Protest Warriors Got Their War On, Alright
You have probably not heard of the group Protest Warrior. They are a small, confused bunch of young loudmouths who are idealogically in line with Fred Phelps and his army of gibbering retards and tactically aligned with the sort of green haired trust-fund boys that smash car windows during supposedly peaceful gatherings.These confused souls entertain themselves by creating inflammatory, far-right signs and crashing left-leaning protests in order to draw attention to themselves. You can see one of their signs in one of my earlier posts...
Their mission statement, as excerpted from the FAQ section of their website, includes this passage:
We must admit we get a certain high from puncturing the moral self-righteousness of leftists. These people claim to have a monopoly on what is good, their entire self-esteem depends on it.
On January 20th, a small party of these self-sacrificing retards crashed DC's massive inaugural protest. You can read a much better written, more factual story here, but the upshot of it is this: these bozos came to a large gathering of angry, disaffected liberals with intentionally inflammatory radical right-wing rhetoric posted on signs and shouted through megaphones.
Shortly after they were noticed, a small army of black-clad "anarchists" encircled the group and violently escorted them from the park, ripping signs and kicking these poor little protest protestors as a crowd chanted a good old-fashioned "na-na-na-na hey hey hey gooood-bye..."
I am usually not a fan of people that call themselves anarchists. Nearly 100 percent of America anarchists never had to sleep in the woods and eat crickets as children because warlords had their parents killed in a tribal feud. However, I totally support that beatdown.
Here's a picture of the "protest warriors" shortly after their ejection:
While they may appear to be frowning, these people are actually very, very happy. In fact, they may be as fulfilled as they can have been in their brief, joyless lives. Here's why: they got the reaction they wanted. Someone paid enough attention to them for long enough to actually touch them, to hold their hands and frustrated bodies to escort them somewhere. Then, someone else took their pictures. That someone was me.
When I started talking to Gil Knobrin, the self-described organizer for this chapter of the Protest Warriors, his birdlike chest puffed up two sizes larger as the pride swelled in his tiny, misshapen heart. I was talking to him, taking his picture and writing things down and taking him seriously. This was big stuff.
His eyes behind his cheap late-80's sunglasses as he gleefully described how the left are a bunch of hypocrites, launching into a carefully planned tirade about how he and his group were just a bunch of innocents. Have a look:
He couldn't tell that I was just some blogger, and even if he could have, he wouldn't have cared. I was paying attention.
He told me that he and his group have a constitutional right to attend any protest they want and wave any sign that they like. That is true. It is also true that college kids in Manhattan had the constitutional right to dress like Osama Bin Laden on Halloween, 2001. I also have a constitutional right to swim in a shark tank in a wetsuit crafted entirely oout of ground beef. The American constitution protects all manner of assholery.
If Knobrin and his ilk read this right now, it's going to make their weeks...I am a liberal who is paying them attention, giving them some desperately needed cred. They have angered me and I have paid them some mind and it's going to make them chipper and angry all at one time, happily outraged with a newly validated sense of purpose.
It will totally cancel out the deflated frustration they must have felt when the cops they called after their well-earned beatdown totally ignored them while an entire parade of protestors marched by, once angry and now over it, moving in a large, throbbing party that welcomed everyone but those bozos.
Now I am getting the same infectious sense of puffed-up self-righteous happiness just writing this, and it is making me feel like I ate too much pizza and too much ice cream. I am experiencing the moral/ideological equivalent of a trip to Chuck E. Cheese. I need to go lie down and dream of an America that knows the difference between having rights and doing what is right while all this idealistic birthday food dribbles out of my head through my mouth, into a crusty puddle I can wash off the pillowcase.
posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 1:24 AM
20 Comments:
Well that just sucks. You can't get mad for people showing up at a protest and speaking their mind. In this sense Knobrin and his ilk are correct: leftists are all too often hyporcritical in that way; all about protest and expression unless the message is one they don't like.
There's more of a lesson here though than just the old "I don't like what you're saying, but I defend your right to say it" routine.
Check out the Protest Warriors: Organized, on message, and loud. If the Democrats want to regain control of Congress in the next 50 years they'd do well to follow that example.
Well, you *can* get mad at people for showing up at a protest when they're airing a message that is in direct contradiction with the protest's message, and you can force them out of that protest.
So long as it's done peacecully and quietly, there's nothing hypocritical in giving these people the boot.
But if the Bush Inauguration team played by the same rules you are holding others to, there would have been no protests period, and that is where the hypocrisy comes in. Had another group been there with a message more in line with the leftist protesters message they surely would not have been escorted away. Not saying the Protest Warriors are standup guys, but they have every bit as much right to do what they do as protesters on the left. To deny that is to create a double standard.
Your position is sheer hypocricy, not that it's surprising. You, who supposedly support the right to free speech for yourself, deny it to others and do so with violence, then gloat. You're a leftist thug who can not tolerate dissent.
You're simply a fascist who wants to crush those who disagree with you, an enemy of free speech, no different from the brown shirts.
Tantor
I have participated in PW events and your characterization of them is off-base. Most of them are hawkish libertarians and some are also social conservatives, but comparing them to Fred Phelps is just ignorant and intellectually lazy.
I previously read your post about visiting the Iraqi polling center. Well, the PWers get it about liberating Iraq and always did - that's one of their main talking points. So on that issue they are not retards, right?
