The Many Farces of the Occupiers (no, it’s not a typo)
Revolutions are rather like that. The word has been overloaded, and can’t help us understand what’s going on. How do you know when you see a revolution? How do you know if a revolution has succeeded or failed? Once you start looking at such questions, the image you’ve got of a “revolution” (which is probably something like an angry mob marching on the Bastille) dissolves. “Scientific revolutions” don’t have mobs or violence in the streets; they take place in laboratories and are conducted by men in white coats, for example.
Mobs and violence, even rhetorical violence of the sort the American Occupiers deploy, do not a revolution make. Nor is that sort of activity necessarily “progressive.” There have been very successful right-wing revolutions (Italian fascism, for example, or the 1979 Iranian Revolution that gave us the frightfully reactionary Islamic Republic, or Lenin’s coup d’etat, which may provide the model for what is going on in Egypt, or even in America: one group brings down the regime, whereupon a very different group consolidates power).
The Occupiers in New York seem very happy about the Egyptian “revolution,” and say so repeatedly:
The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.
Further evidence for the Occupiers’ lack of knowledge, let alone understanding, of the farce in which they are acting. And perhaps a telling insight into the nasty antisemitism that has cropped up in so many of their banners.
So how can we measure their success or failure? The question, as always, is whether or not they can impose their will on their enemies (the rich plutocrats). If you see investment bankers and hedge fund owners redistributing their own wealth, it will be a win for the Occupiers. If candidates adopt the Occupy slogans and do well in primaries, that will be a win. If their world-wide sit-in is sent away from the public squares, and they can’t continue to protest in significant numbers, it will be a defeat.
The president, and his media supporters, are joining the Occupy party (and Party), so those considerations apply to him and them as well. It would be surprising if they won, frankly. It flies in the face of many American traditions, it seems very likely to annoy most American voters, and it is so clearly irrelevant to the real concerns of American workers, whatever class they are in, that one is once again awed by how smart Hegel was.
At least I am.
As I see the banners of the occupiers it is of no wonder that the American Nazi Party (ANP) has allied itself with the movement. They published a statement to that effect today. What is odd is that the organizations that are actively and financially supporting this motley crew of useful idiots who blame anything and everything on Jewish Bankers (it becomes so tiring after thousands of years), such as MoveOn.org and Code Pink, are funded primarily by the biggest of all Jewish Bankers, George Soros. I can’t get my head around that.
To quote Hegel “Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.”
The question for me is as follows: is this a populist revolt, and was Nazism not a populist revolt too, in both its left-wing and right-wing manifestations? Also, has Obama showed his hand with the OWS movement? I wrote about it here: http://clarespark.com/2011/10/10/populist-catharsis-on-wall-street/. Also, here http://clarespark.com/2010/09/11/is-wall-street-slaughtering-the-middle-class/. The latter analyzes the separation of finance capital from industrial capital on the Progressive left. And the quote with which Michael Ledeen began his essay was, I think, from the 18th Brumaire essay of Marx. I haven’t looked it up.
The leaders of all elitist revolutions be it Communism, Nazism or Islamic theocracies will profess populism to get the useful idiots into the streets to shed blood for their ambitions. Clearly if they honestly disclose their top-down, end justifies means intenions too early no one will support them. Of course, once in power, they will cannibalize their own children fearing that once the truth is out these same children can revolt against them. So, to answer your question, yes, the people in the streets have populist desires but those pulling the strings do not.
What is happening across the country has nothing to do with Wall Street and everything to do with the 2012 Presidential election.
Obama has seeded with Justice Department with bureaucrats committed to selective enforcement of voting rights.
He has appointed as the new head lawyer for the federal Election Commission another Covington and Burling partner
( Eric Holder is also a former C&B partner ) who ran the firms pro-bono committee which undertook legal representation of more Gitmo detainees than any other US law firm.
What is going on today is a practice run. Laying the groundwork, chain of command, communications, etc. for massive voter intimidation in 2012. That is why there are so many ” strange bedfellows ” at the demonstrations. Useful idiots all.
http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202497740576
that is the line of thinking I have as well. this is obama’s game.
great essay Mr. Ledeen.
The mainstream media is deliberately concealing the neo-Nazi and pro-jihadi (though perhaps I repeat myself) involvement in this.
If Nazis, Commies, and Soros agree with you, YOU ARE WRONG!
Plus ca change….. Red Danny is part of the ruling elite, Bill and Bernardine are petted and protected by MSM and elite establishment institutions, and Brian McDonnell is still dead. The rodents are donning Mae Wests faster than they did in 64-68, maybe the May 3-5 1971 Washington D C events will also have a similarly accelerated time line. GBUSA
Ha! You are so right. I remember once hearing someone lament back in the day that Clinton wasn’t coming through for “the workers.” I thought, who are they? Every manager and business owner I ever knew worked. I guess subtract the old, the disabled, and school kids and you’ve got “the workers.”
We are only reaping the fruits of our education system. In a world where every child gets a trophy, we develop semi-adulthood or suspended adolescence. I tried to get my own children to study a discipline that would make them a good living. My own daughter has a bachelor’s in art history (that and 50 cents will get you what?). Multiply this by millions and you have the 99%. On the bright side, she is feeding herself….Working at a used car dealership.
The revolutionary hobbyists can dress up and play their game. In the end, it will be how the elites exploit them that matters.
Wait, wait…what makes Italian fascism right wing? Serious question; I’m not madly expert on the subject. I know the movement was nationalist and pro-military, which are generally regarded as righty attributes. But it was also pro-union and in favor of government control of production, very much lefty attributes.
The political spectrum I learned had Strong Government on the left where sat absolute tyranny at the far margin, and anarchy or no government on the far right. Fascism or National Socialism was socialist, in favor of a strong government and was thus leftist, obviously, but slightly to the right of international socialism or Stalinism. Stalin, when Hitler invaded him, saw Hitler to the right of him, so labeled Nazism or Fascism “Right” which falsehood many adopted both before and after. To the right of both, I regard both as leftist, the relative position of either in relation to each other being irrelevant. Whittaker Chambers and General Krivitsky regarded both as fascist in an equal degree.
True Americans should share this view. We in favor of weak and constitutionally constrained government must regard Fascism as a leftist heresy. No further thought is required.
Pointing out that it matters who is doing the labeling, might also make it easier to see.
This is one of those questions that “post-modern” historians don’t want to talk about. Not being one, I’ll try.
Originally, both the Italian Fascists and the German National Socialists were basically doctrinaire socialists with a few “local” features. In Italy, it was an excessive romanticism about the Roman Empire. In Germany, it was anti-Semitism, and a belief that the German Army hadn’t really lost the First World War, but had been “stabbed in the back” by disloyal elements in the civilian government in 1918. (Google “November Criminals”.)
What initially set both groups apart from their respective nations’ Communist parties was that while the Communists (PCd’I in Italy, DPK in Germany) took their orders from Moscow, the Fascists didn’t trust the Kremlin. Less due to “Communist doctrine” than the age-old Western European distrust of Russia, on all counts. As such, they evolved into parties that were nationalist first, socialist second, the opposite of the Communists, who were socialist “internationalists” from start to finish. (Which, indeed, they still are.) And when they got into power, they of course outlawed the Communists. (Mussolini “outlawed” the Mafia, too. It worked just about as effectively.)
What ultimately gave both parties their final shape was charismatic leaders. Mussolini is seen as a buffoon today, and Hitler as the devil incarnate (personally, I suspect Satan is using them both for footstools today- or else as middle-managers to keep the Princes of H**l in line), but in their own time both were seen as reformers, not only in their own countries but abroad. (Google “Foreign leaders who spoke well of” either one, and you’ll be surprised at who fawned over them at one time or another.) The old joke about Il Duce “making the trains run on time” wasn’t a joke in the 1920s and ’30s; my mother, who grew up in that era, remembered that this was considered a very important thing in Italy, where train schedules were mostly figments of the dispatchers’ imaginations until Benny the Moose showed up.
