Gathering Storms And Threats to Liberty
Antifa joining the political Resistance, Internet access denial at the gateway level, and Social Justice restrictions on Free Speech
We’re living in a very dangerous time.
Several things are coming together that pose a serious threat to the liberty of anyone who is right-of-center.
While there are many factors at work, I’ve been focused in recent days on three: (1) Antifa becoming a part of the anti-Trump Resistance; (2) politically-motivated denial of access to the internet at the gatekeeper level; and (3) attempts to weaken free speech protections in the name of social justice.
1. Antifa and The Resistance are getting ready to fight fight.
The neo-Nazi / White Supremacist march in Charlottesville and the killing of Heather Heyer have provided the excuse to expand a violent movement that existed long prior to Trump’s election victory.
Recall that anti-Trump riots erupted during the campaign, with Chicago being the most notorious. There have been many other physical attacks by “Black Bloc” anarchists and Marxists. Those Black Bloc street thugs have rebranded as Antifa, and they are moving from the extreme fringe to the street muscle for the anti-Trump Resistance.
A.P. Dillon at American Lens provides a good summary of the A No White-Wash Look at Black Bloc:
Modern Black Bloc ideology is based on a blending of Anarchism and Marxist-Leninist theories. Black Bloc, being rooted in a hybrid of anarchism and Marxist-Leninist , believe that all government is slavery. Freedom can only be achieved through anarchy.
The Marxist portion seems to draw from what was known as Autonomism or Autonomist Marxism. Autonomism include anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian themes and class struggle is its core.
Autonomist Marxists believe that the working class can go around unions, political parties and state entities to effect change. This form of Marxism employs tactics like sabotage in the workplace, property damage and encouraging skipping work as methods to ‘fight capitalism’. This type of Marxism, like all other forms of Marxism, failed not long after it sprang up in Italy and France during the 1960’s.
According to a document called the Black Bloc Papers, written by anarchists David Van Deusen and Xavier Massot, Black Bloc believes its purpose is to be a tool through which any given protest is ‘escalated to the next level’.
By ‘next level’, Black Bloc believes that by employing violent tactics such as assault, arson and destroying property, it is the government or state that will end up being exposed as the real perpetrator of violence.
(language warning)
Dillon describes Black Bloc tactics:
Black Bloc is not a randomly occurring phenomenon. They are organized and trained in a military style fashion.
Every event where Black Bloc has shown up was coordinated and participants all belonged to a sort of squad they refer to as an “Affinity Group”. Each Affinity Group has a responsibility and position to cover during the protest and ensuing riot.
They employ a platoon-like hierarchy structure that includes what is referred to a “general tactical facilitation core” or g-tacs for short. The g-tacs are the Black Bloc members in charge on the ground of their particular Affinity Group.
The g-tacs set themselves up near the perimeter of the action with one or two members of their Affinity Group close by for support.Affinity groups are made up individuals with set directives and roles, such a communications, medical aid and of course, those concentrating on property damage, vandalism and engaging law enforcement.
In this way, the g-tacs is much like a general sitting on the edge of the battlefield directing attacks, conducting reconnaissance and relaying intel to their troops.
The various Affinity Groups are given assignments and positions to cover. Often several separate Affinity Groups will be positioned together in a “cluster.”
Black Bloc participants train on their own and in groups.
In February 2017, The L.A. Times profiled the connection between Black Bloc and the anti-Trump Resistance, Inside the black bloc militant protest movement as it rises up against Trump:
The movement first made its presence felt in California more than two decades ago, then built its forces amid the protests against the Iraq war.
Out of the sea of largely peaceful antiwar demonstrators marching in San Francisco’s Financial District in 2003, a more militant subgroup emerged. Its members wore black masks, black jackets, black hoods and helmets. They smashed windows and looted military recruitment offices.
Since then, the so-called black bloc protesters have become a force in the Bay Area and beyond. They have been blamed for violence during protests in Oakland over corporate power and police abuse, notably the case of Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man who was killed by BART police in 2009.
Scorned by critics on both the left and right and hunted by police, the black bloc is bringing its radical tactics to the massive protest movement sparked by the presidency of Donald Trump.
The masked militants went fist to fist with neo-Nazis at the state Capitol in June, where five of their allies were stabbed. Black bloc tactics also dogged Trump’s inaugural ceremonies in Washington, leaving broken windows, vandalized banks and a torched limo.
And early this month on the UC Berkeley campus, black bloc militants tore down police barricades, broke windows, started a fire and assaulted Trump supporters.
The NY Times reports, ‘Antifa’ Grows as Left-Wing Faction Set to, Literally, Fight the Far Right (emphasis added):
The term, a contraction of the word “anti-fascist,” describes the loose affiliation of radical activists who have surfaced in recent months at events around the country and have openly scuffled with white supremacists, right-wing extremists and, in some cases, ordinary supporters of President Trump. Energized in part by Mr. Trump’s election, they have sparred with their conservative opponents at political rallies and college campus speaking engagements, arguing that one crucial way to combat the far right is to confront its supporters on the streets.
Unlike most of the counterdemonstrators in Charlottesville and elsewhere, members of antifa have shown no qualms about using their fists, sticks or canisters of pepper spray to meet an array of right-wing antagonists whom they call a fascist threat to American democracy. As explained this week by a dozen adherents of the movement, the ascendant new right in the country requires a physical response.
“People are starting to understand that neo-Nazis don’t care if you’re quiet, you’re peaceful,” said Emily Rose Nauert, a 20-year-old antifa member who became a symbol of the movement in April when a white nationalist leader punched her in the face during a melee near the University of California, Berkeley.
