On Ending the Pro-Hamas Protests on University Campuses

 

Those on the right are faced now with a common challenge: why is it they generally approve of shutting down the current pro-Hama protests, while they generally objected to shutting down the Freedom Convoy?

No, it is not because the pro-Hamas protesters are advocating racism and genocide, while the freedom truckers were simply demanding their freedom and their right to make a living. I approve of the aims of the one protest, and oppose the aims of the other; but that is not the standard. Freedom of speech and the right to petition government applies to everyone.

It is because the nature of the two protests is different. The truckers protested peacefully on public property, where they had every right to be. The Hamas protesters seized and occupied private property, preventing its use by its owners and their clients. The truckers, by contrast, allowed parliamentarians to come and go throughout. Although they were accused of preventing nearby businesses from operating by their presence, this is a slander. The government forced the businesses to close; the truckers were demanding they be allowed to open. Those that did open did good business. In the current protests I see windows smashed, police attacked, and demands to be fed—not free food being distributed to passersby, and bouncy castles.

The issue is not protest, but trespass, vandalism, and assault.

It remains to be seen whether the government reaction to the current protests will excessive and an egregious violation of human rights, as it was for the truckers or those who, sometimes inadvertently, trespassed on January 6. 

Wild in the Streets

 

Justin Trudeau is increasingly facing hostile crowds wherever he goes, crowds shouting things like “traitor” and “criminal.” Trudeau seems to lean into this, lingering, smiling and waving—almost as if he is taunting them. 

Brian Lilley warns this is because the crowds make him look good, and make his opposition look immoderate and scary. They play into his hands. They are winning him sympathy and support.

I think Lilley is wrong. He has fallen for the moderate fallacy, which all professional politicos seem to believe, even though it is a formal logical fallacy, and has been disproven repeatedly in political practice. If it were true, after all, that the moderate ticket wins, that most of the votes are in the centre, the Liberal Democrats would be in perpetual power in Britain.

Has the left, effectively in power in Canada and in the US, almost in perpetual power, been conspicuously moderate in recent years? Has Black Lives Matter? Has Extinction Rebellion and the environmentalist movement? Have the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the trans movement? Has Antifa? Has Idle No More and the aboriginal movement, with their church burnings?

This is how it really works: the average person mostly wants peace and quiet and to get along with their lives. They don’t care about right or wrong. If a small group kicks up a fuss, they will want them suppressed. January 6 was suppressed precisely because it looked insignificant, not a real threat to anyone. Or the Freedom Convoy. Unlike, say, Antifa or Black Lives Matter. If this does not work, if the group seems persistent, those in charge, and the general public, will give them whatever they demand to settle them down. This is what the left has been exploiting for many years: the appeasement instinct. 

It would work just as well for the right. Indeed, the right must do it, or lose ground indefinitely. It is necessary to make it more trouble for those in power, or for the big corporations, to appease the left than it is to appease the right. Only then will the right make progress.

We are seeing this now. Disney, for example is trapped between irate leftists demanding no dwarfs appear in Snow White, and rightists no longer watching, no longer going to Disneyland, declaring this a travesty. Bud Light or the LA Dodgers are caught between irate trans people demanding public tribute, and irate Christians and “frat boys” protesting and no longer buying. All these corporations probably wanted was to keep everyone happy and keep peacefully making profits. 

Because until now the right was determined to stay polite and reasonable, the left kept always getting what they want. The squeaking wheel gets the grease.

Now the right is employing the same tactics. It may be distasteful; public protests are anti-democratic by their nature. But there is no alternative, so long as the other side is employing the tactic. And it is working. Contrary to Lilley’s prediction, Poilievre and the Conservatives are rising, not falling, in the polls.

Mob Justice for Jacob

My sister sends me a video pointing out that Jacob Blake, the man shot in the back seven times by police in Kenosha, was a serial rapist being arrested in the middle of a crime. Who was resisting arrest and seemed to be lunging for a weapon. 

It is indeed weird how so many―the mobs―seem to ignore the facts of case after case in order to scapegoat police. And will not tolerate due process if it does not instantly deliver the verdict they want. These are eerily like the lynch mobs that used to terrorize and murder blacks; except now they want to string up police.

To be fair, some folks have pointed out that if you look at the videos, most of the rioters seem to be white. You cannot lay this at the doorstep of “black people.”

Then is it because we resist accepting that some people, like Jacob Blake, simply choose to do bad things?

No, because then we would not blame the police either.

