Passage from “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy” by Batya Ungar-Sargon:
“If you’ve never heard of Vox, that’s probably because it’s not for you; from its inception, the site had a very specific audience in mind: young, affluent, and highly educated. Klein and his coeditors were writing for urban millennials under thirty-five heading highly educated households that made over $100,000 a year, the New York Times reported.18
Vox’s trademark style would be a cheeky, barely concealed smugness that flatters its readers into believing that by reading the website—which, not coincidentally, would sustain all of the liberal opinions that young, affluent, educated people already hold—they can rest assured that they are among the ranks of the correct, the informed, rather than one of the stupids.”
Very poignant. Which also serves as a great explanation for the NYT, the WP, the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, etc. They define (and target) their audience in different ways, but they provide the same service.
The mentality of Mr. Beauchamp reminds me of the quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “if you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” He and his allies are on the wrong train and are trying so hard to tell the world that the right thing to do is run in the other direction.
I keep coming back to Saul Bellow: "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep". https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
I will throw in one more Bellow, from "Mr. Sammler's Planet":
"You could see the suicidal impulses of civilization pushing strongly. You wondered whether this Western culture could survive universal dissemination—whether only its science and technology or administrative practices would travel, be adopted by other societies. Or, whether the worst enemies of civilization might not prove to be its petted intellectuals who attacked it at its weakest moments—attacked it in the name of proletarian revolution, in the name of reason, and in the name of irrationality, in the name of visceral depth, in the name of sex, in the name of perfect instantaneous freedom. For what it amounted to was limitless demand—insatiability, refusal of the doomed creature (death being sure and final) to go away from this earth unsatisfied. A full bill of demand and complaint was therefore presented by each individual. Nonnegotiable. Recognizing no scarcity of supply in any human department."
This quote by C. Rufo summed up nicely what is going on in America and is being led by the Biden Administration and Deep/Admin state: "Beauchamp concludes his review with a warning that my “dangerous” book might usher in an “authoritarian” political reaction". Obviously, it's just the opposite. Biden and his Czars and the Radical Left, including most of the media have been diligently attempting to usher in a U.S. Authoritarian/Totalitarian style of government under their propaganda and lies of countering so called digital hate and racism and misinformation with these corrupt DEI organizations. In fact, Beauchamp and these people want to usher in their style of Authoritarian government abuse and power and leave the truth seekers in the dust.
It used to be, even if you had a difference of opinion, you could have intelligent discussions on social or political topics and learn from each other. It seems now people just clamp tight and get belligerent if you try to present a different point of view.
A difference of opinion now involves much higher stakes than was true in the past. Now, only two opinions can be recognized--my good, correct, realistic one, and your bad, wrong, delusional one. And since both sides treat their positions as religious dogmas, any deviation from their extreme beliefs equates to sin, immorality, and possession by evil spirits.
I am not sure this is quite true. One example. The conservative position on transgender children is they are castrating boys; the opposite view is we must provide gender-affirming care.
The conservative position is factually correct and observable, the opposing view has to ignore a mountain of evidence, not the least of which is kids grow out of most childish fads, an observation well established. Their position is dogmatic.
So I think we need to be careful of this line of reasoning, we all need to compromise etc. Frankly that is how the hard progressive Left operate; they exploit the reasonableness of their critics.
Thanks for the interesting response, Spaceman. Regarding your example, it is definitely a fact that the transgender treatment professionals are "castrating boys," and that they obviously avoid using that term to describe what they are doing. I doubt that they are denying that reality, however, so much as claiming that said procedure is "medically necessary, effective and safe." (Full disclosure: I am opposed to "gender affirmative care" as it is currently defined and practiced).
My position on the need for compromise is that our form of government requires it, if any action is to be taken on problems that need to be solved. Compromise is a process of mutual give and take, in which both sides get some of what they want but not all of it. When one side is doing all the giving and yielding, that is not compromise, it is dominance and submission. You rightly argue that one-sided efforts to compromise become a fools' strategy leading to self-subordination. What you describe in your last sentence about "how the hard progressive Left operate; they exploit the reasonableness of their critics," is the effort to take power via hostile manipulation. The leftist activists do appear to take a lot of pleasure in hostile manipulation, although I would assume they would prefer direct power assertion (dictatorship).
Frustrating, yes. Especially for those of us who find ourselves very distant from both of the fringe positions expressed. Because I'm not impressed by either the Right's paranoid impending-doom crisis rhetoric, or the American Neoliberal Establishment donning a mantle of virtue and justice woven from unexamined assumptions as if it excuses them from impartially reporting facts and events, and letting the chips fall where they may.
Our electoral system is terribly (but remedially) flawed, and as a result, at this point in American history the leadership of both major parties is rife with self-dealing, personal ego trips, and fealty to wealthy special interests, coupled to various forms of crackpot realism, ass-covering, and constituency pandering, based on the cynical recommendations of "Political Science" 10%ers. (Ahem. Politics is not a Science. It's an empirical Craft. Good politics is about keeping the pipes fixed. Good politics is NOT about ironclad allegiance to phantasmal abstractions of some Ideology or another.)
The U.S. of A. is vulnerable to the prospect of becoming an authoritarian society. But the notion that either the Democrats or the Republicans could possibly achieve one-party rule (without overwhelming popular supermajority approval) is bizarre. Both Teams have formidable legal staffs on retainer.
And, really...speaking of supermajorities, consider that between January 2009 and January 2011, the Obama administration held a Democratic supermajority in the House, and wavered between 58 and 59 votes in the Senate. And the Dems didn't even make a move to reduce the number of Senators required to break a filibuster to something reasonable, like 55 or 56, or getting rid of the filibuster just long enough to actually pass some productive legislation (the GOP Senators successfully held up even basic infrastructure maintenance funding; all they didn't need to filibuster, all they had to do was THREATEN it.)
The Democrats could also have passed a Federal abortion law in those years that included some term restrictions--like 20 weeks--using the legislation found in European countries as a model. But they didn't; they merely kicked the can down the road, assuming that they'd somehow always have a Supreme Court majority despite the obvious lack of any guarantee in that regard, and despite the record of recent evidence to the contrary. A minimum wage rise could have been passed in 2009 by a near-supermajority Democratic Congress, if they had believed any of their own rhetoric. Etc. etc.
But they didn't. The Democratic Party put all of their efforts into a frontal assault on the health care issue- the same one that had sunk Democratic majority control in both Houses in 1994. (The GOP won the House for the first time since 1952.) Between capitulating to the GOP on just about every issue except the one that the Republicans would have the easiest time propagandizing, the Dems lost the House in 2010. As if they couldn't wait to do it. (I was reading Eeyore prognostications of doom for the Dems in the midterms in Salon a year in advance of the election.)
