Saturday, February 4, 2017

A Muscular Minority

     In any civilized society, those who are willing to use violence to gain what they seek will be a minority. Those who are eager to do so will be fewer still. But as I wrote a few days ago, when violence and intimidation fail to evoke an adequate – i.e., adequately violent and intimidating – response, we should expect the ranks of the willing to swell. However, the pressure on those who nominally have the job of responding will grow greater as well.

     It appears from recent events that that’s exactly what’s happening:

     Those are only samples from the most recent events, of course. For some years now the trend among left-wing activists has been to disrupt – to render impossible, if they can – any gathering of persons they regard as enemies. They’re distressingly good at it, and successful more often than not.

     But the counterpressures are building. Conservatives expect the police to act: to suppress disturbances, maintain public peace, and protect the rights of the innocent. That hasn’t been the case in most of the recent leftist disruptions. If the police continue to hang back, there are three possible outcomes:

  • The Left will succeed in its totalitarian-fascist drive to overturn our civil order;
  • When the police finally respond, it will be indiscriminate and bloody;
  • Badgeless citizens will take matters into their own hands.

     None of those developments would be welcomed by any man of good will. Yet there are no other possibilities.

     We speak of the police as the forces of order. Sometimes they’re not, particularly when they confer de facto protection on thugs for any reason. De facto protection is what the leftist rioters have been getting: the police have stood by – sometimes under orders from civilian authorities – and decent citizens have been inhibited from action. Consequently, the rioters have...run riot. Brutalizations and destruction of property have been widespread.

     Is it just too obvious to say that this will not end well?


     Muscular minorities have taken power in other lands by the use of exactly the same tactics as the Left is using today. The best known case is, of course, the German Third Reich. The Nazis were never a majority; indeed, that was no part of their intentions. But they were classically “activist” in the streets of the Weimar Republic, and neither the police nor private Germans were willing to take up cudgels in defense of the civil order. The Brownshirts will triumph if the rest of society sits idle.

     The Left believes its field forces and popular support are sufficient to carry the day. They make no pretense about what they want: the nullification of the November election and the installation of their preference in the Oval Office. Present trends continuing, it’s difficult to be confident that they’ll fail.

     There must be a response, and the sooner the better.

     Americans have been led to believe that all the “important stuff” happens in Washington D.C. That’s not the case, especially today. A “demonstration” such as those that have disrupted cities and universities nationwide – riots, really – is a local affair, to which a local response is required. It’s time for riot-riven cities, communities, and universities to press local executives to do their jobs. It must be made clear to them that those jobs will be peremptorily taken from them should they elect to remain sitting with folded hands.

     Do you know your mayor’s, county executive’s, and governor’s email addresses, Gentle Reader? If not, why not?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Update to comment posted earlier on Bayourenaissanceman:
Issues:
1. Anti-fascists are actually the embodiment of fascists; left wing and violent. We should call them what they are.
2. The violent left are getting plenty of practice engaging in unopposed violence which achieves their ends. What is our plan?
3. There have been no effective counter-actions by law enforcement or by self-proclaimed patriot groups. What is our plan?
4. Yes this is primarily happening in the major cities controlled by the left, so police likely restrained, but it will happen in your neighborhood at some point. What is our plan?
5. They own the media narrative right now. They may be a minority but the press portrayal makes them seem much bigger - how do we contain/mitigate/counter the fear which that engenders?

Bracken is correct; we on the right are stymied by our own morals, responsibilities to our families and, to a significant extent, a failure to understand how serious are these rioters and their less kinetic supporters and backers. Another commentator (Heartiste?) pointed out that while it may be easy for them to demo as many don't have jobs/responsibilities, more significantly those that do demo/riot tend to live in urban areas where it's easy to turn out with a large number of fellow travelers. For the suburbanites, it's an hour car-trip downtown to risk livelihood getting involved with something with no immediate direct impact on them.

Even had Trump won popular vote or a more moderate Republican beaten Clinton, do you think these riots and demos would not also be happening? How do we legally engage? The only leverage is threatening to vote (at some future date) against politicians who refuse to order the police to take effective action, or threaten to boycott the services of those who assist the demo/rioters (bus companies, caterers...). Not much compared to violence and arson.....
I'm angry but hamstrung.
Differ

robins111 said...

I am amazed at how the events in the US are essentially a carbon copy of the 1936 Spain, the lefties were running crazy there until the right finally had enough and revolted. The consequences of the set-to was about 500,000 dead in a population of about 30 million.

Tim Turner said...

It's also distressing to note that some accounts of the Twitter and Facebook videos linked to in the articles to which Fran links have been "terminated."

Fran and others have written about all this before. But Trump's election sure seems to have brought the Left's true colors to the fore.

Unknown said...

Those that do not study history are doomed to repeat it. And those that do and have studied history, are going to be caught up in the riots caused by those that haven't

Pascal said...

"the police continue to hang back."

1917 thugs in white hoods & 2017 thugs in ninja masks, Democrat controlled city halls held back police. They call themselves Progressives.

Jimmy the Saint said...

"Crazy" Joe Gallo put it best: if you massively overreact and do so unpredictably, very soon everyone learns to leave you alone.

Anonymous said...

I know or can get all those emails. So what? Those people, at best, ignore me. At worst I bring the eye of Sauron upon me. I bide my time and resist as appropriate at this time. However, a man pushed too far will fight back. However, when he does it ought to be in a cold calculating manner and in a way that is hard to trace. Michael Corleone was the master.