“You need violence in order to protect nonviolence,” Ms. Nauert added. “That’s what’s very obviously necessary right now. It’s full-on war, basically.”
As the times further reports, Antifa is becoming the muscle for other movements:
Driven by a range of political passions — including anticapitalism, environmentalism, and gay and indigenous rights — the diverse collection of anarchists, communists and socialists has found common cause in opposing right-wing extremists and white supremacists. In the fight against the far right, antifa has allied itself at times with local clergy, members of the Black Lives Matter movement and grass-roots social-justice activists. It has also supported niche groups like Black Bloc fighters, who scrapped with right-wing forces in Berkeley this year, and By Any Means Necessary, a coalition formed more than two decades ago to protest California’s ban on affirmative action for universities.
This is consistent with what I wrote about yesterday, how anti-Israel pro-BDS professors are building a nationwide campus network, Anti-Israel pro-BDS profs organizing Antifa campus network
We have seen what Antifa is capable of in Berkeley, Seattle, Portland and elsewhere.
The teaming of the BDS and Antifa movements is the single most dangerous development I have witnessed in the many years I have been covering campus BDS. Antifa will give BDS even more muscle to intimidate and threaten those who oppose the BDS agenda.
That Antifa will spread its violence is shown by what happened in Seattle the same weekend as Charlottesville. Michael Kochin writes:
…if you want to know what really happened in Charlottesville on Saturday, you need to look at what happened in Seattle on Sunday.
In Seattle, a mainstream pro-Trump group called Patriot Prayer held a small rally downtown. Their organizer, Joey Gibson, addressed his crowd in these words, as reported by David Kroman and Lily Fowler:
“We have to find a way to come together, stop the fighting, stop the yelling,” Gibson said, denouncing the violence in Charlottesville. “There’s good and bad people on the right. There’s good and bad people on the left. We need to get the good people together.” Mr. Gibson the offered his mike to whoever wanted to speak: some echoed his message, other opposed it.
In Seattle, as in Charlottesville, the Left was no mood for Sunday school. The counterdemonstrators repeatedly clashed with police, trying to force their way through the police line in order to attack the pro-Trump demonstrators.
From extreme fringe to mainstream Resistance heros, Black Bloc now rebranded as Antifa, will be a presence on the political left in cities and on campuses.
And they are preparing to fight fight, not just politically fight.
2. Internet Freedom At Risk at Gatekeeper Level
Attempts to induce corporations to silence conservatives are nothing new. We have seen years of pressure tactics from groups such as Media Matter to shut down voices such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity by pressuring and harassing advertisers. Campaigns are currently underway to force advertisers away from websites such as Breitbart and Gateway Pundit.
As discussed in many posts, this tactic can be effective when highly organized because major corporations are scared to death of bad publicity in general, but particularly bad publicity that could find it accused of supporting racism or other -isms. So the easy decision is to drop the advertising, rather than face protesters outside headquarters and in social media.
That tactic now has gone to a completely different level with attempts to intimidate internet hosting companies and companies that provide internet infrastructure to cut off access to the internet. So far, the effort has been focused on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. People might not care that The Daily Stormer is taken down, but the history of leftist tactics show that the target universe will expand dramatically and it will not be long before efforts are directed, as they are now for advertisers, at mainstream conservative and right-of-center websites.
The Wall Street Journal reports, Tech Firms Break From Hands-Off Approach With Bans on White Supremacists l
Technology companies’ recent moves to crack down on white supremacists thrust them into unusual territory for corporations that often take a more hands-off approach to who uses their services and how.
In the wake of weekend violence at a white supremacists rally in Charlottesville, Va.,Alphabet Inc.’s Google and GoDaddy Inc. stopped providing hosting support for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site that the companies said violated their terms of service. Airbnb Inc. banned participants in the rally from staying in rentals booked through its site….
Following the violence in Virginia, domain registrars—which act as intermediaries by making sure that a website’s domain name is linked to the correct IP address—have also become arbiters of free speech. If a registrar pulls service from a site, the site will appear offline to the public until it finds another registration provider.
“The number of net intermediaries acting as gatekeepers has increased,” since GoDaddy booted Daily Stormer, said Daphne Keller, who studies platforms’ legal responsibilities at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. “Suddenly the domain registrars are sitting in judgment on content and speech,” joining the usual players around free speech such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Domain registrar GoDaddy said that, while it doesn’t usually take actions on complaints that would “constitute censorship of content,” it decided that an article Daily Stormer posted ridiculing Ms. Heyer crossed the line “to promoting, encouraging, or otherwise engaging in violence against any person.” On Sunday, it gave Daily Stormer 24 hours to find a new registrar.
Daily Stormer then registered on Google. Hours later, Google canceled Daily Stormer’s website-hosting registration, saying the site violated Google’s policies against inciting violence.
Daily Stormer, whose site was inaccessible Tuesday, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Bad facts make bad law, and bad facts also make dangerous internet policy. No one wants to defend The Daily Stormer substantively, but the notion that domain registrars would shut down the ability of a website to exist is new territory.
It’s significant that part of the effort against GoDaddy were led by the group Sleeping Giants, the same group targeting advertisers at Breitbart and other websites:
The Southern Poverty Law Center is using its highly politicized hate lists to encourage pressure on internet providers, Cloudflare Optimizing Content Delivery For At Least 48 Hate Sites Across Europe:
Cloudflare, the Internet security giant that specializes in content delivery and optimization has an ambitious goal: to help “power and protect the entire Internet.”
