Why Occupy Values Lead to Occupy Violence
Conner Stevens, Brandon Baxter, Joshua Stafford, Doug Wright
Most Occupy groups also abide by a mutually agreed upon “security culture” which pits the protesters against law enforcement, taking the position that the authorities are the enemy. A wide variety of (usually leftist) protest groups implement these policies when they engage in sensitive or illegal activities that may put group members in jeopardy. According to a standard security culture guide, in order to maintain a secure environment, one should not discuss the following:
- Your own or someone else’s involvement with an underground group
- Someone else’s desire to get involved with such a group
- Asking others if they are a member of an underground group
- Your own or someone else’s participation in any action that was illegal
- Someone else’s advocacy for such actions
- Your plans or someone else’s plans for a future action
The groups permit very limited exceptions including:
The second exception occurs after an activist has been arrested and brought to trial. If s/he is found guilty, this activist can freely speak of the actions for which s/he was convicted. However, s/he must never give information that would help the authorities determine who else participated in illegal activities.
They take this very seriously.
To give you an idea of just how deeply this ethos permeates the Occupy movement, a website dedicated to supporting the “Cleveland 5” (Cleveland 5 Justice) launched shortly after their arrests in June of 2011. It originally launched as cleveland5justice.org and included updates about the case and all five of the defendents. But in an unexpected twist, Anthony “Tony” Hayne went over to the dark side, leaving his supporters with no choice but to shun him:
Around 9:30 AM Anthony Hayne formally entered into a cooperating plea agreement with the government on the basis that he was found guilty on all three charges. … As the Cleveland 5 support group, as friends and loved ones of all of them, we are shocked by his decision. Particularly by his decision to enter into a plea that would, by its nature, require the exchange of information that would implicate and/or potentially make worse the case of his other co-defendants. As this is and will remain a political case, we can no longer express support and advocacy on the behalf of Anthony. As was explained to and agreed upon by the co-defendants, our support only exists as long as they stay strictly non-cooperative with the government. … We our deeply saddened by his decision and hope that, in the end, it does not hurt the other four, who continue to struggle for the justice they deserve.
Tony is dead to them. Five days later they renamed the group “Free the Cleveland 4,” launching a new website and redirecting the old one to the new address. These people mean business. What happens in Occupy is supposed to stay in Occupy and Tony broke the rules.
So, as we start 2013, we can all breathe a little easier knowing the Feds locked up a handful of would-be terrorists in Cleveland. The rest of the group scattered, along with the majority of the Occupy movement around the country. Of course, we just watched union mobs occupying the national stage as their mobs stormed Lansing, upending tents and throwing punches. Some on the left, including President Civility, refuse to condemn the violent “diversity of tactics,” apparently finding the behavior acceptable as long as it accomplished what they considered to be the greater good.
Postmodern thoughts and attitudes do not belong solely to the Occupy movement; they run rampant on the Left. With continued high rates of unemployment and inflation, more union clashes on the horizon, and mass economic mismanagement by government officials, the potential for violence from leftist groups will continue to threaten our peace and the rule of law. When everyone does what is right in his own eyes and loyalty to comrades is greater than loyalty to God and country, our American tradition of self-government becomes divorced from morality. That trajectory inevitably leads to a state of lawless mob rule.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Taken to its logical conclusion, there is nothing objectively wrong with killing twenty five-year-old children and the adults who tried to protect them. This is post-Christian America. Where are Zeke and Random Engineer and their arguments that the problem are those damn Christians trying to impose their personal ideas of morality?
I love sticking subjective morality in Atheist’s faces.
Van, many of us atheists (note: small “a”) are libertarians. Unlike Democrats, we actually regard the Constitution of the United States as sacred and we recognize its wisdom in its entirety — especially the 1st, 2nd and 10th Amendments, which progs view as obstacles to their dream of all-encompassing government.
And yes, we realize that most if not all of the Founding Fathers were believers of one sort or another. One does not need to believe in gods to recognize and value the insight of those who do.
Here here SpawnOfNyarlathotep! Count me as an atheist too that stands with you for liberty. Very well said.
As an atheist please tell me what makes the US Constitution any better than any other Constitutional state, monarchy or dictatorship? Please explain without reference to Judeo-Christian values or natural law. (That concept doesn’t exist without the existance of a supreme being.)
Might be wisest to stand down, Tdiinva. If someone’s on my side, I’m not going to quibble about whether he’s on it for what I’d consider the right reasons.
The writers of the Constitution recognized that human beings are Weak and prone to Factionalism and Pettiness.
So they divided up the powers of government into the Three Branches, and between the State and the Federal governments.
Madison in particular saw the need to ensure that the the Factions were many and small to make certain that no one Faction would dominate any other others, and if any Faction gained ascendancy, it would not have it long enough to do real damage.
This recognition that people are weak and prone to trying to get one over on each other is also the hallmark of Conservatism. It is only when we are all also Free, taking up and exercising our Free Will that we are able to balance out each other’s conflicting desires.
I am endowed by my membership in the species homo sapien with the fundamental rights. A “Creator” can be a process as well as a deity.
“please tell me what makes the US Constitution any better than any other Constitutional state, monarchy or dictatorship?”
Seriously?
Try this for starters:
No other system starts with the natural assumption that THE PEOPLE ARE THEIR OWN MASTER and that any (legitimate) Government has inarguable Iron Clad no-go zones concerning their power to control the people.
No other “monarchy or dictatorship” begins with that assumption. They begin with their OWN Assumptive Right To Rule, and may “provide” some “generous allowances” to you, the peon, for which you should be thankful as you bow to their Absolute Supremacy over your life.
Just look at the Second Amendment.
The Police and military do not “own” guns. We do.
They do not “allow us” to be armed, we allow THEM to be armed. We’ve merely hired out the Daily Security Service to our underlings as we pursue other things at the moment. They work for us, not the other way around. ALL the guns are ours. NONE of the guns are theirs. That’s “how” we’re free, and how we will STAY free. The guns belong to us, not them. When they try to claim otherwise, sorry pal, its time to fight.
This is an utterly UNFATHOMABLE concept in any other form of Governance, and its the main reason why NO ONE OUTSIDE THE USA (and fewer and fewer within) understands at all what the Second Amendment is, or why it exists. They just cant imagine any such relationship, where the Rights of a Citizen are superior to the Powers Beheld by The Regime.
This USED to be common sense, back in the day before every illiterate slacker was handed a College Degree for merely showing up, stoned…
Asking really REALLY embarassing questions any 6th Grader of my fathers generation knew the answer to in their souls.
Root:
I don’t disagree with anything you say but I ask whose authority does it rest. Unless you bring in an outside authority it’s just your opinion. The whole the point of the exercise is to demonstrate that the postmodern worldview makes anything a matter of taste. An atheist cannot support their opinion as anything but taste.
@tdiinva
But since you choose which outside authority you’re going to cite a theist can’t “support their opinion as anything but taste” either. Jews claim to be the chosen people of God, Muslims claim that God wants the Jews destroyed. Both sides cite the exact same authority to support exactly opposite conclusions while the Hundus wonder what the hell they’re arguing about.
ALL of us, theists and athiests alike, ultimately choose our own morality and ethics. There’s no reason at all an athiest can’t revere the US Constitution, and I speak from personal experience.
That’s why the United States Constitution is better than all the rest.
The Balance of Powers between the 3 Branches of government and between the Federal & State governments recognizes this one simple fact:
People are self-serving and form factions. If the power of government is not centralized in any one branch or at any one level, it is more difficult for any one faction to gain too much advantage for too long over all the others.
