Stupid anti-OWS tricks

Over the past few weeks, I have offered critiques of the Wall Street Occupiers; no-one can call me a blinkered admirer of this movement. The "no leaders" rule is foolish, and "consensus" is nonsensus. In the early days, Occupation rhetoric seemed to skew toward libertarianism; fortunately, that danger seems to have passed. What passes for Deep Thought in OWS-land is a depressing indictment of our flawed educational system.

When you get right down to it, my basic problem with these protesters is that they tend to be young, and I don't trust anyone under 30. That said, I'm glad that they are out there, even if they are going about their job all wrong. Better to participate in a badly-run protest movement than to say to the elites: "Thank you, sir; may I please have another?"

The Fox Newsers have offered some anti-OWS propaganda that was so loopy, so hysterical, so over-the-top, that it placed a lot of previously undecided observers firmly on the side of the protesters. Yet the -- and I mean THE -- most idiotic critique of the movement comes from a liberal named Dave Emory. Although Emory has had a lot of genuinely worthwhile things to say in the past, even Alex Jones would have a hard time coming up with an argument this crazy:

Kalle Lasn and his AdBusters Mag­a­zine are the dri­ving force behind “Occupy Wall Street.“

In light of the back­ground and extreme anti-Semitism of Lasn, the pos­si­bil­ity that the Under­ground Reich may be direct­ing the jus­ti­fi­able anger of cit­i­zens against the eco­nomic plun­der­ing that has beset the world against “the Jews” is not one to be too read­ily dismissed.

Lasn is of Eston­ian extrac­tion. The Baltic States have a strong fas­cist and anti-Semitic back­ground. (Lithua­nia became the world’s sec­ond fas­cist coun­try in 1925.) Notice which direc­tion his fam­ily fled as the war ground down to a conclusion!

Are Lasn’s busi­ness enter­prises under­writ­ten by the Bor­mann cap­i­tal network?

There's no point in mounting a counter-argument to such ludicrous bigotry.

I've never purchased an issue of Adbusters, although I recall sort of liking what I had skimmed. At any rate, the magazine hardly directs the movement -- in fact, near as I can tell, nothing directs the movement; that's the problem. As we've seen in an earlier post, the real origin story traces back to two activists from Spain who hit upon the idea of recreating something like the M-15 movement in New York City.

Wait. Spain? The home of Francisco Franco? The place where Otto Skorzeny hatched his post-war plots? Oh...my...god. This thing goes deeper than I thought! All of those M-15 demonstrators must be...NAZIS! AIEEE!!!

I may have told you people this story before: I once had a freemasonic friend who was fiercely paranoid about those horrible awful Cat-licks, and a Catholic friend who was fiercely paranoid about those horrible awful freemasons. One day, in the spirit of Puck, I arranged for them to get together for a chat. They got along splendidly. Paranoia is a sort of brotherhood, even when people aim their fears at conflicting targets. In the same puckish spirit, I'd like to see Daverino and Xymphora (whoever the hell he actually is) get together for coffee and donuts; they're more alike than either man would ever admit.

Let's get back to the Fox Newsers. Don't you love hearing those guys castigate the OWS crowd for their strident rhetoric and disunifying speech? (See Jon Stewart's compilation on this topic, here.)

In that light, I'd like to remind you folks of the teabagger antics from just last year: Violence, paranoia, threats, militias, calls for secession, calls to "gather your armies" against Washington. You wanna talk strident?