The 2:00 a.m. violence in Portland.
Who welcomes it? Trump.
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| Gun at throat of protester |
Who benefits? Trump.
Who are those troublemakers? It would make sense to suspect Trump.
It takes at least two sides to have a fight that lights up the TVs for Breaking News, and we are getting the show Trump wants. Fox News has guest after guest moaning over the human suffering. By that they do not mean people in hospitals and morgues from Covid-19. They mean the protests, especially Portland and Seattle, but now Oakland.
Trump has made no secret that he wanted federal officers to enter Portland with a big show of force, to dominate. He wanted shock and awe. He got it, but with mixed, unsatisfying results for Trump.
Big weaponry looks like godly all-American power, thunderbolts from the sky, when we see on television Iraqi tanks exploding, hit by missiles from afar--gotcha, you're dead. However, on the ground in Portland it looks like an authoritarian police state when weapons are pointed at American moms in yellow shirts, or a gun at the throat of the young woman. First impressions matter. The first news stories about the federal officers were about the kidnapping/detention of people at apparent random by unidentified people in combat gear, brought to secret locations to be interrogated. That impression stuck. Trump looked like a provocateur, not a peacemaker.
He needed a bigger villain to justify bigger force. After all, if the danger is high--even if Trump is partly responsible for provoking it--there is still, visibly on TV--a danger people want to see confronted.
Who are those troublemakers?
Three different college classmates, from three different learned professions, raised that issue with me, and I will quote two of them today, one tomorrow. Each raise a suspicion that the real source animating the 2 a.m. rock throwing are agents, one way or another, of Trump.
Agent provocateurs are nothing new. Our FBI, CIA, and military used them, and presumably that is what case officers in the intelligence fields do, they recruit people to carry out missions that can only be done by people presumably affiliated with another country or group. The FBI used a agent to supply guns to the Black Panthers, who were then photographed with guns, to the detriment of the Panters. Click: NPR In this political environment, the rock throwers and window breakers hurt the left and help Trump. Fox News keeps mentioning an effort to "burn down the federal courthouse." Trump needed a visible enemy to blame. He needed a Reichstag fire. He has one.
Agent provocateurs are nothing new. Our FBI, CIA, and military used them, and presumably that is what case officers in the intelligence fields do, they recruit people to carry out missions that can only be done by people presumably affiliated with another country or group. The FBI used a agent to supply guns to the Black Panthers, who were then photographed with guns, to the detriment of the Panters. Click: NPR In this political environment, the rock throwers and window breakers hurt the left and help Trump. Fox News keeps mentioning an effort to "burn down the federal courthouse." Trump needed a visible enemy to blame. He needed a Reichstag fire. He has one.
James Stodder is an economist, a specialist on economic systems and public finance, and a professor teaching at Boston University.(www.jimstodder.com) He warns of the political peril to the left:
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| Jim Stodder |
"Somehow, with an unerring instinct, the ultra-left has seized upon the only thing that could possibly swing this election in favor of our now crumbling 'Strongman' -- fear of greater violence and disorder.
I don't think he and they will be able to pull it off. But at this point, it's not enough for Biden to say he "doesn't support" defund the police. He needs a Sister Souljah moment against these white kids. He should denounce not just the Federal Stormtroopers, but the idiotic performative violence of the ultra-left.
Like sandbox versions of the Weathermen or 19th century Russian regicides, they dream of one more glorious firebomb to awaken the sleeping masses. The masses just want them to go away."
Richard Plotz is a retired pathologist, an avid genealogist, puzzle-solver, and geocacher, living in Providence, RI. He says that people who presume that the protests come from the left, and the violence from the ultra left, misread the situation:
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| Dick Plotz and his wife |
"I think "ultra-left" is a counterproductive, and inaccurate, term to use. The point of the violent actions is to sow disorder. Cui bono? I see the hand of -- not Trump, he's too stupid-- but someone like Putin or Stephen Miller in the chaos.
Not to say that the participants in the violence have all been paid off, but it would only take a few agents provocateurs to rally a larger gathering of young hoodlums who just want to have fun by destroying things. I don't for a minute think that this is generated in a vacuum by a leftist-anarchist outfit; the true source has figured out how to push the right buttons to rouse a mob that undoubtedly does include a contingent of leftist-anarchists, but that doesn't make it "the ultra-left".
Facebook chatter on the left includes people who make the point that fully peaceful, symbolic protest--like Colin Kaepernick silently "taking a knee"-- was all too easy to ignore and it was in fact largely ignored, except by Trump who changed the meaning of the protest from one of racial injustice to an accusation he intentionally insults veterans. Facebook partisans cite the Boston Tea Party. They destroyed some property in 1773. That got the British attention. There are people on the left who justify violence, but they are a rare exception, and they aren't the ones throwing rocks.
Portland rock throwers and window breakers themselves likely include idealists of the anarchist left among the people who are out in costume and masks. Their target has largely changed from racial injustice to very fact of police forces there to stop them It is now a fight about a fight, by people who enjoy a fight. That could go on forever. Who benefits? Only Trump.
[Coming tomorrow: Retired Bankruptcy Judge John Olson cites in detail the use of agent provocateurs in Tsarist Russia.]
4 comments:
So, Jim, "there are bad people on both sides?"
Isn't that lane already taken?
The Portland chaos will only be a win for Trump if federal agents can shut down the violence, reclaim the courthouse, clean it up, and get back to normal. So far, that has not happened.
The authorities have to arrest the vandals and keep them in jail. Catch and release is not solving the problem.
As if both sides want the nightly battle to continue forever.
I thought of a good tactic this morning for the peaceful protesters to use against the perpetrators of violence:
They could all show up with flashlights. When they see someone in their midst launching, for instance, a commercial firework (the kind that are launched hundreds of feet into the air by a mortar and then explode creating a big fireball) at the federal officers, the people close to the perpetrator could back away, create a circle around them, light them up with the flashlights, and cooperate with officers that came to arrest them.
This would eliminate the violent ones in days, and then the protests would be uniformly peaceful. Even if the federal officers stayed in Portland, there would be nothing for them to do and the issue would go away.
If, on the other hand, the peaceful protesters tolerate the violent ones among them, they are creating a shield for them and are complicit in those acts of violence.
Okay, Michael...we finally agree; I like your tactic; peaceful protesters need to take an active role and address this subterfuge of legitimate protest. Another would be to protest in a different location, away from Federal property. Another would be to just give the protests a rest for a few days, a week, even a month. Other ideas?
I have no doubt agent provocateurs are inciting violence; they were in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention, acting as hippies and throwing rocks at cops. Many folks "can't go there" in their Polyannish thinking about this country...it's a bridge too far. As one of the writers stated, it only takes one or two to incite the violence.
Everybody breathe.
Andy Seles
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