Mind you, if the various holders of that power cede it over to one of the other Branches or Levels to gain temporary advantage …
Still, we have a good model to return to. And the worst changes to the Constitution can be reversed, through good legislation and through Amendments (like Prohibition was).
Nobody has been able to explain why the Constitution is any better than other forms of government. It’s just an opinion. I guess I will go with the divine right of kings.
tdiinva, I think you’re being deliberately obtuse in an attempt to prove an invalid point. Even so, I’ll humor you and give you a concise answer:
When used as the foundation of government the US Constitution produces more prosperity and more equity for more people than any other form of government yet devised, and it does so with less coercion and less interference in people’s lives.
Now if you want to continue to belabor your point (such as it is) you can certainly argue that finding increased equity and prosperity “good” is simply a matter of opinion unless your position is backed up by a supposed omnipotent god. If you believe that you are, quite simply, completely wrong. I’m an athiest and I recognize the inherent, self-evident good in things like limited government and equality under the law.
I have plenty of philosophical reasons for believing those things independent of a belief in god, but if you insist on an answer I can ultimately cite simple self-interest: only under the US Constitution do I have a chance to compete on a level playing field and be judged on my own merits.
tdiinva:
The attitudes you express in your petulant comments is an excellent illustration of the post-modern malaise Ms. Bolyard is talking about.
It wouldn’t really matter if someone gave you a succinct argument as to why the Constitution is better than all, or most, other governing concepts. You don’t really care. So why should anyone bother with you?
tdviinva
“Nobody has been able to explain why the Constitution is any better than other forms of government. It’s just an opinion”
An “opinion” can very well be, that water is not “wet”…and no amount of contrary ‘counter opinion” can dissuade typical Leftist/Liberal/OWS/Democrat/Media Propagandists when they engage this sort of Disingenuous Parlor Game that is the sum of their Political Ideology….
No proof will ever be accepted by them, because they “say” no proof can ever be “proven”…thus their communist/totalitarian “opinions” are at least equal, and therfore just as valid, as the Founding Fathers vision for governance. This is their game, as you well illustrate.
But for HONEST People, the simple phrase “we hold these truths to be SELF EVIDENT..” is the key.
Self.
Evident.
You either “get it” or you dont.
Leftists can argue all they want that nothing is really “self evident”… but what they CANNOT be allowed to do, is say this nation WASN’T founded on such a basic principals of clear and incontrovertible Right and Wrong.
It is therefore “self evident” to *most* Honest People, that Leftist/Liberal/OWS/Democrat/Media Propagandists are, by simple observation of their words and deeds, self-contradictory liars…
Liars, who’s political positions should be dismissed with open contempt for the intentionally false, unserious, thinly veiled and duplicitous positions that they are.
Our Constitution is the only founding document for any government that is based on the principle that the powers of government are “derived from the governed.” In essence, government has no authority to do anything other than that which the people can do themselves and that government was created to permit the more effective application of individual rights as exercised by the collective. This is what sets it apart from a democracy. In a democracy, a sufficient number of like-minded people can lord over the minority. In our Republic, if one person can’t compel some type of performance (silence, when an opinion contrary to popular thougt is held; forced conversion to or renunciation of a particular religion; surrender of privacy rights except with a showing of cause/apparent threat to the safety and security of the community, its property, and the rights of the individuals in the community; and so on) from another, then no group of people, even if in a majority, can compel the same perfomance from even a single individual. At least, that’s the concept. As General Patton said, “No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy.” However, this is not an excuse for letting government (and its supporters) further erode the principle.
BTW, I’ve seen remarks about the “balance of power” between the three branches of government. There are actually four branches of government, and one of them gets two whacks at every question of rights and authority. And there used to be five. Referring to the latter, when Senators were appointed by the states, they represented the states as geo-political entities and formed a bulwark against both encroachment upon state sovereignty and against the delusions of the masses that may be evinced in the House. This was destroyed (along with the republican form of government) by the 17th Amendment. Referring to the former, that branch of government is held by the citizns, who have their input when they vote, and have control over the output of government when they sit on juries (jury nullification, such as was done with the runaway slave laws in the northern states before the Civil War). Because we as citizens have control over both the input (who is elected) and the output (which laws can be enforced), we are arguably the most powerful branch of government, should we only decide to act wisely when we vote and boldly when we sit on juries. (Owning as many guns as possible wouldn’t hurt either. Another reason that our Constitution is different – the recognition that government cannot be trusted with a monopoly on force.)
You have people who just can’t get their minds around the idea that laws of nature and human morality must be set by a force/designer/creator not bound by them. I can respect them. They give an honest answer as to what they think and that’s all you can ask.
The problem with atheism though is when it becomes a world-view i.e. this is what we believe hence you are wrong hence they try to fight polices that contradict their belief system and impose policies that support it.
Everybody has to have a world-view. Problems arise when the world-view is wrong. Capital A Atheism — the belief that undesigned and, ultimately, measurable actions account for all reality is as wrong as you can get.
I wish the small a atheists would just start calling themselves skeptics. There is nothing stupid or irrational or dishonorable about skepticism.
“The problem with atheism though is when it becomes a world-view i.e. this is what we believe hence you are wrong hence they try to fight polices that contradict their belief system and impose policies that support it.”
Yet you exempt any theistic belief system from exactly the same criticism?
The wildest, craziest, polytheistic, tree worshiping, pagan religion is more rational and logically consistent than atheism.
Logic-wise, we know that it is impossible to separate the radical left from radical violence. Billy boy Ayers,wifey Dohrn, Van Jones and all of the Radical-in-Chief’s surrogates have proven the above thesis.They are its poster children.
Even when it comes to the kiddies all bets are off. If it means sacrificing the kiddies, so be it. In fact, their radical revolution requires the most amount of blood possible to flow, and this is the way it has to be – if ones goal is to deconstruct America.
Therefore, the danger has never been more out-sized than now, having a Radical-in-Chief at the helm, as he cheers their efforts on – albeit in a “non-transparent” way – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/10/07/when-authentic-revolutionaries-hold-the-reins-of-american-power-centers-via-the-most-radical-regime-in-u-s-history-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
There is no doubt that the Thug-in-Chief tasked his Racialist AG to deal with this round up ever so “judiciously”! In a pig’s eye.
spamming the first post for show should lead to disabled links and banning
Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who insult you and persecute you.
A man’s wisdom gives him patience. It is to his glory to overlook an offense.
I’ll over look the offence, but I still keep the re-loading press crankin’
You did a lot of work on that piece and referenced it well. I’m glad that being a transparent Occupy in Cleveland gave you insight into our documents and the foibles of a spontaneous gathering of folks on Public Square who mostly never knew nor worked with each other before.
There is plenty you got wrong, plenty in fact you got right about how the structure and integrity of the movement seemed to reflect the shabby broken donated tents after a long winter outside. But the struggle for the integrity and coherence of what we were attempting is all up front. The transparency for the most part overcame the amateur and puerile diversions into dark places with FBI informants and provocateurs.
I’m not going to detail where you’re piece got facts wrong or take issue with your POV of Law and Order and Absolute Truth as much as work backwards to shed maybe a little more light to some lesser points:
The Scattering. Yes we scattered. But we were collapsing long before the arrests. Looking back a natural cycle was running its course throughout the country and now it was finally dissolving the cohesion of our group. It’s usually on the backslide of a movement that law enforcement step up infiltration operations and stings (entrapments?) to take full advantage of waning solidarity and confusion.