That goal includes optimizing the content of at least 48 hate websites dedicated to recruiting, organizing and spreading extremist ideologies.
Hate group websites happily utilize Cloudflare’s services. The company is best known for offering protection from DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, a frequent — and illegal — tactic used against racist websites by vigilantes seeking to staunch their noxious messaging.
It is no coincidence that Cloudfare decided to cut off The Daily Stormer in a move Cloudfare’s own CEO recognized posed a danger to internet freedom, as ArsTechnica reports:
Until recently, CloudFlare prided itself on its unwavering commitment to free speech. Even when he was criticized for providing service to alleged terrorist groups in 2013, CEO Matthew Prince stood firm, insisting that “a website is speech. It is not a bomb.”
So a lot of people were surprised on Wednesday when the company abruptly changed its tune and canceled the account of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer. The action seemed to fly in the face of everything CloudFlare claimed to believe as recently as May.
And in an internal company e-mail obtained by Gizmodo, Prince acknowledged that the decision was exactly as arbitrary as it seemed.
“My rationale for making this decision was simple: the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes and I’d had enough,” Prince wrote. “Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision.”
Prince wrote that he “woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company.”
In the same e-mail, Prince argued that it is “dangerous” for that kind of power to be concentrated in any one person’s hands.
“It’s important that what we did today not set a precedent,” Prince added. “The right answer is for us to be consistently content neutral.”
But, as the SPLC list shows, it will set a precedent. Companies like Cloudfare and others who provide internet infrastrucure will come under increasing pressure, and it won’t be limited to the Storm Fronts of the world. We know from history that the “hate” label is broadly applied for political purposes, and will be used only against right-of-center websites.
Being cut off from domain registrars and other aspects of the internet backbone is something we expect from totalitarian governments. Now that power is in the control of almost-uniformly left-wing corporate managers.
3. Scaling Back Free Speech Protections In The Name of Social Justice
As part of the reaction to Charlottesville, the NY Times ran a chilling Op-Ed by K-Sue Park, a housing attorney and the Critical Race Studies fellow at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.
The Op-Ed is chilling because it represents a significant strain in the legal community and on campuses, that freedom of speech needs to be viewed in a social justice narrative, The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech:
The American Civil Liberties Union has a long history of defending the First Amendment rights of groups on both the far left and the far right. This commitment led the organization to successfully sue the city of Charlottesville, Va., last week on behalf of a white supremacist rally organizer. The rally ended with a Nazi sympathizer plowing his car into a crowd, killing a counterprotester and injuring many.
After the A.C.L.U. was excoriated for its stance, it responded that “preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality.” Of course that’s true. The hope is that by successfully defending hate groups, its legal victories will fortify free-speech rights across the board: A rising tide lifts all boats, as it goes.
While admirable in theory, this approach implies that the country is on a level playing field, that at some point it overcame its history of racial discrimination to achieve a real democracy, the cornerstone of which is freedom of expression.
I volunteered with the A.C.L.U. as a law student in 2011, and I respect much of its work. But it should rethink how it understands free speech. By insisting on a narrow reading of the First Amendment, the organization provides free legal support to hate-based causes. More troubling, the legal gains on which the A.C.L.U. rests its colorblind logic have never secured real freedom or even safety for all.
For marginalized communities, the power of expression is impoverished for reasons that have little to do with the First Amendment. Numerous other factors in the public sphere chill their voices but amplify others….
The A.C.L.U. needs a more contextual, creative advocacy when it comes to how it defends the freedom of speech. The group should imagine a holistic picture of how speech rights are under attack right now, not focus on only First Amendment case law. It must research how new threats to speech are connected to one another and to right-wing power. Acknowledging how criminal laws, voting laws, immigration laws, education laws and laws governing corporations can also curb expression would help it develop better policy positions.
Sometimes standing on the wrong side of history in defense of a cause you think is right is still just standing on the wrong side of history.
Park’s view is standard critical race theory narrative, that’s what makes it so chilling. I’ve heard similar arguments many times on campuses.
This urge to curtail First Amendment free speech rights interacts with the Antifa violence against speakers. The threat of disruption from protesters is one of the reasons being given to curtail unpopular speech, as Buzzfeed reports:
Some advocates fear Charlottesville may be a tipping point, a moment at which the calculus over campus speech — and public support for it — shifts entirely, just before the start of a new school year.
This will be the most contentious and difficult year yet on college campuses, said Will Creeley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the country’s most prominent campus free-speech advocacy group.
“We’re deeply depressed and anxious over what the school year will hold,” Creeley said. “The country is deeply polarized, we have disgusting, reprehensible outbreaks of violence on our televisions, and now we have an actual loss of life. I’m girding for a long, long fight.”
There’s no bigger hotbed of the free-speech battle than campuses — especially public universities like UVA, which are, for the most part, legally bound to offer space to those who ask for it….
In quick succession, three public colleges — Michigan State, Texas A&M, and the University of Florida — this week blocked groups from holding events on their campuses featuring white nationalist leader Richard Spencer.
That could spell the start of a vicious cycle: The further that public colleges are pushed to turn away and block white supremacists, the more they will push white supremacists to the forefront of the free-speech debate….
As public colleges move rapidly to block or cancel white nationalist events, Creeley said he fears a slippery slope — one in which safety is used as a pretext for denying First Amendment rights.
“We’re put in a position where safety requires shutting down free speech,” Creeley said. “If you accept that rationale once, you’ve lost.”
The academic foundation for restricting free speech is in place, and the tactic of threatening violence provides an excuse.
Conclusion – It’s Different This Time
There certainly are other political issues that are contributing to this gathering storm, but that’s politics.
After 10 months of Resistance to Trump since Election Night, there has been an unyielding attempt to paralyze the administration. The Trump administration’s disorganization and Trump’s mercurial personality certainly have contributed to this situation. But that’s politics.
The factors I raise above are beyond politics. They are about our liberty — on the street exercising our free speech rights, accessing the internet to communicate our ideas, and preserving the protections of the First Amendment and free speech.
It’s a dangerous time.
[Featured Image: Attack on Student Center protesting Milo Yiannopoulos, Berkeley]
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Comments
Professor — superb synopsis. Truly well done.
We are, literally, on the knife-edge of a civil war – an all-out, blood-in-the-streets shooting war.
It’s hard to believe one man – George Soros – can do so much damage to so many people for relatively little money. But then, his hero Hitler worked on a budget, too.
When this hits the fan, it’d be nice if Soros was among the first casualties.
Maybe if Grandma Sessions would get off her tuffet and start running an aggressive Justice Department, we could see some well deserved RICO indictments.
He is. Asset forfeiture and the drug war.
Those willing to collaborate with Soros for money would probably collaborate for free. Progressivism appeals to a person’s lesser noble instincts. Under progressivism, a bully is sanctioned by society, not reprimanded.
PERHAPS it’s more than just Soros? Conveniently, Obama is elsewhere during this little vicious revolt – but he is an expert at ‘community’ organizing. Given 8+ years to build any type of movement he wanted, this could very well be his stepchild. Blaming Soros just seems a little over-simplistic, IMO.
While His Imperial Executiveness, Emperor Barak the Nonpareil, certainly assisted in the growth of the Black Block/Antifa bunch (and likely birthed the BLM thugs), the violent group has existed in California for about twenty years, going back to the Iraq war demonstrations. It has grown, and gotten more violent, in the recent past – and now sees itself as being the “muscle” of the anti-Trump “resistance” (what a denigration of those who served in resistance groups during WW II). If this violence (on both sides, it takes two to Tango or fight) and urge to curtail citizen’s liberty isn’t changed soon, I fear for the country.
Nah, these lefties are wannabe, crudely-organized street hoodlums, leaving clumsy and abundant evidentiary trails in their wakes. They are perfect targets for the FBI and the Justice Department, just like when the Feds fought the Mob. That assumes someone can butt-kick those two formerly august organizations out of their present Lazy Boys of indifference, corruption and incompetence. Grandma Sessions, your office is calling!
Strongly agree with both previous comments.
Also, I attempted multiple times to post a link to this article on Facebook. The response: “URL Not Found We had trouble using the URL you provided. Please try again later.”
Call me paranoid, but I wonder whether Facebook isn’t censoring this.
It may be time to walk away from the data miners.
At 9:27 pm Eastern, I posted the link on Facebook successfully after copying and pasting the URL from my browser’s address bar.
I still can’t.
The people composing these anarchist groups have been around for years. They did not suddenly spring fully developed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. What has changed is that these groups have now been drafted to be foot soldiers in the war against nationalism and nationalists in America. They are the storm troopers for the Globalist Establishment. And, they seem to be out of control.
The tech culture, including the large internet companies, are all part and parcel of the Globalist establishment. They have to be in order to continue growing and, thereby, reaping the rewards of their positions. So, they are more than happy to assist in curtailing the freedoms of the average American citizen.
Social justice has become simply another money making industry, in this country. It has little to do with JUSTICE and is all about JUST US. It exists solely for the benefit of the limited class of people it represents and its leadership.
But, the real problem here is that the Global Establishment leadership, many, if not most, of whom do not reside within the United States, have lost, or are rapidly losing, control of their various ideological attack dogs. The anarchists, social warriors, the media and even the Democrat party are all out of control. What started as a push back against the rise of vulgar populism, which culminated in the election of Donald Trump, is now an out-of-control anarchist riot. The Establishment will attempt to put the stopper back into the bottle by abridging basic rights and imposing draconian controls on people. But, this will only result in sparking an open rebellion by the vulgar, populist middle class.
The middle class, which comprises over half of the population of this country, has been telling the political and social leadership of this country, for many years, that it is fed up with the situation and wants it changed. No one listened. So, this same group sent an unmistakable message by electing Donald Trump. The response of the Establishment, and the politicians and other leaders whom it controls, was to attempt to destroy Trump’s Presidency. As that was not working very well, the Establishment has slipped the leashes on its attack dogs, the ideological fringe left, including the media. If the Establishment leadership does not reestablish control over these rogue actors, the middle class will eventually do so, itself. And, that would be very bad for this country, in the short term. Civil war is never pretty.
Of course, the biggest problem is that the Globalist Establishment is actually actively working to destroy the USA, as a viable society. If this is the case, then nothing will stop the reaction of the middle class.
And, the reaction may not stop at the borders of the US, either. These are very dangerous time in which we live.
It’s never been this bad. Our schools have never been so corrupted, nor our media, and nor has the republican party been occupied by such despicable, corrupt cowards.
Keep your powder dry.
I don’t see how someone can thumbs down your comment. Maybe it was a reaction to keeping one’s powder dry.
Probably. I wonder how they would react to my repeated admonition to people to “buy more ammo”…
Rick,
Probably just one of the trolls.