Does the record of the Democrats in the years when they were at their most recent peak of power look like the workings of a ruthless juggernaut of ideological zealots bent on totalitarian control to you? The Democrats are flailing. The sole basis of their appeal in recent decades is that the Republicans were even more odious. And then Trump got elected, and they lost their remaining marbles. Because the Dems had always thought that their symbolic gestures, posturing, and polite dissembling would be sufficient to defeat any GOP troglodyte. And then they had their doors blown off, by Donald the Candid. And so it came to pass that the Democrats Who Mattered stood resolved that the Ends justified the Means, in order to banish the Menace. And now they're being exposed, which in my opinion is pretty much exhibit A for the position that we still have some semblance of a rule of law in this country. (Even though some Bill of Rights Constitutional amendments--notably the 6th--have gotten to be disregarded--routinely--here in the Sixth Decade of the Global War on Drugs, and the Third Decade of the Global War on Terror.)
Unfortunately, when it comes to the perils of impending authoritarianism, polarized party politics is the least of our worries. Those of us who have found ourselves politically homeless don't have either of those two Teams to fall back on. And there are factions in both parties who would be fine with a "bipartisan consensus" that sets the stage for the disappearance of personal autonomy and individual agency. Majorities of Republicans and Democrats may hate each other, but bipartisan majorities keep voting for the surveillance state, while failing when it comes to finding effective ways to protect digital privacy rights. Because the real problem is Inertia, and toadying to The Platforms. The Europeans have better privacy protections--and they've had them for years--because the Platforms are not the political force in those nations that they are in the country where the Platform Owners are located.
Beyond that: how many Congressional staffs have the skills and knowledge to research practical privacy protections to counter the currently Unregulated Free Market in Data Mining, and then inform the Boss about their findings? (I've listened to too many Congressional hearings to think that more than a handful of Congresspeople or Senators are able to inform themselves on an issue like that one. They are a lot of people on Capitol Hill who don't even know the chemical composition of coal ash, or coal mine drainage.)
Digital privacy rights are an actual adult Issue. Which is one of the reasons that it's avoided. Even simpler Adult issues- like building out the national electrical grid, or funding the construction of municipal waterworks fortified against pollution and salt water intrusion, so that every American retains some minimal status as a First World citizen- are discreetly shuffled to the bottom of the list of priorities, as if the lump under the rug isn't continuing to get bigger.
Right-wingers think the Democrats are anti-development because they hate the country...no, they're merely hostage to their privileged NIMBY faction. Most Intolerant Minority Wins. The Librocrat elites of the Center for Biological Diversity LOVE the wild country-- so much that they don't even notice the existence of electrical power corridors, pipelines, and railroad cuts when they drive past them in the countryside. Maybe someone should show If you told them about the Renovo natural gas complex, they'd faint- oh, no, this bulletin just in- https://www.pennlive.com/news/2023/04/decision-to-discontinue-plans-for-1b-gas-fired-power-plant-killed-us-mayor-of-pa-town-says.html
For the record, Renovo, PA is one of the most remote areas of the country. The power plant emissions would be released into the atmosphere an area that's beyond rural. Not, like, Jersey City. No pipeline construction would have been needed to supply the power plant; it's at the nexus of one of the largest natural gas storage facilities in the US. The gas is already refined. Natural gas isn't a perfect form of stored energy. But neither are batteries. Way to go, Center for Biological Diversity! You shut down another one! You don't even know why you did it, do you?
Left-wingers think the Republicans are pro-development because they're heedless greedheads. No, only some of them. Enough that the Republican Party is hostage to them. The GOPites explain their opposition to comprehensive pollution regulations that begin at the headwaters as ideological; i.e., Because Freedom. Freedom to poison everything downstream. Some of them defend this by saying that injured parties can always 'whistle for their money'...aw damn, I meant "file a lawsuit." As if we're all Donald Trump.
Maybe some of the brainwashed just repeat slogans and don’t know they’re a fish in water. But I believe most know exactly where they are and what they’re doing. Have you ever bombard a leftist into a corner with irrefutable facts? At a certain point, when caught, they display an embarrassed giggle. They know you know they know they lied.
So, what’s their game? It is just lie, lie, lie, and take one for the team, if need be. And who exactly is their team? Sadly, for many of them it is isn’t ideological. Its “the cool kids I want to hang out with.”
If you wrote a book in 1987 about the USSR's inept response to the Chernobyl disaster, you would expect Pravda to publish a devilishly dishonest hit piece, because that's what communist apparatchiks do. So now it's 2023 and you've written a book about the communist color revolution in America in 2020, and the American Pravda (all the regime-aligned media and "influencers") are doing what communist apparatchiks have always done. I wouldn't expect them to act any differently, given their Marxcissism. The good news: fewer people are paying attention to them, except to point out their lies and ridicule their insane and idiotic ideology. The tide is turning!
Anything that helps their imaginary "Revolution" is good and noble—even if it's blatant lying, even if it's the substitution of journalism with propaganda, even if it leads to thousands of mutilated children etc.
And vice versa, anything that threatens their holy and sacred crusade, even the First Amendement or good-faith debate and negotiation, this will need to be branded as evil and dangerous (authoritarian!).
Anything is justified if it protects and helps the Cause.
Because Ideology is not realist, it must fabricate reality - all gnostic forms are contra nature and condemn nature as evil, including human nature. But to condemn human nature is to condemn/reject ethics, which are derived from anthropology (and its assumptions).
That leaves only a fideistic morality - pure obedience. This is why the SJWs resemble Taliban - their moral structure is the same, though their religion is different. Ethics is not a category in the realization of a utopia within reality, at-least until human nature (anthropology) is changed.
The Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus understood this, and reproached the gnostics for their abandonment of ethics, and asked them when they would become ethical - at what future event? He also observed that such persons as refuse the practice of ethics cannot expect to practice it. "later."
After all the dreams of the Left, it would be quite a come-down to admit that it never was anything but imaginative fantasy. But, first it was God's Providence (LOL He informed Moses and Job that only He is privy to that), then History, now outright gnostic escapery! We really are at the end of this movement, as it disintegrates into nada.
My idea of fideism is new on my part - I will be working on it, but I think that I'm on to a necessary consequence/obligatory logic.
“Beauchamp wants to have it both ways: his argument about the rise of left-wing racialism amounts to the position that it hasn’t happened—and it’s already peaked.” I can imagine him thinking “Tribalist, MOI? C’est Impossiliiiible” whether he’s French or not.
You're savvy enough to know that lefty writers, especially radical lefty writers for Vox already know the story they're writing before they interview you. All they need is the actual quote from your mouth to weave into it at the place and context of their choosing. There's no such thing as fair interviews with them. Why bother giving yourself over to a hit piece?
They do. Most every story is already prewritten. Like a screenplay script. They just go to central casting, interview actors, use the outtakes edited in to the final production. It's a formula. I know, I've done my share of them.
Chris knows this, like said, he's very savvy. It's a game. Hoping they put enough of what you think is useful into the final production. But that's so 2019. All pretense of objectivity is gone. Especially Vox. Maybe so Chris could have an outrage moment to drive home how biased it is? But we already know that by now.
