Rabble's Solution: Blame Thatcher

Yeah. They're really this stupid

In an interview with the authors of Wikinomics, Rabble co-founder Judy Rebick inadvertently offered the perfect explanation for some of the bizarre material that appears on that website.

The website is essentially reader-produced. Authors are encouraged to contribute based on reader response. That not only means that work that is otherwise unreadable tripe has an unusual staying power on the Rabble site, it also means that the pressure is on authors to produce work that is ideologically soothing, even if it's entirely idiotic.

For evidence, one needs look no further than a column published there by "social justice litigation lawyer" Jim Quail. In searching for an explanation for the Vancouver riot, Quail has reached a rather peculiar conclusion: blame Margaret Thatcher.

It actually offers a crash course in the process by which Rabble's material is produced:

Step one - disregard the facts: Or, better yet, write a column that doesn't rely on one. Not a single, solitary fact to back Quail's bold demagogic assertions.

Step two - disregard logic: The logical lapses in Quail's work are comically overwhelming. Take, for example, this bizarre passage:

"There is a world of difference between happiness and fun: fun is the drug that drives consumer-capitalism. It is the new opiate, displacing religion. Contrary to the line in the Beatles song, fun -- the distraction of immediate gratification -- is one of the things most readily bought with money. On the other hand, happiness -- the existential joy of human meaning and fulfillment -- cannot be purchased. Happiness flows from our involvement in the great collaborative process of society. Fun is essentially solitary, the cold inner loneliness of the party-goer’s relentless struggles to stimulate the pleasure-centres of the brain."

Apparently, Quail thinks he can actually quantify fun. Once one gets past this, it becomes difficult to not speculate on how Quail spent his youth. He proclaims fun to be solitary.

That doesn't seem to be the kind of wisdom that emerges from a person who spent his childhood playing baseball or street hockey with his friends. Rather, it seems like the kind of thought that creeps into the mind of a child who spends his time alone with his model railroad (today it would be video games).

Quail very clearly hasn't been to very many parties. The loner getting drunk by hismelf isn't really having a lot of fun; he's a loser.

Truthfully, fun is something that is typically shared with good friends and family. Yes, sometimes it costs money. But it doesn't have to. And contrary to Quail's assertion, it isn't really something someone can buy.

Comparatively, he declares happiness to stem from "our involvement in the great collaborative processes of society".

It certainly sounds like he's suggesting that the true path to happiness is not through personal achievement and self-actualization. It certainly sounds like he's suggesting that the true path to happiness is not through building strong relationships with one's friends and one's family.

No, Quail seems to be suggesting that the true path to happiness is through participation in massive left-wing "collaborative" social programmes. That idea, frankly, just speaks for itself.

It's with this particular bias in mind that Quail just can't seem to understand Thatcher. So, instead, he chooses to demonize her.

"Capitalism’s political leadership of the past four decades undertook the project of cultural vandalism with a vengeance. Their standard-bearer was England’s Prime Minister Thatcher, who famously summarized the atomization and negation of human society: 'there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.'"

It's true that Thatcher said this. She's never apologized for it, and never bothered to explain it. Personally, this author considers this statement to be a repudiation of the far-left's vision of society, one wherein people's individual efforts were to be directed toward collective goals. Rather, Thatcher viewed society as it is: made up of individuals with their own individual goals, dreams and desires, and that any collective goals have to be built out of those individual goals.

One thing that Thatcher stood firmly against was any sense of entitlement. Like it or not, one thing, more than anything, stood out in the Vancouver hockey riot: a sense of frustrated entitlement. At least in part, this riot was perpetrated by fans who had convinced themselves their team was entitled to win the Stanley Cup. When this didn't happen, they threw a tantrum.

Thatcher would never have tolerated the idea that anyone is entitled to anything. "Social justice litigators", on the other hand, approach their work with the idea that people are legally entitled to certain things; often things to which no entitlement exists.

It's that sense of entitlement that draws Greek protesters into the streets to protest against austerity progreams meant to save their country's economy. Although a riot over frustrated championship ambition seems more childish than a riot to preserve lavish social programs that are literally about to destroy Greece, at the core it's no less childish at all.

It's Margaret Thatcher's message of personal responsibility that holds incidents such as the Vancouver riot at bay. It's the collectivist ideal that Quail champions that ells people that collective guilt erases personal responsibility -- and results in bizarre excuses for apologies that attempt to dissemble any sense of personal responsibility.

Then, of course, there's the ultimate punchline. Considering the age group of the majority of the rioters seen on CTV and CBC news footage, most of them likely have no clue who Margaret Thatcher is.

But fortuantely for Jim Quail, he publishes his work on Rabble.ca: where something doesn't need to be factually or logically sound, so long as it's ideologically soothing.

Think of it as a political opiate for morons.

Well Done, Judy Rebick

Rebick hosts black bloc leader at discussion panel

Canadians disgusted by the actions of violent protesters at the G20 Summit in Toronto are still waiting for justice for those actions.

As police continue to use sophisticated investigation techniques to identify rioters and arrest them, that justice grows ever-nearer. But for at least one alleged organizer, that comeuppance may be closer yet.

Alex Hundert, one of those accused of organizing the violence at the G20 summit, was re-arrested afer violating the terms of his $100,000 bail.