Some compare this to the SA Brownshirts during the Weimar Republic.
However I read in another blog:
http://gunfreezone.net/index.php/2017/08/18/welcome-to-france/
where the opinion is that this will be more like the French Revolution with the Globalists being the Jacobins and ANTIFA and other thug groups being the Sans-culottes.
Of course history doesn’t repeat itself, but as it is said to often “rhyme”, we may get a mix of both in the near future.
When I think of William Jacobson I think of a great, levelheaded thinker, against hysterics. This is an alarming post and I don’t think it’s misguided.
The left is at odds with America. We are definitely in a civil war that fortunately has not involved a lot of firepower. I hope it never does and we can beat the left politically and just be done with this nonsense. I don’t know if that can happen. They seriously hate all that has made this country good and strong.
America is not populated by tyrants. But a small number of them are trying to make things seem like they aren’t, while also changing cultural rules to make it harder to resist them. If they are successful with that, next comes a change in laws. Then America is done. I never thought I’d live to see our nation in an Orwell story. Yet here we are.
Don’t know if this will end in a mess or not. But we need to acknowledge some cold hard facts like Prof. Jacobson has done here.
If we are not honest, we have no chance.
“America is not populated by tyrants.”
Not in the traditional sense. But we do have a large number of busy-body progressives who are happy to moralize about what is wrong with your life and what you need to do to become a better person, and how they will do this to you for your own good.
C.S. Lewis nailed it with this quote.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
I’m terrified.
JoAnne,
It will be more terrifying living under the thumb of the fascist left than it will be to be in a shooting war with them.
Agreed. I’m just so afraid for my kids and grandkids. They all live in California.
Grandson #2 and I, here in California, spent the day at the range.
This is outright intimidation which, when combined with recalcitrant police protection, will be the death knell of the public square.
If speakers should arm themselves for defensive purposes, it will be deemed by the Antifa and the media to be further provocation leading to even more violence.
It doesn’t help when Republicans such as McConnell, Ryan, Rubio and Corker lend support to the Silencers.
The Left: Our fascists are different. They’re good fascists. And anybody who disagrees is a Nazi who deserves being beaten up.
We’ll see how the media reacts when their new heroes the Antifa ramp up the mayhem in the coming months.
More people will probably die, but heck, just blame it on President Ttump…
Is there some doubt as to how the media will react?
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-lawyer-idUSKCN1AY26N
“(Reuters) – The White House lawyer brought in to deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election said he believed the focus of the probe was “narrow” and the aspects related to President Donald Trump should be completed before the end of the year.
The lawyer, Ty Cobb, who joined the White House staff on July 31, made the comments in interviews with Reuters on Tuesday and Wednesday…”
Ty Cobb?1! Are you f***ing sh**ing me?
You must be from the South.
“Ty Cobb?1! Are you f***ing sh**ing me?”
What does that even mean?
I have located to southern Texas, and Texans don’t seem to consider themselves as Southerners. No one I have come across has used that expression. “All y’all” yes. What you wrote, no.
Absent the F word, the expression “You’ve got to be/Are you shi##ing me!/?” has been common in much of the rest of Texas for a long, long time. Not so common when I was a child, but I’m in my 70s and people didn’t cuss so much then.
The delicious irony in all this is that that malignant moron obama loaded up the federal government with bullets and automatic weapons – ostensibly to be used by ‘president hillary clinton’ – to keep the non-fascist left in line when the time came.
The malignant moron also chose clinton to ensure his legacy.
Those bullets and automatic weapons are in the hands of President Trump.
Best election ever.
And fastest civil war ever – when it comes.
Yes, what *did* happen to all those bullets Obama bought?
Not to worry. We will remain within the law and maintain civility. Our insurrection will be stay legal, no matter what the cost.
The Left just wants more living space. We will give them the white nationalists, the alt-right and the 2nd Amendment. And a strongly worded memo.
When they come for you in the middle of the night, take comfort in the fact that you lost gracefully with your honor intact.
TFR: I wonder if Trump is really what many think he is? Every blunder or mis-step is excused away by many as his “playing chess” or some other excuse.
At the end of the day he’s a Manhattan Democrat with long term friendships with the Clintons. Where it all goes is beyond my knowledge or understanding.
Full disclosure: I voted for him but it was with foreboding.
If these were earlier times, a major internal slugfest would be doable, but in a global environment we have true enemies abroad not only betting on this but abetting this. This a likely 360 degree engagement. We have the same mentality as in the 60’s where “anything is better than we have right now” protesters and for the older ones are in power in universities, in government, in media or with financial influence. Stupid shallow people who whine about a glass 7/8th full have no idea that the Pax Britanica/Pax Americana has kept the world a lot better off. “Last Best Hope”? Yes.. for real liberty and real freedom. If we lose… there will be a twilight of shared misery for a long time.
We have a battle for the heart, soul and mind of people… that is the battle we can not lose. Our history… bad and good is being whitewashed.. as Orwell noted…. for the Party… now is the only time that matters… all history must be erased… history compromises the Party unless it controls the past and rewrites it to its need.
“Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it; those who fail to learn history correctly – why, they are simply doomed.” – Achem Dro’hm, “The Illusion of Historical Fact”, C.Y. 4971 (Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, “To Loose the Fateful Lightning”)
Net Neutrality.
I wonder what other emanations from the twilight fringe distort our perspective of reality.
Gab remember them a twitter alternate that was not going to ban conservatives like Milo after twitter banned them.
