methinks the protesters doth protest too much, by el gato malo

Not all protests are created equal, and some stand out for their sheer artificiality. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:

how much of modern activism is nothing but stage managed marketing?

it’s interesting how perspectives evolve over time. to be sure, the political protest movements of the 60’s had all sorts of problems and many of their leaders and followers were flawed and/or unsettled or unserious people just along for the ride, but there was a real, genuine nature to them as well. there were serious problems like jim crow or kids being drafted and shipped off against their will to fight in a foolish, contrived war in southeast asia and far from being just “noisy hippies” many of the luminaries of these movements were people with a point. (and often a good one)

these civil rights protests contained real values and real danger.

the regime did NOT like these people.

they infiltrated them with the FBI and police and CIA, arrested them, beat them, sicced the dogs on them, firehosed them, and arguably assassinated several of them (including perhaps a sitting president).

that’s how regimes behave when they actually fear protests: crack down and lock up, surveil and subvert, destroy and discredit.

the movements of the 60’s and 70’s were anti-state and largely right. that’s not something that burgeoning statists will tolerate, especially the “being right” part.

but a very interesting dichotomy has emerged of late with a new kind of protester that seems to be a “pro-regime” protester which has come to be nothing so much as a state sanctioned astroturf movement to lend a patina of legitimacy to propagandistic talking points emerging from DC and davos and downing st and wherever else modern media politics has infected governance.

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