Even more interesting than the arrest, however, was the circumstances of the arrest: he was arrested following an appearance at a forum panel, at Ryerson University, organized by Judy Rebick.

Characteristically, Rebick denounced the arrest.

"It was a meeting, a calm, peaceful discussion of issues on people’s minds,” Rebick complained. “It’s an outrage that he was arrested for discussing issues, an outrage.”

As a condition of his bail, Hundert was prohibited from taking part in political protests, such as the ones he soiled in Toronto.

Of course, if the broad collection of groups protesting at the G20 summit really had no connection to the black bloc protesters -- and factually, the vast majority of them didn't -- Rebick has made that a very hard case to defend by hosting Hundert at her event.

It isn't even the first time Rebick gave Hundert a forum.

In March of this year Rabble.ca published an article, written by Hundert, in which he admitted to using black bloc tactics as part of anti-Olympic protests.

In the article, Hundert crows brazenly about his anarchist theories, and seems to suggest that anarchism is the only alternative to what he deems "neo-colonialism":

"21st-century analysis is moving beyond the empty rhetoric of 'revolutionary acts.' We no longer wish to seize the machinery of the State to use it for our own ends; we wish to see it dismantled, to be replaced by something other than a new Euro-American colonialism. A better world than that is possible, but it cannot come about until we move beyond the dominant paradigms of our culture. Statism and white supremacy must be resigned to the dustbins of history."

In the article, he continues to espouse the benefits of "diversity of tactics":

"Part of the strength of the anti-Olympic campaign, as a watershed for the new anti-colonial movement, has been the solidarity and unity around a "diversity of tactics." Part of that solidarity is rooted in the idea that you cannot attack one part of the movement without attacking the whole. When we remember to defend each other, we also remember to work together to build the movement and our communities. This cannot be done by succumbing to the classic colonial tactic of divide and conquer. Diversity of tactics means that one day we smash the system and the next we build alternatives. The Black Block is a wrecking ball tactic that makes space for more mainstream or creative tactics. The anarchists who participate in the Bloc are for the most part solid community organizers and people who are at the forefront of making space for creative alternatives to capitalism and colonialism. A diversity of tactics is meant to be complimentary -- different tactics demonstrate different values and objectives, and all must be viewed in sum."

Of course, all of this comes across as pure fallacy. Canadians who witnessed the acts the black bloc committed at the G20 summit know full well that the black bloc aren't defending their fellow protesters. Rather, they're simply staging attacks on private property and persons that are poorly-justified even by their own meagre standards.

Moreover, the black bloc puts peaceful protesters at risk for violent retaliation by police officers venting their frustration at the poor decisions of their commanding officers (who famously ordered riot police at the Toronto summit to stand down because they were "too intimidating").

For her own part, Rebick had, at that point, been wise enough to criticize the black bloc's activities. Hundert, however, was having none of it:

"What Judy Rebick, and many other critics who have had little to do with the anti-Olympic movement, have entirely failed to notice is the fact that the Black Bloc was supported by almost every constituency of the ORN. This show of solidarity was not divisive -- it brought us together and has built deep trust between activists who, in the past, have often had very little to say to each other.

Organizations that were publicly represented include (or had individual members present and unmasked): No One Is Illegal, the Council of Canadians, PETA, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), StopWar.ca, Gatewaysucks, the Vancouver Anti-Poverty Committee, Food Not Bombs, and many more. None of those organizations have denounced the actions of the Black Bloc that day. And they can't, because their members know that on that day, they were there to support the Black Bloc. Anyone who says that they didn't know what was going to happen is lying. There were 200 people in black with masks on, and 'Riot 2010; has been a rallying call for the movement for more than two years now. Everyone knew what was going to happen, and they all marched anyway."

In one fell swoop, Hundert manages to locate all of these groups -- most notably the Council of Canadians -- within the extreme underbelly of Canada's radical far-left. Hundert appropriates to himself support from even the moderate organizations among them to his anarchist cause.

Remarkably, Hundert has imagined for himself a world wherein the black bloc can deliberately provoke extreme reactions from police and then divest himself of any responsibility:

"After the police clashed with the Bloc that day, and affinity groups were forced to scatter (the Black Bloc doesn't do peaceful arrests -- the tactic dictates mutual protection from the police instead), the majority of the 'non-violent' marchers continued in support. Some of them allowed themselves to be arrested by the frustrated police. Blaming anyone other than the police for the conduct of the police is merely a legitimization of the police presence on our streets -- it would be like blaming the poor for the criminalization of homelessness. I expect people to know better. Cops are no more than armed thugs-for-hire."

That was, of course, in March of 2010. It is now September, after the G20 riot, and Judy Rebick is still providing a platform from which Hundert can proclaim his extreme radical views.

Regardless of the "solidarity" that Alex Hundert claims, most of the peaceful protesters at the G20 Summit have attempted to distance themselves from he and the black bloc, even chanting "shame on you" at them during the event itself.

Yet Rebick has drawn Hunder ever-closer, much to the discredit of herself and the movement she represents.

For that, one simply has to say: well done, Judy Rebick. Well done.

Or at least one would if she hadn't also contributed to the discredit of peaceful organizations that don't deserve to share in her discredit.

Got Yourself a Gun (Registry)

On Rabble.ca, Judy Rebick cries "emergency"!



Rex Murphy also knows better: