I still remember my own first hand look at anarchists in action 20-odd years ago. The anarchists had gathered to protest the Vincennes incident when an American ship had inadvertently shot down an Iranian commercial jet, mistaking it for an Iranian warplane. The anarchists, of course, insisted that the Vincennes had deliberately shot down the Iranian airliner because the military was a bunch of psycopathic cold blooded murderers….

A small group marched down the side street behind the building where I worked at lunch time and I just happened to be out running an errand. One small guy was out in front a bit and, at a moment that he seemed to judge appropriate, he turned and looked at the guy in the middle of the front row for permission to do something that had clearly been planned in advance. As soon as he got the signal he wanted, the little guy started yelling and chanting and swinging his sign around, then jumped onto a car parked at a meter and started jumping up and down on it. The police saw him and started toward him and he tore off in the opposite direction. I don’t know if they caught up with him because the protester and the cop were soon out of sight. But I was still there a few minutes later when the car-owner came back and found his roof trashed by the protester. He was far enough away that I couldn’t hear him but his body language made it clear he was upset, as any reasonable person would be. I thought it was ironic that he was black since I’m sure the anarchists, if asked, would insist on their solidarity with the poor oppressed blacks, at least in general.

That’s all I needed to see of the Anarchist to dismiss them. Their protest made no sense since the Vincennes had surely not deliberately shot down that airliner and the damage done to that guy’s car served no one except their own need for attention.

I expect no better from the OWS types.