True North

Along with my friends at True North, I’ve spent a good chunk of the last year getting primed to deal with the hordes of “anarchist” thugs - generally upper-middle-class college kids or twenty-somethings - who plan on coming to Saint Paul this fall to cause mischief. This blog has spent lots of time and effort documenting their statements of intent, and their actions.

While I support everyone’s right to free speech, and am perfectly willing to ascribe 90% of the things the Anarcho-fops are saying to “post-adolescent drama-addiction”, there are enough of them out there who do intend to cause serious trouble - vandalism, rioting, assault and mayhem - that I plan on doing what I can to protect my city from their depredations.

And when I’ve mentioned this in mixed-politics forums - like the “E-Democracy” Saint Paul discussion group - the resopnse, almost to a person has been an ignorant “riiiiiiight” at best, and a denial-clogged “the Republicans are just as likely to get violent” at worst.

One of the people who’s given us plenty of both was Grace Kelly of the local leftyblog MNBlue. Kelly, a 9/11 “truther”, is shocked, shocked, to notice that some of her fellow protesters are up to planning no good!

While nearly every peacemaker group has focused on elections, one small group, Protest RNC 2008 has been focussed on protesting the Republican National Convention(RNC), which is normally a good activity except this time.

(Which is a sentence that makes perfect sense except for this time)

I wrote of the importance of nonviolence and peace pledge previously. Now all groups who are participating with this group are being asked to commit to a unity pledge

Let’s be clear, here (since Grace Kelly is not really good at writing clearly); it’s the “Protest RNC group” that’s proposing the pledge below. Kelly herself proposed a pledge - one of those “unicorn in every garage” pledges, all full of high expectations and dreamy assumptions that are the peacenik’s only useful tangible intellectual product - and is somewhat upset that the other guys’ pledge is getting more traction among the anarkids.

And - this kills me - she’s surprised that the anarkids want to pledge people to… (Kelly’s responses are in parentheses below; mine will be in square brackets):

• respect the diversity of tactics (ignore the people who state on public email lists that violence to property like throwing bricks through windows is ok

[Or on MPR, or in the Minnesota Daily, or…]

• >separate activities (please don’t stand next the person throwing bricks or you too will probably get arrested

[we’ve been through this one before; this is part of the art of psychologically priming people to help create a riot against their will]

• don’t criticize publicly (like I am doing right now, no free speech, no request for peace pledge, no request for a standard of non-violence, no openness, no transparency)

I get a kick out of this; Kelly, like many dozey peaceniks, is actually surprised that people whose intellectual and ideological roots trace back to Lenin, Mao and Stalin would actually stifle free speech.

The horror of it all! Who knew?

• don’t cooperate with police (like my pledge to point at the person throwing bricks)

Of course, Kelly’s a 9/11 Truther - so even though the intent to commit mayhem against both the city and the convention and her fellow “peaceful” protesters is right there in black and white, we all know whose fault it really is…:

Well I looked at this unity pledge and I thought, all that Bush has to do to shut down protests is join the groups protesting as “George Bush, Tactic - Iraq War and Group - US Government” and to live by the unity pledge, the protests could say nothing.

And there is more, to even sign up to go organizing meeting of the “umbrella” of groups planning for the peace protest, you have sign a pledge of endorsement - which means the group’s name can be used, basically associated with all the “diversity” of tactics used and dragged through media mud.

Gosh. D’ya think.

The Protest RNC 2008 and RNC Welcoming Committee had a “community” meeting, which I came to represent St Paul. They only collected questions and then promised to answer question later if we came to the organizing meeting.

Hm. Where have we heard this before?

Oh, yeah. From conservative bloggers who’ve been “covering” the fops for the past year.

I came to that meeting and was requested to leave because I advocate for the community, the peace pledge and non-violence. I am not “one” of the them. Exactly, I am a peacemaker. I am a member of several peacemaker groups, all of which have declined to be involved.

No kidding!

We on the right have been warning you about exactly this since the very beginning.

Many peacemaker groups have long experienced activists who know the history of people who join groups to cause difficulties. The question is what happens to groups advocating for peace, who do not have that experience. Will they unknowingly sign on and take the unity pledge? Will people’s unwillingness to question tactics of people who seem to work for the same cause get them in trouble?

Clearly we need a separate non-violent peace pledge committed group to organize a separate peaceful protest.

No, Grace. Clearly, what “you” in the “peace” movement need is to rise up and condemn those who advocate violence; you need to make them feel unwelcome in the Twin Cities. You need to actively reach out to Law Enforcement and make sure that thugs, mayhem-seekers and other degenerates get the welcome they deserve from Saint Paul.

But y’all aren’t gonna do that, aren’t you?

Because you still think “pledges” and the unicorn-in-every-garage rhetoric of the “peace” movement actually carries any weight among your movement’s degenerate wing!

Mark my words; the anarchofops are going to be here; they don’t give a shit about your motivations; they will actively seek to disrupt the convention and life in this city. They may be a tiny minority of those protesting, but they will get the vast bulk of the press coverage. They will vandalize. They will destroy. And, if some of their rhetoric is to be believed, they will attack anyone who gets in their way.
And the “peace” movement will do nothing about it, because the “peace” movement is only about taking the easy moral stands.

Which means that they are utterly worthless at either making peace or dealing with aggression.

Fops: You’re in my town, now.

Cross-posted and comments welcome at Shot In The Dark.