Jeff, come on now. PW is akin to Fred Phelps? A lot of
PW members or folks who think as they do are strongly pro-gay, and would likely be delighted if some prosecutor could find something with which to convict that odious piece of shit.
PW has free speech, and it is as American as apple pie to launch counter-protests; in another context I've been to several myself. I find your views disappointing here. The "anarchists" had no right to "beat down" the counter-protesters, as no such right inheres in ANYONE. Those who initiate violence or its serious threat are always in the wrong, and that was true of the anarchists whose violence you endorse.
--Mona--
so what i don't quite understand is: it's okay for the bush administration to make the protesters have their protest miles away from the inaugural festivities; and then, in order that the protesters not be hippocritical, they need to welcome into their midst people who are basically shouting them down. hmm. i'd like to think that somehow, somewhere, it's okay to express a dissenting voice. i wonder what would happen if the protesters took their protest right into the middle of the inaugural festivities? oh, wait, i know, they'd get beaten, thrown out, oh and sent to jail for a while.
oh and i went to the protest warrior web site. it sure is nice that those in power have some folks to help them spread their grassroots message, the one that you just can't get from the mainstream media. that is, other than the all tv networks, the newspapers, and the radio. other than that, the mainstream media is totally missing these perspectives
oh and another thing
groups like protest warriors are actually quite common.
think kkk, ss youth, etc.
it's just plain easy to support powerful regimes
that seek to maintain and further their power by
singling out the weak or disenfranchised.
which is exactly what the bush administration does time
and time again.
Well that just tears it. If freedom of speech is going to abused by those who would disagree with us, well, then we'll just have to amend the constitution.
Yawn. More typical hate from a leftist that can't wrap his/her mind around the fact that the right has a voice as well.
Remember kids!
Free speech! Unless you are a Conservative!
Uzi, that's precisely the problem. Usually the PWs are outnumbered 100-1 and then they pose as Libertarians. But when they mass in larger numbers--their own website admits this--they refuse to let the protesters get their message out. Their oversized signs are used to obscure the message of the protest, so that it looks like a PW protest--can you say "parasites?" In Dallas and Miami it got pretty ugly. If they're so honest, why are their signs so deceitful?
Communism has only killed 100 million people... Let's give it another chance.
The San Francisco Indymedia site has an interesting video of the Protest Warriors being ridiculed and attacked by right-wing Patriots as they attempt to join an anti-Cindy Sheehan rally in Crawford Texas in August 2005. The irony of their signs (one says "War has never solved anything except for ending slavery, Nazism, Fascism, and Communism") were lost on the crowd.
You can even hear the speaker on the stage ranting against the attempts of these two "peace activists" to disrupt the rally:
Video of right wing 'Protest Warriors' fleeing Crawford pro-war rally
www.rocknrev.com/pw/protestwarrior.html
Quite interesting stuff.
Hey! Thanks for the Protest Warriors T-Shirt link, comrade, much appreciated! Har-de-har-har, archists.
I myself wholeheartedly agree. While they do have the right to free speech, they are either 1)stupid (using Hanlon's razor) and know nothing of "leftists", due to their stereotypical portrayal of anarchists, communists, and "granolas",[1] or 2)only wanting attention. Kfir is some Zionist, who supposedly are nationalists and defend Israel (even when Israel is launching bombs against Palestinians and enforcing apartheid). While I wouldn't support it because PW has freedoms as well, every liberal in the world can sue for libel. Ridiculous, but true. How would PW feel if a liberal made a smear campaign about republicans or conservatives, and making random accusations against them, not necessarily true? --Jonas D. Rand
Freedom of Speech, Dude. Freedom of Speech.
So "freedom of speech" only applies to the left? What a load of dung. Preposterous. What's the difference between a Socialist and a Communist? A Communist is a Socialist in a hurry - with a gun. It's really quite amusing, all this back-and-forth, but really, facism, socialism, communism are all just flavors of the same condemnable thing. When is the Left going to bring back liquidation for those that are "on the list"? Hmmm? Why does the Left deny its own dark and disturbing history? Remember Che? Murderous thug romantically altered into demi-god status by the lunatics. Start walking down the path of censorship, start moving toward thought-crimes - a good example of which is "hate speech" and "hate crimes". Haven't you figured out tht all violent crime is by definition hate? Ha! Contemptable, igonorants. Non compos mentis!
All this could be solved if the Protest Pukes would put their money where their mouth is and join the marines and go support the troops in Fallujah.
Talk about hypocrisy!
"Yea, I support the war, blah blah blah, but I sure as hell ain't gonna put my ass on the line for it. I mean yea, it's a noble cause and all, but it's just too noble for me, see?"
They should have had their asses stomped into the tar. BTW, don't confuse leftist with pacifist... you might just get your ass stomped.
Wow! Scroff, your comments are interesting to say the least. I kinda like the idea of people; who are too young, unable, or just not ready to join the military, expressing their patriotic views...especially when it comes to pointing out the ignorance and hypocrisy of so many Left-wing fools.
Bottom line...
If you fear ridicule, keep your views to yourself.
If you feel the need to voice your opinion, you'd better damned-well be prepared for people to disagree with that opinion. Thats a right that they (and you) happen to have in this country.
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