Well Google has decided that by letting people speak they are promoting hate speech. So they have pulled them from the app store ie Google Play.
Well at least now Trump knows where to point his antitrust department. ( Hey Texas wake up states did it too! )
Sorry I mean states can do it too.
Allegations have been made that Google is leaving results they don’t “like” off from search returns. As Google has almost a monopoly on searches, this is extremely troubling. If they simply don’t give you the link, you won’t know it exists. This is a particularly troubling PC effort, withholding information because Google disagrees with the message.
Somebody once asked a baseball great what Ty Cobb would be batting if was playing. They said “.175” Outraged, they wanted to know why such a low number. Oh, he replied, his gotta be at least 75 years old by now.
Ty was a racist. Well documented.
He did receive more 1st place votes for the Hall of Fame than Babe Ruth.
https://www.prageru.com/courses/history/calling-good-people-racist-isnt-new-case-ty-cobb
Thank you. I owe Mr. Cobb an apology and you my gratitude. Interesting they could trace the falsehoods to a single person. The Commandment is “Do not bear false witness.”, which is about not telling lies about other people. Lying, of course, is a sin, but disparaging a person’s reputation is to much worse than simply telling a lie. I’m sure all of us have had lies told about our character which are impossible to correct or defend. As Captain Jack mentions, the lowest levels of hell are for betrayers, and one certain way to betray a trust is to tell a lie about a person we are close to.
“I volunteered with the A.C.L.U. as a law student in 2011, and I respect much of its work. But it should rethink how it understands free speech. By insisting on a narrow reading of the First Amendment, the organization provides free legal support to hate-based causes. More troubling, the legal gains on which the A.C.L.U. rests its colorblind logic have never secured real freedom or even safety for all.”
1. This dolt considers the ACLU’s interpretation of the 1st Amendment “narrow,” when in fact, it is broad. A narrow interpretation posits that only political speech is protected, while the ACLU believes that it protects all speech. That seems pretty broad to me.
2. The ACLU’s purpose has never been to secure “safety for all.” Why does he think they should even be attempting to do so? If the author thinks he can have freedom and safety, he’s mistaken, but I think it’s plain that although he’s complaining that the ACLU hasn’t worked for both, given a choice, he’d choose “safety.” At least so long as “safety” means protection from people who disagree with him.
“The A.C.L.U. needs a more contextual, creative advocacy when it comes to how it defends the freedom of speech. The group should imagine a holistic picture of how speech rights are under attack right now, not focus on only First Amendment case law. It must research how new threats to speech are connected to one another and to right-wing power.”
3. I swear the Left has no sense of irony.
a. Here is this idiot author imploring the ACLU to defend freedom of speech by withdrawing support for some types of speech.
b. He wants them to do so after conducing “research” on “new threats to speech” without realizing that he is one of those “new threats.”
Haven’t we heard that some presidents violated the Constitution in order to “save it”?
Excellent comment. As we speak the ACLU is coming under great pressure to cave on their advocacy for free speech. Today they said they may stop representing people in protests where firearms are carried. How would they know in advance? How does that even work??? This is probably the first step in a process of not representing conservative or right wing causes, because “ya know, they’re probably a bunch of believers in the evil 2nd Amendment.”
the aclu us full of crap.
What I read was the ACLU specifically stated they would not (not may not) defend in instances where protestors were armed, regardless of whether (as in Charlottesville) any shots were fired.
This is not the norm here, but I ask forbearance in that I have a piece on the same subject, and the critical nature of what we are facing that is up at another place where I am a blogger. CHICAGO BOYS. If this is not allowed, feel free to delete this comment.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/55834.html#more-55834
This is for all the marbles.
A good article, a few nitpicks:
Can you document Grant with reference to your claims? I’ve tried and cannot, only finding he sold or released his slave prior to the war or shortly afterwards. Perhaps I missed something.
Nathan Bedford Forrest did not create the KKK. It was created as a club, then turned into what it became as a result of what took place after the war. Robert E. Lee was asked to lead it, could not due to health and recommended Forrest.
Sorry about the delay, but the search got interesting. Up until a couple of decades ago, I did living history reenacting for both the National Park Service and schools, with some public events. My main concentration was on pre-Civil War Dragoons [1833-1861], but did some Civil War to help other reenactors. One of my recurring characters for a joint Union-Confederate presentation at schools was as a Confederate private Nate Caudill, 47th Va. Infantry. Stole the name from the novel, Guns of the South. Chose the unit because it put me where I wanted for the portrayal of the character.
This involved writing a script, from the contemporary point of view of a Confederate private. And I documented every point to a fair thee well. Including the slave ownership and having slave servants rotating in attendance on him. Part of my point was to show the students that the Civil War was more complicated than normally taught and there were multiple and sometimes conflicting motives.
Like happens on the internet, history vanishes or gets re-written. The [true] story of him freeing the one slave is now everywhere, but the others are not mentioned at the sources I used before. So, here is what I can come up with quickly with citations.
Julia Dent Grant was Ulysses Grant’s wife. She was the daughter of a Missouri slaveholding farmer. And incidentally, she was the cousin of James Longstreet who became a Confederate general. Before the Mexican War, Grant met her, and her father, courted her, and while the wedding was postponed till after the Mexican War, they did marry. Julia Dent’s father gave her from one to five slaves at birth, but the records are unclear if they were all given her at birth, or some transferred as she grew up. She had them when they married. As was common at the time, a woman’s property was managed by her husband, and Ulysses Grant had practical control of the slaves. This includes day to day control, because during the time between his resigning his commission, until shortly before the Civil War, they lived with his father in law, with his wife’s slaves and among the 25 other slaves on the farm. And Grant managed the slaves.