Occupy Cleveland distanced itself from the actions of the 5 individuals as to their intents and participation in any plot and rightfully so since those actions were in direct conflict with explicit understandings about the cornerstone of non-violence of OC and the fact we were gearing up and in the middle of a family friendly festival on Public Square meant to put forward a better interface with the greater Cleveland community and rejuvenate our numbers. But Occupy Cleveland never denied these were participants in the later stages of what was going on downtown. Your issue is with a perception of omission by MSM as a form of oppression of the right wing by not lambasting Occupy Wall Street and fully acting as an arm of a government campaign to torpedo the left as terrorist. This is a propaganda war that is fought in arenas totally beyond our purposes on Public Square. You should try to resolve those distinctions.
We were always a non-violent movement and that never changed. You failed to include the last bullet point of the Chicago Rules proposal you referenced- the friendly amendment that allowed it to pass GA:
“Friendly amendment: we understand that it does not override any principles on which we had previously achieved consensus. The proposer specified that this means that Occupy Cleveland is still a strictly non-violent movement.”
I was at that GA – in fact facilitating it – and would not support Diversity of Tactics without the huge caveat. In fact you may have not read the affidavit of the charges by the U.S. Attorney but it stated quite clearly that the main motive for the five individuals was a general dissatisfaction in Occupy Cleveland’s unwillingness to act with tactics on the order of Oakland or SF. This also was brought up during sentencing hearings, reported by journalists locally and nationally. And as you saw in the documents online there was always brutal and open debate with proponents of black bloc and other techniques. I was there. I saw GA’s go south and shut down for some dastardly attempts to disrupt passage of the Good Neighbor Policy. The point is is that the choice was made for non-violence and cooperative techniques with the City. The forces for transparency and non-violent tactics won the day. The illusion was that Occupy Cleveland harbored violent actors bent on destroying public structures AND their own movement. In fact it was closer to the reality that the government housed, fed and supported the actors offsite and employed a form of security culture to redirect against Occupy. Ironic that the very postmodern brush you painted OC with is quite applicable to counter insurgent methods.
Those are just a few items that needed to be addressed. But one thing you should’ve at least mentioned – and from my POV has been the pivot of the timeline of our Occupy – was the overturning of the curfew law on Public Square and the arrests of activists standing their ground to defend the 1st Amendment right to assemble in public places. This happened over 10 days ago in the Ohio Court of Appeals, Eighth District. The opinion was quite supportive of Occupy Cleveland and its purposes as a free speech movement. The reason I see it as a pivot much more significant than the arrests in not just a focus on the positive. The arrests of 11 activists on October 21, 2011 was D-Day for OC. We refused to leave the Tom Johnson Quadrant where a statue of a famous Mayor of Cleveland and Free Speech advocate after the curfew passed. That was not only the line drawn with the City of Cleveland about being on the right side of history and our basics rights as outlined in our Constitution, but also was the end of the comity within our movement in a very ironic twist. That was also the night the FBI informant recruited the ringleader who six months later would deliver his band of malcontents to the bridge operation. Read both the affidavit of the U.S. attorney on the bridge plotters and then read the Opinion of the three judge panel of the court of appeals. It makes a fascinating juxtaposition. Almost dare I say, biblical.
Or maybe you prefer Russian novels.
The point is that it was that night that two possibilities emerged about the potential and the destiny of a movement like ours in Cleveland. You don’t have to be right or left or even agree on its purposes to comprehend the importance for all Americans and other movements right or left. Our decision to break camp after the arrests that night in Tom Johnson Quadrant and to abide with the permit process of the City – which incidentally would only allow a car port open structure with no heat and no sleeping arrangements – was what ironically drove our younger male members to inconsolable frustration into the arms of a devious and criminal informant and organizer of the bridge plot. The lack of true comity that developed among us that was the direct result on a form of oppression of constitutional rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment by the City was what hobbled us the rest of that winter/spring. The fact that it took over a year of long overdue recognition of the courts to our true intents as a movement and after suffering through a 23 agency Terrorism Task Force operation lasting six months to attempt to bait our 20 year olds and keep us off balance constantly is a bitter but sweet testament to how sometimes events conspire then confirm the true nature of things. Postmodern or not.
I enjoyed reading your piece and though I disagree with a lot of its conclusions you brought out some salient issues that many of us wrestle with inside Occupy.
Hank Miller of the Occupy Cleveland movement.
OWS is an ugly movement that seeks to physically intimidate and bully innocent people in the name of their politics. The violence from OWS was not surprising but what was surprising was OWS acceptance of people who raped their own members.
We all understand you want to blow things up, smash windows, start fires, write graffiti, ban private property, and line the rest of us up against the wall in your quest for the grand workers uprising and march toward socialism but when your violence was turned inward against the weakest and most vulnerable of your own group and your leaders defended those actions, it surprised many of us.
You focus on tearing everything down not building it up. Oh sure you want to build a new society but you can’t even deal with rapeists and 7th century diseases. We have a remarkable political system, instead of pushing for revolution, death, and destruction try participating. Run some candidates for public office.
Also, stop hiding your intentions behind a mask. We already know what you are about so just be honest about your intentions and stop with the double speak.
“Oh sure you want to build a new society but you can’t even deal with rapeists and 7th century diseases.” That’s the crux of the matter. Occupy, like very other Utopianist movement, simultaneously depends on their members behaving ideally, and uses the fact that they do not. In traditional Marxist fashion, they assume that all human evils will miraculously pass away when everybody accepts their point of view, never realizing that what they expect is physically impossible. They decry laws and the police, never admitting why those thing exist and thus opening themselves up to crime, violence, and every matter of social ill.
The belief that all the world’s troubles will be solved when everyone agrees with you provides the motive and the self-righteous justification for leftist genocide of “enemies,” i.e., those who disagree, especially when the reason they will never agree is believed to be because of who they are, e.g., Jews, men, whites, the rich, etc., so must be eliminated. It’s inherent in the left wing faith: failure must always be blamed on others not agreeing with you. The framers of the US Constitution recognized that such “unity” is possible only in the graveyard. The idea that such unity can be achieved in the here and now among the living is the definition of totalitarianism, and the definition of liberty is the acceptance of the inevitability of myriad opposing viewpoints on fundamental political issues. A constitution that sets the procedural rules for people to live together in such a society, including a government of strictly limited powers that allows maximum space for individuals to pursue happiness (i.e., order their lives according to their own values) without having the utopian projects of deluded fellow citizens shoved down their throats, is the definition of ordered liberty. The childishly named “occupy” (huh?) movement doesn’t get that because they were mis-educated in universities post-1970.
Hank, it sounds like you had advance knowledge of the bombing plot:
“Occupy Cleveland distanced itself from the actions of the 5 individuals as to their intents and participation in any plot and rightfully so since those actions were in direct conflict with explicit understandings about the cornerstone of non-violence of OC and the fact we were gearing up and in the middle of a family friendly festival on Public Square meant to put forward a better interface with the greater Cleveland community and rejuvenate our numbers.”
So you distanced” yourselves because you were planning to participate in a festival? You weren’t troubled by the idea that people might die?
You can yammer on all day about general council rules, but your rules and rituals don’t seem to clarify anything for you. Actions speak louder than finger-snapping.
Mr. Miller, you wrote “…the overturning of the curfew law on Public Square and the arrests of activists standing their ground to defend the 1st Amendment right to assemble in public places. This happened over 10 days ago in the Ohio Court of Appeals, Eighth District. The opinion was quite supportive of Occupy Cleveland and its purposes as a free speech movement.”