I'm sure you have seen the meme. Joe Rogan mentions on his show he drinks a few pints of water each day for health reasons. The mainstream headline is: Joe Rogan advocates car engine coolant in crackpot rant!
Trenchant analysis, and a good reminder to buy your book. The simple act of calling lies out is immensely powerful as Solzhenitsyn so memorably pointed out in his statement, "Live Not by Lies", issued on the eve of his deportation from the Soviet Union.
“As Solzhenitsyn has indisputably established, the ideological Lie deceives at a very fundamental level. Those who perceive themselves as “innocent victims,” bereft of sin and any capacity for wrongdoing, or as agents of historical “progress,” become puffed up with hubris and feel themselves to be infallible. They become oppressors with little or no sense of limits or moral restraint. In Albert Camus’s memorable words, we must instead aim to be “neither victims nor executioners.” That is the path of moral sanity and political decency recommended by both the Christian Solzhenitsyn and the unbelieving Camus.”
The Left in all forms is quick to condemn him -they make him out to be a cross between Gogol and Dostoevsky - a sort of God-soaked madman.
Distraction: they never actually answer the charges he laid in his Harvard speech. I presume that he was accurate even in their own self-understanding, and that they are aware of this on some level.
I don't respect the Left for this - I recall disliking Soviet ideology no small bit - and admitting readily that they were not at all wrong about everything! I have been there - I was a vigorous cold-warrior - and even still I admitted as much .
When Chris was right. It's amazing what people will do when the facts are against them. The best part of Chris' work is that he does not simply opine but backs it up with investigation. Arguing ith facts so people like Beauchamp "fudge", which is the most polite way to say it.
Sep 19, 2023·edited Sep 19, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
"Beauchamp’s first criticism is that, contra my argument, left-wing radicalism has not conquered America’s institutions. “The seemingly credible evidence Rufo presents of radical influence—the mainstreaming of once-radical concepts like ‘structural racism,’ for example—thus ends up undermining his case,” he writes. “When radical language goes mainstream without accompanying radical shifts in policy, that’s not actually evidence of a radical takeover.”
This really is denialism, which characterizes the present. It really is a less respectable Baghdad-Bobbery: citizens know what is happening, and are being instructed that "officially," it is not.
I agree with your conclusion that center-left intellectuals are pretending that we are pre-2014 or even pre-2008 (I date the rise of public wokery to that year). A colleague of this man, who seems preoccupied with you ("Rufo" in numerous, non-analytical mentions), leaned on this review as the final word - his whole pitch was that you are inventing/exaggerating about a phenomenon to react to. I drew the same conclusion as you do here - that he was pretending that nothing has fundamentally changed, and so nothing need be done. That was the substance - the rest was an expression of dislike, and possibly envy (don't know him well enough from his posts to say this).
Your comment prompts a connection, a pattern: the theater precedes/rehearses the moment when ideology becomes totalizing in a totalitarian technological pseudo-reality - which is the necessary endpoint of ideology.
Thanks for that prompt, Cristoforo!
The theater reveals the endpoint, and is a confession and confirmation for those who understand what the necessary endpoint must be.
Incidentally, I came to this understanding by reading and reflecting upon the Strauss/Kojéve correspondence, which is indispensable for a philosophical understanding of ideology.
Good point! It appears that these authors start with the denial of the leftist takeover, which forces them to spin a story about why Mr. Rufo and others are writing about it. That can only lead to the conclusion that the latter group is fabricating a story without evidence for its reality. The mountain of evidence in Mr. Rufo’s book is then just swept aside without any alternative credible explanation for its existence.
You are right, Mike! It's hard to keep my mind on that for some reason. Probably because it's manipulation and I don't always catch that. There are actually only a few maneuvers the leftists employ, a lot of which consist of denial that they are up to anything, while at the same time doing what they blame you for.
America's Cultural Revolution is a fine new book by Christopher Rufo. I know, because I've read every word. It should be read by all Americans who want to understand how the left has transformed American society and politics over the course of the past several decades. If you are interested in a brief overview, you may want to read my recent review. https://richardspeed.substack.com/p/cultural-revolution-american-style?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
I don't think it's accurate to call post-Floyd riots "left wing" - at least not in the places where the rioters were actually black. Those were just riots motivated by perceived unfairness toward their ethnic group - they didn't have a particular political end or particular political target. They were an expression of anger and the target was anything that could be satisfyingly smashed. The rioters were not trying to set up a new form of government - they weren't even particularly targeting local officials, who you'd think would be the first blamed. "BLM" did not incite or organize these riots, they just showed up, claimed to be the spokespeople, and were taken as such by the media. It is true that these riots were destructive, and it is true that left-wing sources minimized and defended these riots, but the rioters themselves were not particularly political.
On the other hand, in places where the rioters were mostly Caucasian - there you are correct. Riots in Seattle and Portland were almost entirely white. They did not destroy at random but rather targeted political institutions like federal courthouses. They did organize online & in person with intention aforethought. They did seek to agitate for political change. These "whites rioting for black people" messes were very political, and after the first few days, the focus on black people was basically dropped in favor of "trans day of vengeance" type business and other internet-induced nuttery.
The African-Americans who participated in post-Ferguson and post-Floyd riots were not. for the most part, particularly politically active or aware, and neither are the African-Americans & others currently contributing to urban disorder. They were, and are, as ever, edgy, bored, angry, apolitical youths. BLM stickers are not to be found on their houses & BLM signs are not to be found in their yards. The BLM logo is not to be found on businesses in impoverished black communities. The BLM logo is rather seen almost entirely in affluent white neighborhoods.
The reason this all matters - the reason that it's not just nitpicking - is that you deny yourself allies when you frame the African-American community as uniformly supporting the white so-called progressives & the fringe "Black" activists who claim to speak for the whole community. Most African-American people do not support the destruction of their local communities and the degradation of their local schools. Almost zero African-American people are on board with extreme genderism. (Like, zero zero. Like, next to none.)
It seems like conservatives think African-Americans must support this stuff because they broadly vote Democratic, but actually, a huge chunk only vote Democratic because they think Republicans are racist. I don't think that's remotely true any more - Tim Scott is the sitting Senator from South Carolina after all - but that's still the perception. If Republicans are able to successfully disprove the idea that they're racist, there will be an absolute flood of socially-conservative and socially-centrist African-American & immigrant voters away from the Democratic party. Accomplishing that will start with driving a wedge between everyday African-Americans on the one hand, and the so-called progressives who claim to speak for them on the other.
I feel like this article misses a big opportunity to hammer that wedge in deeper, and instead accepts so-called progressives' claims that they speak on behalf of underprivileged people. They don't - call them out on it. Go & "uplift the voices" of the actual members of those communities. I can tell you from my personal experience that the actual members of these communities have a heck of lot to say about "gangbangers" and "transgenders" that their self-appointed racialist, genderist spokespeople really really wouldn't like. I think putting actual community members up against the spokespeople is the optimal tactic for poking holes in this strain of radicalism. Having to call older African-Americans and immigrant men & women racist homophobes is where they really start to lose people.
