The Paving on the Road to Hell

by

That paving was laid down in California over the last few weeks; first by attendees at a Donald Trump rally in San Jose being harassed and physically attacked after the rally by protestors – and this with the apparent acquiescence (or possibly the tacit encouragement) of the San Jose Police Department, and then again in Sacramento a week ago, when a protest organized on the grounds of the California State Capitol in Sacramento by a group calling themselves the  Traditionalist Worker Party –  variously described as white supremacists or neo-Nazis – was attacked by a group proudly identifying themselves as anti-fascist. As was reported in the Los Angeles Times, when last Sunday’s rally began, “Waiting for them were counter-protesters, including members of the anti-fascist organization Antifa Sacramento, which had promoted a “Shut Down Nazi Rally” event on its website…”

The Traditionalist Worker Party members, whatever their merits or lack thereof, had a permit for a demonstration, and in the larger understanding of things, a perfect right to make fools of themselves in public, just as it was found in 1978 – that a neo-Nazi organization had the perfect right to march through Skokie, Illinois. No less a luminary than the ACLU defended that as a matter of free speech and the exercise thereof. Personally, I find it ironic that the so-called anti-fascists are acting more like actual, historic fascists than those they loudly accuse of being fascists. This irony is probably lost on the members of the loose federation of so-called anti-fascists who swung into action in Sacramento last weekend, as one of their other charming qualities is breathlessly equating Donald Trump with the KKK. Donald Trump has many lamentable qualities to recommend him, including toe-curlingly vulgar taste in interior decoration – but I don’t believe that he was an active member of the enforcement branch of the militantly anti-Reconstruction Post-Civil-War Democrat Party, the 1960s Bull Connor Birmingham version of the Democrat Party or even the present-day KKK in its shriveled version.  YMMV, however. At the rate that shrieking social justice warriors accuse white people of every sort of anti-social-justice crime imaginable, there may be a future in a new iteration of the KKK, even if only out of self-defense.

Back to my main point, though: Essentially, a group of local activists took it upon themselves to judge those whom they had philosophical/political disagreements with as beyond the pale of toleration, enforcing that diktat with violence, overwhelming numbers, and proudly boasting of it all – before, during and afterwards on social media and in statements to the press.  At this point, and as near as I can judge from news coverage of the near-riot, none of the perpetrators of violence have been charged, or arrested, in spite of plenty of video documentation of their actions in viciously attacking members of the Traditionalist Workers. Like San Jose – it is likely that the fix is in as regards local law enforcement.

I am certain that the regular contributors and commenters at this blog – history enthusiast all – know very well what an appalling precedent is being established here, and how that ideological short-cut worked out for Weimar-era Germany. Political activity devolved from starchy editorials and passionate discussions in political salons, cafes and beer-halls to political shock troops from opposing sides brawling in the streets, breaking up each other’s rallies, while civil authorities stood by, wringing their hands and tut-tutting fruitlessly. One of the most visible leaders in last weekend’s brouhaha in Sacramento is a teacher in a Berkeley middle school named Yvette Felarca – a woman apparently drunk on social justice and unscathed by any sense of caution or knowledge of 20th century history save the usual Zinnish pieties. She has whined on her Facebook page about threats to the school where she works, to pupils of the school and herself. Which again – is ironic.

She and her political allies have established the precedent that organized violence is an appropriate response to those whose political and social opinions you hold in disapproval. An extremely dangerous can of worms is opened thereby, in that persons who disapprove of your own political sympathies may respond to being targeted in response with perfect justification. Ms Felarca and her allies will have no real basis for complaint, having chosen to overturn a painfully-struggled-for convention in American political life that violence against political opposition ought to be beyond the pale.  It is a slippery slope, this business of physically attacking other people, merely for exercising their rights. I do not think that Yvette Felarca and her social-justice friends comprehend fully where this will lead. Those of us with a knowledge of history will see it – quite clearly, I am afraid.

Discuss.

 

22 thoughts on “The Paving on the Road to Hell”

  2. Ms. Felarca seems to be poobah over at BAMN:

    The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary is building the new civil rights movement. We are a primarily student- and youth-based organization of leaders in our schools and communities, committed to making real the promises of American democracy and equality.

