Don't Circle the Wagons Now, Jimmy... Redux

The longer the Occupy movement -- spawned by Occupy Wall Street, and imitated and co-opted by now-countless others -- goes on, the more necessary the comparisons between it and the Tea Party become.

It's on this note that the Occupy movement has now reached two key milestones that were used by far-left antagonists to condemn the Tea Party.

The first is the participation in an Arizona Occupation rally of JT Ready, an infamous Arizona neo-Nazi. He brought his militia, the Arizona Border Guard, to Occupy Phoenix rally. More frighteningly, they came armed with AR-15 assault rifles.

Desperate to mitigate the damage, some contemporaries of the Occupy movement attempted to describe Ready's participation as a "counter-protest". Ready himself, as well as the Arizona Border Guard made themselves clear: they were there to -- in their words -- "use their second-amendment rights to protect the first-amendment rights of Occupy Phoenix".

Once one has it directly from the horse's mouth, one quickly becomes relieved that most of the participants at the Occupy Phoenix rally asked Ready and his militia to leave. Some, however, attempted to "reach out" to Ready, feeling a sense of socialist-to-socialist solidarity with Ready.

One elderly woman present was reported to have remarked "I kind of like socialism."

Okay then.

The other incident also involves an armed individual, but fortunately does not involve Nazis. A man was spotted at Occupy Atlanta with an AK-47 assault rifle, which prompted the city to order to crowd to disperse.

Some may remember the infamy of racebaitgate, in which MSNBC selectively edited footage from a Phoenix Tea Party event in order to portray a black man with an AR-15 assault rifle as a white man bent on assassinating the President for racial reasons.

(Contessa Brewer has since been dismissed from MSNBC. Dylan Ratigan, sadly, remains.)

Some may also remember a ThinkProgress video which fabricated evidence of Tea Party racism. Among them was a man proudly extolling his devotion to Nazism.

When the source video was identified, it was revealed that the video was actually of this man being chased out of a Tea Party rally. Think Progress shamelessly stood by the video despite the extent to which it was discredited.

Now, no one should expect Occupy Phoenix to physically chase armed militiamen away from their rally. The reasons are obvious.

But the mixture of armed individuals and a movement that promises to occupy public space over the long-term -- permanently, if need be -- is an alarming development, and should be alarming even to the most devoted Occupation enthusiasts.

Simply put, what started out as a laudably-peaceful protest is now taking on the vestiges of an actual armed occupation.

This is where the input of the aforementioned Occupation enthusiasts becomes so necessary.

Jim Parrot -- who by now needs no further introduction around these parts -- is as dedicated an Occupation enthusiast as they come. He even renamed his blog "Occupy Let Freedom Rain" at one point, likely until he finally realized he had always occupied that space.

He also previously promised that he won't circle the wagons to protect his own when they are wrong.

Having so deeply embraced the Occupation movement, he has made it his own. Perhaps he'll have something to say about this.

His previous forays into not circling the wagons were less than successful. But perhaps he'll do better this time.

Maybe. Just maybe.

Occupy Toronto: Gross

Don't Circle the Wagons Now, Jimmy

In terms of online stupidity, Jim Parrot is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Apparently, Jymn has become so obsessed with the Occupation movement, that he renamed his blog Occupy Let Freedom Rain. (The detail that he already occupies it seems entirely lost on him.)

But in one of the most recent bouts between Jymn and unintentional hilarity, he's apparently taken deep umbrage with the efforts of a few conservative bloggers to draw attention to some anti-semitic behaviour among participants in the Occupation movement.

Some of that behaviour was captured on film by National Review Online.



If such undeniable evidence didn't exist, one could certainly assume that Jymn would simply claim there was no anti-semitism and move on. After all, he seems to be perfectly content to cling to his claims that "no violence was had" at the Dick Cheney protest in Vancouver, despite an assault on an employee of the venue at which Cheney was hosted.

Yet in a long and rambling post trying to explain the anti-Semitism away, Jymn simply recycles old discredited claims about the Tea Party, and even recycles the Tea Party's explanation for any racist behaviour at their rallies: that the racism came from a marginal minority. (Although he does indulge himself in pretending that the proportion of Tea Partiers indulging themselves in racism was much, much larger than it actually was.)

Midway through his incoherent ramblings, he seems to sense that he cannot actually explain the anti-semitism away, so he seems to decide to not even try:

"Should we be worried that anti-Semitism has popped up its ugly head amongst our message? Of course. It's deeply worrisome. That it would happen is not the problem - individual wackos turn up at every gathering, whether it is right or left.

The problem is that, and we don't know this, if we have not argued these exceptions to take down the signs, to take their hatred elsewhere. Perhaps that is what happened - we don't know. We just have right-wing publications - not the hallmark of honesty and fair play - to tell us their version. The bigger problem is that the media will sense blood and come prowling. This is going to get ugly."

Did the rest of the Occupy Wall Street movement ask the anti-Semites to leave, as Tea Partiers have with racists who turned up at their rallies? He admits he doesn't actually know. But apparently that isn't even a salient concern for Jim Parrot, as he seems to think the bigger concern is that the media might actually pay closer attention to the anti-Semitism at many of these Occupy rallies.

That is rather remarkable, when one considers this previous bit of sanctimonious tripe from pre-Occupy Let Freedom Rain:

"I will not circle the wagons to protect my own when they are wrong. I am a blogger. I am not a journalist."

Jim Parrot has very clearly taken the Occupation movement as his own. He's so enthralled with it that he's renamed his blog after it. (It's actually quite natural that someone with a tendency to repeat whatever he's told to say would take so keenly to a movement founded on repeating what other people say.)

Yet when other adherents to the Occupation movement are caught publicly voicing their anti-Semitism, what does Jim Parrot do? Precisely what he claimed he would not: he circled the wagons.

No one should be particularly surprised: it's precisely what Jim Parrot and his cohorts have always done. There's no reason to expect that they would have done any differently, or that they ever will.

Mirror, Mirror

Occupy Wall Street not a perfect facsimile of the Tea Party, but something of a warped reflection

In many ways, Occupy Wall Street is starting to look more -- and less -- like the Tea Party. And apparently, the Tea Party doesn't like it.

According to Tea Party Patriots founders Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, the two movements couldn't possibly be less alike.

"Tea Partiers don’t believe corporations are inherently evil, nor should bankers be beheaded," they wrote in a statement. "They do not believe this country should be divided by class, but united in a return to the principles that undergird our nation’s success. In fact, they want more of what made America great: more Constitutional restraint on government so that the people have more freedom to achieve the good things the country offers."

“By contrast, those occupying Wall Street and other cities, when they are intelligible, want less of what made America great and more of what is damaging to America: a bigger, more powerful government to come in and take care of them so they don’t have to work like the rest of us who pay our bills,” they continue.

There are a lot of differences between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. There's no questioning that.

For example, more than 2/3 of Occupiers are non-voters. Comparatively, Tea Partiers are overwhelmingly voters.

Considering that one of the common grievances each movement shares is that the political system doesn't work for them, at least one thing can be said for the Tea Party: they, at least, try.

Another obvious key difference is that the Tea Party is overwhelmingly law-abiding. Occupy Wall Street has had some trouble staying on that side of the law, and may have further trouble yet, as they plan to march on the homes of Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers.

Yet each has draped themselves in the garb of a revolutionary movement. The Tea Party traced its animus back to the American Revolution. Occupy Wall Street seems to be inspired by the labour unrest of the Great Depression era.

Both movements demand that American politics shift away from its soul-crushing status quo toward what they consider the founding principles of the United States. In the case of the Tea Party, they look to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. In the case of Occupy Wall Street, they very clearly look to the New Deal, and hope to expand it far beyond the imagination of all but the most fervent tax-and-spend Democrat.

It's certain that many Occupiers feel just as strongly as Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler about the comparisons between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.

Just as with so many rivals, the real reason Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party dislike each other is because they are so much alike.

Occupy Wall Street? More Like Resistance is Futile

Sheer weirdness is a quality that has long permeated many far-left protest movements. But Occupy Atlanta takes the cake.

