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“Labour MPs and woke leftists are kicking up a storm about the tactics being used by American police right now. But the exact same tactics were used by French police against the gilets jaunes every single weekend for a year and these people said nothing.”
Brendan O’Neill on Sky today
The rioters in America are behaving with terrible violence which bears no comparison with the gilets jaunes, but the gilets jaunes were just uncool, mostly white and campaigning against environmentalism. The media instinctively disliked them. The media are hive-minded and as anxious to suppress as to discover news. They are above all astonishingly lacking in intellectual curiosity, something which should mean they chose the wrong profession.
Or perhaps they are scared of the disapproval of their peers and potential employers.
As Charles Moore said recently, about the Emily Maitlis affair,
The rioters in America are behaving with terrible violence which bears no comparison with the gilets jaunes, but the gilets jaunes were just uncool, mostly white and campaigning against environmentalism. The media instinctively disliked them. The media are hive-minded and as anxious to suppress as to discover news. They are above all astonishingly lacking in intellectual curiosity, something which should mean they chose the wrong profession.
Or perhaps they are scared of the disapproval of their peers and potential employers.
'It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living'.Bertrand Russell's remark applies to journalists more than most people but it's not just about being employable - though I am told people who have worked for Breitbart, unlike the Morning Star, are not - it's about being part of the club.
As Charles Moore said recently, about the Emily Maitlis affair,
Long ago, I remember the novelist Kingsley Amis telling me that the trouble with broadcasters, especially BBC ones, is that they were “much more concerned with ‘How will it go down at the club?’ than with the viewers.” His expression “the club” now sounds a bit old-fashioned, but the point holds.
My theory is that the aim of the riots in the US is to prevent the election of Biden. The protests seem to be promoted by an extreme faction which would like to see Trump re-elected because that will give them more opportunities (and provide what they see as a justification) for an ongoing campaign of political violence. They're deluded extremists who think that the re-election of Trump will create favourable conditions for revolution.
ReplyDeleteTheir motivations are similar to those of the Baader-Meinhof group, the Red Brigades and the Weathermen in the US in the early 70s. They're deeply crazy.
In the next few years we can expect to see a growth of violent extremism on both the left and the right. Both the extreme left and the extreme right no longer believe in political solutions. They're increasingly inclined to the idea that we need to "burn it all down" and then somehow, magically, they'll be able to create utopia. The only difference is that the far left crazies are better organised and more disciplined and therefore (at the moment) more dangerous.
In the US in particular faith in the political process seems to be evaporating fast. That doesn't mean that I think there's the slightest chance of a collapse in the political/social order but things are going to get very unpleasant. I expect there'll be some nasty political violence regardless of whether Trump or Biden wins the election. Hotheads on both sides are psyching themselves up to dispute the result of the election whichever way it goes.