    Realizing American democracy apparently means dispensing with the First Amendment, at least:

    PROTEST THE NAZIS/KKK IN SACRAMENTO! No “Free Speech” for Fascists! Open the Borders! Full Citizenship Rights for All Undocumented Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum-Seekers Now! Build the New Independent, Integrated, Mass Militant Youth-Led Civil Rights and Immigrant Rights Movement!

    Militant Youth-Led…I wonder if their militants are armed. I’m guessing that their opposition will start creating militant groups to thwart BAMN’s goals, thwarting by any means necessary. And those opposition groups will be better armed.

    This won’t end well.

  3. Oh, this paving project started long ago. The mob took down prominent people who expressed or had ever held views differing from the Correct opinions of the moment; searched out private citizens who hadn’t spoken up but could be counted on to dissent if you demanded they violate their beliefs; shouted down college speakers who might, if allowed to speak, say something they disagreed with.

    At the same time the President engaged in ad hominem attacks against anybody who dared disagree with him; a politicized IRS hobbled groups whose names suggested the possibility of opposing the President’s will; an equally politized Justice Department turned a blind eye to abuses by favored groups. Now we have the bizarre spectacle of state Attorneys-General trying to sue dissenters under RICO, while Congressional Democrats sit on the floor to express their disdain for due process and try to hatch laws criminalizing criticism of Islam.

    The attack on our civil liberties has been going on for seven years. It’s now obvious that the mob and the State share the goal of silencing all dissent. Is anybody really surprised at the sanctioned political violence of this summer?

    Krystallnacht didn’t come out of a vacuum. Neither did these mobs.

  4. Agreed, Margaret; it’s been building for a while, but openly organizing to attack people in the streets on political grounds while the police stand around with their finger in their ear – this takes it to a whole ‘nother degree. Like Capitalist Roader said – it won’t end well. Ms Felarca and her BAM pals are metaphorically cruising for a bruising, as my father used to say.

  5. Sarge,
    The same subject was under discussion at INSTAPUNDIT this morning, and if you don’t mind I will quote what I said there which strikes me as on point here:

    Granting that Colorado is not California. With very few exceptions, open carry is legal and if you have a Constitutional Sheriff [which most of ours are] concealed carry permits are “shall issue” unless you are in a restricted class [convicted felons, etc.] In our 4th of July Parades, TEA Party contingents are marching under arms, led by County Sheriffs [which is what I will be doing tomorrow].

    It is already being actively discussed here that in Democrat-controlled areas of the country and with the Feds, the law enforcement agencies are not LEA’s but rather political muscle not to be trusted to obey or enforce the law. For the record, I am a retired Peace Officer, and I hang [and tomorrow will be marching with] retired Peace Officers from all sorts of agencies, including Federal.

    After Chicago, after Dayton, after San Jose; and having been pre-deployed to cover the demonstration in Sacramento, when the Democrat thugs in government uniform saw 100-150 identically dressed in black and masked Democrat thugs carrying baseball bats and 2 x 4’s approaching simultaneously [they probably did not see the knives and icepicks at first] they should have a) interposed themselves, b) directed the attackers to stop, c) ordered them to unmask [it is against the law, an old anti-KKK law, to appear masked in public while committing a crime or creating a disturbance in California], and started arresting anyone who did not comply with b) and c). Unless they had political orders otherwise like in San Jose.

    It is absolutely key to understanding the reality of the situation to realize that after 150 thugs committed aggravated assault with deadly weapons [with multiple casualties on both sides] on 25-30 demonstrators who had a permit and the police were there to protect; that as of several days afterwards there were no arrests either at the scene, at the hospitals afterwards, based on security camera footage, or on media interviews that included confessions of violations of statute by the organizers. In fact, the public organizer was/is a government employee; a middle school teacher.

    I’m sure that various lessons are being learned. As far as the police only arresting those being attacked by the Left if there is active resistance, that is a given. But we are not in the exact same world as Weimar Germany. Video and computers can identify attackers for later, and today the fashion is 4th generation warfare. Just as ethnic gangs attack individuals and families to enforce their wishes; both sides are going to diffuse the battle into the population. The Left brought those tactics into this country, and eventually it is going to become the norm in the absence of the rule of law.

    Oh, Brave New World that has such people in’t.

    Subotai Bahadur

    If I may, I will add another couple of points. I was advised today that under California law, the simple carrying of clubs is a weapons crime. Plenty of probable cause.

