Matt Traceywhat history tells us about the mob violence destroying American cities

The longer the rioting and looting goes on in America the more irrational and random it becomes. Not only are the icons celebrated by the ultra-left and CNN clearly not the sort of characters that anyone with pretensions to a “better world” would want to be seen next nor near – regardless of how they came to attain such heroic stature – but almost without exception those, mainly white, members of Black Lives Matter and Antifa who end up on the wrong side of exchanges appear to be cut from the same cloth.
 
 
The three people shot by Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha all had criminal records; Rosenbaum for sexual assault of a minor, Huber for domestic abuse including strangulation and battery, and Gaige Grosskreuz, a member of the Peoples Revolution Movement, for burglary. Not exactly Prince Kropotkin are they? The BBC without a trace of irony claimed that they just happened to be in the midst of a criminal rampage while protesting against violence.

Trump narrowly won Kenosha in 2016 which may well be one of the motivations for the assault on its law abiding citizens by criminal sympathisers with another criminal, Jacob Blake. President Trump’s visit to the city was prefaced by an attack on the Mayor of Portland where the Democrat controlled authorities were either unable or unwilling to tackle the anarchy unleashed. Trump described Mayor Wheeler as “incompetent, much like Sleepy Joe Biden,” and shared a tweet which described Wheeler as “the useless fucking idiot that gets everyone killed in every disaster movie.”

Senior hurling, with expletives. If the Democrats were expecting Trump to lie down they have been severely disappointed. Like Ali boxing Foreman in Kinshasa, October 1974, he has come off the ropes when he looked like a beaten fighter and put those who thought they could use the ultra-left and poisonous race baiting to win the White House for the old retainer on the back foot. Will the straight right finish them off?

Trump is baldly stating that behind Sleepy Joe is a coalition of the Democrat grandees and the nihilists they have encouraged in their onslaught on what they thought was a populace cowering in the face of the criminal anarchy in the Democrat one party city states. He reiterated that message in Kenosha on Tuesday where he praised the local police and Wisconsin National Guard for their actions in tackling what he described as “domestic terror” tolerated by the Democrat city council.

Despite the evidence that the on-going violence may be turning the tide against the Democrats, they seem to be doubling down with their tacit approval of a plan to stage a siege of the White House that will begin on September 17 and only end in the days following the election, if as the organisers have stated Biden “wins by a landslide.” What happens if Trump wins is anyone’s guess. If you are searching for an historical analogy then perhaps look no further than Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922 or the Bolshevik coup against the short lived democratic republic in Russia in 1917.

There was a similarly motivated movement in the late 1960s and early 70s, and it too took as its totems jail psychopaths like George Jackson and the comic opera criminal gang known as the Black Panthers. In October 1969 the Weather Underground launched its Days of Rage in Chicago as the catalyst that was fantasised to spark a revolution of the underclass and their white middle class groupies. Even the Panthers thought they were a pathetic joke.

The Weather persons then went underground to pursue an occasional pointless campaign of low level terrorism. That finally came to a close when its two leaders Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers re-emerged in 1980 into upper middle class Chicago respectability to become key allies of Obama at the beginning of his journey to the Oval Office. Are there ninja Antifas destined for the same fate once this is all over? Perhaps if they serve their intended purpose then the Democrats may well look favourably on them, just as the Hollywood liberal left mythologised the Weather Underground in Robert Redford’s dreadful The Company You Keep.

Or perhaps they might be better advised to study what actually does happen when the mob is unleashed. Have the Democrats opened a Pandora’s Box that it might prove difficult for them to close again, even assuming that it does lead to their short term triumph?

While anarchy may seem superficially attractive to the young and naïve, or to older naïfs, it never has a positive outcome. Ivan Bunin in Cursed Days described the chaos of the early months of the Russian Revolution when vengeance and greed were promiscuously tolerated before the Bolsheviks imposed a more disciplined terror and series of confiscations.

The victims of the early mob violence were similar to those in Portland and Kenosha and Seattle who had the temerity to have a grocery shop or a second hand car dealership or a nice house or just get up in the morning for work. In Moscow in 1918 the mob might decide on a whim to move families into your “bourgeois” two bedroom flat. If you were fortunate they might let you muck in.

Likewise, Mao unleashed the murderous adolescents of the Red Guard to destroy all vestiges of Chinese tradition that posed a potential threat to his personal power and that of the Communist Party. Some believe that Xi is pursuing a similar but more controlled onslaught on those vestiges of old decency to ensure the perpetual dominance of the Party and its gangster capitalist allies.