So let me see if I understand the meaning of this ruling: All I have to do is to claim that I’m exercising my right to free speech and free assembly in public places, and this then gives me the right to squat in a public park and make it unsanitary and unusable for others.
Gosh when the City of New York went in to clean up Zuccotti park, they had to go in with full bio-hazmat suits. The sanitation workers (!) stated that in all their years of working, they had never experienced anything so foul.
Is this what you’re fighting for? Is sanitary living only a matter of degree? Is removing a play area for children just another casualty of the evil bankers?
I am frankly dismayed with the Occupy movement. In many ways, you had an opportunity to forge a strong connection with those on the right, but you chose not to. I, as a conservative right winger, am not happy about TARP. I think it would have been better to allow these lying thieves to lose their money instead of support them with a nearly bottomless pit of public money. I disagreed with TARP when Bush did it, and I disagreed with it when Obama continued it. Furthermore, I have yet to read of any convictions for the misrepresentation of the quality of all those mortgages.
Instead we have a very unsociable group of people who are looking for a free lunch instead of actually doing something effective, such as lobbying congress or forging political alliances.
The OWS movement started on day one as something I might have found a lot of common ground with; but then it rapidly descended in to the depths of relativist hatred and discontent that I refuse to entertain. You have only yourselves to blame for this ridiculous excess.
Clean up, put on a suit, and start writing something coherent that the rest of us can get behind. You might be surprised at the results.
OWS was, is and has always been constructed from angry little dweebs whose only grasp on life is “I want”. Their collective answer to this has thus been, “So give me.”
I suppose it was bound to happen when a bunch of kids who are the trophy generation (you know, just show up and you get a trophy)have suddenly found out that just by existing, they didn’t get the Ferrari in the driveway, the hot girlfriend and the house on the coast; That you have to have money to get those things, except maybe the hot girlfriend, and to get that money you have to be politically, socially and financially adept and adroit. These are skills that are no longer taught in the socialist state of education these days. “Everyone’s a beautiful flower” works great for kids of the watching-Blarney-the-purple-dinosaur age but it does nothing for learning how to compete for a job, how to capitalize on one’s own skills or even to be content with what one has already.
It’s no wonder, then that they are angry. Sadly, they also cannot identify the real source of their anger, which is, of course, themselves. Parents, teachers and other enablers are to blame as well. All of those photos seem to look to me like kids who would have been normal producers in society (mental derangement notwithstanding), but who got shoved off the rails of being able to participate in society by utopian dreams unfulfilled. And that’s the real crime. Our “educators” do it to this day, thinking that teaching a kid how to compete, how to win and how to excel is somehow wrong.
I have also noted, that while substitute teaching in high-schools that teachers, themselves, seem to have never grown up but that’s a discussion for another time.
“We were always a non-violent movement and that never changed.”
Except the whole “occupy” tactic was incitement. What was the purpose to squatting on other peoples’ property except to invite the appropriate response?
Too bad about the AnarchyHippyOcyPanhandlers and their stinking bowel movement. No amount of conversation from them nor about them has any meaning whatsoever. Lots of wasted space and hot air.
This has always been a failed and pointless amorphous tiny mass of drek. I am more surprised that there is even mention of them anymore. Or, in other words….
Nothing here, folks. Get over it. Get on with things. Move along…..Next? Next case. Who’s next, please?
Henry,
Thank your for your thoughtful response. I’d like to push back on some of your assertions.
You said, “Occupy Cleveland distanced itself from the actions of the 5 individuals as to their intents and participation in any plot and rightfully so since those actions were in direct conflict with explicit understandings about the cornerstone of non-violence of OC and the fact we were gearing up and in the middle of a family friendly festival on Public Square meant to put forward a better interface with the greater Cleveland community and rejuvenate our numbers.”
You don’t mention that Brandon Baxter, one of the 5, was actively involved in planning the “family friendly festival.” From the FBI affidavit:
“Baxter then discussed the fact that he believes the city of Cleveland is going to give him a difficult time about acquiring a permit for an upcoming festival. He wants to march on city hall. Baxter said, “I’m going to straight up tell the city we are not playing by your f–king rules.” He continued by saying he knew the city was trying to shut them down and that, “if you shut it down we will blow it wide open.” Baxter was also upset because he is presenting the festival as a family friendly event and the city will not support them. When asked about comments Baxter previously had made about how the last few days of the festival were going to get crazy, Baxter replied, “Yea, but they don’t know that.”
It’s instructive that you say “Occupy Cleveland distanced itself from the actions of the 5 individuals as to their intents and participation in any plot” but refer to them as “our 20 year olds” and “our younger male members.” . Members/former members of OC continue to support 4 of the 5, raising money for them, showing up for them in court, protesting on their behalf, and speaking to the media in support of them. Again, I contend that for some (many?) in the group their hatred or suspicion of government authorities overrides their belief in non-violence (whatever that means, right?).
You failed to explain what OC did to address the violent members of your group even before this bomb plot was exposed. While the majority may have embraced non-violence, what was the policy on members who espoused, promoted, proposed, or committed violence?
Moreover, why was OC (and OWS) committed to non-violence? Why is violence wrong? Who are you to judge? Is it because there is some moral standard that makes it wrong or because the movement believes it’s a better strategy to accomplish its goals?
The bottom line is that without an absolute standard of right and wrong, decisions are made by consensus. Dissenters are free to disagree and go their own way and find their own path. In the case of OWS or other leftist groups that reject absolute truth, as long as the dissenter doesn’t violate the goals of their group (whether it’s saving the planet or sticking it to the 1%), there’s no standard within this philosophy by which to judge his actions, especially if he is working for their cause (the enemy of my enemy is my friend).
You’ll have to forgive me for that omission of not mentioning Brandon’s role in the later stage of our occupation downtown. But it’s beside the point of mentioning who were and weren’t taking on roles at specific points of time. ALL of them took on profiles within our movement in constructive ways and in some cases divisive ways if you would dive into all the documents out there again. Read the Rolling Stone article. Read the Cleveland Magazine article. Peruse through the forum threads. Watch hours of Ustream GA angst and controversy. Nothing is hidden. And Occupy Cleveland never denied their activities. These were young men barely out of their teens save for a con artist and drifter, which by the way were confronted at GA’s on multiple occasions. Because of our structure as you have poked at the weaknesses of, we were easy pickin’s for an operation.
The one other example you mention of us “tolerating a violent ex-con” in our camp you didn’t do enough due diligence to discover that the experience of confronting that individual with his violation of our policy nearly destroyed the GA itself. People left in exasperation – we never got them back. It took us weeks out in the cold to rebuild it from scratch. The person eventually lost interest in afflicting us with his threats and disruptions and left. The slings and arrows of being in a Public Square – all comers are allowed in that space. And I had numerous contact with ex-cons in our movement – some with serious felonies. It was a feature of Occupy to welcome all regardless of person history as long as they understood the context of what we were trying to achieve. Again sounds almost biblical this Christmas season to remind ourselves of one baseline tenet in our Judeo-Christian traditions: Christ never excluded very serious “sinners”. Hows that for Pre-Modernism?