> I don't think it's accurate to call post-Floyd riots "left wing" - at least not in the places where the rioters were actually black. Those were just riots motivated by perceived unfairness toward their ethnic group - they didn't have a particular political end or particular political target.
It would be more accurate to say they were motivated by having a excuse to steal stuff.
Perhaps we can agree on "there was a breakdown of order due to high emotions resulting from a local incident, and this breakdown was thereafter exploited by those seeking to profit, many of whom were not originally involved." After all, the disorder clearly followed the incident. It's not like there are random outbreaks of disorder on this scale, they require a trigger. Without a trigger the baseline level of "desire to steal" results in individual burglaries & robberies rather than as a mass incident.
Something unique to the post-Floyd disorder was the speed at which it spread through so many cities large & small which did not have particular local incidents to provide a local trigger. However, I think we can chalk this up to increasing interconnectedness due to the internet. Before, riots would spread block by block as people witnessed the disorder and joined in, but now people can see disorder happening online - and when the McDonald's in their town looks just like the one that's burning in Ferguson, it's easy to see how people get inspired. The trend of having your whole friend group walk into a store and then all suddenly grab as much as you can and charge out as a pack, that we saw a lot in malls before they tightened security, also had online viral inspiration.
And more than inspiration, lots of out-of-towners get news of the party right away and head down in person. As we saw with the Rittenhouse incident, lots of people from lots of places end up involved. How did a riot about police racism turn into twenty white kids and adult losers chasing another white kid around and trying to hit him with skateboards, leading to two deaths? The internet is how, it's the reason all of those people were there. They weren't politically involved or even really stealing stuff in any organized way, they were just attracted to the summer's biggest party like stupid, stupid moths.
> Perhaps we can agree on "there was a breakdown of order due to high emotions resulting from a local incident, and this breakdown was thereafter exploited by those seeking to profit, many of whom were not originally involved."
Bureaucratic doublespeak. Note the use of passive voice and indirection to avoid naming those responsible.
I'm making an important distinction, which is that most of the rioters had nothing to do with the original protestors - obviously, the almost-entirely-Caucasian rioters in Portland had no proximate exposure to racial discrimination by police or anyone else.
They may have had "BLM" signs and they may have had the support of some newborn "activist organization" calling themselves "the official BLM" or whatever - but neither Portland Caucasians nor "official BLM" have any right to speak on behalf of the average African-American citizen of Ferguson, and that average citizen can't be blamed for what these outside activist organizations do.
Worse still, evidence is pretty clear that a heck of a lot of disorder was initiated by out-of-towners attracted to the crowd cover of vigils & marches. This will probably become more & more the norm in the internet age - any excitement anywhere will be instantly telegraphed to the entire nation as soon as it starts, lighting a giant candle for the stupid, stupid moths I mentioned earlier. Every dumbass from five hundred miles around who wants to loot something will be there, every loser from five hundred miles around who wants to break windows & burn cars will be there, every idiot who wants to get famous for recording or starting the next Rittenhouse incident - or being the next Rittenhouse - they'll all be there.
This is what we get when most in our young generations live and breathe in a hive of constant digital contact & constant competition - it's like Survivor meets Lord of the Flies. It's fortunate for us that they're so sedentary in habit - were that not the case, our cities would be suffering much worse things...
> They may have had "BLM" signs and they may have had the support of some newborn "activist organization" calling themselves "the official BLM" or whatever - but neither Portland Caucasians nor "official BLM" have any right to speak on behalf of the average African-American citizen of Ferguson, and that average citizen can't be blamed for what these outside activist organizations do.
In other words, they were outside left wingers. But in your initial comment you claimed the rioters were not "left-wing". In your continued effort to shift the blame for the riots onto no one in particular, you've managed to contradict yourself.
> every idiot who wants to get famous for recording or starting the next Rittenhouse incident - or being the next Rittenhouse - they'll all be there.
And now you've even descended to victim blaming the people whose businesses were burned and the friends they called in to help defend their businesses.
It's completely ridiculous to put locals holding a vigil or a march for the deceased in the same category as people looting stores and burning cars for the heck of it. "BLM" claimed to represent the vigil holders & the peaceful marchers, but then defended every incident opportunist violence. They are the reason people conflate vigil-holders with violent looters. it's a terrible thing they've done.
It's certainly true that the blame for the disorder lies squarely on the shoulders of those who threw the bricks. Yet at the same time, it's ridiculous to assert that these people had broader political motivations outside of perceiving injustice in local policing. The African-American rioters in Ferguson stole & burnt, but they did not take over a federal courthouse, nor did they attempt to establish an anarchist microstate. Caucasians in Portland did those things "in the name of all black people."
Vigil holders & peaceful marchers did not defend rioters, "BLM" did, again "in the name of all black people." I remind you again that "BLM" is not an organization whose members are elected by anyone but themselves. It's not even an organization like the NAACP responsible to members and local branches. "BLM Inc" is literally just a ring of educated "progressives" who declared themselves representative of all black people in America, and who were then accepted & promoted as such by the same demographic of educated "progressives."
You should take this all as good news. African-Americans do not broadly support burning their own communities down, nor do they broadly support "defunding the police" or anything of that nature. The vast majority of African-Americans want safe streets and good schools. The people you should be blaming are the educated & wealthy "progressives" who anoint themselves unelected official spokespeople of the oppressed, plus the people in the media who help them get away with this silent coup.
(No one should be calling in teens and giving them guns to help protect a stupid strip mall storefront whether it's under attack by rioters or Red China. If you really think that's commendable behavior, you are literally blinded by partisanship. Rittenhouse bears zero blame compared to the gobsmackingly dumb adults who thought it was a good idea to get him involved in the first place. He could've easily been shot by rioters or mistaken for a rioter & shot by police. The way things ended up going was far from a worst case scenario. Have you forgotten that vigilanteeism isn't legal? You need to be a sheriff to round up a posse. We do, in fact, live in a society, and violence for violence is the rule of beasts.)
Passage from “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy” by Batya Ungar-Sargon:
“If you’ve never heard of Vox, that’s probably because it’s not for you; from its inception, the site had a very specific audience in mind: young, affluent, and highly educated. Klein and his coeditors were writing for urban millennials under thirty-five heading highly educated households that made over $100,000 a year, the New York Times reported.18
Vox’s trademark style would be a cheeky, barely concealed smugness that flatters its readers into believing that by reading the website—which, not coincidentally, would sustain all of the liberal opinions that young, affluent, educated people already hold—they can rest assured that they are among the ranks of the correct, the informed, rather than one of the stupids.”
Great quote!
Very poignant. Which also serves as a great explanation for the NYT, the WP, the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, etc. They define (and target) their audience in different ways, but they provide the same service.
Curious what they say about The Atlantic. They make more of an attempt than most to question the prevailing orthodoxy.
Absolutely. Batya's book touches on them all.
Thank you- just ordered the book! 📖📚📖
Muckracking at its finest.
