[SpecialOlympian]

Yeah I read the article and they couldn't even correctly identify him as a professor at a university. Faculty are publicly listed on websites for colleges.

These are the internet geniuses who are going to take him down!!!

[jakell]

I guess the anti-fa didn't show up because they are spooked that 4chan sleuths revealed the identity of bike lock guy despite him wearing a hood, sunglasses and face mask when making his assault. As much as anti-fa like violence when not being ethics professors in their day job they don't want to go to prison for it.

I would think that a good number of them were there (the more local ones anyway), but didn't don the ninja outfits and associated behaviour because that is not such an easy trigger any more, the previous events made that very plain.
I would expect them to circulate amongst the 'talkers' looking for more subtle points of cleavage to exploit. The black bloc tactic is not over though, there isn't really any other way to stimulate the required primitive responses (which dampen the more cognitive responses) than through faceless group aggression, it will be used again when the time is right. This longer-view approach will be managed by groups such as BAMN who seem to have been at it for a while
Sargon has done a good analysis of these and taken the fruitful approach of starting to view them as a cult and I agree that a lot of the markers are there. This is a bit long-winded (but worth viewing in full), the section from 38:00 onwards gets to the heart of the matter:

I was going to post this in the New Atheism behaves like a cult' thread, because the cult angle seems worth pursuing, but two old ladies have been having a bickering contest in there for a while and I don't want to encourage them with any attention.

[The Immortal Goon]

Anarchist tactics have, as I've mentioned, yielded a 100% failure rate.

This being predictable, and any kind of credible left having long since been smashed by a century old alliance of the government and far-right groups, the far right feels comfortable enough to expand marches from Berkley to other left-leaning areas of the country. Where, of course, the police will escort them through a community that doesn't want them there with heavy-handed tactics.

No doubt the right-wingers, always eager to proclaim themselves victims, are easily manipulated by their masters into thinking that going through neighborhoods that don't like them protected by columns of riot police makes them victims somehow.

But, again, try to imagine a communist march through rural Wyoming.

Here's the rightwing march through Portland this week:

a group of Trump-loving right wingers organized a "March for free speech," and met at Montavilla Park around 10 am Saturday morning. They gathered in the fenced-off "futsal" field for short speeches. Left-wing protesters gathered around it and made noise. Armored-up police officers tried to separate the groups as much as possible. A number of helmet-wearing Trump supporters brought thick wooden sticks with zip-tied flags on them, looking ready for battle, and police made them put most of their sticks back in their cars.

Mayor Ted Wheeler made a brief appearance at the park, shaking hands with police officers and park rangers. He was teased and sworn at by a number of lefty protesters and dismissed by a number of right wingers. He left after a few minutes.

At the park, a Trump supporter carrying a baseball bat (quickly confiscated by police) tried to fight people, and yelled "fuck all you n****rs." He'd later give the Nazi salute. It should be noted that a number other Trump fans disavowed him and wouldn't let him into the futsal court were the first part of the rally was being held. It should also be noted that there were a number of open white nationalists in the crowd, including one wearing a "Germany" shirt who was enthusiastically ranting about "white genocide" in South Africa and his desire to have all white people in South Africa move to America because Black people, he said, are "naturally cannibals."

After some speeches in the court, the right wingers marched for more than two miles on the sidewalks down 82nd Ave. Protesters followed and mingled in the crowd. Armored-up cops from the Portland Police Bureau and Multnomah County Sheriff's Office kept a watch the entire time during the march and tried to separate the two groups. There was pushing and a lot of yelling. At least three people, left wingers, were arrested today.

The march ended at a Burger King parking lot about 2.3 miles from Montavilla Park. The city used three TriMet busses to take people back to the park.








(This one I find personally offensive as the rightwing has tried in the US to appropriate the Irish tribe-colour, presented to Meagher by socialists in France and made the national standard of Ireland in a communist revolution, into a rightwing symbol)



(Protecting the right-wing's "right" to march through leftwing areas:











(It's a largely Asian neighborhood, one of the few minority enclaves in mostly white Portland)

Same old story of the establishment supporting rightwing snowflakes to crush any opposition from the left.

The sad part is that the Black Bloc and others feed right into this by resisting it like children by smashing car windows or something. It didn't happen this weekend, but it's almost exactly what any of these idiots hope for. Whether it's the Nazis marching through Red Berlin; the Orangemen marching through Catholic neighborhoods; or the KKK marching through a black ghetto. The right loves this tactic since they get to feel like coddled little victims while inviting the state to beat up their enemies.

[jakell]

Anarchist tactics have, as I've mentioned, yielded a 100% failure rate...

Never mind, an acre of images renders it all fresh and interesting again.

[jakell]

I'm not sure if, by 'anarchist tactics', TIG actually means black-bloc tactics. Also how that 'failure' might be measured.

