Are the protesters playing for Team Trump?

Are the Portland protesters playing for Team Trump? That's one possible interpretation of this article in Reason. Yeah, I know that it's a libertarian publication. I hate libertarians -- but in this case, the reporting seems, well, reasonable. 

"YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO FILM!" is a cry you hear incessantly at protests in Portland, Oregon, always shouted at close range to your face by after-dark demonstrators. You can assert that, yes, you can film; you can point out that they themselves are filming incessantly; you can push their hands away from covering your phone; you can have your phone record them stealing your phone—all of these things have happened to me—and none will have any impact on their contention that "YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO FILM" and its occasional variation, "PHOTOGRAPHY EQUALS DEATH!"

I cannot say who came up with these anti-camera battle cries. But it's easy to understand why protesters use them: to shape the narrative the country sees about the protests. And that narrative, in my estimation after many weeks covering street clashes in a city where I lived for 15 years, is 90 percent bullshit.

Similar displays of insanity have occurred on our college campuses, which have been overrun by the power-mad proponents of political correctness. These impromptu Stalinist dictatorships have done immeasurable harm to liberal ideals.

The protests are only going to get worse, says the WP:

Marches have grown more confrontational — cornering politicians in their homes and heckling strangers as they go about their lives. Protesters have embraced mobility and taken to participating in demonstrations far from their hometowns.

Since protests began in late May, public officials have sought to draw clear distinctions among groups of people: The good protesters and bad protesters; the looters, the vandals and the peaceful demonstrators — but it has never been that simple.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has pointed to agitators who she has long said come from outside the city bent on destruction. President Trump has intensified his efforts to demonize the far-left antifa movement for escalating demonstrations, property damage and violence in Democrat-run cities.

Last weekend — after a peaceful gathering of thousands in D.C. at the 2020 March on Washington — a chaotic standoff ensued between protesters and D.C. police, who fired rubber bullets and noxious chemicals into a crowd.

More than two dozen people were arrested. Police said officers were injured by bricks, fireworks and lasers pointed into their eyes.

Bowser blamed “outside agitators” for setting fires and shooting off fireworks in overnight clashes. These visitors had come “armed for battle,” Bowser said, “looking for police to confront.”

At a time when Trump's insanity should have rendered the right powerless, the left has found a new way to punch itself in the face.

Being egomaniacs, lefties will never admit that they are hated not for their positions but for their behavior. They will never admit that their controlling, domineering, intolerant -- and now violent -- actions have made even the most noble causes seem toxic.

The left continually tells itself a series of simplistic lies: "Americans who support Trump must be racist" or "Americans who oppose feminism must want a return to the 1950s." Stuff like that.

But that narrative is self-serving. Here’s the truth: The supremely vile Donald Trump -- an ambulatory mass of coagulated pimple-puss -- retains his base because many Americans hate the alternative. They find the left repellent.

The repellent left created Trumpism.The fascist right needs the repellent left.

It has ever been thus. Hitler would never have prospered if German Marxists had not alienated the average citizen. The Marxists also aided Hitler by doing everything they could to weaken liberal centrists.

You can't reach 'em if you don't like 'em. A few posts down, I embedded a clip from the new documentary Unfit, in which Anthony Scaramucci quotes David Axelrod. Burn these words into your memory banks:

"People will vote for a someone they don't like. They voted for Nixon, and nobody liked Nixon. But people won't vote for someone who doesn't like them. See the difference?"

Let's apply this axiom to the protesters. Though widely supported at first, they finally have succeeded in making themselves unpopular. But that's not the worst of it. The worst is this: They have also made it clear that they don't like America. They don't like Republicans, but they also don't like liberals like me. Deep down, they don't like Joe Biden, even though black people voted for the guy. In fact, they scorn the entire American experiment.

No wonder public support for the protesters has faded. I'm surprised that they still have any support. But what can the protesters hope to accomplish without public sympathy?

I'll say it again: You can't reach 'em if you don't like 'em. If reaching the public isn't the goal -- WTF is the goal?

I think I know. I think that the protesters are deliberately trying to re-elect Donald Trump.

Worse: They're helping the Boogalooers initiate Civil War II.

Maybe that was their raison d'etre all along. Maybe this "left-wing" movement was always a marionette controlled by right-wing (or Russian-speaking) puppeteers.

Here's a key question: Will the protests stop on November 4? The question remains valid no matter who wins. If the movement peters out, then you'll know that the protests were always just an election-year exercise in political theater.

BLM claims to be a leaderless movement. But is it really? Throughout history, leadership has always tended to arise spontaneously. If five people stuck on a desert island try to build a boat, one of those five will emerge as the chief shipwright. That's how human society works.

Even in the absence of a leader, clever online techniques make it possible to manipulate the masses. Every one of us considers himself or herself impervious to brainwashing, and that cocksure arrogance is precisely what makes the average person so easy to brainwash.

BLM does have leaders. Hidden leaders.

What's past is present. Now that BLM and Antifa have become, objectively speaking, the Committee to Re-Elect Donald Trump, we must ask a hard question: Was this outcome engineered by a foreign power?

Recall this 2018 story in Wired:

Targeting Black Americans, Russia's IRA Exploited Racial Wounds
A new report documents how Russian online propaganda had a much more sustained, deliberate focus on black Americans.

In late 2017, it was first reported by CNN that the pro-Kremlin enterprise masterminded a plot to infiltrate online communities of the Black Lives Matter movement. But New Knowledge’s report, released Monday, shows a much more sustained and purposeful focus on black Americans—as the IRA went about instigating mistrust in law enforcement and political institutions, while cultivating seemingly authentic narratives of black pride.

The report details how black Americans were among the most exploited online communities by the IRA, cataloging how the Russian firm developed an “expansive cross-platform media mirage” that specifically targeted black people by leveraging popular social media sites. The campaign was “designed to exploit societal fractures” and “erode our trust in media entities and the information environment, in government, in each other, and in democracy itself,” the report states.

For more, see this NYT story from the same year.

The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”

The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African-Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.

Only the most naive ninny would deny that the same tactics are being used right now.

More muck from Moscow. I just now stumbled across Revolver News, an outrageous new right-wing rag which proclaims that Black Lives Matter, in conjunction with Evil Soros, is trying to lead a "color revolution" against Trump. Check out this codswallop:

First, a quick note on Color Revolutions. A “Color Revolution” in this context refers to a specific type of coordinated attack that the United States government has been known to deploy against foreign regimes, particularly in Eastern Europe deemed to be “authoritarian” and hostile to American interests. Rather than using a direct military intervention to effect regime change as in Iraq, Color Revolutions attack a foreign regime by contesting its electoral legitimacy, organizing mass protests and acts of civil disobedience, and leveraging media contacts to ensure favorable coverage to their agenda in the Western press.

It would be disturbing enough to note a coordinated effort to use these exact same strategies and tactics domestically to undermine or overthrow President Trump. The ominous nature of what we see unfolding before us only truly hits home when one realizes that the people who specialize in these Color Revolution regime change operations overseas are, literally, the very same people attempting to overthrow Trump by using the very same playbook. Given that the most famous Color Revolution was the “Orange Revolution” in the Ukraine, and that Black Lives Matter is being used as a key component of the domestic Color Revolution against Trump, we can encapsulate our thesis at Revolver with the simple remark that “Black is the New Orange.”

Yeesh! Could these guys be more obvious? Maybe if their slogan was "EAT MORE BORSCHT"...

Don't be surprised if this site "premieres" one of Trump's planned October Surprises.