In Germany the drunken debauched Brownshirts visited Mayhem on the population under the protection of the National Socialist state before Hitler and the SS curbed their unpredictable violence as he prepared for the more sinister and systematic destruction of the old Europe that was in planning.

The lesson is, that state terror takes over from the terror of the mob once the mob has cleared the decks for the new revolutionary elite. Camus contrasted the anarchic violence of the mob with the totalitarian violence that succeeds it:

If Sade’s formula was ‘open the prisons and prove your virtue,’ then Saint-Just’s would be ‘Prove your virtue or go to prison … the libertine justifies individual terrorism, the high priest of virtue, State terrorism. (The Rebel, p76.)

It is probably foolish to seek any logic in the nihilistic violence unleashed by Black Lives Matter supporters and Antifa which is being closely watched by their would-be imitators in other democracies. Unless of course that logic lies in a deliberate strategy plot on the part of a section of the American elite to retake power from a man they regard as an unpredictable outsider and populist who is not beholden to the permanent state.

One thing is for certain is that the genie will not easily be put back into the bottle. There is a lot more at stake in November than which Septuagenarian wins the White House.


Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland.
He is currently working on a number of other books; His latest one is a novel entitled Houses of Pain. It is based on real events in the Dublin underworld. Houses of Pain is published by MTP and is currently available online as paperback and kindle while book shops remain closed.

Man And God In Kenosha

Matt Traceywhat history tells us about the mob violence destroying American cities

The longer the rioting and looting goes on in America the more irrational and random it becomes. Not only are the icons celebrated by the ultra-left and CNN clearly not the sort of characters that anyone with pretensions to a “better world” would want to be seen next nor near – regardless of how they came to attain such heroic stature – but almost without exception those, mainly white, members of Black Lives Matter and Antifa who end up on the wrong side of exchanges appear to be cut from the same cloth.
 
 
The three people shot by Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha all had criminal records; Rosenbaum for sexual assault of a minor, Huber for domestic abuse including strangulation and battery, and Gaige Grosskreuz, a member of the Peoples Revolution Movement, for burglary. Not exactly Prince Kropotkin are they? The BBC without a trace of irony claimed that they just happened to be in the midst of a criminal rampage while protesting against violence.

Trump narrowly won Kenosha in 2016 which may well be one of the motivations for the assault on its law abiding citizens by criminal sympathisers with another criminal, Jacob Blake. President Trump’s visit to the city was prefaced by an attack on the Mayor of Portland where the Democrat controlled authorities were either unable or unwilling to tackle the anarchy unleashed. Trump described Mayor Wheeler as “incompetent, much like Sleepy Joe Biden,” and shared a tweet which described Wheeler as “the useless fucking idiot that gets everyone killed in every disaster movie.”

Senior hurling, with expletives. If the Democrats were expecting Trump to lie down they have been severely disappointed. Like Ali boxing Foreman in Kinshasa, October 1974, he has come off the ropes when he looked like a beaten fighter and put those who thought they could use the ultra-left and poisonous race baiting to win the White House for the old retainer on the back foot. Will the straight right finish them off?

Trump is baldly stating that behind Sleepy Joe is a coalition of the Democrat grandees and the nihilists they have encouraged in their onslaught on what they thought was a populace cowering in the face of the criminal anarchy in the Democrat one party city states. He reiterated that message in Kenosha on Tuesday where he praised the local police and Wisconsin National Guard for their actions in tackling what he described as “domestic terror” tolerated by the Democrat city council.

Despite the evidence that the on-going violence may be turning the tide against the Democrats, they seem to be doubling down with their tacit approval of a plan to stage a siege of the White House that will begin on September 17 and only end in the days following the election, if as the organisers have stated Biden “wins by a landslide.” What happens if Trump wins is anyone’s guess. If you are searching for an historical analogy then perhaps look no further than Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922 or the Bolshevik coup against the short lived democratic republic in Russia in 1917.

There was a similarly motivated movement in the late 1960s and early 70s, and it too took as its totems jail psychopaths like George Jackson and the comic opera criminal gang known as the Black Panthers. In October 1969 the Weather Underground launched its Days of Rage in Chicago as the catalyst that was fantasised to spark a revolution of the underclass and their white middle class groupies. Even the Panthers thought they were a pathetic joke.

