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History Matters: Riots on Familiar Ground
Two older veterans’ remarks pointed to the late 1960s being repeated on the same ground. The forces involved may well have changed, and that may matter a great deal. What has not changed is the physical geography, apparently. We should pay attention to both the forces and the ground if we are to begin to truly understand and so have a chance at preserving our constitutional republic. This is a national problem. It is made worse by local bad governance and leadership, but there is a much larger and persistent problem of national-level entities seeking to influence politics through violence and the threat of violence.
I had just completed reviewing the books for my local veterans’ organization post. I exchanged greetings with two older veterans sitting at the bar, with the cable news showing Saturday morning’s ugly light in Minneapolis. “Protests,” said the screen. “It is not a protest if you throw rocks or Molotov cocktails,” I remarked.
The first veteran said he grew up in that city and his father had been shot as a police officer in the 1968 riots in the same area. This time, he noted, he was hearing that the people in the streets were mostly outsiders, not from the local community or state. At that, the other veteran spoke up. His father was also a police officer, and had also been shot, but survived, in Detroit in 1969.
So, there is continuity in the physical geography, as there has been for thousands of years of human habitation and movement. Look at any land or water route that has been used for centuries or millennia. Look at valleys, hills, and mountains that shape movement and provide the advantage of protection. Consider how sticking a shovel in the ground in many places yields layer after layer of settlements. If a piece of ground was fought over once, there is a fair chance it was fought over more than once.
Our cities are much younger than Europe’s. Still, a bit of digging back into an older place like New York City will turn up a history of street violence. The Bowery in 1849 turned bloody. New York City saw draft riots by working-class white men in the summer of 1863.
Thousands of white workers – mainly Irish and Irish-Americans – started by attacking military and government buildings, and became violent only toward people who tried to stop them, including the insufficient numbers of policemen and soldiers the city’s leaders initially mustered to oppose them.
So, we have a truly diverse, when it comes to ancestry, history of domestic street mob violence. Through our first 200 years as a nation, it may be that people who felt unrepresented by the results at the ballot box eventually turned to street violence. It appears, however, that the class makeup has shifted, starting with the late 1960s radical college student movement. Instead of poor and working-class men alone, it appears that there has been a shift towards people with more resources, including more ability to network, coordinate, and travel greater distances in support of street violence and threats.
We should learn how the “human terrain” has changed. We should understand the networks that have enabled apparently coordinated strikes at the national level and much more than mob action at the local and street level. The FBI, were it not so horribly compromised by its complicity in the attempted coup and then the long and continuing cover-up, with continued subversion as part of the cover-up, should have been all over Antifa’s command and control and logistics networks, starting the moment President Trump completed taking the oath of office. They clearly did not make that change in direction with the change in administrations, and that is an important factor in overwhelming the local authorities this past week.
On Saturday, Attorney General Barr weighed in. He sees clearly and has real moral courage, unlike Jeff Sessions. I believe he will drive the Department of Justice to drive all the other agencies, starting with the FBI, to go after the head(s) of the snake biting our cities. Notice the list of agencies. DEA? Look for linkage between drug gangs and cartels and radical groups that intend violence. ATF? If you fly in, you need your local illegal gun supplier to arm you up for the riot, and bomb-making can’t be far behind.
Published in GeneralSaturday, May 30, 2020
Attorney General William P. Barr’s Statement on the Death of George Floyd and Riots“The greatness of our nation comes from our commitment to the rule of law.
The outrage of our national community about what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis is real and legitimate. Accountability for his death must be addressed, and is being addressed, through the regular process of our criminal justice system, both at the state and at the federal level. That system is working and moving at exceptional speed. Already initial charges have been filed. That process continues to move forward. Justice will be served.
Unfortunately, with the rioting that is occurring in many of our cities around the country, the voices of peaceful protest are being hijacked by violent radical elements.
Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate and violent agenda.
In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchistic and far left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics, many of whom travel from out of state to promote the violence.
We must have law and order on our streets and in our communities, and it is the responsibility of the local and state leadership, in the first instance, to halt this violence. The Department of Justice (including the FBI, Marshals, ATF, and DEA), and all of our 93 U.S. Attorneys across the country, will support these local efforts and take all action necessary to enforce federal law.
In that regard, it is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting. We will enforce these laws.”
Topic(s):
Civil Rights
Component(s):
Office of the Attorney General
Press Release Number:
20-499[Emphasis added]
Good point about FBI. There seems to be some sort of national network to get the Antifa people out.
Finally someone is standing up to Antifa and confronting their evil.
Dan Bongino drew attention to an Obama executive order enacted in the last days of Obama’s presidency; Bongino thinks the purpose was a legal rationale for the Obama staybehinds at the DOJ and elsewhere to undertake the coup.
I am watching the Crowder Riot Stream.
Its shocking.