Before the Civil War, when they returned to Galena, Illinois at very least Julia Grant’s personal slave, also named Julia but known as Jule, returned with them. There is dispute as to exactly when, but the other 4 slaves eventually joined them as property of Julia, but the records of ownership have not survived. As noted, the husband managed the property of the wife in those days. And slavery was legal in the North until the 13th Amendment was ratified after the fall of the Confederacy. The Emancipation Proclamation ONLY applied to areas in rebellion. Anywhere the Union Army was, by definition not in rebellion. Another slight complication was that some states individually abolished slavery before the 13th Amendment, and Missouri did slightly before the 13th Amendment.
The accounts I saw back then, which are now gone, listed the slaves by name who did duty in rotation as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s personal servant throughout the war. And for much of the war, Julia stayed with Ulysses at his HQ, sometimes with their children. This was probably necessary to avoid his drinking problem, because whenever they were separated for any length of time is when Grant started hitting the bottle, hard. Julia was always accompanied by her personal slave, Jule. Her presence as a slave in Union HQ caused some scandal, which was brought up to President Lincoln. But the ownership of slaves was still legal. Nothing was done. The fate of the slaves is also unclear. Some accounts say that they were freed after the Emancipation Proclamation, but then again Jule was still with Julia. Some say that they walked away over the course of war. Some say that the 13th Amendment freed them. And there is one account that says when Missouri freed their slaves, they were freed.
Anyway, as requested, here are citations for the above. I probably have to get a copy of Julia Dent Grant’s memoirs which she wrote in the late 1800’s but it was not published until the 1970’s. But this is the best I can find in a couple of hours.
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/the-two-julias/
https://www.nps.gov/ulsg/learn/historyculture/slaveryatwh.htm
https://www.nps.gov/ulsg/learn/historyculture/jdgrant.htm
Sorry to cause you to write at such length, I did not intend that.
As a student of Civil War history, I long believed Grant to have owned his manslave until sometime after the war began.
Where I got this is undetermined. Several years ago I tried to determine the truth and it is a bit murky. I know the history with the wife.
From your second link “In 1859, Grant freed William Jones, the only slave he is known to have owned.”, that is what I found as well. Although some
sources say the slave Jones was sold rather than freed.
Ironic, Lincoln first asked Lee, to command the northern forces, and Grant ended up there, both* with slavery in their respective histories.
*technically Lee never owned slaves. They belonged to his father in law, whose will freed them 5 years after his death in 1857
No problem. When I write for publication, I am always willing to cite my sources. In a way it was good to find out that what I had before and depend on was gone and find replacements. And I will end up trying to chase down a copy of Julia Dent Grant’s memoirs, because I suspect that it is pretty well nailed down there.
I may be wrong, but I don’t think the “left” really has any idea what they will face from the middle of the country.
The thing is, we must start to push back now. Otherwise, we let them consolidate their gains and establish a new norm for what is acceptable in society. Counter attack to disrupt their momentum.
As others have pointed out, they are not as strong as they think they are. But, the public sees them on a victory roll and is running away them. This is how the Bolsheviks, a small faction, overthrew the Russian provisional government. This is how 1,500 or so ISIS routed 30,000 Iraqi troops and seized Mosul. This same kind of panic has infected the CEOs on Trump’s business councils and Republican establishment.
We didntelect the ceos we did elect the GOPe rats
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/unmasking-antifa-anti-fascists-hard-left/index.html .. found this on CNN this afternoon deep down in the rabbit hole but the fact that it’s there at all is telling
An excellent, but frightening analysis by Professor Jacobson.
The ultimate goal of the left is the destruction of our Constitution. They hope to do this, not by amending it away, but by simply declaring it dead because it was written by ‘white supremacists.’
I can imagine ‘constitutional scholar’ Barack Obama coming out of retirement several years from now and declaring “we must set aside the Constitution so we can move forward and be on the right side of the arc of history”
Be scared, but be scared into action.
What about la bron ‘hands up dont shoot’james?
I wonder if K-Sue Park considered even for a second that the 1st amendment was written to protect us from people like her in positions of power. I’ll bet it never crossed her tiny little mind.
Antifa needs to be designated a terrorist organization. They only assemble to initiate violence and intimidate. The Republican Party needs to disavow the likes of McCain, Romney, Graham, Rubio, and Cruz for standing with Antifa.
no need for all that: have the National Wildlife Service declare them to be “varmints” and announce a nationwide open season with no bag limits or ammo restrictions.
Problem Solved!
😎
I was browsing a bit today and came across some video of the Charlottsville rally taken by Faith Goldy.
I had not really paid attention before.
Something we forget about the Nazis. Yeah they were bad people. They were out in the streets beating up people and being pushy about taking over, but they weren’t the only ones doing so. So were the red shirts.
It used to be hard to understand how the German people turned to Hilter. Now it is not so hard. Hitler was a vile person, but he was a piker compared to Mao and Stalin. The German people turned to the little demon to protect them from the big demon.
What we are seeing is a replay of the last days of the Wiemar republic and of the flooding of New Orleans.
The group in questions a bunch of tedious pipsqueaks. They got a federal court court order to demonstrate. They’ve done it before and nothing happened. Around a thousand gathered and did some shouting, then went home. Skokie survived. So did a lot of other places.
