August 30, 2017

Dems disavow Antifa: Collective blame works!

After an unusually stark display of collective violence against Trump supporters and even neutral journalists in Berkeley on Sunday, Antifa soon found themselves out of favor among their Establishment enablers.

First came a euphemism-free headline to an in-depth article from the Deep State's own newsletter, the Washington Post: "Black-clad antifa members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley".

Then on Tuesday no less a liberal Establishment mainstay than Nancy Pelosi herself issued a rebuke that also called them out by name:

Our democracy has no room for inciting violence or endangering the public, no matter the ideology of those who commit such acts.  The violent actions of people calling themselves antifa in Berkeley this weekend deserve unequivocal condemnation, and the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted.

Other liberals and Democrats have begun to follow suit, including the Mayor of Berkeley who had been content to let them rampage all they wanted to, and is now saying they should be treated instead as a gang.

At last the efforts by the Trump movement to cast collective blame on the other side are starting to pay off, something I've been writing about for months. We don't isolate the problem down to the narrowest groups and individuals who are committing violence on the Left -- we just say "the violent Left," and then everyone who isn't a violent Leftist has to disavow the Antifa types, or get successfully branded as a sympathizer of Leftist group violence against first amendment exercisers.

The individualist focus and overly developed sense of fair play had led the conservative movement and Republican mainstream to only decry the extremist members of the other side. But now that we are locked in group vs. group struggle, the only option is to blame the entire other side, and let them clear their own good names by disavowing and shutting down the extremists on their side.

As I wrote in an earlier post, collective blame prevents the rise of an extremist minority, by causing the mainstream of the other side to impose costs on their side's super-intolerant minority.

After Charlottesville, I floated the plan that Trump should invite a high-profile Democrat to a joint press event, where each side would disavow and call for an end to violence in general, but would specifically call out the extremists on their own side. If the Democrats refused, it would prove they are enabling Leftist collective violence. If they agreed, it would shut down their attempt to frame only the Right as a source of collective violence (both sides, many sides, etc.).

Now that Pelosi has come forward, she would make a natural choice for Trump's partner in that press event. It's hard to tell in such polarized partisan times, but it just might humanize each one -- at least a little bit -- to the supporters of the other. Each one would enjoy a little brand rehabilitation.

The sudden souring on Antifa by elite Democrats means that the Establishment is beginning to tire of using these useful idiots as a covert arm of the police state to attack political enemies of the Establishment. That's why elite Republicans don't denounce Antifa -- they too hate Trump supporters, and are fine with deranged Leftists being used to punish Trump supporters for holding the wrong values and making the wrong decisions.

I picked up on this dynamic back in April, around the time I read more and more so-called revolutionary Leftists cheering on regime change in Syria (and later, Venezuela). I'm convinced that after decades of infiltration by federal agencies, groups like Antifa and the International Socialist Organization are effectively being run for Deep State goals.

In recent comments, I summarized the evidence showing that Antifa is not some far-Left version of the Bernie movement. The actual progressives, socialists, etc., who formed the hardcore of the Bernie movement spend as much time, and often more, attacking the centrists and corporate Democrats on their own side, in the same way that the hardcore Trump movement trains most of its fire on the Paul Ryan and John McCain types on its own side.

Yet Antifa never beats up Hillary Clinton supporters, or formed a gauntlet outside of an Obama rally. They didn't even bother trying to shut down the Democrats' National Convention last summer, unlike the crowds of angry Bernie people both inside and outside the venue.

With so much impossible-to-spin negative coverage last weekend, Antifa may have worn out their usefulness to the Deep State as a counter-revolutionary paramilitary group meant to stop the populist-nationalist uprising. No different from the failed jihadist militias in southern Syria, who were serving as proxy armies for the CIA until Trump stopped it. But by that time, they had worn out their usefulness anyway, so the CIA did not bother fighting the decision.

But unlike the jihadists in Syria, who have little means to strike back at the CIA that has abruptly abandoned them, the psychotic freaks who make up the Antifa foot soldier ranks may start to wake up to the fact that they were just being manipulated by the Establishment and police state. Maybe they'll resent getting disavowed by the Mayor of Berkeley and by one of the most liberal Democrats in Congress, who hails from the Bay Area.