As for Hitler, according to foreign press types, he brought Germany out of the Depression almost single-handed; sort of like FDR was supposed to have done with the United States. And “progressive” newspapers were editorializing that FDR needed to adopt at least some of Hitler’s methods. (He tried once, with the National Recovery Act; the Supreme Court slapped him down, hard.)
The idea that there was nothing but hatred between the Nazis, their Fascist friends in Italy, and the Soviets is, unfortunately, just not accurate. Germany trained airmen and armored troops in Russia, secretly, for over a decade in the late Twenties and early Thirties, to avoid the strictures of the Versailles Treaty.
Gregor Strasser, the No. 2 man in the NSDAP, pushed for closer ties with Moscow right up until he was murdered by SS gunmen along with Ernst Rohm & Co. on “The Night of the Long Knives”. BTW, his biggest supporters were Franz von Papen and Josef Goebbels, both of whom switched their allegiance to Hitler almost before he had a chance to reload that night.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact signed a month before the Germans blitzkrieged Poland had among its provisions the exact way Germany and the USSR would divide Poland. And while they were at it, Molotov and Ribbentrop privately agreed that it would be up to the Russians to “deal with” the Polish Army’s officer corps. (Google “Katyn Forest”.)
The final “break” between the Nazis and the Soviets was very simple. Both had decided that “this continent isn’t big enough for the both of us”, and each was ready to double-cross the other and attack. In late May and early June of 1941, Stalin ordered his main ground forces (run by the officers who had survived his purges) out of their prepared defensive positions (well inside Russia’s borders, mainly east of the Dnieper River) and into hasty positions just inside the border, west of Kiev and the Pripet Marsh. The intention was to use this “forward base” line as the jumping-off point for strikes into Czechoslovakia and Austria. With the forces holdng the line in Poland, it was to be a classic “left hook” maneuver, culminating in the invasion of Germany from its weakly-defended (they thought) southeastern frontier.
(Any resemblance between this and the German “Schlieffen Plan” in Belgium in 1914 and its replay in 1940 probably wasn’t just coincidental; even in military strategy, imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery.)
The Red Army was still “digging in” and getting itself squared away for offensive operations, when Operation Barbarossa began on 22 June 1941. It was a classic strategic example of Hogg’s Law. (“Just because you are preparing to attack your enemy in no way prevents him from having a go at you first.”) The result was that most of Stalin’s offensive formations- which were also his defensive formations- were wiped out in short order. In Old West terms, Hitler and Stalin wanted a showdown, and Hitler drew first. (Thereby proving the old shootist’s adage that the man who draws first generally loses in the end, or as one Texas Ranger put it, “Speed’s fine, but accuracy is final.”)
The relationship between Fascism and Communism is complex, and far from the simplistic “Communists=Good, Fascists= Evil” of the modern left, or the “Fascists=Communists with even worse fashion sense” of the modern right. Early on, they were almost symbiotic; later, they became deadly enemies.
But I feel safe in saying that the world would have been much better off if neither one had ever been invented to begin with.
cheers
eon
Well, the Mafia really was shut down, for about 20 years. we actually did a lot to bring it back. my friend eric dezenhall has recently published a cool novel about FDR’s use of American mafiosi to facilitate the Sicily campaign.
Mussolini came from the Socialist Party, not the Communists, who didn’t exist until well after the war.
what’s that insult about fascists’ clothes? huh?
yes, the soviets were preparing to invade the reich when the nazis invaded. very good point.
fascism evolved, it wasn’t created overnight. but the core doctrine is about war, it’s a war ideology, came out of the trenches. the “liberal fascism” notion tends to overlook that. if you go to my archive you can find two long essays about it all. i spent many years in the fascist archives in rome when i was even younger than i am now, and slowly came to the conclusion that the differences between the nazis and the fascists are probably greater than their similarities; i think that we should probably talk more about “totalitarianism,” which provides better context.
While it’s (sort of) true that the Mafia went into hibernation, even what amounted to direct military action in Sicily couldn’t do more than force them underground. Besides, as you state, by that time, the main center of gravity of the mob was here in the U.S., not in the Old Country, courtesy of Maranzano, Genovese, Profaci, and the Castellammarese War. (That novel sounds interesting- I’m a sucker for alternate-history SF.
)
As for the bit about clothes, it’s an old joke from one of my history profs (USMC vet);
“In Russia and China, the result of the Communist Revolutions was that they traded in monarchical oligarchies with poor fashion sense for autocratic oligarchies with even worse fashion sense. Witness the Manchus and Maoists.
In Italy and Germany, they traded semi-democracy with lousy fashion sense for totalitarianism with absolutely horrid fashion sense. Witness Hindenberg and Bruening, compared to Mussolini and Goering.”
He believed that people who dress extravagantly (the Manchus, Fascists, etc.), or in a pseudo-military manner (the Maoists), tend to have other mental aberrations which make them poor choices for leadership. He didn’t insist on it, and neither do I, but it’s an intriguing thought.
cheers
eon
hah! eric dezenhall’s novel isn’t all that “alternative;” it’s based on the report of the Dewey Commission, which I came across many yrs ago in the National Archives here in Washington.
As for “style,” one of the many alarming things about fascist leaders is that they were much beloved by the women of their countries…I guess those military outfits were pretty stylish at least in the eyes of contemporaries, and I would have thought that your Marine prof knew and appreciated that, ahem.
I think the infatuation of women by fascist leaders had more to do with their perceived power rather than their uniforms. Kissinger’s ultimate aphrodisiac, ya know. Mao was the recipient of the affection of many young Chinese women of whom he liberally took advantage and he certainly was no Adonis. Only a few days ago we saw Lady Gaga going gaga over that ole horn dog, Bill Clinton. Maybe you, Dr. Ledeen, when walking the corridors of power in the yesteryears did notice the occasional fawning eye arrowed at your direction as well. Did you really think it was because of the turtle neck I see you wearing on TV?
hey, stop that! i wore a tie in the corridors, always.
I’m not sure what history books you guys are reading. The mafia thrived under American occupation in Sicily and Naples and robbed the Americans blind, with the connivance of some Americans. The U.S. did in fact elicit the help of the mafia to facilitate operations in Sicily – it is NOT alternate history.
Furthermore, the US military had no policy to eradicate or make the mafia in Italy keep their heads down but used them or ignored them as the case may be. To the contrary, business is business and the mafia worked with the Nazis and Americans, each cadre according to it’s capabilities and politics and local experiences.
Stalin was NOT preparing to invade Germany in 1941 and I’m not sure where you pull that from. As for Nazi/Soviet ‘cooperation’, Hitler and Stalin despised and mistrusted one another and the early 30s and late 20s is not 1939.
recent documents from the soviet military archives make a very convincing case that stalin was planning an invasion of the reich. excellent book a year or two ago by Victor Suvarov, a former GRU colonel, lays it out in detail. so please try asking some questions, Air, at least sometimes…
I don’t disagree with the notion that Stalin would’ve wanted to invade Germany – of course he would’ve liked to. You have written about perception and perceptual traps so let’s be perceptive.
There is a difference between intent and the ability to carry out that intent and wishful thinking and actual military deployments. Plans on their own mean nothing – of course Stalin had plans ON PAPER to execute such a thing but, in making a threat assessment, intent without the ability to carry out that intent, as you well know in your line of work, means nothing.
My statement stands.
Military judgement demands that Stalin would’ve needed to act while Germany was involved in France and he low countries and then the Battle of Britain. His moment had passed. Stalin was not beaten to the punch in real terms. He was in actual fact preparing no such deployments. One doesn’t need recent documents for this but only too look at what Soviet Army formations were set upon where. The idea that Germany narrowly avoided a meeting engagement on a massive scale is not persuasive nor supported by Soviet deployments whose location when set upon is in no way a secret.
It wasn’t on paper, it was on the ground. step back from your current convictions and read the Suvarov. it’s a fun book, chock full of terrific insights. i promise you’ll have a fine time with it.