The mentality of Mr. Beauchamp reminds me of the quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “if you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” He and his allies are on the wrong train and are trying so hard to tell the world that the right thing to do is run in the other direction.
Precisely.
I keep coming back to Saul Bellow: "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep". https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
Great quote
I will throw in one more Bellow, from "Mr. Sammler's Planet":
"You could see the suicidal impulses of civilization pushing strongly. You wondered whether this Western culture could survive universal dissemination—whether only its science and technology or administrative practices would travel, be adopted by other societies. Or, whether the worst enemies of civilization might not prove to be its petted intellectuals who attacked it at its weakest moments—attacked it in the name of proletarian revolution, in the name of reason, and in the name of irrationality, in the name of visceral depth, in the name of sex, in the name of perfect instantaneous freedom. For what it amounted to was limitless demand—insatiability, refusal of the doomed creature (death being sure and final) to go away from this earth unsatisfied. A full bill of demand and complaint was therefore presented by each individual. Nonnegotiable. Recognizing no scarcity of supply in any human department."
His very article, clearly propagandist, is proof of the media takeover by the left. He is not reporting. He is manipulating.
Right, Vox is at the tip of the spear of elite left-wing orthodoxy.
This quote by C. Rufo summed up nicely what is going on in America and is being led by the Biden Administration and Deep/Admin state: "Beauchamp concludes his review with a warning that my “dangerous” book might usher in an “authoritarian” political reaction". Obviously, it's just the opposite. Biden and his Czars and the Radical Left, including most of the media have been diligently attempting to usher in a U.S. Authoritarian/Totalitarian style of government under their propaganda and lies of countering so called digital hate and racism and misinformation with these corrupt DEI organizations. In fact, Beauchamp and these people want to usher in their style of Authoritarian government abuse and power and leave the truth seekers in the dust.
Yeah, a work colleague only reads msm and now believe cultural Marxism is a right wing boogey man. Le sigh
So frustrating.
It used to be, even if you had a difference of opinion, you could have intelligent discussions on social or political topics and learn from each other. It seems now people just clamp tight and get belligerent if you try to present a different point of view.
That's because people didn't used to hold opinions like "it's virtuous to encourage children to castrate and mutilate themselves".
A difference of opinion now involves much higher stakes than was true in the past. Now, only two opinions can be recognized--my good, correct, realistic one, and your bad, wrong, delusional one. And since both sides treat their positions as religious dogmas, any deviation from their extreme beliefs equates to sin, immorality, and possession by evil spirits.
I am not sure this is quite true. One example. The conservative position on transgender children is they are castrating boys; the opposite view is we must provide gender-affirming care.
The conservative position is factually correct and observable, the opposing view has to ignore a mountain of evidence, not the least of which is kids grow out of most childish fads, an observation well established. Their position is dogmatic.
So I think we need to be careful of this line of reasoning, we all need to compromise etc. Frankly that is how the hard progressive Left operate; they exploit the reasonableness of their critics.
Thanks for the interesting response, Spaceman. Regarding your example, it is definitely a fact that the transgender treatment professionals are "castrating boys," and that they obviously avoid using that term to describe what they are doing. I doubt that they are denying that reality, however, so much as claiming that said procedure is "medically necessary, effective and safe." (Full disclosure: I am opposed to "gender affirmative care" as it is currently defined and practiced).
My position on the need for compromise is that our form of government requires it, if any action is to be taken on problems that need to be solved. Compromise is a process of mutual give and take, in which both sides get some of what they want but not all of it. When one side is doing all the giving and yielding, that is not compromise, it is dominance and submission. You rightly argue that one-sided efforts to compromise become a fools' strategy leading to self-subordination. What you describe in your last sentence about "how the hard progressive Left operate; they exploit the reasonableness of their critics," is the effort to take power via hostile manipulation. The leftist activists do appear to take a lot of pleasure in hostile manipulation, although I would assume they would prefer direct power assertion (dictatorship).
Frustrating, yes. Especially for those of us who find ourselves very distant from both of the fringe positions expressed. Because I'm not impressed by either the Right's paranoid impending-doom crisis rhetoric, or the American Neoliberal Establishment donning a mantle of virtue and justice woven from unexamined assumptions as if it excuses them from impartially reporting facts and events, and letting the chips fall where they may.
Our electoral system is terribly (but remedially) flawed, and as a result, at this point in American history the leadership of both major parties is rife with self-dealing, personal ego trips, and fealty to wealthy special interests, coupled to various forms of crackpot realism, ass-covering, and constituency pandering, based on the cynical recommendations of "Political Science" 10%ers. (Ahem. Politics is not a Science. It's an empirical Craft. Good politics is about keeping the pipes fixed. Good politics is NOT about ironclad allegiance to phantasmal abstractions of some Ideology or another.)
The U.S. of A. is vulnerable to the prospect of becoming an authoritarian society. But the notion that either the Democrats or the Republicans could possibly achieve one-party rule (without overwhelming popular supermajority approval) is bizarre. Both Teams have formidable legal staffs on retainer.
And, really...speaking of supermajorities, consider that between January 2009 and January 2011, the Obama administration held a Democratic supermajority in the House, and wavered between 58 and 59 votes in the Senate. And the Dems didn't even make a move to reduce the number of Senators required to break a filibuster to something reasonable, like 55 or 56, or getting rid of the filibuster just long enough to actually pass some productive legislation (the GOP Senators successfully held up even basic infrastructure maintenance funding; all they didn't need to filibuster, all they had to do was THREATEN it.)
The Democrats could also have passed a Federal abortion law in those years that included some term restrictions--like 20 weeks--using the legislation found in European countries as a model. But they didn't; they merely kicked the can down the road, assuming that they'd somehow always have a Supreme Court majority despite the obvious lack of any guarantee in that regard, and despite the record of recent evidence to the contrary. A minimum wage rise could have been passed in 2009 by a near-supermajority Democratic Congress, if they had believed any of their own rhetoric. Etc. etc.
But they didn't. The Democratic Party put all of their efforts into a frontal assault on the health care issue- the same one that had sunk Democratic majority control in both Houses in 1994. (The GOP won the House for the first time since 1952.) Between capitulating to the GOP on just about every issue except the one that the Republicans would have the easiest time propagandizing, the Dems lost the House in 2010. As if they couldn't wait to do it. (I was reading Eeyore prognostications of doom for the Dems in the midterms in Salon a year in advance of the election.)
Does the record of the Democrats in the years when they were at their most recent peak of power look like the workings of a ruthless juggernaut of ideological zealots bent on totalitarian control to you? The Democrats are flailing. The sole basis of their appeal in recent decades is that the Republicans were even more odious. And then Trump got elected, and they lost their remaining marbles. Because the Dems had always thought that their symbolic gestures, posturing, and polite dissembling would be sufficient to defeat any GOP troglodyte. And then they had their doors blown off, by Donald the Candid. And so it came to pass that the Democrats Who Mattered stood resolved that the Ends justified the Means, in order to banish the Menace. And now they're being exposed, which in my opinion is pretty much exhibit A for the position that we still have some semblance of a rule of law in this country. (Even though some Bill of Rights Constitutional amendments--notably the 6th--have gotten to be disregarded--routinely--here in the Sixth Decade of the Global War on Drugs, and the Third Decade of the Global War on Terror.)
