Organizing Riots for Fun and Profit


As an old labor organizer and Lefty propagandist myself, I can recognize a staged riot when I see one, and that's exactly what I saw at the Trump riot in Chicago a few days ago.  I can even guess who staged it.

First off, various anti-Trump forces have been working up to this for several weeks now, sending noisy hecklers into Trump rallies to test the waters, seeing how his staffers and local security handle the attempted disruptions, and hyping the reactions thereof (as "racism", of course) in the media, until they were ready for a big showy blow-up.  You could see them doing this, right on TV.

Now hecklers at political rallies are usually given short shrift;  I once heard a local independent candidate announce to the crowd "Somebody throw a saddle on that jackass and ride him on out of here", whereupon his rally-security people grabbed the heckler and gave him the bum's rush out the nearest door.  It's widely understood that if you want to ask a speaker embarrassing questions, you wait for the question-and-answer period and get in line;  you don't jump up in the middle of the speech and start shouting insults (though nowadays exceptions seem to be made for Muslim students attacking Jewish speakers on campus).  There's nothing new or illegal or unusual or ray-ray-racist about it.

Ah, but look what emphasis the media has been putting on Trump hecklers getting the bum's rush!  As if this had never-never happened before!  And look how they've zoomed in on the one case where a strapping young heckler got right in an old Trump supporter's face, and the old man punched him.  Ooooh!  What shocking and unprecedented vi-o-lence!  Apparently they've forgotten about the old Kentucky saying, "As sure as murder on election day in Harlan County".  They've forgotten about the 1968 Democratic convention, too, which was also in Chicago.  These pious pundits whaffle about election vi-o-lence the way the current campus Politically Correct crowd whine about "microaggression" -- as if they'd never seen real violence or aggression in their lives.     

Anyway, at the Chicago rally the hecklers -- oops, "peaceful protesters" -- were out in force, truly amazing numbers of them.  In fact, any good investigative reporter could have bothered to find out how many rental busses dropped off lots of passengers carrying picket-signs on the day of, and before, the Trump rally and calculated just how many "protesters" there were -- and how many were brought in from out of town.  (Having been to a few big political protests myself, one of them in Chicago, I can tell you that most of the serious protesters are brought in by rented bus and bring their signs with them.)  This was definitely orchestrated and the local police were clearly aware of it, because they tried really hard not to let the protesters get into the building where the rally was going to be held.

What's interesting is what happened next.  The hecklers started too early; besides attacking obvious Trump supporters, they started yelling at and threatening totally unconnected passers-by.  They attacked the line of cops -- who, fortunately, had better sense than to respond by chasing after them.  They made a huge, noisy, threatening spectacle of themselves for the media to lap up.  The lesson was simple and clear: Trump rallies attract vi-o-lence like this.  Yes, the smartest thing Trump and his crew could have done was cancel the rally.

And of course the news shows yesterday and today have been all about Trump being responsible for the vi-o-lence.  Uhuh.  Trump's "divisive rhetoric" and of course earlier "vi-o-lence" toward the hecklers caused the protesters to rampage around the rally site before he -- or his followers -- even got there.  Right.  Note that the one word the talking-heads have scrupulously avoided using is "provoked" -- maybe because it might make some people think of the word "provocateur".  This whole incident was so obviously staged that one has to wonder if anybody was really taken in by it.

The next question is who staged it.  Well, the major actors were pretty clearly Black Lives Matter, as their own slogans proclaimed.  Who hired them (knowing BLM, you can be sure that they insisted on being paid)?  Obviously somebody wanting to dump Trump -- but this doesn't look like the style of the GOP's old guard.  Could it be the Democratic Party in general?  After all, Trump is beginning to look like a serious contender in November.  Or was it specifically Hillary's backers and campaign managers?

Well, I saw -- and a few news-pundits noticed -- that some of the protesters (primarily the White ones) were carrying professionally-printed "Bernie" signs.  Among them was no less than Bill Ayers, whom I know well of old, still playing his old game of egging on other people to commit his violence for him.  That's how he tried to get me killed, all those years ago.  Alas for Billy-boy, radical students back then were a bit more intelligent and mature back then than they seem to be today;  they didn't stampede on anybody's unsupported word.  And anyway, Billy is a staunch Obama, and then Hillary, supporter.

Now there hasn't yet been any heckling, let alone vi-o-lence, associated with Bernie Sanders' campaign, nor has he approved of any, nor has Bernie particularly gone after Trump, so why should his apparent supporters show up at a stage-managed anti-Trump riot?

Well, who benefits?

Seeing how surprisingly well Bernie has done in the primaries and the polls, there just might be a chance that he could whisk the nomination out from under Hillary.  Linking his name with the anti-Trump protesters, and the vi-o-lence thereof could hopefully kill two birds with one stone.  As much as the old guard of the GOP worries about Trump, so does the old guard of the Democrats worry about Bernie.  The Republicans discount Bernie because, after all, he's publicly proclaimed himself a "socialist" (though he isn't), and that should automatically make him a pariah, shouldn't it?  It's Hillary who has cause to worry about Bernie, as well as Trump.

In any case, this has been the year of the Dark Horse -- the out-of-nowhere candidate who upsets the expected political applecart and wins surprising numbers of voters who are fed up with politics as usual.  What I find amusing is that neither party seems to have realized just how fed up those voters are, and that this -- not either Dark Horse candidate -- is the real reason to worry.

--Leslie <;)))><       
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on March 14, 2016 22:04
No comments have been added yet.