Dear Dr. Bones,
Geezerly whightists [1] resemble their Red [2] brethren in some ways more than they resemble their own kiddiecons.
The goings-on in Zucchini Square would not, it is safe to say, have much impressed the late Comradess Luxemburg of _Spartakus_.
His Eminence Bin Ledeen knows that as well as you and I do, sir, and, havin’ no sense of other folks’ decency, does not hesitate to tell them so at length. Or rather, what with the characteristic courage-challengedness on one team an’ the odors supposedly emanating from the other, at least to tell Wally Wombschool an’ Cinda from Wasilla an’ all the pajamaclads what his ecclesiastical freelordship *would* bark at the _canaglia_ if HEFL ever *did* get within barkin’ distance.
It comes to “¡EYE knew _Spartakus_, and YOO scambugs are no _Spartakus_!”
The first part of that is a bit of a stretch, not to say “of a fib,” but you are to remember, Bones, that I am attempting to spoof a high dignitary of the First Church of _Jihád_ Careerism. Nobody informed would accord my Charlie McBinledeen the smallest suspension of disbelief if I were to make a dummy purporting to be a professional dogmatic mythologist talk like Honest Abe instead of fudge an’ fiddle like a paid-up member of the 2011 Party of Grant an’ Hoover.
Well, I have granted the point already myself. The advanced student might want to try to find signs of Infantile Leftist Syndrome in the _Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deautschlands_. But that is another story.
A little less beside the point would be to wonder whether His Eminence would in fact be pleased if the scambugs could recite letter-perfect on _Die Phänomenologie des Geistes_ and the Paris MSS and even the darker passages of Comrade Adorno. I do not just mean that exterminators do not often spare cockroaches of erudition. That is true enough, but, as noted, the Grand Ayatollah is prudently stayin’ well out of exterminatin’ range. The only point (that I can see) in His Eminence barkin’ at his own Party’s base and vile like this is to flatter the kiddies or to persuade them to despise their enemies more than ever. “¡How extremely clever of Mizz Cindy an’ Master Wally not to go camp out in a parkin’ lot with a lot of scruffy types who know not Marx an’ Hegel!”
It’s fortunate for H.E. that the kiddie selfservatives have been saved by wombschoolin’ from all knowledge of that sort of pornography. Only before a thoroughly freedumbed-down audience, after all, can a Grand Ayatollah Mikey bin Ledeen pose as an expert on the history of socialism in Greater Europe.[3]
Anyhow, sir, the main reason I write is the title which His Eminence has seen fit to place atop the freelordly scribble:
In the first place, any joke that needs a footnote is no longer a joke.
More specifically, and much more laughably, Grand Ayatollah Mikey bin Ledeen is here lambastin’ the enemies of Party an’ AEIdeology for insufficient acquaintance with their own intellectual ancestors, real or maliciously supposed. Yet it seems that His Eminence is lambastin’ the scambugs before an audience of wombscholars an’ freedowndumbees that cannot (as H. E. Himself thinks) negotiate a faked typo without assistance.
Hence I conclude that all ideogeezers agree in considerin’ even like-minded youngsters vastly less bestembright than their generation is, or at least than their generation used to be. Q.E.D.
And I wish you, sir, as ever,
Happy days (through affordable health care, especially for seniors and _señores_.)
–JHM
[1] A class to which Grand Ayatollah Mikey bin Ledeen may be admitted by acclamation and _honoris causâ_, if, perchance, the date on His Eminence’s drivin’ license (or other form of photo ID) be not quite technically sufficient to qualify.
*
[2] The reference is, of course, to PALÆO Reds[tatists], Bolshies and Psientific Psocialists.
The barber-stripe community that consists of ex-redstate neowhightists would be in the same case, I presume, if it significantly existed. In fact, however, the Illustriously Freemighty Lord of Radoszcz–as Comrade Ronnie Radish must now be addressed, forelock humbly in hand–has proven sterile. His Freemightiness must ‘pass’ alone, the freelordly deathbed unsurrounded by two or three further generations of ideological perverts whom the old man can disinherit as unworthy before bein’ himself gathered to the bosom of General Arnold.
Lady Logic is inexorable: no more Commies, no more Excommies. Period. No exceptions.
***
[3] His Eminence has been alleged to actually know somethin’ ’bout Mussolini an’ a’ that. I presume H.E. has *deliberately* decided not to portray the Zucchini Square scambugs as minor-league _fascisti_, but must admit that I am not quite sure how the deliberation went.
(3A) Stuff like Big LEW’s ” … the former socialist Benito Mussolini oratorically inspired and mobilized country and working-class people: ‘We declare war on socialism, not because it is socialist, but because it has opposed nationalism. . . . ’ is problematical, obviously,– off-hand, it suggests the _heimatlandtreu_ Tee Putty rather more than their enemies–but these problems arise only if little Mikey’s theory of Fascism is more or less the same as Big LEW’s, which seems to me antecedently unlikely.
Alternatively,
(3B) ¿Perhaps even wombschoolin’ can be overdone? The Grand Ayatollah may have figured that poor Wally an’ Cindy would simply have no idea what H.E. was barkin’ ’bout if he called the Zucchiniïtes ‘blackshirts,’ not referrin’ to their “ring around the collar” problem.
(( One sees here, Dr. Bones, part of what the theoreticians and practitioners of Wombucationalism have been up to. Up against, rather. Despite the familiar maxim of Their Ford, History cannot be quite ALL be written off as bunk without abandonin’ all sorts of perfectly good ammo that might have been fired off at various fiends whose names figure on Rupert’s List.
(( Moreover, to bunkify the Idea of History would render the sort of scribble little Mikey gives us here ineffectual. Without havin’ had a certain abstract respect for our Ms. Clio ’turf’bagged into their dittopans, preferably at an early age, Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy would not sit still to be lectured at by Eminences of _jihád_ careerism. Speaking of ‘ideal’, I suppose what the Hire Kiddiemasters are aimin’ at in this department must be for all their little pajamaclads to revere History profoundly, but only on two conditions: (1) that they never actually learn much about it, for any such knowledge might easily be used against, and (2) that the kiddiecons shop for this potentially dangerous product strictly on a brand-name basis. That is, always look for “Product of Foxcuckooland” on the label before buyin’. ))
Jeez, Einstein, couldn’t you have made that a little longer?
And what’s with the strange punctuation?
A bizarre post. ‘Nuff said.
Although I do wonder what the hell he was trying to say. Maybe next time, he’ll forgo the Meth until he’s written the whole thing.
Concur. I got through a few paragraphs, but lost track of what looked like inside jokes with no one besides the other voices in his head understanding them.
Excellent essay. A couple of observations:
a) you state that “…Most Americans have never seen the need for social revolution because they believe they live in a revolutionary society that offers them a path to success and happiness.” Well, this is historically true, but for the past 50 or so years academia has been infiltrated by Ayers-trained teachers who have indoctrinated our children into believing America is the root cause of evil in the world and that our country is founded on lies and ___ism (fill in the “ism” of your choice). The evidence is in the election of an incompetent ideologue as our president and the fact that no one under the age of 40 is flinching at the comments of Elizabeth Warren, Bev Perdue and Peter Orszag. THAT is a real danger for the survival of our republic.
b) you describe several revolutions as “right wing.” I do not accept a right-left-centrist paradigm. I see more a scale that on one end is the American model of individual liberty and freedom and the other end as tyranny and oppression. Since the cancer of progressivism took hole in the US, we have moved down that scale at a steady clip, accelerating since the 2008 election.
I still have hope that a majority of Americans understand truly what we are all about and, living through the nightmare of the past 3 years, will overwhelmingly reject by way of the ballot box, that horrific vision of society. Now that is a revolutionary idea.
Yeah, whatever happened to “QUESTION AUTHORITY!” Every time I see hippies selling slogan buttons, I look for one to buy and wear, but not a one to be found….All the young folks are happy drinking the KoolAid….