While the entire occupation movement has prided itself on claiming to be free-thinking individuals standing against a system that does not work for them -- although the detail that most of them are non-voters indicates that, in typical lazy-leftist fashion, they haven't even tried -- the groupthink aspect of the movement has become unignorable.

The case in point is an attempt by Congressman John Lewis (Democrat) to speak before the Occupy Atlanta General Assembly.

Lewis is widely known as a civil rights hero, and with good reason. But apparently that doesn't impress the weirdos at Occupy Atlanta, who instead of listening to Lewis speak, instead insisted on repeating after every single word spoken.

The emerging elements of Stalinism emerging from under the riptides of the occupation movement only becomes more frightening when one considers that the alleged free-thinking members of the occupation movement, at the very least in Atlanta, are proving to be nothing more than sheeple.

They've become their very own real-life Borg Collective. Almost quite literally.

Of course, those familiar with the Sci-Fi-Mythical Borg know full well that there is absolutely no freedom within such a collective, and whether one surrenders their freedom willingly or if it is taken from them by force seems entirely irrelevant.

It's becoming crystal clear: the "new America" Occupy Wall Street imagines is one in which people think in an increasingly uniform fashion, literally dictated them to the vanguard-esque demagogues who are more interested in obstructing the speech of people like John Lewis than in what they actually have to say.

Occupy Wall Street seems to be coming to think that resistance is futile. But they're in for a shock. despite their self-aggrandizing claims to represent "the 99%", Occupy Wall Street would be lucky to represent as much as 9% of American society, and the other at least 91% aren't going to put up with this kind of stupidity if they decide to try to impose it by force.

What Is Occupy Wall Street? Exactly?

Occupy Wall Street more left-wing Tea Party than Arab Spring

Writing in an op/ed for National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg turns his attention to a persistent movement that cannot be ignored: the self-styled Occupy Wall Street movement.

Goldberg seems to enjoy the naive precociousness of the movement. There's little question about that.

But Goldberg seems to nearly overlook what, at this point, is the most important question of all: what, precisely, is Occupy Wall Street? It's not as ridiculous a question as it may seem. They haven't really been clear.

"I don’t think this thing has nearly the legs its boosters do. For starters, for all the talk about this being the US version of the Arab Spring (a disgusting, and idiotic, anti-American slander by the way), at least the Arabs were smart enough to start the Arab Spring in the Spring! These bozos chose the fall which means it’s only going to get colder. No doubt some will hold out in their urban yurts for as long as it takes, but that self-anointed avant garde of the campus proletariat is going to get lonely when it starts to snow (of course they could all migrate south for the winter)."

The "Arab Spring" notion is a vain idea shared by many far-left protesters with delusions of persecution. Canadian human bobblehead Brigette DePape has taken a certain pleasure in being compared to Arab Spring activists, neglecting to consider the fact that she was at no threat of violence, unlike Libyan activists who were at risk of airstrikes.

Likewise with the Occupy Wall Street activists. They are at positively no risk of even a sideways glance from law enforcement until they do something stupid like attempt to block the Brooklyn Bridge.

So, no. Occupy Wall Street is not the Arab Spring. Nor do they truly represent 99% of anyone, let alone Americans. As Goldberg muses -- and he is absolutely correct -- the very notion is utterly comical.

If anything, Occupy Wall Street is the left-wing Tea Party.

They'll certainly refuse to admit it. They'll even feign indignant outrage at the very suggestion. But it's true, and the conclusion is unavoidable.

Like the Tea Party movement, Occupy Wall Street will learn how difficult it is to produce a coherent message from so many divergent ideas. They'll learn how easy it is to be typecast by the most extreme among them; although many would likely find that the average extremism index -- if there were such a thing -- would be sky-high in the Wall Street Occupation movement compared to the average member of the Tea Party.

And while the mainstream media won't be as willingly complicit in the demonization of Occupy Wall Street, they will eventually learn what it is to be demonized. Some of them will deserve it; many of them will not. Unfortunately, that demonization has become an occupational hazard for grassroots movements in the US.

Just ask the Tea Party.