(Via Instapundit) I find it mildly astonishing that this even needed to be written, honestly:
What we are seeing here is the latest iteration of an old political program that has been given new strength by the failures of the global economy and the power of postmodern technology. [snip] … the concerns of labor intersect only tangentially with those of Occupy Wall Street’s theorists and prime movers. The occupiers have a lot more in common with the now-decades-old antiglobalization movement. They are linked much more closely to the “hacktivist” agents of chaos at WikiLeaks and Anonymous.
But perhaps this isn’t immediately obvious to the casual observer... so we’ll do a quick recap. The antiglobo movement has long been a haven for radical anarchists and would-be fascist stormtroopers who apparently feel that throwing various objects at authority figures is much more socially responsible than, say, bathing. Typically, this group is virulently parasitical; it delights in finding Activist Left causes (the Activist Right has higher standards when it comes to sanitation) and taking them over for its own purposes. Wesaw it with the antiwar movement – oh, my, did we see it with the antiwar movement – and now we’re seeing it with the Occupiers. Presumably the result will be the same: utter, complete, devastating, and humiliating failure for the Activist Left.
But it’s not all good news: as Matthew Continetti notes in the link above, the movement will be back in the spring, and will probably make an appearance at both party’s conventions. Expect their reappearance to be bloody; unlike the antiwar movement, the Occupiers’ core opinions are… nonexistent. That kind of vacuous lack of self-awareness virtually assures an ideological takeover by those who at least have an idea of what they want out of life…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: For the record, and contra Mr. Continetti, the time for confronting an ideology with ideas ends when that ideology decides to propagate itself via Molotov cocktail. At that point you’re perfectly justified in swinging back at the [expletive deleted] trying to, you know, kill you with fire over a point of policy planning.
I just wanted to make that clear before the Occupiers start throwing incendiary devices next year. Which, if they keep letting the blackshirts metastasize through their movement, will happen.
I hereby propose that subsequent party conventions be situated in states with concealed-carry rights firmly established.
As my born-and-raised-in-Belfast-during-WW2-mother would say, the world is a Big Scary Place, and until Americans have it come a’knockin’ at their own door (ahem, 9/11)–well, we have a tendency to la-la-la it. A clearly insane version was Loughner. Pray to whatever God you want to that we don’t get more of the same. Any prominent Conservative minority is a target for these reptiles.
I dunno if I’ve said it here before, but I predict the Black Bloc will, as last time, put on only ceremonial efforts at the DNC.
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They’ll save the bombs and more for the RNC.
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Wait — the Republicans go first this time, right? Well, then, the story will be that a “more chastened” movement will appear at the DNC after an orgy of violence at the RNC.