The entire concept of a “working class revolution” is false.
Historically, all such revolutionary movements have been conceived and “led” (such as they have been), not by workers, but by mid-to-upper class self-styled “intellectuals”. The role of the workers, if any, has mainly been as cannon fodder, on the principle of “you can always break the enemy line if you can afford to absorb the casualties”. (In fact, this was the entire battlefield strategy of the post-Revolution French army prior to Napoleon.)
The “intellectuals” believe that the result of any revolutionary victory will be a new “people’s state”- run by the intellectuals themselves, with no reference to anybody or anything else but their own cronies and dogmas, and no backtalk from the peanut gallery permitted. (That’s a reference to “Howdy Doody” for those of you under 40.) As Tom Wolfe relates in “From Bauhaus to Our House”, the intellectuals of the left, architects or otherwise, see themselves as the ideal of what the “Common Man” should be, complete to Birkenstocks, hash pipes, Sea Island shirts, and Trotsky goatees, and are determined to be the “soul engineers” who will make the world perfect- by making everybody else exactly like them.
But it never works. Mainly because the “soul engineers” have little or no understanding of even themselves, let alone the rest of humanity. This is how they almost invariably end up hating and despising anyone not exactly like themselves, and dreaming of how wonderful the world would be without all those grotty groundlings getting in their way enroute to Utopia.
And that’s when the massacres generally begin. In the end, they go over the top as the “enlightened ones” conclude that they are not only “necessary for the defense of the revolution”, but actually fun.
Every revolutionary movement of the left follows this pattern. Russia, China, Cuba, Cambodia; they all end the same.
And it is the “workers” who end up filling the mass graves.
The “People’s Revolution” invariably ends with the death of the “people”- at the hands of their own revolutionary leaders.
Our own domestic version of revolutionary wannabees are mostly composed of a large number of Che! fans who are too ignorant and/or stupid to understand this- and a small core of the “elite”" who think it’s a great idea, for their own reasons.
And as said above, history repeats itself. But all too often, the farce is also a tragedy.
clear ether
eon
eon
Brilliant.
Except for the snarky stereotyping of “Birkenstocks, hash pipes, Sea Island shirts, and Trotsky goatees” (funny!) this pure and simple outline of the Leftists Track Record could (should!) be inserted as-is into the History and “Social Studies” Section of every Middle and High School textbook in America.
Well, Napolean wasn’t a sweetheart, either. His attacking columns used newbies on the outside as human armor, absorbing the bullets, so his veterans could arrive at the line of battle in good shape. Only if you survived the outer ranks could you become a veteran. Efficient? Absolutely! Lovely? I think not. Using humans as shields for other, more worthwhile humans smacks of liberal fascism.
Hey! That would make a great book title!
Old Nappy definitely was a ruthless b******d, but he was also a professional. He re-introduced the line formation and fire discipline to the French Army, plus proper artillery and cavalry support. Which explains why he kept winning battles even when he managed to do a complete b**ls-up on his tactical prep. Having competent subordinates, like Louis DeSaix (who was killed saving his boss’ butt at San Giuliano aka “Marengo”), helped, too.
For a look at what the revolutionary French Army looked like before Napoleon took charge, get out James Burke’s “Connections” (1978) and turn to pp.230-231. The “army” was a mass of men with no particular organization, with a few “francs-tireurs” out front to harass the enemy and shoot officers. (Today, we’d call them “scout snipers”.) Once they’d caused as much confusion as they could, the mass behind them would steamroller the enemy, generally taking heavier casualties than he did for the privilege of claiming a “victory”.
It has often occurred to me that, considering what the Zulus did to the British under Chelmsford at Isandlwana on 22 January 1879 (even granting that they had about a 10-to-1 numerical superiority), if a typical Zulu impi (regiment) armed with the assegai had engaged a typical pre-Napoleon revolutionary French “formation” of about the same size, odds are the impi would have beaten the French unit’s a** like the proverbial gong. Musketry can beat hand-to-hand engagement troops, even with muzzle-loaders, but generally speaking it helps if there’s someone in charge who knows what he’s doing, and everybody else is using the same manual.
/just saying
cheers
eon
Joel Carmichael in his biography of Trotsky (p.262ff) writes about the ideology of the state Lenin created after the coup mentioned by Michael above:
“The [Communist] Party had never ‘represented’ the working class in a concrete, numerical sense at all; rather, it represented the Idea of The Proletariat; that is, it made claims about the working class…As the flesh-and-blood proletarians increasingly contradicted any identification with the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, the Bolsheviks found themselves in the classic dilemma of minorities ‘representing’ majorities-they had to force the workers to accept the Worker’s State.” And then Carmichael quotes Trotsky at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921: “The Worker’s Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans…They seem to have placed the workers’ voting rights above the Party.”
You may be right in a bourgeois, oldthinker sort of way, Mr. Ledeen. However, the Occupiers (not the useful idiots but the ones leading and running the occupations) would answer simply that this shows that the working class lacks the proper consciousness. They only think they disagree with the movement because they’ve been deluded by the corporate powers that be.
Their real interests therefore need to be imposed on them by the vanguard of the…well, if the media are nearby they might say by people who truly understand the nature of the system and why it needs to be overthrown.
Nothing new here, really, and the admixture of anti-Semitism–excuse me, “anti-Zionism”–really rouses a certain sense of nostalgia.
“The “Occupiers” think they’re the new revolutionaries, but they’re not.”
How true. The clueless rabble think they are staging a revolution because they are a mob, vocal, wave signs, etc.. As you point out, that does not a revolution make.
If revolutions have anything in common, or a defining characteristic, it would be a change in the dominant outlook. That is why the word is suited to also describe what happens in the scientific community when some new, superior paradigm takes hold. For that to happen there must be an appealing alternative to the current one and the ‘occupiers’ are simply not offering any coherent message as to what that might be. Without that they are nothing more than a crowd of petulant children throwing a temper tantrum.
Of course the Occupiers are ignorant, but most of the media is on their side, and there are a large number of voters who are now ignorant of why America became great.
So the Occupiers have a real chance of doing some major damage.
yes, they all went to the same schools, after all.
Here’s a way to get to know some of these highly educated and passionate young folks:
http://sharpelbowsstl.blogspot.com/2011/10/howard-stern-exposes-occupy-wall-st.html
Oops, should have added foul language warning.
Thanks—I watched your link to: “Howard Stern Exposes Occupy Wall St. Morons.”—Oh!! It, was, just, plain, ripping, . . . but, . . . on longer pause, . . . I feel some compassion for some of those fools(?)—would that be the right word(?)and for NYC(?), and for the USA(?), . . .
And in response to larger issues which are alluded to, or plainly identified in Mr. Ledeen’s work—and whatever the USA, or France, or Russian and others might have done upon sense of desperate need impelling those revolutions, there—nowadays, those of our own who may be even now entertaining themselves with visions of at least some kind of revolution, a great many of them, if as I suppose, are greatly in response to the impulses which covetousness and envy generate, and in the same moment—whether upon institutional educational lack, or upon parental lack—quite unable understand how to get what they desire, or secondly, why it might be that, they should desire one thing and not another.
To wit—in the circles in which I move—how common, to hear quiet mention made in conversation about the expensive cars or clothes which some celeb may be driving or wearing, and their life’s choices, and of the frustration inthat, more people are not able to so do—the more of wealth there is, the more extensive the exposition of it, and exponentially, the more of it which people desire; so, . . .
For ourselves, of course, hopefully, as we grow older on this earth, so many a toy or bauble which once charmed us shall be seen, as mean a dust, and so very dead, . . . as some forgotten dream; then, thrice lovelier shall shine the things which last, “The Things Which Are More Excellent”, . . . and you may recall the name of the author of the poem by that name.
