Oppress Us Now or We'll Destroy the City

Oppress Us Now or We'll Destroy the City
by Dave Munger

Some of you might have thought I had nothing to say about the recent WTO disruption. After all, all of the other Partisan columnists got theirs in when it was current, and the readers' thirst for other peoples opinions on these events must have been slaked way back then. Well I'm not letting it go. Until the Munger has spoken, the matter remains open. It is my contention that the rioters are all treasonous sub-humans and that the Seattle police ought to have beaten at least a few of them to death.

To say the least, the self-righteous throwbacks in their non-conformist uniforms have profoundly misunderstood the WTO, democracy, freedom, themselves, and reality itself on a pretty basic level. This horde of slack-jawed barristas entered the proceedings with a collective paranoid fantasy of martyrdom that would not be denied. If the authorities committed the outrage of failing to play along with the shared delusion then, damn it, they'd be forced into the role that they must play in order for these insects to be able to pretend to be the type of dramatic characters that they must believe themselves to be in order to keep from killing themselves.

The most important thing to remember about big groups of idiots is that they always get their way eventually. This is why the government exists. Live local TV coverage showed deeply confused protesters chaining themselves down to stuff in eager anticipation of having their rights brutally violated by The Man. As the day wore on, they were pathetically dismayed by the mellow attitude of the latte sipping cops of Seattle (motto: "I'm more tolerant than you, fascist"), as they ambled about like Bobbies inquiring as to why Rage Against The Machine's lice-ridden pawns were making themselves so uncomfortable. Finding that they were actually going to be allowed to exercise their right to free speech, they were left with an awkward silence to fill with chanting, drums, and incoherent indignity. It was clear they were going to have to come up with something else.

Throughout the day, our shaggy would-be saviours escalated their painfully obvious attempts to bait the fuzz. Their pique at literally not being able to get arrested was alternately amusing and sad as they intensified their infringements on the rights of the WTO delegates (freedom of speech and assembly don't extend to people who wear ties or express coherent thoughts. They're The Man).

The delegates' routes were blocked more and more aggressively, until anyone with a real job in Seattle had a hard time getting where they belonged. This was not done by a mere handful of Oregonian "Anarchists", but was participated in by very large numbers of pious activists. Now if that's not time to start hurting people, then why are cops armed? Self-defense?

Nevertheless, the police did not attempt to arrest anyone at this point. They concentrated on protecting the delegates by escorting them, blocking off paths for them to follow, and misdirecting the hipster thugs. Imagine the frustration of the dreadlocked drama-queens at being handed everything they could admit to wanting, plus control over other people's lives, yet denied the victimhood they so desperately needed? When night fell, and all hope of unprovoked Vietnam era police aggression was lost, the rioting started.

Concerning what happened then, the local media has uncritically parroted the propaganda of the rioters. For example: there was "indiscriminate use of tear-gas". Tear gas is... gaseous. You do not aim it at a person, you aim it in the general direction of a disorderly crowd. All use of tear gas is indiscriminate, that is why it is used to disperse crowds, not to apprehend individuals.

One of the main reasons that riots are undesirable is that they require indiscriminate police action (curfew, marshal law, water cannons). We can be treated as individuals only when we act as individuals. If you want a police state (which many ostensible "Anarchists" seem to), then the best means to this end is rioting.

It was also immediately and insistently asserted that all of the destruction was perpetrated by a violent minority of out-of-towners. Numerically, the violent are always a minority. In war, the majority of the population of each country does not wield arms. This did not make Iraq or imperial Japan "non-violent". In any riot, there are more people running around acting like it's a big street party than there are active looters, and a pretty small percentage actually sets fires and throws stuff at cops. The "non-violent" rioters obstruct justice by refusing to disperse, and making it physically impossible to simply single out and arrest looters as they would common burglars. They are the ones who make it a riot rather than a simple outburst of assaults and vandalism.

I've gotten some insight into the "minds" of the rabidly compassionate brick hurling pacifists by subscribing to an EcoFeminist e-mail discussion list. A typical example of the capitalist monstrosities they "oppose" is the stories that have been circulating about Nestle (or sometimes Gerber) that, if true, would make certain executives guilty of mass homicide at least, and possibly crimes against humanity. It is alleged that in the third world, the myth that formula is healthier than breast milk has been very effectively promulgated by advertising, resulting in outrageous increases in infant mortality.

Where the WTO comes in is that it is said to oppose laws that El Salvador passed that would regulate milk advertising. Apparently, for beaded posers, the ability of national government to restrict commercial speech is more important than enforcing existing international laws. It is never hinted that any individuals should be held responsible for these alleged corporate crimes, put on trial, proven guilty, and executed, which would be absolutely necessary if the charges are true. It is only used as a reason to justify statism and one's own crimes.

You may notice that I have avoided terms such as "protester" and "demonstrator" with regard to the objects of my scorn. That is because these terms indicate opposition to government coercion, the status-quo, and related injustices, whereas these witless Maoists promote these things and oppose free enterprise, private property, personal responsibility, and rational thought. The objection to the WTO that the aforementioned quisling media passes off as reasonable common sense is that it is not democratic enough. What that means is that a non-coercive, private, consensus based, free market institution should have to take orders from them; that is, the mobile vulgus, the proletarian masses, The People, the power that has backed every form of tyranny, for which dictators only serve as fronts, and bureaucrats as puppets.