Family Friendly Festival. Brandon was involved in that planning. And I worked alongside him. To truly understand the nature of things human you must be willing to understand that people have both good and bad, light and dark contending inside of themselves. Some have to compartmentalize, some like Brandon suffered in their young lives. There is no reason to believe that Brandon believed he was doing right by Occupy Cleveland in one role, then leaving site and living out a very different role under the tutelage of a much older criminal and ex-con being employed by the Federal Government and who never showed his face but to the 5 – as shadowy a figure could be. Brandon has faced our Justice system, he has admitted his culpability and his violations to the community, the Judge as sentenced him and the others ( save for Joshua “Skelly” Stafford who has NOT pleaded guilty and is still up for trial – you got that wrong too) and we all have forgiven him for exposing the movement to such dark plotting and being outside our boundaries of non-violent intentions. But you’re wasting your time trying to flog the movement for somehow denying the 5 were part of the goings on at OC. Anthony Hayne himself was signatory on the lease of our Warehouse! He was Captain of that Pirate Ship for a short period before incarceration. What do you want from what is already out there? What’s your point? That movements somehow are exempt from the same forces afflicting a very unhealthy society? Whether we agree or not on the cause of such disease?
Your questions about explicit policies on non-violence are laid out in our documents and I already discussed our explicit statements concerning that. What you really are driving at, and I’m not meaning to put words or assumptions on you, is the enforcement part. There is a lot of space online dedicated to the failure of OWS in most every manifestation in enforcing its policies. Epic FAIL. And I do understand that that issue is directly connected to having a non-violent policy to begin with. That’s the issue I was alluding to about how we inside the movement grapple with such failure. The consensus process that was adopted across the board in every Occupy had a very serious flaw. Like I mentioned in an above paragraph, we nearly lost our GA to one such occasion of enforcement. Go back online, go on Ustream ( “Occupytogether” – user, look for OccupyCleveland Cam 1 channel ) and look for an early November ’11 GA and watch the train wreck, if you’re into that sort of thing. We tried. And this went on for days of abscess agony. Apart from just that incident there were other confrontations – some successful apart from GA and others very disappointing in the discovery of just how vulnerable it was to manipulation. I was central to those too and could not convince the group to “enforce” or build on the experience of consequences of not enforcing policy. Failure is also a feature of movement work, left or right. And you are right in pointing it out in our case.
There are other dangers also that you didn’t directly hit on but maybe alluded to. I have serious issues not so much moral relativism as you describe it but the manipulation of our language that covertly intends to disrupt agreed upon terms. This is a very slippery and snaky thing. The reinvention of the word “violence” is a disturbing development and one that really challenged our discussions. And it is no where resolved. Did this new device give enough cover for people so inclined to ignore consensus and agreements with each other. Absolutely. But it was not the intents of our process to allow for it. It just snuck up on us mostly unaware that even in Occupy, especially in Occupy, some people have agendas outside of our intentions. That included SOME anarchists – a very small subset of young immature malcontents – and it included the Federal Bureau of Investigation of Northeast Ohio and the Terrorism Task Force. Funny how the two dovetail very often well with each other in terms of disrupting positive social change.
Somehow we will learn from all of this. Somehow going forward we will be chastened into building the structures we need to enforce our own rhetoric and policy. On a last bit of correction – and this really should be mentioned – there was no rape at Occupy Cleveland. If you follow up on the initial reports, 10 days later the charges were investigated by the police and withdrawn for lack of any evidence or willingness on the part of the family to make charges. Most likely it was an early operation to besmirch the OWS with a planted story. After what was revealed six months later to the extensive campaign by the federal and local authorities, it all fits nicely, doesn’t it? There were rapes at other Occupys and there is plenty of space devoted to that issue, and the woeful denial inside the movement toward the safety of women, but here in Cleveland, that one story was not fact OR police based.
Happy Holidays.
You cut these Five guys a lot of slack and place the blame for their actions everywhere but with themselves and the ideology of OWS.
You might blame society but you are overlooking the society they belong to and shaped their ethos and that society is OWS.
The violence and calls for violence are all too common with OWS and leftist groups in general, these Five guys are representative of the movement.
“The violence and calls for violence are all too common with OWS and leftist groups in general”
Yeah, but only because Violence, and calls for Violence are never MET with any.
Its all “cool and fun” because they live in a safe and pampering Western Democracy.
Dont forget, for every 20-something Punk Anarchist with a rock in his hand, there are 10-20 mean old men, with guns.
Bring it bitches, BRING IT!
… uses one of the more offensive phrases in the English Language:
“You’ll have to forgive me for that omission”
No one has to forgive anyone for anything. We can ask Forgiveness of the people around us, and it often is better for the people around us to give that Forgiveness (if only for their own sake – grudges are toxic), but no one can or should presume they’ll get that Forgiveness.
I would like to think you did not make that statement in the spirit of the German poet Heinrich Heine, when he said: “Of course God will forgive me; that’s His job.”
Christ never excluded very serious “sinners” (you can remove the scare-quotes). No, but he did expect them to stop sinning!
Succinctly put. I’m sick and tired of leftist idiots trying to claim Jesus when it’s convenient to them. Jesus was about repentance and selflessness. OWS is about rapaciousness. OWS is like the mob that was ready to stone the women for adultery, but apparently not the man. So, Jesus challenged the person who had not sinned to throw the first stone. That’s what OWS is. You are like pirates who deceive themselves about their nobility because they construct their charter by consensus, but really your just bullies who seek to plunder against the law.
Somehow we will learn from all of this. Somehow going forward we will be chastened into building the structures we need to enforce our own rhetoric and policy.
Interesting thought. Do you not realize that the very laws, police, FBI, etc that you decry are how society does that enforcing? If you wish to “enforce our own rhetoric and policy” than you will simply end up re-inventing the structures that any society uses to do so.
What you do not seem to realize, Mr. Miller, is the contradiction of your own statements. You wish for a utopian society that is ruled by consensus and good will, yet you don’t know how to handle those people who plainly will not come to consensus and have no good will. You accept anarchists and unrepentant ex-cons, and have no plan for handling the results when they resort to their favorite techniques; indeed, Occupy cannot even clearly call upon them to forgo those techniques. Utopianism never has and never will work; it always runs up against those who simply do not wish to be good, and its response to them is always to become dictatorial and tyrannical.
/\ This /\
“ALL of them took on profiles within our movement ”
Because they ARE your “movement”. You are THUGS.
Said it once; saying it again:
OcyPanhandlers and Their Stinking Bowel movement was and is a pointless, meaningless, and unsanitary bowel movement of the greatest insignificance and unimportance in and on the planet.
It has died. There remains only the formality of some kind of burial. Get on with that…..
Henry said, ” Did this new device give enough cover for people so inclined to ignore consensus and agreements with each other. Absolutely. But it was not the intents of our process to allow for it. It just snuck up on us mostly unaware that even in Occupy, especially in Occupy, some people have agendas outside of our intentions. That included SOME anarchists – a very small subset of young immature malcontents – and it included the Federal Bureau of Investigation of Northeast Ohio and the Terrorism Task Force. Funny how the two dovetail very often well with each other in terms of disrupting positive social change.
I’m glad to see this level of introspection and an admission that the consensus process didn’t work out the way you (meaning OWS in general) hoped it would. However, it’s disturbing that you continue to lay much of the blame at the feet of the FBI or other forces outside your control. As a movement, I would argue that the individuals have no one to blame but themselves. Plenty of 20-year-olds have tough lives and have lived through horrendous, abusive events and manage to navigate their teens and 20′s without turning to crime or anarchy. They manage to rise above the temptations of people waving the easy money of drug dealing in front of them or dozens of other criminal or other personally harmful choices.