In that Howard Stearn video, as with articles such as this one, the personalities of the Occupiers, manifest as so very empty—unable to experience fulfillment in actualizing themselves in the use of tools, training, and other capital investments, to get what they desire—but, . . . so to do? Would that seem just too much like capitalism? I feel there’s a definition in language to protect—they’re tearing it down, . . .
In growing up, I did once wonder why there wasn’t some way in nature so that, the sun could shine and things could be warm, and then you would feel good about getting up and starting a fire. But, I did learn too, that, because of the brevity of life, some things can’t be reasoned about at length and so, “Because that’s just the things are.”, has a valid and practical meaning and use; I mean, sometimes, you have to work and provide before you can have and enjoy.
Plainly, the Occupiers fail to grasp the fact that, as Boethius said, when a clod washes into the ocean, the country is diminished, let no man suppose himself and island, free and entire, that, in actuality, what the Occupiers do—in life choices—and where their lives have been—perhaps, in school rooms—is rather closely related to what the bankers do, and to such extent that, the “climate of violence, fear, chaos, to be added to the regulations that destroy the economy, and the crazy financial moves that destroy the dollar, and the actions and omissions in national defense which wreck our military” are parts of a whole picture which will ever more clearly manifest in total withdrawal and system reboot. And in watching those Occupier crowds, I get the idea that, . . . it ain’t gonna be pretty, . . .
Very nice. Thank you.
I imagine Bill Kristol sees the Occupy Wall Street movement as America’s “Arab Spring” democracy movement.
By the way, has Kristol yet seen any problems with how the street revolutions have turned out in Egypt and Libya and Syria?
kristol is just one of many elites who fancies himself a conservative. He is not.
Michael Ledeen — You wrote: ‘The Occupiers, with their signs advocating “class war” and blaming the Jews for life’s intrinsic unfairness … ‘ Don’t you find the last part of that extremely troubling? We are being scapegoated for what and the f-ing LSM is totally ignoring it!! It needs to be shouted over and over again that there are some very nasty elements associated with the Occupy movement. If Democrats don’t distance themselves from this, then they are part of the problem, and it must be made perfectly clear that their association with this group is intolerable. (Yes, there is guilt by association.)
Minor point: You wrote: ‘There have been very successful right-wing revolutions ‘Italian fascism, for example … ‘ Apparently you don’t agree with Jonah Goldberg’s position that fascism is a left-wing phenomenon.
I agree with most of the essay but not with Wittgenstein. Of course, all games have winners and losers. The boy playing catch against the wall is, in his imagination, making great plays and leading his team to victory. At least that’s what was happening when I played catch like that or played hockey in the drive way shooting at the garage. Games exist both on the field and in the minds of men. The OWS gang will have both internal and external winners and losers. Only time will tell.
Very nice article Mr. Leedon. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
The Occupiers are nothing but a few more of the mindless pawns that are helping Obama meticulously build his 2013 farewell gift to America.
Obama knows that he will not win reelection.
He knows that because of the possibility of that defeat that the majority of the black race can be excited into physical street violence trying to stop the defeat before the election.
Obama knows that once it is certain that he has lost, that street violence can be quickly accelerated to horrific levels and proportions throughout every town and city in our country.
Blacks have always resorted to street violence to get what they want. Dr. Martin Luther King used that factual reality to his advantage by preaching a doctrine against violence as a better way to get what they wanted. Obama reversed that course last week at the dedication of King’s Memorial.
Obama has been given preferential treatment his entire life. Early on he learned how to manipulate people’s fears, especially Caucasians; particularity his own mother.
In Obama’s mind America owed him whatever he wanted with no questions asked.
In Obama’s mind America must be made to pay a terrible price for failing to treat him right during his term in office and an unimaginably horrible price for rejecting him next year.
Far fetched?
What or who can stop it?
The Occupiers?
Union bosses and thugs?
Republican debates?
Are you certain..?
“Obama knows that he will not win reelection.”
I wish I was as certain about that as you are, Gift. Whatever any polls might say now, there is a long way to go before Nov. 2012, and Obama has a mostly supportive media plus a lot of dirty methods to use on his behalf. Conservatives had better not get complacent.
ms bagheri, this propaganda is irrelevant to the matter at hand so it’s been trashed.
Curious about the post you deleted, especially since you allow the uni-blather to go on with his obscure reference diatribe.
it had to do with the ransom of Gilad Shalit.
Michael, your article seems very angry from what must be a personal experience or perspective. Checking what might be explanation, research shows you have a very active political-security scholarly background, at one point a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. Among other activities, founding member of Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Are you still engaged with JINSA? Could you please give us that website and explain the organization’s purpose? Your history causes pondering regarding your sharp rebuttal of a commenter, accusing of propaganda, which you “trashed.” Another commenter asked you What? to which you replied the trashed comment regarded Gilad Shalit. What is going on?
Don’t let your brain run wild with Dr. Ledeen’s “conspriratorial” filters as to what is posted or not here. It will only damage your neurons. He has never trashed anything I have written save once. I posted a link to an interview by Ayn Rand and he trashed it because it had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Should I deduce that Dr. Ledeen hates Rand? Or maybe he hates me? Or maybe the speech by Rand somehow will encumber his plan for taking over the world? If a posting is trashed it is either because it is vulgar or off topic.
Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one.
does nobody bother to read the rules on comments? i try to go through all the comments and remove those that are not on-topic and also those that are just personal diatribes with little or no serious content. i love criticism, but we do not play Dr Masoch/Count De Sade here…
And the reason you axed my post?
nobody did anything to you; i was at work. so there was a delay.
Plop. The sound of foot being extricated from mouth , both my own . I should have known better based on the calibre of your work. Most humble apology. I shall shoot from the hip no longer.
Chag Sameach.
chag sameach and many more.
Thank you Mr. Ledeen.
There is no comment I could make that would add value to this insightful, informed and brilliant piece.
Again, thank you for a great opening of the day read.
The Big Government Website Shows Proof That Municipal Police Departments Are Colluding With The Occupy Wall Street Protestors To Stage Pre-Arranged Arrests For The Cameras.
Learn More About How This Propaganda Is Being Passed Off As Real News.
http://biggovernment.com/kolson/2011/10/18/occupy-arrest-scam-unmasked/
“….and every serious student of American history has pondered the question “why has there never been a serious socialist movement in the United States?”
Michael,
You don’t think we have a serious socialist movement at present? It sure looks that way to me.
not serious. farcical, as i wrote.
With regard to the Occupy Wall Street I would agree with you…. and I enjoyed your article. However the current administration is the most serious Socialist administration I’ve seen in this Country in my lifetime. Their attempt to embrace the “Occupy” movement is foolish. But Obama and friends are as serious about promoting Socialism as a heart attack.
…wait for part two. that is the one that will be violent. coming to a city near you. my guess is late summer 2012
‘fracical’ to those easily offended.
I laughingly read somewhere that one of the protesters thanked an Egyptian for showing them the way in Tahrir Square.
Since Tahrir Square to date has been an utter failure with the Prez elections put off til 2013, that’s good news for anyone who isn’t an entitled commie moron.
Are you sure that you have conveyed Wittgenstein’s thought accurately about games? I’m no philosopher, but the obvious answer to the question
“Is there something that all games have in common?”
is
“Yes, they’re all called games (and nobody has any serious objection to that).”
Similarly we can say that all revolutions are called revolutions and that is what they all have in common.
The “occupiers” movement is certainly farcical, but it could be part of a tragedy, the end of this Republic under the push of internal enemies who are seriously working to destroy the power of America.
And that is no laughing matter.
As the Readers know, I always repeat that there are no “mistakes” in the policies pursued by this administration, if one thinks in terms of leninism (i.e., in terms of an actual war against America.)
The OWS movement is probably intended to create a climate of violence, fear, chaos, to be added to the regulations that destroy the economy, to the crazy financial moves that destroy the dollar, to the actions and omissions in national defense that destroy our military might (or deterrence.)
The subversives want to bring the whole society to the point of stress where a crack can happen, the comedians of the OWS are part of a dramatic aggression against America.
