What turns a protest into a riot?
How do peaceful movements and nonviolent interventions devolve into larceny and looting? How did a seemingly organic series of protests against police brutality descend into an organized nationwide riot that has laid siege to more than 140 cities?
In short: Who lit the fire and why?
Arguably the most disturbing thing about the recent riots (yes, riots) following the murder (yes, murder) of George Floyd is the shocking alacrity and speed by which it devolved from protesting to plundering.
There was contrivance in all this madness: Cops discovering caches of combustible materials hidden in bushes; Mask-clad protesters hitting key targets.
Police found a busload of weapons in Ohio. In some cases, a peaceful protest would formally come to an end before curfew and the moment the peaceful leaders stepped away, violent agitators took center stage.
In the personal recordings of local protesters, the divide is quite clear: those working for a better world and those seeking to bury it. There is now a permanent faction in the liberal movement. The Jacobin Liberals have finally revealed themselves.
This is their Reign of Terror.The Jacobins were the most radical element of the French Revolution, advocating the destruction of all in society including the monarchy, property, money, contracts, everything, even people — in order to create a new order with the radicals on top of this newfangled civilization. Indeed, the very phrase "social justice" originated with the French Revolution, and did so as justification to destroy everything to achieve that uprising's nefarious goals.
In Russia, Lenin also knew that left-wing revolutions were simply about reordering who was on top in the name of justice.
Their artifice of justice is, if someone has a farm, that farm must be taken and the owner punished or killed and the farm given to a member of the so-called oppressed underclass.
Forget the injustice for the original farmer.
He does not deserve justice for the simple reason he owned a farm and must have gotten it through illegitimate means.
Class warfare at the point of a dagger is at the heart of American Jacobinism.
American Jacobins are no different than their French forefathers, except they now have sophisticated technology to use, and they also seek to control the language — a new ruse. Thus, calling or branding someone a "thug" for beating innocent people senseless is denounced. Calling or branding someone a "rioter" when they smash and destroy businesses is harshly attacked. They shriek when someone uses "politically incorrect" language.
The tactic of destroying or taking over all institutions and controlling language is central to their goal. Hence, the newest targets are small businesses and law enforcement.
As I’ve written previously, American liberalism, at its purest, is the artificial evolution of what is in the service of what could be.
It's a series of small progressive steps that lead irrevocably towards their greater justice.
By this rationale, the goal of the protests should be reforming American policing practices and expanding economic opportunity.
Simple and understandable enough, right?
Not for the American Jacobin.
When the American Jacobin says, "America is fundamentally racist" and "Policing is an inherently racist institution," they reveal their true hand.
If the entire system is inherently, irredeemably, and fundamentally flawed, bigoted, racist, and biased — then it cannot be saved.
The only solution is destruction.
That is, the destruction of Americanism, of capitalism, and the subjugation of individual liberty to the service of "collective good."
If the foundation of a house is broken, whatever you build on top will collapse.
Therefore the only solution is to "start fresh." Or, as Barack Obama said, "remake America."
All collectivists, all those on the political or cultural left are, at heart, deconstructionists.
American conservatives believe in political revolution accomplished along peaceful lines: Intellectualism. American liberals believe in economic and cultural revolution done along lines of violence: Anti-intellectualism.
Einstein often said, "Force attracts men of low morality."
Curiously, the left will tolerate or accept anybody as long as they are on their side.
The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, is an excellent specimen.
Caught up in a scandal over a racist photo, he is also so radical on abortion, he actually advocates ending the life of a newborn — after it's born. He is also hip-deep in the questionable solar trade, doing business with China.
As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "I am not interested in power for power’s sake but instead in power that is moral, that is right and that is good."
Ralph Northam, like other American Jacobins, is interested in power for the sheer joy of the abuse and control of people. Thankfully, he's term limited.
This was the principle that led the original Jacobins to turn a positive populist revolt against the French Monarchy into the Reign of Terror that slaughtered thousands of innocents, all to protect the "greater good."
The one glimmer of hope I see in today's protests is how quickly good protesters were trying to stop the malevolent ones.
In video after video, we see liberals, statistically public college-educated and bourgeois, and Antifa members, disrupting peaceful marches with wanton acts of destruction.
In some videos, African American protesters actually cooperate with police to reveal, excise, and arrest the Antifa members.
My personal favorite in one in which a group of white, liberal, Antifa members, were handing out bricks to African American men from the comfort of their Mercedes. Their intention was obviously to instigate acts of destruction while hiding in their luxury vehicle.
An African American woman, upon seeing this, took a brick, threw open their car door, shoving it back at the Atifa members. She then blasted them for the childish monsters they are.
In this and all these kinds of videos, the Jacobins protest "we’re on your side . . . we're allies." No, they very much are not.
Americanism, as Ronald Reagan put it, was "maximum freedom consistent with law and order." Reagan, the intellectual, was despised by the anti-intellectuals in some of the Jacobin liberal media, such as The Washington Post, but he just brushed them away like he would flies.
I’d argue the legitimate protesters are in the best tradion of America, going back to the American Revolution.
The Antifa brats, well, they deserve a good spanking.
Craig Shirley is a Ronald Reagan biographer and presidential historian. His books include, “Reagan’s Revolution, The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started it All,” “Rendezvous with Destiny, Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America,” "Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years," and “ Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan." He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, “December, 1941” and his new 2019 book, “Mary Ball Washington,” a definitive biography of George Washington’s mother. Shirley lectures frequently at the Reagan Library and the Reagan Ranch. He has been named the First Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater and will teach a class this fall at the University of Virginia on Reagan. He appears regularly on Newsmax TV, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. Read Craig Shirley's Reports — More Here
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