Previous generations had it much harder than this generation does (think the Great Depression and the Civil War) and entire cultures in this country have suffered horrific abuse and discrimination and yet millions of individuals lived honorable lives in spite of the abuse and trials.
And just to tell you where I’m coming from on this, my husband grew up on welfare and lived in the projects, attending a half dozen elementary schools growing up. He has a close family member in prison, so we are not unacquainted with that side of life. He’s had family members go both ways.
“Somehow we will learn from all of this. Somehow going forward we will be chastened into building the structures we need to enforce our own rhetoric and policy”
Structurally, I don’t see how that changes when there is no fixed moral authority. What makes non-violence morally superior or preferable to violence? What makes excessive wealth and/or greed “wrong”? Why is a 1%’er like Michael Moore morally superior to Donald Trump? Who has the moral authority to decide those things? Ultimately, you’re back to the consensus and “everyone doing what is right in his own eyes.”
” Again sounds almost biblical this Christmas season to remind ourselves of one baseline tenet in our Judeo-Christian traditions: Christ never excluded very serious “sinners”. Hows that for Pre-Modernism?
He never “excluded” sinners who were genuinely, sincerely seeking him (see Zacchaeus the tax collector), but he certainly had harsh words for the the posers, calling out their sin and hypocrisy, and many didn’t hang around long after he confronted them. Jesus had an especially harsh sermon for the Pharisees, calling them serpents and a brood of vipers:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” (Matthew 23:15 ESV).
In another exchange, he said to them,
“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:42-44 ESV). Jesus then claimed to be God and they picked up stones to stone him.
There is a time and a place for telling people they are wrong and sometimes the kindest thing you can do for them is to stop their bad behavior, whether that means getting them mental health services or involving law enforcement. To me that seems like a major moral failure in OWS philosophy and it doesn’t seem like there is much motivation to change that.
On the Jesus score, we distinguished the behavior from the person too. And “condemned” the behavior.
We had rules btw. No alcohol, no drugs on our sites along with being under such influence. No threats or violent approaches allowed. Even spreading rumors and disinformation was not acceptable. Remember that this was all on public property and we ultimately had no authority to ban anyone from physical presence. We would make it clear though that they were to be shunned from fellowship inside our immediate spaces. Many times though, that could not be well coordinated since others would use such occasions to sow division for ulterior agendas beyond the original problem.
In terms of your question of moral authority or lack of it as you perceive it at Occupy, there is a distinction to be made. There is the greater view, or objective view of moral authority from the outside looking in with a stress on the word “moral”. And then there is the internal moral authority that arises from within a group or organization. The stress here would be on the word “authority”. Occupy had huge issues around that part which I discussed above around the exercise of enforcing policy. That has background in how some participants of occupy view “authoritarian” issues in general and how ill trained they were at making distinctions between their allies and what we should’ve been fighting against on our terms as a coalition of forces. In terms of coordination for our own survival as a cause.
You may think that someone has to be in the position of placing themselves on the outside as a “moral authority” on what’s right and wrong in a general sense and arguing that is a different discussion belonging to a philosophy or ethics debate, but it’s not within the scope of an Occupy to even begin there.
The best any such movement can do is arbitrate what behavior is congruent with the purposes of gathering as united citizens for the cause of a greater good for all. We can arbitrate amongst ourselves what behavior will ensure we grow and represent our greater cause and what behavior will undermine and weaken our cause. Remember also that it is inherent in such gatherings in public squares that our intentions are to bridge differences and not acerbate the tensions of different visions of where moral authority ultimately derives from in theory or religious, philosophical practice.
The very idea of Absolute Truth is an block to apprehending the actual situation of various worldviews amongst real Americans and occupants of our Planet Earth. It posits the notion that ultimately cooperation and unity is a zero-sum game that has to exclude various points of view. That can’t work and it can’t be a feature in movement work. Ultimately a House Divided Cannot Stand. Setting up a false idol of “Absolute Truth” is setting up for a divided house.
Happy New Year
Henry said, “The very idea of Absolute Truth is an block to apprehending the actual situation of various worldviews amongst real Americans and occupants of our Planet Earth. It posits the notion that ultimately cooperation and unity is a zero-sum game that has to exclude various points of view. That can’t work and it can’t be a feature in movement work. Ultimately a House Divided Cannot Stand. Setting up a false idol of “Absolute Truth” is setting up for a divided house.”
I admire your honesty, but I think you’re misinformed about the role of absolute truth in civil society (or perhaps you understand it and you want to gut it and toss out our Constitution in the process?). “Real Americans” have been living with the concept of absolute truth, often called “natural law,” since before we were a country. Our Founders understood this and told the king that “certain unalienable rights” were endowed by our Creator. They appealed to a power greater than the king and the aristocracy and were arguably the most successful revolutionaries in history.
You are offering a false dichotomy. We must either have your view, where there is no recognition of absolute truth or we have a single alternative where a recognition of absolute truth results in some kind of totalitarian regime.
Madison anticipated your scenario of “various worldviews amongst real Americans” – sort of, as he wrote in The Federalist 51:
“The society itself will be broken down into so many parts, that the rights
of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested
combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil
rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one
case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of
sects.”
Madison and the other Founders envisioned (and enshrined into the Constitution) laws that would protect religious and civil liberties from state authority. At the same time, they unequivocally, unapologetically acknowledged that those “certain unalienable rights” came from God, an authority to which all men were accountable.
Here’s where I’m coming from: As a Christian, I’m saved by the grace of God, through the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Period. I don’t need to do anything further to earn that. Out of gratitude and obedience, I do my best to do what the Bible, (which I believe to be the standard for absolute truth) commands. However, I don’t seek to impose that on anyone else, except to the extent that what I believe merges with our American civil government and that I have the same rights as any citizen to work within the framework of our Representative Republic to help change laws I don’t like.
And those “certain unalienable rights” endowed by our Creator are certainly as absolutely true today as they were in 1776. We didn’t make them up and we don’t get to abolish them. Countries who have tried to snuff out the concepts of “natural law,” “unalienable rights,” and “God” usually end up on lists that include names like Mao and Stalin. The first thing tyrants do is shut down the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in order to control the masses. The human rights abuses follow in short order. Thank God we live in a country where those certain rights are given to us by God and are not endowed by the whim of a mere king or government bureaucrat or corrupt legislature.
No one really believes in an Absolute Truth because there are exceptions to any rule. But as a society, we have determined what is right and wrong over the last several hundred years and our system was based on the study of the previous several thousand years. This is also an ongoing process, there are new laws made all the time.
Saying you don’t believe in an absolute is a cop out. We are not concerned about your Absolute Truths but your Relative Truths. The problem lies with what OWS as a society has deemed acceptable behavior.
It boggles the mind how the leftists never pay a price for their violence in the name of politics. Sure some individuals might go to jail but their groups march on. Their politicians always stay in office. Their media never has to face their lack of credibility.
And after the next act of violence from OWS or some other leftist group, we will be greeted with cries of mostly peaceful.
wodun said, “No one really believes in an Absolute Truth because there are exceptions to any rule”
But you say that with such certainty! Are you absolutely sure that’s true? Because I absolutely believe that you’re wrong. How do we resolve this?
I love that one of the OWS fascist pigs comes here to try and ‘explain’ himself; it reminds me of when the Communists decided to discredit Stalin.
“We had rules btw. No alcohol, no drugs on our sites along with being under such influence. No threats or violent approaches allowed. Even spreading rumors and disinformation was not acceptable. Remember that this was all on public property and we ultimately had no authority to ban anyone from physical presence. We would make it clear though that they were to be shunned from fellowship inside our immediate spaces.”