Apparently some guy in Dallas just got the crap kicked out of him 15 minutes ago.
I warned people that this would happen. You cant lock up tens of millions of people for months and not think that things would happen.
Good article. Frankly it’s about time we dealt with these sorts. We’ve let theme do what they want freely since the sixties. They ran the government under Obama so there was peace in the streets. It pretends to be spontaneous, the thieves and the looters are, but not the planners and key folks on the streets. They will destroy the country. The key to understanding the centralizers, is that it isn’t back and forth. It goes in one direction toward the center where power accumulates until it looses it’s thrust then it just rots.
When it comes to accountability, very seldom has anyone asked who to hold accountable for rioting. It’s hard to believe anger over Floyd’s death justifies robbing a Target of a hot air fryer, burning cars, or beating up innocent bystanders . . .
Bongino also made the point this morning that Antifa’s goal appears to be to get Trump to call out the military and then hope something in the vein of Kent State 50 years ago happens, so that Trump can be blamed for the killings (not that Antifa people themselves want to be the martyrs — they’d prefer some other poor schmuck dies for their cause).
Perhaps the FBI can find a little time to surveil the Antifa groups now that they are finished investigating our President. They are finished investigating our President, aren’t they?
Exactly. The rioters are local to Minnesota, including the Governor’s daughter who seems to be using her Twitter account to keep them informed. The stuff about “Outsiders” has now been debunked unless they are all giving local addresses but I would expect the cops want some evidence of ID. Lileks had a post showing white kids in Bernie tee shirts. I am certain that this will go on as they try to get Trump to stage a Kent State event. He seems to be holding off, which I think is wise. If the FBI was competent, they would be tracing the control links. Like who is delivering pallets of bricks downtown where there is no construction. In stead the FBI seems to be too compromised to assist.
The rioters may be local. The ideology and organization are not.
Andy Ngo is right:
The Obama Party’s elite insurgency is allied with Antifa.
Ngo:
Not exactly; see my previou comment
farther down. Also, there are people in BLM, BAMN, and other black block groups who are willing to die. Not necessrily the leadership, but some of them are extremely violent themselves. BAMN’s Yvette Felarca is an example. She is a middle school teacher in Berkeley. She does not keep her politics out of her classroom.What Antifa wants is to destroy capitalism. It wants to make people miserable enough to overthrow the government. Obamacare was the same thing, done from the top and done incrementally. It was intended to destroy the remnamnts of the free market in health care, and make people so fearful for themselves and their loved ones that they demanded that the government take it all over. The Green Nude Eel would bite off another chunk of the economy.
COVID-19 is another opportunity for the same forces to advance their cause.
Antifa, BLM, BAMN, and the rest want to do it all at once. The Democrat Party wants to do it in stages. The end is the same; the riots serve to limit the government’s options. There will be concerted effort from foreign and domestic enemies to see to it that whatever the government does to bring order, bad things will happen and when bad things happen—and they will—despite Trump’s and Barr’s best efforts, that the Progressive takeover resumes. Antifa is there to make the Progressive takeover the least bad available alternative for those who love America.
If Antifa is declared a terrorist organization will we get different results?
I’ve seen early warning signs in my town today, and I do not live in a metropolis. I jumped on the 2nd amendment bandwagon a little late, never thinking I would need a gun here, but now I’m glad that I did. There’s already video circulating of storefronts being destroyed and hoodlums beating innocent bystanders within an inch of their lives, in a city that I frequently travel to. And sadly, this kind of behavior spreads unless it is condemned and suppressed.
South Dakota sounds really nice right about now.
The pawn shop owner in Minneapolis who shot a looter was arrested. No help from police in deep blue cities like that one
As Andy Ngo said:
More specifically, ending the “systemically racist” system of laws and its enforcers clears the way for the Progressiv state to impose Social Justice. The only permitted violence is revolutionary violence, which can be promoted by the proper sort of state.
This is, of course to the benefit of a certain large Asian country as well as of a certain US political party. No doubt both will only act in ways that don’t run afoul of US campaign laws. When it helps them.
On this divergent thread, Andrew McCarthy is the best analyst :
Back on the main thread, same author:
He’s a very good analyst. His journey has been painful to watch, though certainly not as painful as it has been for him. However, his ongoing use of the word “farce” to describe a seditious attempt to overthrow the duly government is just wrong.
Can you impeach the child of a governor?
We’re going to find out:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-announces-u-s-to-designate-antifa-as-terrorist-organization-following-violent-protests
Ain’t real until AG Barr says it in writing.
I’m writing about bigger implications of this politically directed violence:
http://ricochet.com/763254/desperate-leftists-seek-to-win-in-november-by-burning-jobs-down/
Isn’t it amazing how law and order has now become a key campaign issue for the upcoming elections?
What elections?
These aren’t riots. This is insurrection.
This link should be to twitter. Scroll down to see anti-fa documents.