Even Lenin locked in the German train that brought him back to Russia could have appeared like “just a pawn” (of the German army, to create chaos in Russia), but the pawn was devilishly clever.
OK it is true that we can’t see any clever mind on the subversives’ side today…
but there is Soros…
When the City of New York, Rudy Giuliani mayor, manipulated property taxes at Dayton Seaside — three apartment buildings constructed by my family in the early 1960′s pursuant to a variant of Mitchell-Lama — and I was advised by a member of then NY assembly GOP Leader John Faso — that the buildings would be transferred in bankruptcy a year ahead of the fact — I was given a direct less that our form of governance was rule of, by and for the insiders. In the context of the Zuccotti encampment, an unnamed Wall Streeter was cited in The New York Times, October 15 as expressing the belief that the people who pay the politicians call the tunes. This Wall Streeter was quoted as declaring that Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, recipients of campaign contributions from the financial industry “‘need to understand who their constituency is.’” A letter to the Times, published October 18, stated that the remark gave all the explanation needed about Occupy Wall Street.
E.E. Schattschneider, in “The Semi-Sovereign People” pointed out that people can accept universal change; it is relative change that is problematic. Relative change is, I think, the aim of those who seek, quoting the opening line in Federalist No. 57, the “ambitious sacriice of the many, to the aggrandizement of the few.” That unnamed banker would seem to have no difficulty at all with the relative change that is a consequence of the perversion of the free enterprise system that permits the enjoyment of profits to the private sector AND protection of that portion of the private sector close to government offcials by means of the socialization of loss via funds obtained from the public sector.
The occasions when I agree with Times columnists are very few. But I cannot disagree with Joe Nocera that banks regard people as “marks to be taken advantage of.” But then, years ago, I realized that banks worship at the altar of the fictional banker of “It’s a Wonderful Life” — “Henry H. Potter.” It was when I was hit with a $35 penalty for a $12 overdraft that I decided to close my checking account. Today, not having a bank account has given me a serenity I did not enjoy those years when I could not be certain a demant to pay a bank pernalty would be in the mail.
A recent Times op-ed column piece was headlined: “Charging for Debit Cards Is Robbery.” What of 18.99% and higher interest rates op
n credit card balances?
I just do not understand the right wing sentiments with the wall street movement. The occupiers want smaller government, spending wars to be cut, a freer financial environment and more personaly freedom. I suspect the reason the tea party republicans are so upset is because the occupiers have lasted a month with five times the amount of participation while the tea party demos lasted only few days… jealous maybe?
What I’m seeing with the occupiers is;
1. They want the government to take over the banks (and give them free stuff).
2. They want total “debt forgiveness” for everybody- with the government making it all come out right.
3. They want to be paid for doing things that most people who work for a living consider ridiculous (think “teaching Critical Dance Theory at Rockefeller Center on Goldman-Sachs’ nickel”)- with the government making everybody else open their wallets to pay for it all.
4. And oh yes, they want government-funded ponies, too. (OK, that last is /s, but you get the idea. Or do you?)
Does any of this sound like they want lower taxes, and less government?
The only people they want paying less are themselves. And they want everybody else paying more, so the government can give them what they believe they are “owed”. Just for.. well, being them.
Which is sort of like the gal in San Francisco who was running an “airplane game” (pyramid racket)
http://people.ucsc.edu/~rosewood/writing/essays/pyramidgames.htm
who, when the police took an interest (no surprise there), literally could not understand why they had a problem with it.
Her take on the subject: “But, don’t we all deserve money- just for being?”
Not so I’ve noticed, Ma’am.
clear ether
eon
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/10/surviving_zuccotti_park_how_th.html
Its all happening without the help or THOUGHT of any you people!
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/10/surviving_zuccotti_park_how_th.html
This movement is happening, worldwide, without the help or even a THOUGHT to you negative, venomous, pathetic people.
Well, you’re partly right. It is happening with no discernible thought- on the part of those doing it.
Being indignant about not being kowtowed to requires very little thought. Toddlers do it all the time.
Of course, they generally get it out of their systems by age three, too.
cheers
eon
Thank you Mr. Ledeen, for a spot of hope in a crazy world. Actually, the right are the revolutionaries. And we will win by the truth, not by lies.
As it happens, I witnessed the May 1968 events in Paris. Freshly arrived from my province, my obsession at the time was how was I going to make myself useful, and earn a living in the capital. Suddenly, the smell of tear gas was carried by the winds, and I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. I remember marveling at people in the street, well fed and otherwise prosperous, determined to break everything, but not particularly inclined to build anything to replace the objects of their fury. Today’s OWS (and associated farce) reminds me of May’68 in Paris, definitely a farce, even if not entirely comical.
Talking about games, it all seemed to me like a game: “Let’s play revolution, OK?”, just like what we see today in the US. An authentic revolution is a rare thing (the French revolution quickly devolved into a bloody and tragic mess, and produced an emperor where there was merely a king before), and I doubt there will ever be another revolution as positively transformative as the American revolution. Fortunately, the OWS does not carry with it the potential for tragic developments likely to come out of today’s pseudo-revolutions of the Middle East.
Overthrow all institutions; place us in charge; give us all of your stuff. We will be harsh masters. We demand it! We will act out like spoiled children if you don’t. You have been warned.
Yes, that covers it nicely.
the problem with these protesters and their supporters is they have lost the capacity of logical thinking. take my sister, a supporter, she was ranting about some ceo making 16,000 dollars an hour while his employees made only 8. i remarked that i wouldn’t turn down 16,000 an hour and asked her if she would. she said she would not turn it down. so i asked her how she could demonize this person for doing something that she herself, given the opportunity, would do, this she had no answer for but it hasn’t stopped her from carrying on with these rants. how do you argue with stupidity?
The only right wing revolution WAS the American Revolution. Please STOP calling nazi’s and fascists right wing. Just because a bunch of liberals got together and decided to LIE about their ideology (gee – imagine that! liberals lying!) does not make their lie the truth. That goes for those religious nutcases in the middle east. Islam is nazism with religious window dressing. A totalitarian ideology.
#6 S. Weasel
Short form, it is not right wing. The abused “Left-Right” dichotomy is based on the seating arrangements in the Revolutionary French National Assembly. Those closer to the Ancien Regime and its social order tended to sit to the Speaker’s right. Those more inclined to “kill them all and let ‘Rationality’ sort them out” sat to the Speaker’s left. We won’t go into the concept of “the Mountain” in the seating charts or the changing names of the groups.
It would make more sense today to take the Left-Right continuum and bend the ends around to form a ring with the Marxist-Leninists and National Socialists/Fascists side by side.
They both believe in the absolute subordination of the individual to the collective. There is a direct philosophical line from Plato through Rousseau’s “General Will” leading to both.
They both believe in the necessity for a core group of especially enlightened leaders to run things. The Party/Dictatorship of the Proletariat for the Marxists, the National Socialist/Fascist Party for that group.
Both derive a justification for power from esoteric sources and processes that are beyond the common man; the Material Dialectic in the case of Marxists, the FuehrerPrinzip and racial/historical roots for National Socialism and Fascism.
Both require the unrestricted operation of coercive organs of the state to maintain order and to keep the people controlled with fear of random arrest, torture, and death. From the Marxist side, each state has its own: Cheka, OGPU,KGB,FSB, Public Security Bureau, North Korea’s State Security Bureau. National Socialists had the SD and Gestapo, Fascist Italy had the Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell’Antifascismo (OVRA).
Each gives major emphasis to the forceful indoctrination of youth, with mandatory membership in party organizations from the moment of entering school.
Each has racial elements, and hates Jews. The Marxists do it under the rubric of Zionism. The National Socialists and Fascists openly under Jew Hatred drawing on racist mythologies.