Really, Hank? I would have called the police. You, on the other hand, facilitated their drug abuse and violent behavior by not *doing* anything about it. In other words, its as much your fault as theirs. Its amoral jackwagons like you that you should be fighting. Funny how that works sometimes.
Well put, you and wodun above. The hallmark of the Progressive is the superiority of intentions and feelings over actual results. Occupy intends good things, therefore the actual implementation is totally irrelevant. They can ignore civil law and health codes – intended and designed to promote security and health – because they are pure of heart and intend only well. The actual results (requiring hazmat suits, as noted elsewhere) are beside the point.
Remember that this was all on public property and we ultimately had no authority to ban anyone from physical presence.
And yet you refused to cooperate with those that did have that authority. Why?
The very idea of Absolute Truth is an block to apprehending the actual situation of various worldviews amongst real Americans and occupants of our Planet Earth.
Seconding what Paula said, I would also note that Absolute Truth, aka “Natural Law” is derived from nature: nature’s laws (e.g. gravity or the speed of light) and human psychology and physiology. It’s all well and good for you to gather various points of view, but if those points of view do not correlate with the realities of human nature, than they are most certainly invalid. That’s simply what Natural Law is, and what human laws are based on: 50,000 years of experience in how people actually think and act under various conditions.
Do you really think that you can arrive at a more valid “situation” than that experience has? If you are a believer, than you admit that God is not arbitrary and knows our human nature far better than we do; if an atheist, than simply respect the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors. Either way, simply saying “we accept everything” and relying on all of your members’ inner voices to keep them from hurting people is poor practice.
“Ultimately a House Divided Cannot Stand.”
You have no right to quote Lincoln, slaver.
Left/liberal anti-social behavior… nothing to see here, youthful indiscretions just as how boys will be boys, according to the liberal cheerleader media.
Ahh, another OWS protester who either has no idea the true intention behind OWS or is complicit and running their PR game.
Oh he knows what OWS is all about. This guys job in the movement is to propagandize to outsiders. It might work on people sympathetic to their desires but not on anyone who has followed OWS closely.
It isn’t a surprise that OWS doesn’t use open forums to plan. It is all done in secret because they don’t want the uninformed masses knowing what they are doing.
I have a pretty good idea who he might be (not “Henry Miller” as he claims). If it’s who I think it is, I understand why he’s afraid to use his real name.
And FWIW, as “Henry” stated, the Occupy movement has been very transparent – often eager to post their angst and their ramblings on their websites and video channels. Many of them are either exhibitionists or have inflated views of their historical significance and record every second of their lives for “posterity” (or something), and though they don’t post all of their illegal activities, it’s not difficult to see the types of people we are dealing with in this movement.
Postmodernism has its roots in the writings of the late 19th Century radical syndicalist Georges Sorel. Sorel is to Fascism what Marx is to Socialism. Postmodernism became embedded in academic circles after the Second World War through the tireless efforts of Yale professor Paul de Man. de Man was exposed in the 1980s as a member of the Belgian Nazi Party during the German wartime occupation. One of de Man’s major accomplishments was the rehabilitation of the unrepentant Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, Hitler’s Minister of Education. There is nothing modern about postmodernism. It is actually a return to the primitivism of Jean Jacque Rousseau.
Interesting, and very informative. Also perplexing (to me), since this seems to be a very different “tdiinva” than the one in the thread above about the “Creator.”
In any case, thank you for this interesting post.
Of course PJ Media is a big fan of the Occupation of Palestine by the terrorist
Zionists.
Occupy from the start was a controlled opposition operation, with funding from Soros operatives, such that no real demands of economic reform as regards Wall Street would be advocated. This was ensured by the totalitarian consensus game, and by the lack of any non-violent pledge from the get go.
Ad Busters works in essence for the financial oligarchy utilizing a strategy of the 68′er forces of the left that would invariably lead to such a break up. This was the very same tactic of the FBI/Ford Foundation destruction of SDS into the violent racist Weather Underground…all to get cozy University positions and be the part of the foundation of the Obama evil.
The problem with Occupy was not in identifying the problem, Wall Street, but refusing to politically challenge Obama, as the Uncle Tom slave of Wall Street gamblers.
I love how these guys are in favor of violence: note the news from NYC about some of the same.
What they don’t understand that they are still breathing because of their enemies’ respect for the law and human life.
If the door is truly open, then they will have remaining lives on the level of the fruit fly, if that.
Coming soon to a city near you – Idle No More – the aboriginal version of Occupy. It started in Canada and now our charming little activists are getting together with your charming little activists to make it a global movement. Why these movements have to be global I’ve no idea but activists have to believe their movement is global. Expect malls to be bombarded with flash mobs, railways to be blockaded and bridges to be taken over. Just giving you a heads up from Canada.
I want to see OWS or any variant riot in Detroit, Philly, LA, Oakland or other black inner city. These petulant, white, chicken-sh$t trash only distrupt cities they know are mostly white and progressive.
Excellent article.
Glad that you did not refer to this band of scoundrels as radicals or revolutionaries.
They are nothing but a bunch of punks. Ignorant punks.
The worst thing is that they believe they are all enlightened, and everyone is blind, with no sense of justice (only their version will do); they see themselves as an oppressed, angelic class of heroic victims who have a divine mandate to usher in change to the unenlightened “sheeple”.
His gleeful comparison of his band to the saints and apostles make this obvious.
“That was also the night the FBI informant recruited the ringleader who six months later would deliver his band of malcontents to the bridge operation. Read both the affidavit of the U.S. attorney on the bridge plotters and then read the Opinion of the three judge panel of the court of appeals. It makes a fascinating juxtaposition. Almost dare I say, biblical.”
“It was a feature of Occupy to welcome all regardless of person history as long as they understood the context of what we were trying to achieve. Again sounds almost biblical this Christmas season to remind ourselves of one baseline tenet in our Judeo-Christian traditions: Christ never excluded very serious “sinners”. Hows that for Pre-Modernism?”
So this is what happens when leftist philosophers are left to stew in the cesspool of the university: minds exposed to that miasma are so crippled they can’t understand fundamentally basic concepts.
But then the left has always attracted diseased minds. Even just going back to Marx and his deranged salon-mates and other socialists of his era. They were all violent nutbags. Look at the French Revolution. That was their first real grasp on power. Another was the Paris Commune. They spent so much time on infighting and murdering each other, and those who disagreed, the city fell apart and even had to be put down by the rest of France. The American ambassador to France at the time saw several hundred of the Commune under arrest and stated they were the most dirty and disreputable looking people he’d ever seen. Sounds a lot like the Occupy people.
WHOA THERE! The left is busy proposing to further disarm Americans and make us more defenceless in the face of evil by more gun regulation. Most states have tough guns on their books already but criminals get them anyway.
Here, though, is something a bit different; anachists with C4 explosive! Where and how did they get C4 explosive? That’s military stuff with potential to kill hundreds at one time.
Lest anyone think OWS is a peaceful group, this demonstrates that they are dangerous, violent terrorists. Thank God they were caught and prosecuted before they did any real harm, and will soon be behind bars.
This is what happens when nations become atheist, when parents don’t teach right from wrong, when there is no absolute moral compass.
They got C4 expolosive…how many honest citizens are waiting for gun permits?
They bought what they thought was C4 from an FBI agent. The man who introduced them was an agent provocateur who infiltrated OWS. The infiltrator also told them that he would provide funding for the C4.
