Manhattan: That, I could agree with, if I did not hear reports of them using… I’ll call it ‘strikebreaking’ tactics. Physical force and whatnot. Not that it’s not easy to get a rise in a protestor… after all, if they weren’t emotionally involved, they wouldn’t be protesting.
In short, these people are maroons. Dopes. In theory, it’s a good idea. In practice, it’s a frat boy moronathon. They’ve got almost every right to do it… (except where it crosses to vandalism and physical force), but really, they’re not on our side.
Sadly, I was thinking of counterprotesting the protestors of the RNC this summer, mostly for entertainment and education, and I was hoping these gentlemen would have the same idea. I was wrong.
It seems that a lot more people have jumped onto the anti-protestwarrior bandwagon because they’re right leaning than because the protest warrior people are uneducated. Correcting them when their facts are wrong is quite different from saying that they are nothing but ignorant and don’t have any valid ideas. I haven’t seen anyone here yet (and I doubt I ever will) acknowledge anything done by protestwarrior that is a valid point (such as their countering of the ‘Free Mumia’ rallies.)
I don’t agree with their politics, but they’re certainly free to protest the legality of abortion, to support the death penalty, and to believe that the war in Iraq was necessary. They may be wrong about the reasons, and often they are, but blindly discounting them as ignoramouses because all of their opinions are right leaning or berating them for marching in the streets certainly isn’t a productive way to deal with them. They may be rightist and wrong, but they are not wrong because they are rightist.
Nor are they all college aged frat boys with no brains, but I wouldn’t expect anyone here to learn something about them before dismissing them as drunken teenagers.
Catsix: you quoted someone else as me, in which the posters calls the protestwarriors blazingly stupid. Then you tu quoque against the lefty protesters.
I, if you read my post, went to protests with the purpose of seeing blazingly stupid protesters. Whenever you carry a slogan on a placard you paint yourself as an idiot, no matter if what you say is basically correct, since coherent policy arguments are notoriously difficult to emblazon on placards. Even if you possess an ability to talk about deep policy implications, you are lowering yourself to the lowest common denominator.
It’s just that I haven’t really seen any swastikas, or even druggie slogans, in person, on the lefty protests. They do try to minimize that, but one or two can get on national TV as easy as a couple dozen.
On the other hand, if the right were the ones with the huge protests, I’d bet the signage would be harshly controlled, perhaps at the point of armed security. After all, we need to crack down on those who don’t believe in freedom, right?
Sorry, I didn’t mean to misattribute a quote to you.
I still think that perhaps people should learn a bit more about the protestwarriors before lambasting them for the things they do get wrong.
They get enough facts wrong to hammer away at without resorting to branding them all juvenile college fuck heads and making fun of them because they carry conservative signs.
Sign waving in general is not the most intelligent way to get your message heard, but it’s no more stupid when it’s righties doing it than it is when it’s lefties.
Got a cite for that? I take it as a given that when a group like this comes along, the other side WILL claim that they are being physically abusive, whether they are or not. Standard tactic. So if you ‘heard it’ in the sense that someone on a message board said that someone at a demonstration saw it, then I’ll have to call bullshit. If you could point to, say, a newspaper clipping, that would be much better.
Uh, they’re not being made fun of because they’re conservative, they’re being made fun of because they’re ostentatiously ignorant, and yet say things like “Some leftists may be genuine about wanting to help people, they just have bad data. With them, it is a pleasure to educate them and help them, it’s like bringing someone out of darkness into the light of truth – akin to saving souls.”
To make a lofty claim like that on a website selling posters, bumper-stickers, T-shirts, and coffee mugs that are uniformly tainted with embarrassing misinformation is to invite ridicule. Representations of burka-clad Iraqi & Palestinian women? Brilliant. I love the smell of good data in the morning.
No one’s saying that protest signs ought to be cogent, self-contained arguments. The idea is just to show numbers, usually. Humourous or sardonic signs have their place, too --but signs that betray ignorance of the basic facts of the situation don’t serve anyone’s interest, no matter which side of the political spectrum they’re on.
Of course there’s no shortage of yobbos on the left carrying manifestly stupid signs. The difference is, that guy with the “U.S. Out of North America!” placard made it himself with a jiffy-marker and a cardboard box he pulled out of the bin behind his basement apartment. He’s just an idiot in a crowd. You roll your eyes and wish he’d go away.
Now, if he set up a website selling his brilliant brainwaves to other morons, exhorting people to help him spread the light of truth and “educate” the poor deluded conservatives, and he started getting some press coverage, well then, that’d be something to talk about, wouldn’t it?
Funny you should mention that. I am pleased, though of course not surprised, that someone would want to eradicate ignorance like that.
The main sponsor – and by “sponsor” I mean permit-holder, organizer, flyer-maker, etc. for the big rallies these days in New York and Washington is these guys and their apparent affiliate here. Have at 'em!
