by William Skink
Before getting to the madness, let me say hello to any new readers who came here via Moon of Alabama. A post I put up about how it could all be true was front-paged by the blog’s host, bernhard.
With those various narratives mind, I want to localize how the protest against the public slaying of George Floyd is playing out on the streets of Missoula.
For the last few days, as chaos spreads in bigger cities across the country, a small group of people have maintained a peaceful presence at the courthouse downtown. I drove by yesterday and saw mostly younger people (not socially distancing) with signs and soliciting honks.
The protesters were open with media and shared their names. One is a local musician. The media-dubbed spokesperson, 19 year old Mahogany Howard, was depicted by the Missoulian this way:
Tuesday’s stalwart crew in Missoula started small, and grew through the morning to a crowd of 50 by noon. Howard has taken something of an informal leadership role over the crowd Tuesday, wielding a megaphone to build the tempo with chants and speaking calmly with people with raised tensions
The next part of the Missoulian story inserts an exciting example of tensions, and how protesters and law enforcement are working together to keep the peace:
At one point a man approached the demonstration while the protesters lay face-down with their hands behind their backs.
“You’re inciting violence!” the man hollered at them, a video camera in hand. Dozens leapt up from the ground and countered him at close range, chanting “Black Lives Matter” at him until he left.
“This is free speech, you morons,” he said as he turned away.
Howard alerted authorities, and two Missoula police lieutenants were on the scene within a few minutes. They told Howard they would keep an eye our of the man, but asked if they could get a picture with the protesters before they left. As the crowd swelled around the two officers for a photo, a white woman chastised the crowd, calling the suggestion a “photo op.” Howard stepped in to calm the woman, telling her, “I’d rather take a picture with them then be pepper sprayed by them.”
My initial takeaway: it’s a good thing this young person, who has the courage to identify herself, along with other protesters, are exercising their constitutionally protected rights, and it’s a good thing they have opened up a seemingly constructive line of communication with local law enforcement when tensions flared.
The biggest reason it’s a good thing protestors and cops are speaking peacefully with each other now is because a baseline of local protest has been established, so if and when outside elements try to pull some shady shit, both sides of our local protest/cop divide will hopefully be ready.
There is concern outside groups from Spokane and/or Idaho could be coming to cause trouble. I base this on a text I got from my mom who has a friend who has a son who is a local cop, and also on a second source, who is not my mom.
Whether or not outside groups are headed to Missoula cannot be known at this point. But we don’t need outsiders to create ideological tension.
Yesterday “counter protestors” were visible from the courthouse with Trump signs and firearms. These people ruined Pete Talbot’s day, so he wrote about his experience using words he doesn’t understand.
I was feeling pretty good as I drove home along Broadway around 8:30 p.m. after working a 14-hour shift at Missoula’s Election Department. The day went smoothly considering the new wrinkle of an all mail-in election and record turnout.
Pick up trucks full of white terrorists waving a mix of Trump and American flags, packing heat and spewing diesel exhaust, were parked in front of the Missoula County Courthouse on both sides of the street.
There were also about 100 folks on the courthouse lawn with Black Lives Matter and other signs protesting injustice and police brutality. They outnumbered the terrorists by three to one but that was still about 33 too many reprobates.
I’ve never seen anything like it in Missoula.
Pete Talbot, the “progressive” blogger at the partisan Montana Post, claims he saw a bunch of white terrorists yesterday. I’m going to help Pete out by reminding him what the definition of terrorism is:
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
If these counter protesters are not using unlawful violence for political aims, then they are not terrorists. Anyone calling them terrorists is either drinking too much bourbon and watching too much Rachel Maddow, or trying to escalate the situation.
Pete Talbot and the stupid white people showing up with guns have something in common: they all think they know what ANTIFA is.
Right wingers think every self-described anarchist is on the payroll of George Soros, a gargantuan villain who personally dropped off pallets of bricks across America. And “progressives” defend ANITFA, claiming they are legitimate protesters pushed to violence because the right has become so fascist.
The reality is ANTIFA can be anything the power structure wants it to be. A cop provocateur can become ANTIFA to discredit peaceful protesters. A right-winger can become ANTIFA to commit violence and blame it on leftists. A young person who truly believes he/she is fighting fascism can become ANTIFA. Even FBI cointelpro-type infiltrators can become ANTIFA.
Now that Trump has declared ANTIFA to be terrorists, things are going to continue to escalate, and idiots on both sides of the political divide are going to help fan the flames, including old boomers with bourbon-soaked brains who abhor violence but threaten litigation when he can’t form a coherent counter-argument to criticism.
Liberals and progressives are going to have a hard time understanding what is happening in America because they don’t understand how REAL American terrorism works.
I know this because I spent 8 years trying to point out how Obama’s foreign policy was a continuation of the expansive, lawless imperialism of Bush, and, like Bush, Obama’s actions made him a war criminal willing to bomb weddings and funerals every kill-list Tuesday to further the goals of the ruling class while making weapons corporations even more rich.
Good progressives like Pete Talbot couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance of what Obama did in places like Syria and Libya, so they ignored it. And they ignored it in 2016, when they assumed Hillary would shed her “humanitarian intervention” baggage and ascend to her throne. And now it doesn’t even register that America can suffer a pandemic, a lockdown, an economic crisis, and now spreading social unrest, all while maintaining its killing machine abroad.
If progressives had paid closer attention to how legitimate protests began in places like Syria, then quickly got co-opted by foreign-backed terrorists, they might understand that these tactics have now been brought home, and why.
But no, they are still too invested in the binary thinking of liberal/conservative because it inoculates them against reality and the disorienting cognitive dissonance reality produces.
With tensions this high across the country, all it’s going to take is one act of violence locally to set things off.
By immediately labeling the white counter-protesters as terrorists, partisan assholes like Pete Talbot are increasing the chances that the violence he claims to abhor is going to happen here, in our town.