The Sheep from the Goats from the Dragons

It hasn't been so many years since I went marching in the streets, along with several thousand close friends, protesting for civil rights, peace, women's liberation, Gay rights, the ecosystem, the radical labor movement, and a few other similar causes.  I've marched on more demonstrations than I can count, most of them large, a few of them enormous.  I've seen how they were organized, how well they served their purpose, what enemies they had and how we dealt with them.  In time, I learned to recognize the techniques.

Early on, we learned that the cops -- however much they might hate us -- weren't the main enemy.  They might charge into us  without warning, swinging their clubs with fierce abandon, but there was a simple defense against that -- one that I wish the continuing Black civil rights organizations would teach their followers everywhere: go limp, shut up, and play dead.  This worked, both because it left the cops with no legal excuse -- in front of cameras, yet -- to keep on beating us, and also because "dead" prey is no fun to play with.  A bit of body-armor took care of the rest.  This is why, as I've said elsewhere, as much as the cops truly hated us, very few peace-et-al marchers were actually killed by them.

Far more dangerous were the opportunistic thugs, who hid among our ranks until and unless we came past cars and buildings with smashable windows and appealing loot inside -- including easy victims to attack for fun and profit.  We soon learned to identify these, partly by the way they dressed (scruffy, with only a few slogan-buttons or a single slogan-shirt, and few or no picket-signs) but by the way they acted.  The serious protesters walked with a steady economy of movement, and even when chanting we paced our breathing, because we expected to march a long way -- and we kept our eyes on the streets ahead of us, watching for police or other obstructions.  The thugs couldn't seem to chant the slogans without throwing in assorted obscenities and threats, and they couldn't seem to march more than a few paces without darting off to the sides to check out the cars and buildings as we moved past.  These were dangerous because they would not only stain our reputations, at a time when we were trying to win public sympathy, but because they'd also draw the cops down on us.

We dealt with them by tightening our borders, often by joining hands, so that the thugs had difficulty getting out of the body of the demonstration and even more difficulty getting back in.  Thugs separated from the mass were very visible to the cops, who also seemed to recognize thugs by the way they behaved and would react accordingly.  Interestingly enough, the thugs never seemed to pick up on the protesters' tactic of go-limp-shut-up-play-dead, but would always yell and fight -- with the expected consequences.  Good riddance.

More dangerous still were the False-Flag provocateurs.  These were harder to spot, at first, because they knew the right way to dress, chant, and move -- but they'd show their true colors as the demonstrations proceeded.  By subtle degrees they'd work their way to the center-front of the crowd and move with a little more tension, swing their arms a little more fiercely, chant a little louder, and then -- by starting up when the rest of us had finished chanting a slogan -- begin leading the chants, adding slightly more aggressive words, a little louder and faster than before.  We noticed that they'd also carry things with them -- like bottles -- that could be easily thrown.  If left unchecked they'd effectively herd the other marchers into the police lines, and then throw rocks and bottles and curses until the cops attacked.  This, of course, would turn the march into a jolly brawl -- in front of the cameras -- that got our people injured and discredited the whole demonstration.

We learned to deal with this by exposing them.  Whenever we spotted someone exhibiting the known characteristics, we'd turn and point to them while yelling: "Imposter!  Imposter!"  This drew them to the attention of both the cops and the cameras, which spoiled not only their plans for the demonstration but their anonymity.  Once their faces and names (and intentions) were known to the cops and the media, their usefulness was ended;  they had no choices except to duck out of sight, get new identities and new looks, and try again in some other state.  Eventually we found some of them, years later, working for various police forces or other government offices -- where they'd come from in the first place.  I suspect that a few of them went on to private practice.

So I recognize what I've been seeing on the news for the past week.  There are the serious protesters, whose purpose is both to win sympathy for their cause and show the numbers of their sympathizers;  they're readily identifiable by their steady marching pace and their hands full of picket-signs.  Then there are the opportunistic thugs, carrying maybe one badly-printed sign for every ten of them, but with lumpy pockets.  Finally there are the provocateurs, who often show up hours before the demonstration to plant bags of rocks, bottles, explosives and more at strategic points along the line of march or the targeted streets nearby.  Everybody has seen their antics by now.

The honest protesters can certainly tell who's who, and have begun to complain, loudly -- especially since the thugs don't just attack police cars or police stations, but go after storefronts great and small, with a nice disregard for who owns those businesses.  A lot of Black shopkeepers who have been looted and burned out by the protest-parasite thugs are speaking out, noisily.  (https://independentminute.com/2020/06/08/black-business-owner-loses-it-after-criminal-looters-destroy-his-business-during-riot-video/?utm_source=Mailer-TIA&utm_medium=email&utm_content=subscriber_id:2492264&utm_campaign=6-9%20IDM)  Still more small business owners, of all colors, have armed themselves and formed local mini-militias to defend their shops and neighborhoods. (https://breakingnewsalerts.com/business-owners-arming-themselves-against-civil-unrest/)

What makes these protest marches different from their earlier counterparts is the sheer number and organization of the provocateurs.  They've learned how, when, and where to call up large gangs of thugs at an hour's notice, which is a remarkable feat even in these days of cell-phones and the Internet.  This kind of organization and planing didn't spring up overnight;  it's been years in the making.  Now who could -- or would -- have done that?