    And two reporters present who were injured, working for different outlets, both say that the police deliberately refused to act. Just like San Jose, this was ordered.

  7. Lest we forget: Open carry was legal for the entire history of our state until the blue-state fascists in Sacramento found out it existed, whereupon they took it away.

    Two days ago they passed a raft of anti-gun legislation which, among other outrages, makes it a felony to purchase ammunition out of state or from a private individual not licensed to do so. They have also made it a felony to possess any previously grandfathered magazine for any centerfire weapon over ten rounds.

    The noose keeps tightening. As with the militant queers and their insistence on queer sex ed (now state law as well, starting grade 7), as with the militant environazis and their demonization of lead ammunition (now illegal to be used for hunting anything, anywhere, which effectively outlaws varmint hunting — there is no non-lead loading for .22 LR), there is no stopping point, no finish line, no We’re Happy Now. The means of effectual resistance are being white-outed away, so that you might be set upon as soon as they appear and be murdered or thrust into a prison cell.

    When Gavin Newsom become governor in two years, he will happily pass everything Jerry vetoed this time around, plus whatever else he can think of. This will almost certainly include classifying reloading components as ammunition, retroactive universal registration of all older firearms in the state, and a slew of taxes on anything and everything to do with the shooting sports. And he is crazy enough to attempt to enforce his diktats, which will not go over well in small rural-NorCal towns with names like Adin and Duncan and MacArthur and Oroville and Redding. Throw in the likely resistance of rural Constitutional shire-reeves to their constituents being victimized in this way, and you ratchet the tension level up a few more notches. That’s even if Hillary fails to win the White House, and if she does, the cossacks from SoCal will have Federal backing and intelligence. Sooner or later there will be a series of Bundy-ranch-style standoffs, and sooner or later — perhaps intentionally, on either side — somebody will f*ck up.

    We will be demonized as gun toting racists, lawbreakers, violent anachronisms worthy of only of mingled pity and fear and disgust. No one in the large cities will speak out for us or hold candlelight vigils; no one will fly small green Jefferson state flags to show their support, the way they all flew little rainbow flags after Orlando. We are utterly forsaken by our own people. Men who want to chop their junk off and pee in the ladies’ room or get married to other men or sneak across the border and get food stamps and drivers licenses are worthy of consideration and respect and protection under the law. They are individuals with dignity and respect and worth. Not us. Not me.

    Subotai is safe enough in his Tea Party enclave. Sgt. Mom is safe enough in Texas. I am sitting in the eye of a government-sponsored hurricane. I look at it with my QA/process analyst eyes, and I see it forming. I cannot tell where it will touch down, or what it will wreck. But I see the storm coming. If the progressive Kulturkampf turns violent, it will almost certainly begin here. Which is why I intend to have an Oregon driver’s license in two years’ time. But if I see my home town and my neighbors and friends laid waste, I will probably come home, and not in any mood for bipartisan compromise.

    Keep your eyes on rural northern California in the years between now and the end of the decade. And pray most devoutly for us, and for our wounded Republic.

  8. A new version of the KKK is not called for though revitalizing the institution of the militia for the 21st century is probably in order. That such a thing will be called fascist and KKK is utterly predictable but it’s different than an actually renewed KKK. Turning to the KKK is exactly what the other side would like and I am not inclined to give them that victory.

    Phil Ossiferz – The Girandoni air rifle is something that needs to be updated for the 21st century and 3D printing. It is important to tie arms to 3D printing because that is a technology that is likely to create a great deal of economic advantage for the societies that adopt it. By making that technology capable of creating arms, it guarantees that the gun grabbers will either condemn themselves to economic backwater status by banning 3D printing or they will have to give up on gun grabbing. Creating pro-liberty applications for technology that is the next wave in economic progress is a must because the battle will not be solely a military one but also an economic one. Force them to choose time and again between being poor and being safe from arms and being rich and having an armed people.

  9. Today’s airguns are better than the Girandoni.

    Check out the big bore air rifles here:

    http://www.airgunsofarizona.com/

    The pre-charged cylinder models can be pressurized with a bicycle type pump or with a scuba tank. I have a Benjamin Marauder in .25 cal. Shoots a 25.4 gr. pellet at nearly 900 FPS, good for 40 FT-lbs energy. Not for big game, but will kill the local javelina when they come in to root around your yard plantings. Arizona has no regulations of any sort on airguns.