Then is it a case of black privilege?

No, because nobody gives a sweet d**n about Blake's victim, who is also black.

I think it is because the people rioting do not see blacks as human, as moral agents, responsible for their actions. They cannot be blamed for their choices, and so do not deserve punishment. They are only following instinct. They are animals.

The outrage at the police looks a lot like the outrage over the killing of Harambe at the Cincinnatti Zoo. The outrage over the American dentist who shot an African lion who had been given a name. The outrage if a crew of game wardens killed an animal in trying to sedate it.

I notice with a wince that commentators invariably note when speaking of any prominent black figure that they are “smart” or “really smart.” They never seem to make the comment about a prominent white person—that would be patronizing. It sounds like Fredo Corleone talking about himself. The tacit assumption is that a smart African is newsworthy, like a man biting a dog; or it is a knowing wink to the audience.

This is actually the form that anti-black discrimination has always taken: the idea that blacks are not moral agents capable of thinking for themselves. This is how slavery was justified. This is now how the welfare culture is justified, and a cycle of dependency that keeps black people on the bottom while one immigrant group after another rises past them.

Maybe the average black is not as smart as the average non-black; IQ results suggest this is so. This of course means nothing in the case of individuals. And this does not matter to their human dignity. They have the right to run their own lives, and not to be treated like children or wards of the state. You do not need to be smart to know right from wrong. And you actually do not need to be smart to succeed. You need to be responsible; you need to see yourself as a moral agent, and act accordingly.

Bookburning in Portland

Reportedly, "black bloc" protesters in Portland are now burning Bibles.

It illustrates what this is really all about. Those who are out protesting are actually protesting any restraints on their own actions. Police are hateful because their existence implies a need to obey laws. Bibles are hateful because their existence implies a need to restrain your impulses in order to act morally.

Rioting itself is an acting out of the insistence to be able to spontaneously indulge desires at any time.

Are the Schools the Root of All Evil?

Scott Adams is the cartoonist who does “Dilbert.” He has nothing to do with education. Today, however, on his YouTube channel, he declared his conclusion that all our current problems, which seem to him as to me to be spinning out of control, are really just one problem: teachers’ unions.

As I understand him, he makes two points. First, the mobs out tearing down statues and looting are demonstrating that they have not learned how to think: at best, their actions are not addressing their real problems. They seem like children having a tantrum, smashing their toys, demanding that some adult step in and make everything right. If the problem is racism, as they commonly say, nothing they are doing is addressing the problem.

Second, all the current anger over “racism” is deluded. As the system is currently set up, a young black man with a good education actually has better opportunities than a young white man. Government and corporations are climbing over one another to hire him. Therefore, the problem is education—getting those young black men the skills to make then hireable. Better schools, especially in poor and in black neighbourhoods, would fix this supposed “racism.”

And by the way, didn’t we always think this? Remember desegregation? That was primarily desegregation of schools. Getting the black kids into the same schools as the white kids was supposed to end the problem. It was deficits in education that were holding blacks back.

Instead, now the schools are failing black kids and white kids equally.

And Adams sees all attempts to make the problem better blocked by teachers’ unions.

So, he concludes, the solution is to ban the teachers’ unions.

I agree with him that the teachers’ unions should be banned. I agree that if they were, education would quickly improve, and the costs would go down.

But I also think the problem is bigger than he realizes. Get rid of them, and we could experiment with other approaches. But we would also have to get rid of teacher certification, and the teachers’ colleges. Because, given the current state of educational theory, we still would have no idea how to make schools better. The academic field of “education” is bankrupt.

For that matter, all academic fields in the social sciences, and now most of the humanities, are bankrupt.

The deeper problem comes from the consecration of science as our new religion, beginning in the nineteenth century, and reaching the schools in the early twentieth century. On the model of science looking at the physical world, humans were redefined as objects. And schools were redesigned as factories.

I agree with Adams that education is critical. The essential task of civilization is education: passing on the culture to the next generation. Our system of education is clearly not now passing on the culture. This means, within a few short generations, civilizational death. And we have been failing to pass on the civilization for at least a couple of generations now. It should be no wonder that suddenly all the systems seem to be failing. The civil service can no longer be relied upon; the press can no longer be relied upon; the church hierarchy can no longer be relied upon; the academy can no longer be relied upon; the courts can no longer be relied upon; the parliaments can no longer be relied upon; even things like dictionaries are no longer reliable, as the meanings of words change rapidly for political advantage. Everyone is suddenly pursuing what they see as immediate self-interest.