Unfortunately, when it comes to the perils of impending authoritarianism, polarized party politics is the least of our worries. Those of us who have found ourselves politically homeless don't have either of those two Teams to fall back on. And there are factions in both parties who would be fine with a "bipartisan consensus" that sets the stage for the disappearance of personal autonomy and individual agency. Majorities of Republicans and Democrats may hate each other, but bipartisan majorities keep voting for the surveillance state, while failing when it comes to finding effective ways to protect digital privacy rights. Because the real problem is Inertia, and toadying to The Platforms. The Europeans have better privacy protections--and they've had them for years--because the Platforms are not the political force in those nations that they are in the country where the Platform Owners are located.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beyond that: how many Congressional staffs have the skills and knowledge to research practical privacy protections to counter the currently Unregulated Free Market in Data Mining, and then inform the Boss about their findings? (I've listened to too many Congressional hearings to think that more than a handful of Congresspeople or Senators are able to inform themselves on an issue like that one. They are a lot of people on Capitol Hill who don't even know the chemical composition of coal ash, or coal mine drainage.)
Digital privacy rights are an actual adult Issue. Which is one of the reasons that it's avoided. Even simpler Adult issues- like building out the national electrical grid, or funding the construction of municipal waterworks fortified against pollution and salt water intrusion, so that every American retains some minimal status as a First World citizen- are discreetly shuffled to the bottom of the list of priorities, as if the lump under the rug isn't continuing to get bigger.
Right-wingers think the Democrats are anti-development because they hate the country...no, they're merely hostage to their privileged NIMBY faction. Most Intolerant Minority Wins. The Librocrat elites of the Center for Biological Diversity LOVE the wild country-- so much that they don't even notice the existence of electrical power corridors, pipelines, and railroad cuts when they drive past them in the countryside. Maybe someone should show If you told them about the Renovo natural gas complex, they'd faint- oh, no, this bulletin just in- https://www.pennlive.com/news/2023/04/decision-to-discontinue-plans-for-1b-gas-fired-power-plant-killed-us-mayor-of-pa-town-says.html
For the record, Renovo, PA is one of the most remote areas of the country. The power plant emissions would be released into the atmosphere an area that's beyond rural. Not, like, Jersey City. No pipeline construction would have been needed to supply the power plant; it's at the nexus of one of the largest natural gas storage facilities in the US. The gas is already refined. Natural gas isn't a perfect form of stored energy. But neither are batteries. Way to go, Center for Biological Diversity! You shut down another one! You don't even know why you did it, do you?
Left-wingers think the Republicans are pro-development because they're heedless greedheads. No, only some of them. Enough that the Republican Party is hostage to them. The GOPites explain their opposition to comprehensive pollution regulations that begin at the headwaters as ideological; i.e., Because Freedom. Freedom to poison everything downstream. Some of them defend this by saying that injured parties can always 'whistle for their money'...aw damn, I meant "file a lawsuit." As if we're all Donald Trump.
Asking the liberals to understand Left-wing institutional capture is like asking a fish to understand water.
You can't see the effects of something when you're stuck in the middle of it. Thus the path of least resistance is to disbelieve its existence.
"Asking the liberals to understand Left-wing institutional capture is like asking a fish to understand water." Truth.
Maybe some of the brainwashed just repeat slogans and don’t know they’re a fish in water. But I believe most know exactly where they are and what they’re doing. Have you ever bombard a leftist into a corner with irrefutable facts? At a certain point, when caught, they display an embarrassed giggle. They know you know they know they lied.
So, what’s their game? It is just lie, lie, lie, and take one for the team, if need be. And who exactly is their team? Sadly, for many of them it is isn’t ideological. Its “the cool kids I want to hang out with.”
If you wrote a book in 1987 about the USSR's inept response to the Chernobyl disaster, you would expect Pravda to publish a devilishly dishonest hit piece, because that's what communist apparatchiks do. So now it's 2023 and you've written a book about the communist color revolution in America in 2020, and the American Pravda (all the regime-aligned media and "influencers") are doing what communist apparatchiks have always done. I wouldn't expect them to act any differently, given their Marxcissism. The good news: fewer people are paying attention to them, except to point out their lies and ridicule their insane and idiotic ideology. The tide is turning!
This is the foundation of Leftist morality:
Anything that helps their imaginary "Revolution" is good and noble—even if it's blatant lying, even if it's the substitution of journalism with propaganda, even if it leads to thousands of mutilated children etc.
And vice versa, anything that threatens their holy and sacred crusade, even the First Amendement or good-faith debate and negotiation, this will need to be branded as evil and dangerous (authoritarian!).
Anything is justified if it protects and helps the Cause.
Because Ideology is not realist, it must fabricate reality - all gnostic forms are contra nature and condemn nature as evil, including human nature. But to condemn human nature is to condemn/reject ethics, which are derived from anthropology (and its assumptions).
That leaves only a fideistic morality - pure obedience. This is why the SJWs resemble Taliban - their moral structure is the same, though their religion is different. Ethics is not a category in the realization of a utopia within reality, at-least until human nature (anthropology) is changed.
The Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus understood this, and reproached the gnostics for their abandonment of ethics, and asked them when they would become ethical - at what future event? He also observed that such persons as refuse the practice of ethics cannot expect to practice it. "later."
Human kind cannot bear very much reality!
After all the dreams of the Left, it would be quite a come-down to admit that it never was anything but imaginative fantasy. But, first it was God's Providence (LOL He informed Moses and Job that only He is privy to that), then History, now outright gnostic escapery! We really are at the end of this movement, as it disintegrates into nada.
My idea of fideism is new on my part - I will be working on it, but I think that I'm on to a necessary consequence/obligatory logic.
Hard agree. Too many are oblivious to this. We submit to a rulebook we assume is universal while they laugh.
That's right.
I hope - yet feel the tide is overwhelming
“Beauchamp wants to have it both ways: his argument about the rise of left-wing racialism amounts to the position that it hasn’t happened—and it’s already peaked.” I can imagine him thinking “Tribalist, MOI? C’est Impossiliiiible” whether he’s French or not.
Exactly
You're savvy enough to know that lefty writers, especially radical lefty writers for Vox already know the story they're writing before they interview you. All they need is the actual quote from your mouth to weave into it at the place and context of their choosing. There's no such thing as fair interviews with them. Why bother giving yourself over to a hit piece?
Good point! It’s like they have a template and they just plug in new names.
They do. Most every story is already prewritten. Like a screenplay script. They just go to central casting, interview actors, use the outtakes edited in to the final production. It's a formula. I know, I've done my share of them.