Both believe in state control of all property and the economy. The difference is to me akin to the arguments about numbers of angels who can dance on the head of a pin. The Marxists believe in direct state ownership. The National Socialists/Fascists believe in private persons having the ability to own property under constant threat of coercion by the organs of the State for the good of the State. This last is sometimes referred to as Corporatism, and is intrinsic to Fascism. It is no accident that the party known as Nazi [a German colloquial term akin to Brits calling Conservatives Tories] has as its full name “National Socialist German Workers Party”. Otto and Gregor Strasser were Nazi ideologists purged by Hitler, and their views of the evils of private property and capitalism would not be out of place at OWS.
Like the relatively minor doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants in the 30 Years War; the minor differences between how property is controlled, and whether the movement is international or nationally/racially based has triggered the most violent hostilities.
180 degrees around the ring from the Marxists and National Socialists; there probably would be anarchists, assuming that the variable being measured is autonomy and the intrinsic worth of the individual.
in re: class consciousness
OWS in all its various incarnations is not a spontaneous, grassroots movement. It is designed and controlled by the Democratic Party and its supporters. It is supported and endorsed by others of the collectivist sector of the ring; including explicitly by both the American Nazi Party and the CPUSA. As much as the mass of the participants, ranging from the usual suspects at all mass demonstrations [including those with a predilection for violence], to trust fund Marxists, to young skulls full of mush, to actual victims of what the current regime has done and is doing to the country who do not understand how; may believe, this is not the Revolution. This is the manipulation to create incidents that will build that “revolutionary class consciousness” for the next step. That mass believes that when Le jour de gloire est arrivé ! that they will be amongst the leadership of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and be holding the whip hand. In reality, they are expendable cannon fodder or will be destined for the Black Marias.
Those who organized this, and those who endorsed it, have their own sometimes conflicting agendas. And they are under systemic pressure. OWS has become background noise. Something more spectacular must and will be provoked to keep things going and perhaps create the ‘Kent State Moment’ being lusted after on MSNBC that will build that revolutionary consciousness.
They are also under time pressure on at least two fronts. First, General Winter is weighing in. It is hard to keep people in the streets, especially spoiled college students and teachers, in the face of wind-blown rain, slush, and snow. Secondly, the “Lord of the Flies” factor is kicking in. Today we are hearing of thefts within the OWS. One woman is appalled that the donation money for the day’s food [and her "$5.5K MacBook"] were stolen by someone in the Proletariat. As the normal run of thieves, junkies, and con artists endemic to big cities zero’s in on these easy marks; as the woman said, “people will stop coming down here”. The organizers are going to have to do something soon, within the next week or so. And it is probably going to be violent in an attempt to create martyrs for the revolutionary cause; to inspire the class consciousness they desire.
Subotai Bahadur
I’m just worried that these communists (and that’s what they are) in lower Manhattan will suddenly decide that it would be a good idea to trash lower Manhattan, just like those communist rioters did to London not too long ago. It seems that “wealth redistribution” is always a good a idea to people like that when you’re stealing the wealth from somebody else. One day Mayor Bloomberg is going to have to throw these bums out of that park, and I don’t think any of those kids know what’s in store for them. And if they think they’re going to get as deadly as those rioters in London, I wouldn’t try it. I’m sure those kids never, ever, had to fight a bunch of angry New York City cops. If they knew what was good for them, they’d just leave. They made their point, now leave. The endgame for this is not going to look good if they keep this up.
Thanks for this article. When a WSJ journalist documented the size of the inhabited park in NYC as only 1/2 acre, I computed the number of tents the space would hold, and concluded these campers are nowhere near the number deserving of the attention they’ve gotten, since a family reunion I attend each summer outnumbers the ‘Obamaville’ camp.
It’s difficult to find the headcounts in other cities. In Ft. Worth, the number was about two dozen including children in tow (no camp). The two complaints mentioned were ‘mad at bankers because her house was foreclosed’, and ‘against lobbying’. One article about Sacremento documented that only the two organizers showed up.
Any group blessed by the current regime in DC who openly display hatred toward other people’s religion or station in life is scary, but only because they’ve been blessed by powerful people. There will always be radicals, as the human race is diverse, but they should and usually are marginalized and not the focus of so much attention.
Let’s hope La Nina goes as predicted and cold weather descends soon, for the sake of the people who live in the neighborhood. Let’s also hope fraud doesn’t keep the radicals in Washington in power past 2012.
I don’t quite agree that the OWL crowd are revolutionaries. For the most part they are children playing to be revolutionaries. There is a difference.
If those people really wanted to riot in the streets I suspect they would all run screaming for their mommies and therapists if even a few of them were shot down. Real revolutionaries put their lives on the line. I suspect these people are terrified at the prospect of getting a hangnail.
What do all games have in common? Rules.
try asking the kid bouncing the ball off the wall about rules some time…
Obama mobs looking to get their Obama money.
What do all game have in common? They keep us from doing something useful! Leave the children to their game. Shortly, Mother Nature will be giving them a cold shower. For gamers reality bites!!!
I always sit up straighter when seeing you have posted something, Mr. Ledeen, and eagerly absorb what you have to say.
“Farce” is the right word, and it applies in painful spades to the “dudes” in the Obama nomenklatura. Those who don’t see the devolution going on are on “farce” drugs.
I remember when Bill Clinton had just been elected, and a top economic advisor on his team appeared on the old Wall Street Week program with Louis Rukeyser.
He looked and sounded like a recent PhD graduate—such a neophyte, in PERSON! Lou, and all his panelists, couldn’t manage to keep from rolling their eyes and otherwise using body language that expressed their true feelings about this guy.
Most sentient people now recognize that Obama was WAY under-prepared to be president, NOW, after almost three years of farcical dancing, and the “disease” seems to be spreading—hello, Occupy Wall Street.
What comes after tragedy and farce—the deluge?
Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote that he thought the “bottom” was basically reached, in the American political and economic “market”, after so much in-your-face “wealth spreading” manure by Obama and his enablers. Perhaps he’s right, and the Obama bubble is indeed popping, as we write.
If it’s true that BHO and his political machine are really going to adopt the Occupy Wall Street “movement” and run with is as a way to get reelected, well—
Just when one onion-skin like act is exposed, and we get closer to the “real” Obama, he goes and does something even more outrageous.
Bless Obama for showing us the way NOT to go!
The Things Liberals Get Away With!
No political party or philosophy has a monopoly on stupidity but with the stranglehold liberal Democrats have on the mainstream media most of the American public never gets to hear about ignorant, stupid, racist, and otherwise bigoted utterances and actions of Leftists and if and when they do become public knowledge, they are usually soon buried by the MSM and never resurrected again.
We heard fast and furiously when Ronald Reagan said trees caused more pollution than cars, when Dan Quayle misspelled “potatoes,” when George W. Bush committed his countless gaffes, when Sarah Palin swore she could see Russia from her porch, even when Jerry Falwell speculated that Tinky Winky must be gay because he was purple and triangulated.
We rarely if ever heard of Democrat Rep. John Conyers’ admission that he hadn’t a clue what the Obamacare bill contained before he voted for it, of Democrats Joe Biden’s or Nancy Pelosi’s numerous exercises in inserting feet into mouths, of liberal commentator Anderson Cooper slandering the Tea Party with a homosexual reference to “teabagging,” or of Democrat entertainer Sheryl Crow’s environmentalist advocacy of the one sheet of toilet paper rule.
One of President Barack Hussein Obama’s earliest gaffes, his claim to have visited 57 of America’s 58 states during the 2008 campaign, went unreported and unnoticed for almost two years before it was given grudging attention by the MSM after everyone else was aware of it thanks largely to Fox News and the conservative branch of the blogosphere.
Instances of vicious idiocy, the vile things America-hating, “freedom-loving,” diversity-plugging Leftists say, do, and get away with lately could fill volumes.
A select few:
. At Achieve Early College High School in McAllen, Texas, situated 10 miles from the Mexican border, students were required to stand and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance in a Spanish class.