However, it's unclear how well these guys can organize themselves without the backing, financial and otherwise, of high-placed Democrat operatives like those who were exposed by Project Veritas' undercover videos last year. So while particular Antifa freaks may lash out violently at a Democrat, I doubt we'll see mass riots where hundreds or thousands are present, since their Soros checks may be drying up, and their political and media enablers are cutting them off as well.

12 comments:

  1. How important was the petition to formally recognize Antifa as a terrorist organization?

    Right now, the petition has 321,784 signatures.

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  2. "The individualist focus and overly developed sense of fair play had led the conservative movement and Republican mainstream to only decry the extremist members of the other side"

    That's something I've been wondering about: why is it that liberals/Democrats are much better at assigning collective blame?

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  3. Even the Onion is getting on the action.

    "Alt left" and "on many sides" were rhetorical harpoons. The bleeding isn't going to stop.

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  4. The petition was a good complement to collective blaming. It was a form of collective action -- pooling all of their individual voices into a single concentrated delivery vehicle.

    Why are libs more collective than individualist like cons? Perhaps because libs are more K-selected, and that characterizes populations that are near carrying capacity (higher population density) and therefore formed into solid groups, many of which will be jockeying for resources against other groups.

    Cons are more r-selected, and that characterizes populations where resources are so abundant per capita (sparse population density) that an individual can live off the land by themselves -- or a nuclear family, and at most a band of several nuclear families. There aren't many large groups to speak of, let alone that are constantly vying with each other for access to stretched-thin resources.

    http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2017/03/rk-theory-conservatives-r-liberals-k.html

    BTW, libs are not fooled when cons naively try to turn tribal politics back on them, like "Look at Antifa attack a black Trump supporter!" Yeah, well Antifa is not attacking a black Trump supporter because they're part of the black group, but part of the Trump group.

    Libs never make the "racist!" argument based on harming an individual black person, but by targeting the black group collectively.

    Also why tokens never convince libs -- sure, here's a black conservative, but clearly they are not speaking for the black collective but rather the conservative collective.

    As the Trump movement pulls more urbanites back into the non-Democrat fold, they will bring a keen sense of collective social dynamics with them. Including the man himself, a lifelong resident of New York City. The more rural outlook of the old non-Democrat coalition can provide some moral grounding, but not strategic plans.

    Remember that the story about how Trump's victory was a revolt of rural America is bogus. It was mostly large urban counties that Trump flipped for the win (how else can you flip entire states without flipping major population centers?):

    http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2016/12/urban-areas-that-flipped-red-and-few.html

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks, makes sense. Conservatives, for instance, were more likely to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq because they believed that Saddam Hussein was completely to blame, and the Iraqi people would welcome us with open arms. Liberals were more likely to point out that the Iraqis might hate U.S. troops and form an insurgency.

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  6. Part of it's striving. The elites in these periods deride their own prole countrymen and idealize foreigners. Americans don't work hard, complain too much, deserve to rot in trailer parks, etc. Elites learn to associate status with physical (and philosophical) distance from native proles.

    Snobby elitists get tired of listening to the frustration of natives and are seduced by exotics who bring exciting and novel culture, and haven't had enough experience in America to grasp how treacherous and greedy the elites are.

    Also, first world elites think that first world natives should take whatever they can still get for granted. We're supposed to be grateful and shut up. The elites figure that turd world POC will appreciate the immigration and nation building gibs offered by a striving first world establishment eager to blow Joe Six pack's money on utopian BS that Joe Six-pack never approved.

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  7. In the low to moderate striving period of the 50's-90's, our elites weren't dumb enough to prolong destructive foreign conflicts though many of them should not have started in the first place. The populace raged over 'Nam in 1968, and the US rather quickly began to back off, with Nixon effectively ending the war several years later. Future presidents were anxious to not let an unpopular, difficult, and protracted war become their tomb, like what happened to LBJ with Vietnam.

