Blog note: Okay, so now and then I’m going to blog on something aside from feminism and sexism. This is one of those occasions.
I was just reading this post over at DU decrying the police state antics of law enforcement at the RNC:
What I find really discouraging is watching the reaction to the demonstrations at the RNC. The right-wing reaction is “dirty, smelly, unemployed hippies who should have been shot.”
The left-wing reaction is “Since when is free speech a crime, and what about the possibility of police provocateurs?”
The “moderate” reaction is, “Well, I believe in free speech and everything, but those protesters shouldn’t have thrown stuff.” (This is even though the violence started after the main protest was over.)
Neither the right-wing nor the “moderate” group seems willing to even consider the possibility of police or FBI provocateurs, despite clear historical precedents.
She’s right, up to a certain point. Except that the right doesn’t need a reason to hate us, or demean us, or be treat us violently. Our very existence is reason enough.
I myself never quite understood why starting at least as far back as Nixon the right wing went after us liberals with huge police presence, apparently worried about us being violent. Leftwingers are notoriously NOT violent, too laid back (sometimes too stoned) to get that upset about anything even when provoked, and/or deeply committed to non-violence as a philosophy and value system anyway. Why on earth would they target us like that?
Well, one reason is to discredit us. As the author pointed out, agents provocateurs are pretty much de rigeur for any self-respecting goverment law enforcement agency and has been since at least Nixon. There are several sterling reasons:
- If the left can be provoked into being violent (or just made to look violent by agents provocateurs who dress like us or often in masks, insert themselves into our group and do the violent work for us), mainstream folks will cluck their tongues and ignore what we are all about. We will be discredited.
- Any violence during a protest is an automatic excuse for law enforcement to crack down, beat a few skulls, lob a few gas cannisters, spray a few faces with mace and, these days, haul out the rubber bullets at close range and employ those deadly tasers.
- Crackdowns on protesters will have a chilling effect on future protests. Who wants to get their heads bashed in? Or be stunned into incoherence?
And, as I said, they don’t seem to need real reasons. Nor do they exercise much restraint anymore, in these heady neofascist times. This year at the RNC convention, there was hardly any reason to, with the policy the city insisted the RNC buy which covered “up to $10 million in damages and unlimited legal costs for law enforcement officials accused of brutality, violating civil rights and other misconduct.” To authoritarian cops that’s like an invitation to party, isn’t it?
Okay, so what is the real reason? I’ve already told you: because we exist, and because they understand they are forever imperiled by our very existence.
Profoundly anti-democratic, the movers and shakers — the fascists, the uber-rich, the oligarchs and plutocrats, the upper 1% of the population — these and their sycophants are the folks who know that if their power is directly inversely proportional to the power the left gains and any and all gains present the potential for more gains.
This was vividly driven home to me by Naomi Wolf’s amazing and chilling must-read book, Shock Doctrine. It details quite well how fascists go after the left in each and every third world country where democracy has raised its head and the left has been ascendant or already powerful and threatening to be more so.
Because let’s be clear: the policies of the left are the policies of the people. They appeal to the people and the people want more of them. Those policies are directly threatening to the powerful, the oligarchs and the oligarchs therefore want us not just out of power but thoroughly defeated, dead. Yes, they want us dead — politically, figuratively and literally — and have gone to some pains to make that happen in other countries in the world. Now it appears to be our turn.
More on this important topic another day.