Chris knows this, like said, he's very savvy. It's a game. Hoping they put enough of what you think is useful into the final production. But that's so 2019. All pretense of objectivity is gone. Especially Vox. Maybe so Chris could have an outrage moment to drive home how biased it is? But we already know that by now.
Yes, I think we've been successfully flipping the script on them.
Hope. Always hope with action ...
I'm sure you have seen the meme. Joe Rogan mentions on his show he drinks a few pints of water each day for health reasons. The mainstream headline is: Joe Rogan advocates car engine coolant in crackpot rant!
Trenchant analysis, and a good reminder to buy your book. The simple act of calling lies out is immensely powerful as Solzhenitsyn so memorably pointed out in his statement, "Live Not by Lies", issued on the eve of his deportation from the Soviet Union.
“As Solzhenitsyn has indisputably established, the ideological Lie deceives at a very fundamental level. Those who perceive themselves as “innocent victims,” bereft of sin and any capacity for wrongdoing, or as agents of historical “progress,” become puffed up with hubris and feel themselves to be infallible. They become oppressors with little or no sense of limits or moral restraint. In Albert Camus’s memorable words, we must instead aim to be “neither victims nor executioners.” That is the path of moral sanity and political decency recommended by both the Christian Solzhenitsyn and the unbelieving Camus.”
— Daniel J. Mahoney, Solzhenitsyn scholar
Solzhenitsyn was one of the greats.
The Left in all forms is quick to condemn him -they make him out to be a cross between Gogol and Dostoevsky - a sort of God-soaked madman.
Distraction: they never actually answer the charges he laid in his Harvard speech. I presume that he was accurate even in their own self-understanding, and that they are aware of this on some level.
I don't respect the Left for this - I recall disliking Soviet ideology no small bit - and admitting readily that they were not at all wrong about everything! I have been there - I was a vigorous cold-warrior - and even still I admitted as much .
Lying is lying, and so with self-deception.
When Chris was right. It's amazing what people will do when the facts are against them. The best part of Chris' work is that he does not simply opine but backs it up with investigation. Arguing ith facts so people like Beauchamp "fudge", which is the most polite way to say it.
"Beauchamp’s first criticism is that, contra my argument, left-wing radicalism has not conquered America’s institutions. “The seemingly credible evidence Rufo presents of radical influence—the mainstreaming of once-radical concepts like ‘structural racism,’ for example—thus ends up undermining his case,” he writes. “When radical language goes mainstream without accompanying radical shifts in policy, that’s not actually evidence of a radical takeover.”
This really is denialism, which characterizes the present. It really is a less respectable Baghdad-Bobbery: citizens know what is happening, and are being instructed that "officially," it is not.
I agree with your conclusion that center-left intellectuals are pretending that we are pre-2014 or even pre-2008 (I date the rise of public wokery to that year). A colleague of this man, who seems preoccupied with you ("Rufo" in numerous, non-analytical mentions), leaned on this review as the final word - his whole pitch was that you are inventing/exaggerating about a phenomenon to react to. I drew the same conclusion as you do here - that he was pretending that nothing has fundamentally changed, and so nothing need be done. That was the substance - the rest was an expression of dislike, and possibly envy (don't know him well enough from his posts to say this).
That's right, it's pure theater to obscure reality.
Your comment prompts a connection, a pattern: the theater precedes/rehearses the moment when ideology becomes totalizing in a totalitarian technological pseudo-reality - which is the necessary endpoint of ideology.
Thanks for that prompt, Cristoforo!
The theater reveals the endpoint, and is a confession and confirmation for those who understand what the necessary endpoint must be.
Incidentally, I came to this understanding by reading and reflecting upon the Strauss/Kojéve correspondence, which is indispensable for a philosophical understanding of ideology.
Good point! It appears that these authors start with the denial of the leftist takeover, which forces them to spin a story about why Mr. Rufo and others are writing about it. That can only lead to the conclusion that the latter group is fabricating a story without evidence for its reality. The mountain of evidence in Mr. Rufo’s book is then just swept aside without any alternative credible explanation for its existence.
The Left always accuses you of what they themselves are doing, in this case fabricating a narrative and ignoring evidence.
You are right, Mike! It's hard to keep my mind on that for some reason. Probably because it's manipulation and I don't always catch that. There are actually only a few maneuvers the leftists employ, a lot of which consist of denial that they are up to anything, while at the same time doing what they blame you for.
Well-put and succinct, Sandra!
Thanks, Tommaso!
Gaslighting is a form of abuse.
Hm, well put.
America's Cultural Revolution is a fine new book by Christopher Rufo. I know, because I've read every word. It should be read by all Americans who want to understand how the left has transformed American society and politics over the course of the past several decades. If you are interested in a brief overview, you may want to read my recent review. https://richardspeed.substack.com/p/cultural-revolution-american-style?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Christopher, thanks for helping me complete my post this morning!
The tools at Vox are not the only ones distorting history....
https://markmarshall.substack.com/p/he-shall-think-to-change-times
I don't think it's accurate to call post-Floyd riots "left wing" - at least not in the places where the rioters were actually black. Those were just riots motivated by perceived unfairness toward their ethnic group - they didn't have a particular political end or particular political target. They were an expression of anger and the target was anything that could be satisfyingly smashed. The rioters were not trying to set up a new form of government - they weren't even particularly targeting local officials, who you'd think would be the first blamed. "BLM" did not incite or organize these riots, they just showed up, claimed to be the spokespeople, and were taken as such by the media. It is true that these riots were destructive, and it is true that left-wing sources minimized and defended these riots, but the rioters themselves were not particularly political.
On the other hand, in places where the rioters were mostly Caucasian - there you are correct. Riots in Seattle and Portland were almost entirely white. They did not destroy at random but rather targeted political institutions like federal courthouses. They did organize online & in person with intention aforethought. They did seek to agitate for political change. These "whites rioting for black people" messes were very political, and after the first few days, the focus on black people was basically dropped in favor of "trans day of vengeance" type business and other internet-induced nuttery.
The African-Americans who participated in post-Ferguson and post-Floyd riots were not. for the most part, particularly politically active or aware, and neither are the African-Americans & others currently contributing to urban disorder. They were, and are, as ever, edgy, bored, angry, apolitical youths. BLM stickers are not to be found on their houses & BLM signs are not to be found in their yards. The BLM logo is not to be found on businesses in impoverished black communities. The BLM logo is rather seen almost entirely in affluent white neighborhoods.
The reason this all matters - the reason that it's not just nitpicking - is that you deny yourself allies when you frame the African-American community as uniformly supporting the white so-called progressives & the fringe "Black" activists who claim to speak for the whole community. Most African-American people do not support the destruction of their local communities and the degradation of their local schools. Almost zero African-American people are on board with extreme genderism. (Like, zero zero. Like, next to none.)