    I think open carry was ended in California in the late 60s. When the Black Panthers started to walk around with rifles and shotguns, it made legislators nervous.

  11. TM – no, a new KKK would be a bad PR move, but considering that any response to this outrage performed politically by citizens of non-color would be labeled the KKK anyway by the shrieking social justice warriors — I can see people of non-color saying basically ‘Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb’ or alternately, ‘accused of the crime, nothing to lose by committing it anyway.’

    I have already seen the Tea Party – as earnest, committed, color-blind and self-educated middle-class activists as ever there was, locally – slimed as racist, bigoted know-nothings by the establishment media: My education in seeing the Big Lie played out in real time.

    Damage is being done to our public understandings and conventions as will take decades to undue, thanks to idiots like MS Felarca. That damage is so easily done, and she and her ilk have no notion of what they have unleashed.

  12. Raymond,

    It was when the Panthers walked into the California legislature, while it was in session, carrying rifles and shotguns.

  13. I would like to wish all a splendid 240th Independence Day. If we as Americans have independence much longer, I’m not so sure. I think that a Convention of the States could be an answer to our problems. But,
    I don’t think a convention that tries to fix too many problems is the solution. I would think that a COS that
    focused on one easily recognized problem would alleviate anxiety of many of an “out of control convention”.

    I’ve read Mark Levin’s book >The Liberty Amendments< and I understand that Randy Barnett too has a book with his own proposed amendments for overturning progressive rule in America. It is just after the reaction to Brexit, I find their proposal naive. These folks cannot be reasoned with. You can only take power away from them. And they don't like it one bit.

    So, I circle back to COS. I believe that a COS amendment that took the power of about 280 people( 218 congress, 60 Senators, 1 president) to raise the federal debt limit from them and returned it to the acceptance of 3/4 of the State legislatures would be interesting way to start reversing the last 100 years.

    I think of this as the "Dave Ramsey amendment" Cut the credit card up and start over. The fun part is
    that this 2016 election means nothing. The battle is 2018 at the State level.

    Happy 4th to you all.

    ps As I write this, Americans are outside blowing stupid sh@t up.

  15. Tom,

    While I had forgotten about that incident, I can claim to be correct about a nervous legislature. When that took place, I was
    a high school sophomore in a suburban town near San Jose. Television news was interesting to watch when Ronnie was Gov.

  16. Remember Napoleon? He ended the French Reign of Terror by firing artillery at the Parisian mobs. He instantly became the most popular man in France and quickly the emperor of most of Europe. Is this what the radicals are hoping for?

  17. Like Capitalist Roader said – it won’t end well. Ms Felarca and her BAM pals are metaphorically cruising for a bruising, as my father used to say.

    They forget that the other side has people who are armed and NOT afraid of guns. At some point, there’s going to be some nasty shit going down as each side guns up.

  18. In a way I pity these so-called Antifas, but only in the tiniest way possible. Much the same way I’d pity I’d pity a rat in a glue trap. The rank and file are either clueless or demented and have no idea where their road will lead them; too bad there aren’t any surviving former Brownshirts or Red Guards available to give them a preview–not that it would help. Even the leaders can only hope there’s no Stalin in their futures but are probably too ignorant to think that far ahead. They’ll come to a bad end eventually; I’d like to say it might be amusing to watch, but I know better. They’re playing with a fire that will burn us all to one degree or another….

  19. I am reminded strongly of a scene in the movie ALIENS where one of the Space Marines made the comment “Express elevator to hell, GOING DOWN!”

    If the American Right gets triggered full death squad, the only safe place for Leftists will be inside guarded Federal reservations.

    And no, I’m not joking.

    The disparity in hard core ex-military is that large.

  20. Death squads acting on a national scale have been active in my lifetime, and they were effective. The Algiers Motel incident was one manifestation. This time it won’t be so well covered up because it won’t have federal protection until its end. _Lightning Fall_ indicates Bill Quick has some awareness of this.

  21. Nothing new here. IIRC, Communists were involved in gun battles in the streets in South Carolina in the 1950s, and in the 1980s, while I worked on my first masters’ degree, I was invited to violently disrupt a right-wing legal assembly. I replied, “I don’t suppress the rights of people with whom I disagree,” which forever marked me as racist, sexist, fascist, homophobe.

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