It is also striking how almost everything we see now in the media, in academics, in civil discourse, is based on simple logical fallacies. Nobody indeed knows any longer how to think; for nobody is taught how to think in the schools—the one skill everyone needs.

But since people were redefined as objects, the implicit assumption must be that thought itself is impossible, or purely an illusion. Machines can’t think.

Nor, of course, is there any longer such a thing as right and wrong. There is only wanting, and then trying to get.

There is only looting or smashing things.

Maybe It Really Is the Devil's Work

Just when I was going to say Antifa...

Who the Devil is Behind the Riots?

NYC Draft Riots, 1863.

The current mad rioting across the US seems to demonstrate the reality of the Devil. It looks as though it is organized; yet it cannot be easily accounted for by any human agency. Therefore, the hypothesis that there is some independent malicious spiritual consciousness interfering in affairs. 

There are reports of mysterious pallets of bricks left in prominent public places for mob use; of masked men with umbrellas smashing windows to encourage looting. There is a mysterious gap in the original video that triggered the protests…

The nominal cause for all the unrest is that apparent murder of George Floyd, captured on video. It is supposedly Black Lives Matter, or the black community more generally, demanding justice.

But justice was already apparently being served. The policeman seen killing Floyd had already been arrested and charged with murder. Moreover, the violent protests that we are now seeing are probably ending more black lives, devastating black neighbourhoods, reinforcing police presumptions that black people are violent and lawless, and suggesting to the public the need for more police and greater police powers. If the black community is doing this as a community, they are working against their own interests.

This is itself a hallmark of Satan’s work; that his followers work to their own destruction. But we also see videos online of blacks loudly protesting the looting and violence. And many if not most of the rioters have white skin.

A more plausible explanation is that the rioting, whatever happened to spark it, is driven by general frustration at the long lockdown, desperation at loss of employment, a feeling that the experts and the government have messed up and behaved callously during the epidemic. Yet if this is the impetus, the rioting and looting are again counterproductive. They are perfectly calculated to cause a new outbreak of the virus, forcing us all back into lockdown for longer. And justifying the government in not trusting the people to make their own decisions.

Some of the news media are apparently blaming it all on “white supremacists.” It might indeed fit their agenda, by discrediting blacks. But this presumes a massive, coordinated false flag operation, involving moving large numbers of people into places where they do not live, and having them all chant and spray-paint only slogans they disagree with—an improbable conspiracy theory, and certainly vastly beyond the capabilities of any existing “white supremacist” organization to pull off all across the country on a day’s notice. At least as any kind of organized group, they number only a couple of thousand at most, and these riots are breaking out in cities all over the country.

Some, including the governor of Minnesota, suggest foreign provocateurs are behind it all. This sounds reasonable to some, no doubt, because of current tensions with China. But as with white supremacists, the numbers of foreign agents and resources likely available seems beyond the realm of possibility. As a general principle, I doubt foreign intelligence services really account for much. By their nature, they amount to a group of bureaucrats operating without supervision. What happens when you put together a large group of bureaucrats and remove any supervision?

Nothing.

If individual agents or cells ever do get up to anything, the secrecy generally means they end up operating at cross-purposes, most often for their own narrow self-interests.

And “provocateurs” can only ever be a partial explanation. People must have a predisposition to be “provoked.”

Some, of course, blame the police for it all—it is all, including the killing of George Floyd, an assertion of police bullying. If they only kept the police away from the protesters, similarly, all would be well. Police themselves have not been helping this perception—at one point, they arrested a black CNN crew member on camera.

Yet policemen and police chiefs across the country quickly condemned the original killing. If some policemen have an attitude problem, it does not seem to be an organized or coordinated thing.

The likeliest explanation seems to be that Antifa are behind this. If Antifa is, as claimed, an anti-fascist organization, this would again be counter-productive. Chaos in the streets is a demand for Fascism. But I think it is clear that Antifa is not now, and has never been, an anti-Fascist organization. Rather, it is a Fascist organization seeking power.

If Antifa is behind the curtain, this too would involve moving people in large numbers into neighbourhoods where they do not live—Antifa’s membership is white and middle class. But they at least seem large enough, wealthy enough, and organized enough to make this possible.

It would not be surprising, either, if Antifa were getting funding from some foreign power.

Perhaps the upshot of these riots needs to be a concerted investigation by the FBI into Antifa.