Is this always wrong? If not, what’s wrong with them saying so on their website?
Maybe. Maybe he’s also got some causes that I wouldn’t be inclined to immediately write off as idiotic. For one thing, I’d at least listen to what the protestwarrior people have to say about firearms rights. Maybe it’ll be a lot of incorrect bullshit, maybe it won’t. If it is, maybe I can help them not look like dumbasses as they try to sway the liberals.
Although, I’m not willing to dismiss everything that might ever come out of that website and write off every single person there as a moron.
Manny, do you really see an equivalence there? You’ve linked to an extremely detailed, text-heavy activist website, where actual arguments are presented. This is not a leftist version of Protest Warrior. Conservatives have grass roots organizing websites, too.
No, an oppositely-slanted version of Protest Warrior would be a site that sells T-shirts and bumper stickers that say things like “End the U.S. Occupation of Iran Now!” and “Conservatives and Paedophilic Serial Killers- United for the Spread of Democracy Abroad, Fiscal Responsibility at Home, and the Rape and Murder of Preschool Children Everywhere.”
No, it’s only wrong when you’re not actually making an effort to educate anyone, you’re just distributing ridiculous signage. Real conservatives come by their opinions honestly and present actual arguments for them. They do sincerely wish to propagate their views by giving people information and reasoning they may not have previously heard. Attention given to yahoos like PW undermines their cause, just as the antics of ignorant, irrational, and sub-literate protesters on the left work to undermine their cause.
Uh, A.N.S.W.E.R. is better because they have bigger lies with more text? C’mon, seriously check out the stuff on there. I recommend such highlights as
and
The Mumia section, predictably enough, is also a scream.
These are the organizers of the protests. The ones about whom you said
I’m saying that may be true in Vancouver, but here it’s not. The organizers are the extreme far-left nutjobs. They are the ones superimposing swastikas over Stars of David.
You seem a pretty reasonable guy. I’ll let you play on those sites some more and invite you to get back.
I had no idea it was a front for a raving Marxist group, and didn’t take the time to start wading through their site.
You’re right-- up here, radical loons have little to do with organizing – although they show up around the fringes and cause a certan amount of embarrassment.
A little research on non-loony anti-war activists’ dependence on ANSWER’s organizing has been enlightening and surprising.
Okay… I’m with you…
Yes, you’re talking sense…
Not so much “reasonable” as “astonishingly obvious.” Go on…
Well, duh.
Uh… what…?
:smack:
This is the kind of stupidity that comes of neo-fascists having those cussed overdeveloped organizational skills. Here’s a ten-foot-pole, you lazy twat! Don’t use it. There are other options. Like, I don’t know, doing the organizing yourselves, and not letting the whackjobs near the lecturns. Jesus.
In case you missed it, Larry, here is the t-shirt store at A.N.S.W.E.R. I particularly like the “End Occupation, No to Colonialism” one. Hopefully, not many people will but them because me and the little lady have just been promised 50 acres and a mule in Afghanistan, and we’d like to take advantage of the offer.
Can you provide some photographic evidence of an organizer of a major protest carrying a placard with a swastika on it, to back up your assumption that they would do that? And remember I said organizer, not just some dude who just showed up at a protest. :rolleyes:
Yeah, I thought you’d appreciate the difference. A quick, unscientific survey (also known as a “google image search”) of Vancouver protests indicates that they are indeed, different. Sheesh, I think some of the guys up there were wearing ties!
So there you have the difference, and the reason I think protestwarrior does good, important work. The fact is that whatever one’s politics – liberal, conservative, pro-war, anti-war, even pacifist – the banner that many Americans march under is way too often far, far, far worse than whatever it is they are opposing. A good old-fashioned taunting, at the least, is in order. In turn, I’d agree that a Vancouver branch of the organization, if they have one, is probably a little silly.
Of course not – exactly like the protests themselves. Do you seriously think any government, left or right, American or non, takes seriously a protest organized under the aegis of unapologetic Trotskyites? Protests that are just general leftist bitchfests where the people who oppose the Iraq war march side-by-side with the Mumia people and the People’s Socialist Liberation Whateveritis?
Nah, it mostly just pisses of the far lefties. Like I said, performance art, but without an NEA grant. And from time to time, it might encourage a conversation like this in which people of good will who happen to be on the left can learn exactly what kind of poisonous scum they’re marching with – and whether they realize it or not, for.
I went there and looked at the film footage of ‘peaceful’ protesters pushing and threatening these guys, as outnumbered as they were. From what I am to understand we all have a right to be heard, right?
There was a pregnant woman on the PW side who was shoved around by a peaceful anti war protester, me thinks ‘peaceful’ has taken a whole new meaning according the lobbying, protesting critical left.
