-cool gear for anti-terrorist operations, but not in anti-riot training, since that involves the potential for serious head-busting action, which they’re terrified of.
If this kind of thing remains confined to the larger mostly coastal cities, the rest of us will watch with mingled alarm and disgust. The backlash will come on election day.
But if the far-left keeps pushing and it escalates, the backlash could be terrible. And it won’t be at the ballot box.
(Photo credit: The Daily Mail (UK) “An antifa member (right) wielding a sign reading ‘No Hate’ clashes with a father and son (left) wearing pro-Trump shirts who had turned out for a ‘No To Marxism In America’ rally.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4828672/Masked-antifa-swarm-Berkeley-rally-assaulting-several.html#ixzz4r48mWAES
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