Referring to my previous post with Sargon's video in it, if BB tactics are meant to trigger a low-brow fight/flight response in their chosen opponent then they have been pretty successful in the past and, even in the more recent Berkeley example, are still successful even thought they have not produced an antifa victory on this occasion.
A non-confrontational stalemate, especially one where (relatively) extended dialogue ensues, might be considered a failure by BB types. I've seen quite a few videos (from the right) and analyses that are starting to focus on such occurrences.

[Hong Wu]

It seems to be mostly over now that people are being smart enough to ban masks.

[jakell]

It seems to be mostly over now that people are being smart enough to ban masks.

We may find masks being donned for short periods whilst a hit-and-run is performed such as in Eric Clanton's behaviour, and then removed to rejoin the crowd, anonymity is another sort of mask.

There's a more subtle form of mask though, and that is the use of useful idiots (mostly impressionable kids, but not always) as a frontline, especially as idiocy is a fairly inexhaustible resource when used wisely. The question would be who is behind this particular form of mask and Sargon's cult angle may provide one perspective on this.

[Hong Wu]

We may find masks being donned for short periods whilst a hit-and-run is performed such as in Eric Clanton's behaviour, and then removed to rejoin the crowd, anonymity is another sort of mask.

There's a more subtle form of mask though, and that is the use of useful idiots (mostly impressionable kids, but not always) as a frontline, especially as idiocy is a fairly inexhaustible resource when used wisely. The question would be who is behind this particular form of mask and Sargon's cult angle may provide one perspective on this.

I've come to the conclusion recently that most SJWs (extreme leftists) are hobbyists. It explains their sometimes gleeful approach to irrationality, you do a hobby because you enjoy it, not because it matters to you a lot. Since punches ("punch a Nazi") aren't fatal and weren't going to get anyone to change their opinion, it being a hobbyist activity would explain that weird meme as well. If they did it while masked it's not dangerous to them, without masks it's a whole other ball game and not something a hobbyist would enjoy.

[The Immortal Goon]

I'm not sure if, by 'anarchist tactics', TIG actually means black-bloc tactics.

I mean anarchist tactics as a broad whole, going back to Propaganda of the Deed. Where most leftists tend to see organization of a people or class in order to create mass action as the key component to victory, anarchists tend to see individual action as the primary means of creating change.

In this sense, I don't disagree with this sentiment:

I've come to the conclusion recently that most SJWs (extreme leftists) are hobbyists.

Even if we must accept the right's complete inability to use the English language effectively in defining people and problems.

All this being said, and in defense of me daring to include photos in a photo-journalist piece, I do side with the anarchists here for the same reason that I side with blacks in black neighborhoods when the Ku Klux Klan decides to march, or Catholics in Catholic neighborhoods not wanting the Orangemen to come marching through.

There is a spoiled child's conception of the First Amendment that, actually, isn't supported by any American case law, that the government has to help facilitate Freedom of Speech. In some sense in Berkley, and certainly in Portland above, the Trumpites have had to come with the police to force everyone to hear what is said. In the actual sense of the First Amendment, you should be able to say whatever you want without the government interfering, but the person you're saying it to might punch you in the goddamned face.

I understand that the police's compelling interest is to do this instead of allow a riot to break out, but it certainly seems insincere to dress this all up as a First Amendment issue.

[SpecialOlympian]

Anyone who disagrees with Trump: Uncommitted hobbyists, low-T losers with no ideological roots or commitments. And, through a continuous shift of rhetorical focus, simultaneously a great threat but also powerless.

Brave Trump Supporters:



Committed, strong, firmly in the Gorilla Mindset. Dedicated to the coherent and well thought out Trump ideology 4 LIFE, and not at all hobbyists (please ignore the collector's edition Assassin's Creed flag that does not in any way detract from the seriousness of their mission).

[jakell]

I've come to the conclusion recently that most SJWs (extreme leftists) are hobbyists. It explains their sometimes gleeful approach to irrationality, you do a hobby because you enjoy it, not because it matters to you a lot. Since punches ("punch a Nazi") aren't fatal and weren't going to get anyone to change their opinion, it being a hobbyist activity would explain that weird meme as well. If they did it while masked it's not dangerous to them, without masks it's a whole other ball game and not something a hobbyist would enjoy.

A hobby for an older person may describe something that doesn't matter a lot, but for a younger person it can also be obsessional, ie, it does matter a lot.

Gong out on a limb, I would hazard that the recent obsessional behaviour that has resulted in the label 'SJW' is due to the element of religiosity that still remains in the human psyche. Morality used to be the domain of religion, but now that that has faded and is regarded as a taboo avenue of contemplation for today's thinkers, a similar irrational (and therefore leading to extremes and obsessions) container for it has been found, hence SJW behaviour has come to mirror cultish and religious behaviour.

John Michael Greer hinted at this in his essay The God with Three Heads. Here he didn't dwell too much on the specifics of the moralistic head, but I think this is what we are seeing.