It seems like conservatives think African-Americans must support this stuff because they broadly vote Democratic, but actually, a huge chunk only vote Democratic because they think Republicans are racist. I don't think that's remotely true any more - Tim Scott is the sitting Senator from South Carolina after all - but that's still the perception. If Republicans are able to successfully disprove the idea that they're racist, there will be an absolute flood of socially-conservative and socially-centrist African-American & immigrant voters away from the Democratic party. Accomplishing that will start with driving a wedge between everyday African-Americans on the one hand, and the so-called progressives who claim to speak for them on the other.
I feel like this article misses a big opportunity to hammer that wedge in deeper, and instead accepts so-called progressives' claims that they speak on behalf of underprivileged people. They don't - call them out on it. Go & "uplift the voices" of the actual members of those communities. I can tell you from my personal experience that the actual members of these communities have a heck of lot to say about "gangbangers" and "transgenders" that their self-appointed racialist, genderist spokespeople really really wouldn't like. I think putting actual community members up against the spokespeople is the optimal tactic for poking holes in this strain of radicalism. Having to call older African-Americans and immigrant men & women racist homophobes is where they really start to lose people.
Great points! I live in Portland and completely agree with your analysis of what transpired here.
> I don't think it's accurate to call post-Floyd riots "left wing" - at least not in the places where the rioters were actually black. Those were just riots motivated by perceived unfairness toward their ethnic group - they didn't have a particular political end or particular political target.
It would be more accurate to say they were motivated by having a excuse to steal stuff.
Perhaps we can agree on "there was a breakdown of order due to high emotions resulting from a local incident, and this breakdown was thereafter exploited by those seeking to profit, many of whom were not originally involved." After all, the disorder clearly followed the incident. It's not like there are random outbreaks of disorder on this scale, they require a trigger. Without a trigger the baseline level of "desire to steal" results in individual burglaries & robberies rather than as a mass incident.
Something unique to the post-Floyd disorder was the speed at which it spread through so many cities large & small which did not have particular local incidents to provide a local trigger. However, I think we can chalk this up to increasing interconnectedness due to the internet. Before, riots would spread block by block as people witnessed the disorder and joined in, but now people can see disorder happening online - and when the McDonald's in their town looks just like the one that's burning in Ferguson, it's easy to see how people get inspired. The trend of having your whole friend group walk into a store and then all suddenly grab as much as you can and charge out as a pack, that we saw a lot in malls before they tightened security, also had online viral inspiration.
And more than inspiration, lots of out-of-towners get news of the party right away and head down in person. As we saw with the Rittenhouse incident, lots of people from lots of places end up involved. How did a riot about police racism turn into twenty white kids and adult losers chasing another white kid around and trying to hit him with skateboards, leading to two deaths? The internet is how, it's the reason all of those people were there. They weren't politically involved or even really stealing stuff in any organized way, they were just attracted to the summer's biggest party like stupid, stupid moths.
> Perhaps we can agree on "there was a breakdown of order due to high emotions resulting from a local incident, and this breakdown was thereafter exploited by those seeking to profit, many of whom were not originally involved."
Bureaucratic doublespeak. Note the use of passive voice and indirection to avoid naming those responsible.
I'm making an important distinction, which is that most of the rioters had nothing to do with the original protestors - obviously, the almost-entirely-Caucasian rioters in Portland had no proximate exposure to racial discrimination by police or anyone else.
They may have had "BLM" signs and they may have had the support of some newborn "activist organization" calling themselves "the official BLM" or whatever - but neither Portland Caucasians nor "official BLM" have any right to speak on behalf of the average African-American citizen of Ferguson, and that average citizen can't be blamed for what these outside activist organizations do.
Worse still, evidence is pretty clear that a heck of a lot of disorder was initiated by out-of-towners attracted to the crowd cover of vigils & marches. This will probably become more & more the norm in the internet age - any excitement anywhere will be instantly telegraphed to the entire nation as soon as it starts, lighting a giant candle for the stupid, stupid moths I mentioned earlier. Every dumbass from five hundred miles around who wants to loot something will be there, every loser from five hundred miles around who wants to break windows & burn cars will be there, every idiot who wants to get famous for recording or starting the next Rittenhouse incident - or being the next Rittenhouse - they'll all be there.
This is what we get when most in our young generations live and breathe in a hive of constant digital contact & constant competition - it's like Survivor meets Lord of the Flies. It's fortunate for us that they're so sedentary in habit - were that not the case, our cities would be suffering much worse things...
> They may have had "BLM" signs and they may have had the support of some newborn "activist organization" calling themselves "the official BLM" or whatever - but neither Portland Caucasians nor "official BLM" have any right to speak on behalf of the average African-American citizen of Ferguson, and that average citizen can't be blamed for what these outside activist organizations do.
In other words, they were outside left wingers. But in your initial comment you claimed the rioters were not "left-wing". In your continued effort to shift the blame for the riots onto no one in particular, you've managed to contradict yourself.
> every idiot who wants to get famous for recording or starting the next Rittenhouse incident - or being the next Rittenhouse - they'll all be there.
And now you've even descended to victim blaming the people whose businesses were burned and the friends they called in to help defend their businesses.
Have you tried not being a total sleazebag?
It's completely ridiculous to put locals holding a vigil or a march for the deceased in the same category as people looting stores and burning cars for the heck of it. "BLM" claimed to represent the vigil holders & the peaceful marchers, but then defended every incident opportunist violence. They are the reason people conflate vigil-holders with violent looters. it's a terrible thing they've done.
It's certainly true that the blame for the disorder lies squarely on the shoulders of those who threw the bricks. Yet at the same time, it's ridiculous to assert that these people had broader political motivations outside of perceiving injustice in local policing. The African-American rioters in Ferguson stole & burnt, but they did not take over a federal courthouse, nor did they attempt to establish an anarchist microstate. Caucasians in Portland did those things "in the name of all black people."
Vigil holders & peaceful marchers did not defend rioters, "BLM" did, again "in the name of all black people." I remind you again that "BLM" is not an organization whose members are elected by anyone but themselves. It's not even an organization like the NAACP responsible to members and local branches. "BLM Inc" is literally just a ring of educated "progressives" who declared themselves representative of all black people in America, and who were then accepted & promoted as such by the same demographic of educated "progressives."
You should take this all as good news. African-Americans do not broadly support burning their own communities down, nor do they broadly support "defunding the police" or anything of that nature. The vast majority of African-Americans want safe streets and good schools. The people you should be blaming are the educated & wealthy "progressives" who anoint themselves unelected official spokespeople of the oppressed, plus the people in the media who help them get away with this silent coup.
(No one should be calling in teens and giving them guns to help protect a stupid strip mall storefront whether it's under attack by rioters or Red China. If you really think that's commendable behavior, you are literally blinded by partisanship. Rittenhouse bears zero blame compared to the gobsmackingly dumb adults who thought it was a good idea to get him involved in the first place. He could've easily been shot by rioters or mistaken for a rioter & shot by police. The way things ended up going was far from a worst case scenario. Have you forgotten that vigilanteeism isn't legal? You need to be a sheriff to round up a posse. We do, in fact, live in a society, and violence for violence is the rule of beasts.)