To her enviably patriotic credit, 15 year old Brenda Brindson refused and said later, “I just thought it was out of hand, I didn’t think it was right. Reciting pledges to Mexico and being loyal to it has nothing to do with learning Spanish.”
Young Ms. Brindson deserves the Medal of Freedom. Repercussions for her Mexican native teacher? None.
. President Barack Hussein Obama, aptly characterized as “The Gaffe Machine” by Michelle Malkin, often ventures beyond mere mental and verbal lapses into the realm of downright venomous–and dumb–attacks.
Our perpetually-campaigning president on the non-campaign road again re-launched an ancient Dem canard when he said that the Republican jobs plan boiled down to “Dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance” as opposed to his plan to put people back to work.
Aside from our scholar-leader’s grammatical faux pas in saying “less” when “fewer” is the correct usage, that tired crowd-pleasing line presupposes Republicans revel in the idea of breathing foul air and drinking fetid water, want their kids and grandkids to do the same, and get off by depriving Americans of proper medical attention and unemployment lines.
Will the media rebuke Obama for his mud-slinging? That’s as likely as the MSM condemning Nancy Pelosi for saying “women can die on the floor” if House Republicans passed the Protect Life Act. (They did; no dead women on any floors, yet.)
. The full story of arch-Leftist actress Susan Sarandon may never be told although she recently displayed her extreme liberalism and bigoted anti-Catholic spleen in Long Island’s elitist Sag Harbor. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5741.)
The following is a quote from “Revolt of the Masses” by Jose Ortega y Gasset. Written in the 1930’s it rings true to me today.
“The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café; I doubt whether there have been other periods of history in which the multitude has come to govern more directly than in our own.
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: “to be different is to be indecent.” The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated.
It is illusory to imagine that the mass-man of to-day will be able to control, by himself, the process of civilization. I say process, and not progress. The simple process of preserving our present civilization is supremely complex, and demands incalculably subtle powers. Ill-fitted to direct it is this average man who has learned to use much of the machinery of civilization, but who is characterized by root-ignorance of the very principles of that civilization.”
A cursory reading would lead one to dismiss Ortega y Gasset as an elitist; however, he was a defender of liberal democracy:
Ortega argues, that “mass-man is a primitive who makes use of all the products of modern civilization, but does not appreciate nor respect the superior intelligence and effort by the individuals who are responsible for their development. Mass-man takes it for granted that civilization is “just there” and has no appreciation for the intricate processes that are required in order to maintain it. Mass-man is content in his own mediocrity, and feels it unnecessary to strive toward excellence. This mass-man who once submitted to his superiors, now feels compelled to involve himself in everything and impose his will on everyone. This is often done through violence and is done without regard for rationality or reason.
The 99% indeed!
Re: “There have been very successful right-wing revolutions (Italian fascism, for example, or the 1979 Iranian Revolution that gave us the frightfully reactionary Islamic Republic…”
Mr. Ledeen, you spoil an otherwise fine analysis by falling for the leftist distortion of history that holds fascism to be of the right, and not the left. Mussolini was a socialist before creating fascism, and brought those ideas with him into the new movement. Islamic theocracy is – like communism and fascism – a form of collectivism, not to mention a variant of fascist totalitarianism.
Iran’s theocracy differs from its Nazi and communist forebearers in that it is a religious collectivism, and not secular as its European forebearers were. The placeholders for religion in Nazism were paganism and racism, while in communism, class warfare subsituted for religion. Make no mistake, however, that all three movements are more alike than they are different. All demand complete control over the individual and what he thinks and says. All use/used an extensive police state apparatus to enforce the will of the political leader or leaders. All were/are exceeding repressive, intolerant of dissent, and hostile to new ideas and ways of doing things that threaten the status quo, and disrupt conformity. There are many other similarities.
it isn’t a leftist distortion to say fascism was a right-wing system. yes, there were leftist components, and yes, you can trace the fascist revolution back to the french revolution, but by the time the fascist state was fairly mature, it was certainly rightist. anti-communist, supportive of private property, etc. Mussolini was indeed a socialist. Later on, when he was the fascist dictator of Italy, he was an ex-socialist. heh.
Ray Turchansky touches on the perpetuatly aggrieved, http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Protests+mourn+life+that+gone+analyst/5548318/story.html
He earned his bones in 1980 when he said that the Edmonton Eskimos would win the Grey Cup (the Canadian equivalent of the Super Bowl) by 40 points. They won
by 38 points, and he was burned in effigy.
The Peter Pan syndrome has resulted in quite the blight.
Why do you feel the need to undermine a non-violent protest, by calling it a revolution. These two things are not the same, and it is intellectual dishonesty to equate them. OWS does not seek a new type of government, just a fix to the current dysfunctional financial system. I find it disgusting that you would portray a group exhibiting their first amendment rights as something so ugly. Do you hate the constitution?
Also, what is up with the claim of the movement being antisemitic. I was under a Sukkot at a protest. I guess it is so antisemitic, that the movement celebrates Jewish Holidays. I have yet to personally experience any antisemitism. I am not claiming that there are not some crazy people out there with ugly signs, but to claim those people represent the movement, is intellectual dishonesty.
Brian, i’m not trying to “do” anything to OWS except understand it. i didn’t say they were ugy, only confused. i’m glad you haven’t encountered any antisemites, and I hope that continues. But if you look at all the photos from Zomie on the main page, you’ll see that there are some. Indeed, one of the more outspoken of them was just fired in Los Angeles. So they’re in there. I don’t think, and didn’t say, that they represent “the movement.” But “the movement” explicitly sees itslef as a followon to the Egyptian insurrection, and I don’t think you will say that antisemites in Cairo don’t represent it…right?
Again I take issue with your calculated word choice. Insurrection: “A violent uprising against an authority or government” Where has there been any coordinated violence in OWS protests? You try to link the OWS with some sort of violent uprising, but to what end? If you want to understand the make up of the Movement, follow this link to a recent study. http://occupywallst.org/media/pdf/OWS-profile1-10-18-11-sent-v2-HRCG.pdf.
What seems more likely, than you wanting to understand it, is that you want to dismiss it or undermine its credibility.
Let me try and get your last argument straight. So the OWS creates a peaceful protest. One of the thousands of people says that they were inspired by the peaceful sit ins to over through a dictator, in Egypt. I guess in this case Obama would be Mubarak? So because one person said they were inspired by people walking into brutality to stand up for what they believed in, the entire OWS movement is antisemitic by association? I have participated in the movement, and I am Jewish. Does that mean I am antisemitic? My parents and Grand parents experienced antisemitism growing up in Indiana. I know what it looks like, and this movement is not antisemitic.
the bit about Egypt etc is on their website written by them. it has nothing to do with my desires. and your rhetoric about antisemitism is silly. nobody is calling you anything, and nobody has called the Occupiers a bunch of antisemites. But there are certainly plenty of them there.
One irritating aspect of “Occupy” is that they expect me to follow them. What if I have my own ideas? What if I have my own agenda? What if I have my own gripes that THEY are ignoring? Besides, who are they to tell me what to think? Shouldn’t I have my say?
One of the reasons why rural areas don’t tend to be leftist has nothing to do with any warm feelings toward “Big Biz”. Whenever a rural area has a Populist Party, Non Partisan League, or Farmer-Labor movement, socialists – often out of New York – descend on the place and attempt to take over the movement, telling people what they are really supposed to think. Outsiders who did nothing to help “The Cause” come in to reap all of the rewards for themselves.
So, those who go out on a limb for liberal causes at the local level now find themselves expected to support “Occupy”. How is this different from a local Communist being expected to support the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939? Too many leftists expect blind obedience and nothing else. In my experience, while I often disagree with modern conservatism, I have noticed that conservatives have generally been more willing to listen to my concerns and ideas than leftists have been.
Whatever….still the rich have to pay more taxes, and 30 percent of the economy cannot be finance and unproductive bs needing massive bailouts, you can call us marxists, leftists, bla bla whatever. We want basic fairness and accountability and won’t go away.