The most obvious suspect is the infamous Antifa, which has performed similar antics in public for years, thus earning itself a federal designation as a domestic terrorist group.  Antifa members are primarily White middle-class and college age, if not actually college students themselves, and they've shown remarkable cleverness in manipulating the media, intimidating and extorting local governments and school administrations.  This skill could also explain the sudden appearance of the so-called "Boogaloo Movement", whose website purports to be politically right-wing.  Given its members' actions during the current riots, it's very possible that they're actually False Flag actors, trying to shift blame for Black rioters onto supposed White right-wingers.  We've seen that done before.     

But it's swiftly growing apparent that Antifa isn't the only major actor in this campaign.  Black Lives Matter, formed during the Ferguson riots of a few years ago, started out at least trying to look like a respectable civil rights organization -- and certainly sold that image to the media.  Very soon, however, the opportunities for extortion -- "Give us what we want or we'll throw riots in your city" -- corrupted the organization into the Black working-class version of Antifa.  By the time of the Charlottesville protests the two were working hand-in-glove, often riding to the same demonstrations on the same chartered busses.

Most recently, the thugs have been showing up wearing BLM-labeled shirts for their looting-parties, and even when attacking police.  In St. Louis, a brazenly BLM looter has been arrested for murdering a Black retired police captain who was helping a neighbor defend his store.  Other cities report BLM rioters attacking Black police and even civilians who stood between them and the loot, thus proving that it isn't Black lives that matter to them, any more than Antifa is really anti-Fascist.  The excuse for their indiscriminate smashing/looting/burning, according to thugs willing to speak to actual reporters, is that "It's all slavery money.  We're just getting our own back." -- a slogan first invented by BLM pundits.  If Antifa has earned legal standing as a domestic terrorist organization, then BLM deserves the label too.

But this only moves the question back another step.  The well-developed strategy and tactics of BLM and Antifa have had considerable backing from somewhere, and not just money from intimidated liberals.  Usual suspects include the Socialist Democrats, who have been busy bailing out jailed looters, and there are the usual accusations against George Soros and his numerous organizations, but there's no solid proof.  The chief question is motivation.  What would Soros or the Democrats have to gain by all this disruption, aside from possibly making Trump look bad? 

There's a hint from Australia, of all places, where a major Muslim preacher brags that the riots provide an "opportunity" for Islam to take over as the major political power in the world.  (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8385977/Hizb-ut-Tahrir-leader-Ismail-al-Wahwah-says-riots-cause-downfall-Islam-over.html)  This certainly is a believable motive, and the various Jihadist organizations and governments certainly have the money -- and the patience -- to have created Antifa/BLM and set up this whole campaign.  We know that the Jihadists have been trying to recruit American Blacks at least since the 1950s, when the self-named Elijah Muhammed invented the Black Muslim movement.  Certainly the Jihadists have had plenty of time to analyze and exploit the social psychology of Black Americans.

The question is how they learned to understand and manipulate so well the social psychology of White American liberals.  That implies longer and more intimate knowledge of the American psyche than the Jihadists have ever allowed themselves to learn.  Who else in the world would have that?

I'm remembering that at the height of the Vietnam war the furthest-out of the leftists began pushing and peddling Chairman Mao's famous Little Red Book, and I wondered about that.  I mean, there was no great ethnic or political group which had any love or loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, and the Vietnamese themselves wanted nothing to do with China, so where did this push come from?

The only logical answer is that the Chinese government itself  thought that this was an opportunity to infiltrate and manipulate the US through its younger and better-educated class, who already had a history of strong leftist sympathies.  It didn't work then, as note John Lennon's famous line: "If you go carryin' pictures of Chairman Mao, You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow."  Nonetheless, the Chinese govt. is nothing if not patient, and it has maintained its network in the US ever since.  The war's end and Nixon's trade offers gave China an opportunity to play economic warfare on a previously unheard of scale, and of course there was always the liberal/college-age group to exploit.

Certainly China would profit from disrupting the US by any means;  ever since the Ming dynasty China has been devoted to conquering the world by any means available, and its biggest obstacle for the last 30 years has been the US.  The only problem with using huge excited crowds to disrupt the US economy and legal system has been the difficulty with recruiting the Black community especially, and "People of Color" in general.  Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and other Asians have no great sympathy for China.  Even Chinese-Americans have no great sympathy for China.  The solution to the problem would be to use a cat's-paw, an intermediary who already has a sizable following among ill-educated Blacks and worse-educated White liberals -- someone like the Jihadists.  Little though China loves Muslims, as viz its treatment of the harmless Uighurs, the Jihadists would still be useful.  It would also further China's interests to get a lot of people out into the streets, packed close together, shouting slogans, breathing in each others' faces, while the Corona virus is still flying about unchecked.

Whatever the US intelligence agencies know, and have not made public, it's clear that the most likely culprit behind the carefully sculpted "civil unrest" in the US is the government and the Communist Party of China.

Just what to do about it is another story.

--Leslie <;)))><