    In the 2000's, any lasting trace of populism was gone, as we saw the US both launch still extant wars as well as do nothing to limit immigration, after immigrants committed the most galling terrorist attack in our history. Recent decades have also seen elitist anti-nativist judges overturn several pieces of prole approved legislation that would've benefited natives.

    The twilight of striving is marked by many elites adamantly refusing to be reined in while the commoners begin demanding change. Whether under Bush or Trump, The GOP elite is still mostly committed to dated and boring ideology while refusing to hold the banner of nativists and realists (we've got to take care of the people we've got, and we've lived financially and militarily far beyond are means).

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  8. In a wholesome era, we generally don't sentimentalize any group of foreigner or claim that any one of them might do great things. Eisenhower told Mexicans to GTFO in the 50's. It didn't matter to him that any particular Mexican might do great things or have a child who did great things. They were Mexicans, not Americans, and as such Ike was not interested in sob stories or "vibrancy".

    This attitude persisted into the 70's, as nativist defenses of their people and their culture were still pretty strong (attacks against immigrants were quite common in the 60's and 70's in the UK, for example, and Jello Biafra wrote Nazi Punks Fuck Off around 1980 over the skin head punk sub culture).

    The GSS shows that on racial/ethnic questions (like miscegenation), Americans didn't start cucking until the 80's; in fact, according to some who work in the sciences, the 80's were a chilling period on elite/academic discourse. The populist early 90's backlash momentarily warmed things up, then the chill returned esp. after 9/11 required greater paeans to diversity.

    We tend to think of the 60's and 70's as being morally liberal; yes, there was a much less judging attitude towards hedonism in those decades. Be that as it may, national and economic security aren't moral issues. The economic booms of the 80's and later 90's allowed the Me Generation's biggest dreamers to go full cuck on immigrant/national culture issues. Silents and Boomers benefited handsome from stuff like Operation Wetback, which created greater native opportunity and higher social trust/cohesion levels. These generations have moralistically condemned any talk of immigration reduction, refusing to acknowledge that they robbed future generations of security.

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  9. We should play the game of "Why did it take you so long to issue a statement?" and "The statement didn't go far enough".

    If you're feeling more diplomatic: "While we appreciate the statement, it still begs the question [sic, their airhead usage] of why it wasn't issued sooner, and whether it went far enough."

    They've done it for long enough to our side, time to do it to their side.

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  10. Conservatives don't have many pejorative nicknames for liberals, usually just referring to them as liberals. The only one I can think of is 'pinko', but that hasn't been used since the 50s.


    Liberals have plenty of nicknames for conservatives: "rednecks", "hillbillies", "bible-thumpers", "mouth-breeders", "troglodytes", "bumblefucks". "rednecks and hillbiliies", though originally used against rural people, are now widely used to refer to conservatives in general.

    Once again, this shows liberals are better at assigning collective blame based on political identity.

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  11. Yuppie, snob, social-climber, egg-head, and so forth were used more derisively and frequently in the low-mid striving period of the 30's-early 90's. As was deriding someone for being "city", or city folk, or such. Remember Quint in Jaws saying, "Show me your hands" to Hooper in Jaws? "You been counting money all your life". Amiable ribbing and nicknames were much more common among GIs-Silents-Boomers than with later generations. A lot of Gen X and Millennial interaction is predicated on bullying people for the sake of reinforcing distinctions in social status, as opposed to giving people shit to better bond everyone together.

    Late striving periods emphasize cosmopolitanism and urbanism. Which of course correlate with cultural liberalism. Ann Coulter recently resurrected Yuppie to shame women srivers; we've got to stop looking up to financial/cultural elites who've become parasitic.

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  12. "If everyone is looking out for Number One, group-level structures will crumble as public goods are no longer paid for or maintained, and individuals will become isolated from one another due to the "use or be used" morality."

    I was hurt and exploited so badly, Ag... Whatever happens, please be good to Julian. So appropriate that it is a Gen-Xer holed up in that embassy and who was also there with me. If it weren't for him, I could not have gotten up and walked out. I kept quiet about that from the very beginning and that is my salvation. The sadist can only sit and wonder and fear... I planned on leaving 2 days before I did, and that last day was the happiest day I've had in a long time.

    ReplyDelete

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