History suggests that martyr(s) come in handy when you want to take your political movement to the next level. And who might that be? Not hard to imagine, really. Could happen any day, as a matter of fact. One, ten, maybe a hundred martyrs. A guy on my block runs in this shadowy world, that recently has emerged in a spectacular way online. Masses of organized folks rushing walls of riot cops - this sort of overt confrontation (
the charging mass) is frankly designed to create just such a martyrdom, and set off the crisis that seems almost inevitable.
Imagine this scenario. The ever-growing Antifa movement stages a protest at a Pro-Trump event. Riot police are called. The "kids"
rush the cops, shots are fired, it becomes unclear who has guns (probably not the protesters - they tend to shun them) and a dozen or more people are killed. Recruitment quadruples every week, cities brace for violence, the National Guard gets called (by you-know-who), unions take sides, churches take sides, the victims of riots strap on their weapons. And most importantly, the guy in the White House shows absolutely no interest in calming things down or reaching out to anyone in the name of domestic peace. This is the "race war,""class war,""war for the soul of America" that many have been pining for. Far-fetched? Google "Antifa protests" and witness, not from the NY Times, but from ground zero. It's real, and the paranoia of infiltration from rival groups adds to the sense of urgency and desperation. We can assume that every one of these groups is under surveillance. Politicians want to call these protesters terrorists, which depending on your perspective I suppose is accurate. (But so are the skinheads and republinazis of course). But they're mostly just kids, 20-somethings following 30-somethings, and they've been around the black bloc - World Bank, Occupy, Ferguson, Berkeley. They are a very small but growing fringe. But they get attention! Think of how hundreds of thousands marched on Washington on January 21st. But on inauguration day, the Antifa stole the show. It's the protest that's still being talked about.
In many ways the current political shitstorm seems a crisis of, among other things, the Internet. How else to describe once barely noticed anarchist protests garnering hundreds of thousands of "views," with either rightist or leftist narration calling each other idiots, cowards, racists or commies?
If you're like the Q, you've been snooping around, sniffing for meat on recent "black bloc" protests, you know, this whole
Antifa thing. The radical left Anti-Fascist resistance is growing by tweets and bounds, drawn out by the high profile riotous protests on Inauguration Day, nazi-punchings and counter-beatings, then planned "happenings" at Berkeley and NYU. It's not hard to see why Antifa, Occupy , #BLM and anarchist groups in all manner of Ninja outfits are appealing right now. White supremacists took the White House. It's theory no longer. This shit is real.
You're smart and curious, you read all about Trump's whisperers, the alarmingly persuasive birthers and conspiracy theorists and nationalist updated
CCC thugs who now pass as policy wonks and regular ol' Steves. Bannon himself has left a long and tedious trail of films and writings that show exactly where he's coming from, and it ain't pretty. It's not even entirely surprising, or even unknown to the MSM. The very things that have been in decline (so goes the rhetoric) are the things Trump bemoaned the loss of in his bellicose bullying - Christian "values," patriarchy, white hegemony, pro-life anti-gay anti-PC anti-manufacturing you name it, if Trump hears it's in decline, he'll call it out. Of course he's really just another overweight Oligarch in search of meaning and validation. Big time daddy issues and a whale's belly of insecurity. Personality disorder. Serious nutjob, but don't cry for him Argentina - he's the President of these here United Sates.
The
sieg heilers are now on speaking tours to draw out the Antifa. The Antifa respond on cue, but their numbers overwhelm even the white nationals. Antifa is now more popular on liberal arts campuses than
Jagermeister and EDM. Actually Antifa probably goes well with beats and shots, so I should shut my trap about what college kids get off on. I haven't been one for a long, long time - an undergrad OR a shot-drinker. I DO know sure as shootin' that young kids love a good idealistic fight, and boy howdy do we have a dandy right now. The hood's off the KKK (turned out half of white America were closeted card carriers), the billionaires aren't content with ACTUAL power - now they want government credentials as well, and Democrats haven't a clue how to keep up with the outrageous equity canyon. School's out! And revolution has always been sexy as hell.
Of all the videos of black-clad rioters - from Ferguson to D.C. to (good lord)
Omaha just the other day (I shit you not) the one bit online that stands out for me is a young woman defending the Antifa at Berkeley. She's like a Feminista Che, relaxed enough to articulate but determined as an Olympian shot putter. Check her out, absolutely destroying a local news anchor who probably assumed she'd easily shred her guest, but ends up looking ridiculous herself.
So why bring up civil war, or at least widespread violent confrontation? Because the right is obviously fixing for a fight, and have been for a long time, and they feel emboldened. The left is feeling angry, cheated and helpless. All it takes is for one of these many, many bigger and bigger confrontations to devolve into lots of shooting, bombs and/or heavy casualties, and now you've got Kent State times 100. Rodney King times 1000. The riots, sorry Uprising, in L.A. is not so long ago. The Occupiers haven't all moved to Canada. The White Lives Matter crowd didn't suddenly grow up and apologize. And of course, the police, while often full of well-meaning decent people, have hotheads and rednecks on staff in every precinct in the country.
Chilling? Maybe you're not buying my premise, and the Q hopes he's wrong. (sort of - I've been fixing for a fight for weeks.) But for unsettling, nothing gets to me like this ad for just the kind of firearm that could set off the national emergency.
Civil War happens when all else fails. And lately, a lot of taken-for-granteds ahve failed. Miserably. Throw in a comrade to die for, and, well, I shudder to think.