Terry MaCualif and the mayor decided to override the federal judge. They decide to send out the police, but tell them to stand down and literally force the pipsqueaks into the antfa.
What happened is what they wanted to happen.In New Orleans the governor and especially the Mayor, but managed to put the blame on Bush. I think they are going to try to put the blame on this on Trump. hell they already have.
As for the people involved in the car accident. What where they doing there. If they were there to protest then very likel;y they deserved what happened to them. When you look at the riots in Ferguson, Baltimore, etc. it was obvious that something like this was going to happen eventually.
The police chief claims that it was premeditated. If he has proof then I think the driver should fry. If he doesn’t then the police should fry for making the statement.
tedious
Now that the Left has injected so much hate into the system, now that they have so many people angry over absurd expectations, now that they have everyone thinking of themselves as either a persecuted victim or the savior out there defending their world against injustice, now that so many are used to being given stuff just because, the cannons are loaded and the fuses are lit. What I truly fear is a further unraveling of our systems where justice is no longer served or served based on who you are, where the police are politicized and are only used when those in power think it necessary, where the lies from the MSM not only continue but become even more over the top and incendiary, and then the crash so many are fearing comes.
>
Given this situation we are facing, should a crash come when the banking industry is convulsing, people are laid off, store shelves stop being stocked like we are used to, inflation spikes and then possibly even becomes hyper inflation, goods become scare as do jobs, then this entire mess will explode.
>
There will be a civil war and it will be between the haves and the have nots. This time, though, the haves will be those living in “fly over country” who have the farms, the livestock, the means to defend themselves, the ability to make things work, and are used to long days of hard physical labor. The have nots will be those in the cities who thought hard work was sitting at a desk, who know little to nothing about growing anything, who cannot repair anything around the house, and who suddenly discover that their money is next to worthless. Those liberals in the cities who have no guns and do not know how to use them if they did, will be the ones controlling the police and military and they will demand that military force be used to take from the countryside what they want because their feeling of entitlement and importance will override every other thought.
?
This is when it all will become interesting and I pray we never get to this point.
I’m just glad I now have the mob’s authority to punch Cecile Richards right in the face. Abortion doctors too. Time for their clinics to be torn down. After all I disagree with everything they stand for, they’re incredibly offensive, and I’d be taking the moral high road by down so. Those three things are all that is required to be deemed justifiable as of 7 days ago.
Storm clouds gathering as we speak over Boston.. Could be a tempest, please everyone there be careful. Hopefully its a drizzle.
Pair Professor Jacobson’s outstanding article with this one, and you have effective read all you really need to about Charlotessville.
It’s Not Trump They Hate—It’s Us!
https://amgreatness.com/2017/08/17/not-trump-hate-us/
(PS: The above article was written by a #NeverTrumper.
While the tactics of violence, murder, threats, intimidation and destruction by 2017 revolutionaries in the U.S. have a long pedigree there are profound differences due to the infrastructure of modernism. Those that wreck havoc in service to their ideology avail themselves of a whole host of goods and services,technologies,that the revolutionaries of old would ask why are we overthrowing this system? Additionally, they are concentrated in large/mega cities incredibly vulnerable to disruption. A casual glance at the 7/24 symphony of logistics, skills, capabilities and technologies required to sustain these cities illustrates their precarious circumstance. How many of the people that provide the labor/skills underlying modern urban life are with the revolutionists? How many in the military, police force (current and former)and doctors. medical technicians and last but not least gun owners? The good professor is correct these are indeed dangerous times. But, as far as violently overthrowing the form of government USA there are inputs factors which are not accounted for.
I have seen many articles like this one warning about what happens next with Antifa. The one upside to the Charlottesville blow-up by the media’s reaction to Trump’s non-screw-up statements is everyone is on high alert on our side for the same playbook next time. Up till now Antifa violence was played off in the media and only cared about by people who read right-wing websites. Next time there is a rally that Antifa shows up the Democrat media and the Democrat politicians can’t just run the playbook that got a woman killed. They can’t just pretend it got out of hand and there was nothing they can do or they couldn’t see it coming. Next time there will be blowback from Trump and the right and there won’t political cover from Republicans if they have any sense at all about defending the left over others.
And this will not go away on its own. If they get Trump they’ll start on Pence the same day. Uncompromising totalitarianism, all they want is everything you have.
Of the three, it’s the middle one that worries me the most. If the cops would start enforcing the law Antifa would evaporate, just like OWS.
“Modern Black Bloc ideology is based on a blending of Anarchism and Marxist-Leninist theories. Black Bloc, being rooted in a hybrid of anarchism and Marxist-Leninist , believe that all government is slavery. Freedom can only be achieved through anarchy.”
This gives Antifa far too much credit.
The rank-and-file are common street thugs who engage in violence because they think it’s fun. Only the top leadership have any ideology that might be motivated by Marxist ideology.
“This is consistent with what I wrote about yesterday, how anti-Israel pro-BDS professors are building a nationwide campus network, Anti-Israel pro-BDS profs organizing Antifa campus network”
Yes, they are organizing through the campuses, and recruiting in the grievance studies departments. I’m at school now, and know firsthand that professors are agitating for “social change.” It’s pretty easy to guess which side they fall on.
“As part of the reaction to Charlottesville, the NY Times ran a chilling Op-Ed by K-Sue Park, a housing attorney and the Critical Race Studies fellow at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.”
Critical theory is yet another Marxist offshoot. We are being overrun by communists.
Thank you Professor Jacobson. People need to know the truth.