Ohhhhh….that changes everything. The poor dears. They probably had no idea that an actual bridge would blow up and kill actual people when they pushed those funny little buttons on that scary looking contraption (what was it again? Oh, yeah…a cell phone) to detonate the C4 bomb. The FBI agent probably held a gun to their heads and made them do it anyway. We all know how these things work. None of this was the fault of the Cleveland 5….er…Cleveland 4 (Tony was probably an informant, too). THEY HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO GO ALONG WITH THE PLOT.
It didn’t change everything. It couldn’t change the fact that they pressed the button. It didn’t change the fact that they were found guilty. But it certainly had an impact on the judge’s sentencing.
So when four elderly right wing militia members try to get their hands on guns and silencers for their Ricin attack on government buildings to “save the Constitution”? Do these tactics upset you, or do you have full faith in the FBI and their assorted informants?
What upsets me is someone plotting to violently attack law-abiding Americans and institutions, if that’s what they did. They will have their day in court. I don’t know all the details in the case (haven’t read the charges), but if they were indeed plotting the attacks they are charged with, they deserve to be punished as terrorist, just like the Cleveland 5. Their political views are irrelevant.
Interesting, but do you support the use of FBI informants that are not FBI employees and receive payment or reduced sentences? Or might you agree that cases are being created by these informants who have a clear incentive to push these people to commit crimes.
Two of the four elderly men from Georgia involved in the right wing militia bio terrorism plot have been sentenced 5 years. The other two are still pending.
It’s not that far away from the Cleveland case. Approached by informant, offered guns, C4 etc. then busted. There is the question of whether all this was just hot air and bluster until the informant arrived and provided the means to commit the crime. Is the FBI manufacturing terrorists that wouldn’t have existed otherwise?
As we saw with the arrests of two OWS in NY last week, they don’t need any encouragement to build bombs.
Remember the Democrat bomb plot to hit the RNC in 08? Be thankful for your friends in the media hiding the truth.
This is slightly off topic, but one of my frustrations with conservatives is their failure to point out to people as often as possible that the left can’t make up its mind whether on the one hand science is trustworthy and capable of telling us that we are causing global warming, and on the other the postmodern view that postmodern life is governed by the “incapacity to know anything with certainty.”
They can’t have it both ways.
They can’t have it both ways.
Well yess they can, if they have the power to do so. That is their objective.
The media lets them have it both ways nearly every time, evidenced by their coverage of issues like abortion, OWS, and global warming. We must continue to point out their inconsistency. We must take a page from Breitbart’s playbook and put cameras in their faces and ask them how they know they’re right. Who are they to judge the 1%? Aren’t they also entitled to their own truth if they’re on a different path? Why are they being so intolerant?
Paula. I expect better from the person who wrote that well researched article. You are so close. You touched on all the right questions. Questions of Violence vs. Non-Violence are critical and no movement, no politic is above questioning.
Blast away if you must. Be righteous. But keep your eyes on the prize: Truth. Not absolute truth. That is where death waits.
The kind of truth you read about in the bible is where your answer lies: It’s not what we take into us that defiles us but what comes out of us. Read the comments above. Reread your own comments. Poison. Vitriol. Judgement. Some of it spiced with inchoate hatred. A sorry commentary on tolerance here.
Peace and Happy New Year.
Henry Miller wrote: “Truth. Not absolute truth. That is where death waits.”
That sounds nice, but what does that even mean? You are making propositional statements all the while, decrying propositional truth. You’re contradicting yourself.
What you still have not answered is why you (or OC or OWS) have any particular truth claim that’s superior to anyone else’s. Since you reject the idea of absolute truth, what makes your values correct, true, or better than mine? Why is greed bad? What if I believe that Donald Trump is filthy rich because he’s more highly evolved. He’s the strongest and the smartest. In a survival-of-the-fittest world, the strongest should survive, and the weak should be allowed to perish. Why am I wrong? Who sez?
You know, after all these years of listening to this ranting about the left, it finally occurs to me, the KKK had nothing to do with the left and was one of our countries most horrific terrorist organizations. Mono dimensional thinking will eventually absurd itself out.
The KKK was started by the Democrat party and the Democrats still support many policies that they started to discriminate against minorities, like free abortions and gun control.
To the contrary. One of the basic tenets of the left – if not THE basic tenet of the left – is collectivism. There are no individuals, only society as a whole. This is what the left means when they use the words “we” and “us”. Anyone who does not conform, in action and in thought, to the will of the collective, is “Them”.
There’s the key point. Individuals do not matter. People are defined by Group Identity. Group Identity rules all in the collectivist mind. Environmentalist Identity. Black Identity. Hispanic Identity. Gender Identity. Note the vitriol heaped on Black conservatives by the left as a demonstration.
The original American ideal, the EXCEPTIONAL American ideal, was that each human being was an individual with inalienable natural rights, sovereign unto themselves. Each individual human being can be fairly judged only on their actions, how they live their lives and how they treat others – and race, in and of itself, is absolutely and totally irrelevant to that judgement.
The Klan was nothing more than another collectivist identity group. a White Supremacist identity group. Not one of those idiots ever understood that race tells you nothing, NOTHING, about any given individual. They viewed Black people – and Jews, Catholics, American Indians, etc., etc., as THEM by definition. Only WASP Southerners (and later Northerners as well) could EVER be “Us”.
The Klan WAS the Left. And the Left IS the Klan. Only the Identity Group tags have changed.
There’s a more compelling reason for Leftists to refrain from violence: Right-wing white Christians will, when their lives and property are in grave danger, set aside their morals and wipe out the leftists. See Spain in 1936-39, Chile in 1973, etc. Don’t come crying to me when a Black Bloc infiltrates your “non-violent” protest and the shopkeeper shoots you by mistake.
someone in the group exchanges his Guy Fawkes mask for a “surprised face”
It should be a disappointed face, for the success of their coddled in-house bombers in matching the failure of Guy Fawkes himself to blow up Parliament.
Who’s kidding who about ‘non-violent’ Occupiers? That’s the name of their game – threats, intimidation and violence.
Nice essay. Clear and correct. But as you make your main point, clear and correct is pointless with these types of thinkers. They like post-modernism because it empowers them to be philosophically profound every time they open their mouth and obfuscate or confuse an issue.
Loved that “definition” of violence routine-its as if the Marx brothers became the gaurdians of mainstream thought. But this particular species of clown takes itself very seriously. It feels itself to be an artist, a thinker and an orator; different, special and unique; whereas if they took on a responsible social position (i.e. a job) they would be but nerdy entry level supply clerks.
The right are the enemy who would impose rules and rigidity upon them, be blind to their gifts, and exploit them as tools. This is the problem, how can the right make them feel allied and not alienated, how can the right make them feel empowered?
These websites are clearly pointing out fault and exposing hypocrisy but a poke in the right direction and a kick up the ass just wont do it (though that type will of course get a lot of pokes and kicks where they are going, to which I suggest they not take it too personally and just repeat over and over “Society is to blame.” Anyway, might be able to get a few new tatts while they are there and by heck they will have earnt them this time)
But, seriosuly, its time for a new plan. How can you bring these people back? How can they feel connected to society? You can’t Fox them back into the fold. Post modernism is actually pretty stale, 40-50 years strong, and considering the rate of change in the world, thats just sooo yesterday daddyo. The right will have to outradical the radicals if it is to return.
How many people would Terry Robbins weathermen bomb have killed?
anyone know?