The Weather persons then went underground to pursue an occasional pointless campaign of low level terrorism. That finally came to a close when its two leaders Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers re-emerged in 1980 into upper middle class Chicago respectability to become key allies of Obama at the beginning of his journey to the Oval Office. Are there ninja Antifas destined for the same fate once this is all over? Perhaps if they serve their intended purpose then the Democrats may well look favourably on them, just as the Hollywood liberal left mythologised the Weather Underground in Robert Redford’s dreadful The Company You Keep.

Or perhaps they might be better advised to study what actually does happen when the mob is unleashed. Have the Democrats opened a Pandora’s Box that it might prove difficult for them to close again, even assuming that it does lead to their short term triumph?

While anarchy may seem superficially attractive to the young and naïve, or to older naïfs, it never has a positive outcome. Ivan Bunin in Cursed Days described the chaos of the early months of the Russian Revolution when vengeance and greed were promiscuously tolerated before the Bolsheviks imposed a more disciplined terror and series of confiscations.

The victims of the early mob violence were similar to those in Portland and Kenosha and Seattle who had the temerity to have a grocery shop or a second hand car dealership or a nice house or just get up in the morning for work. In Moscow in 1918 the mob might decide on a whim to move families into your “bourgeois” two bedroom flat. If you were fortunate they might let you muck in.

Likewise, Mao unleashed the murderous adolescents of the Red Guard to destroy all vestiges of Chinese tradition that posed a potential threat to his personal power and that of the Communist Party. Some believe that Xi is pursuing a similar but more controlled onslaught on those vestiges of old decency to ensure the perpetual dominance of the Party and its gangster capitalist allies.

In Germany the drunken debauched Brownshirts visited Mayhem on the population under the protection of the National Socialist state before Hitler and the SS curbed their unpredictable violence as he prepared for the more sinister and systematic destruction of the old Europe that was in planning.

The lesson is, that state terror takes over from the terror of the mob once the mob has cleared the decks for the new revolutionary elite. Camus contrasted the anarchic violence of the mob with the totalitarian violence that succeeds it:

If Sade’s formula was ‘open the prisons and prove your virtue,’ then Saint-Just’s would be ‘Prove your virtue or go to prison … the libertine justifies individual terrorism, the high priest of virtue, State terrorism. (The Rebel, p76.)

It is probably foolish to seek any logic in the nihilistic violence unleashed by Black Lives Matter supporters and Antifa which is being closely watched by their would-be imitators in other democracies. Unless of course that logic lies in a deliberate strategy plot on the part of a section of the American elite to retake power from a man they regard as an unpredictable outsider and populist who is not beholden to the permanent state.

One thing is for certain is that the genie will not easily be put back into the bottle. There is a lot more at stake in November than which Septuagenarian wins the White House.


Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland.
He is currently working on a number of other books; His latest one is a novel entitled Houses of Pain. It is based on real events in the Dublin underworld. Houses of Pain is published by MTP and is currently available online as paperback and kindle while book shops remain closed.

11 comments:

  1. Matt

    This is a most disappointing post. Nowwehre do you acknowledge that Kyle Rittensouse was acting as a vigilante firing indiscrimintely at black protestors. Do you really think that anyone has the right to take the law into their own hannds; let alone white supremacsits woth access tyo automatic weapons which African-Americans do not presumably have. The criminal records of those he is charged with murdering is utterly irrelevant to the legality of Rittenhouse's alleged actions.

    Nowhdere do you mention the incident that triggered the riots in Kenocha: the cold-blooded firing of seven shots into the back of Mr Blake by a homicidal policeman. And no; Blake's criminal record and that of Gheorge Floyd are also irrevalent. They and many other African-Americans since the homicide of Trayvon Martin have been victims of institutionally racist and homicidal police forces in the US.

    That's why there have been riots on the streets of Kenocha, Portland and many other American cities and towns. I have no truck with Antifa's methods and agree that rioting is ultiomately nihilistic (although it helps to remember MLK's aphorism that "a riot is the voice of the unheard).

    Nowhere, Matt, do you discuss Trumps's constant playing of the race card under the guise "law and order"; a familiar item in the playbook of US conservatives since the days of Nixon's silent majority.

    There was also a socio-political context to the rise of the Black Panthers; structural racism just like today. I would no more agree with the Black Panthers than I would the Provisional IRA but I would like to think that I would accept that neither came out of nowhdere.

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    1. Barry,

      If you talk about a victim of crime in terms of the persona of the criminal, the criminal mind, criminal actor, the complete and forever existential status that defines this person, you really are going on the attack. You are not only saying that they are, to some degree, responsible for the crime (in this case murder), but you are tapping into underlying prejudices that people have about this persona. Prejudices that often coexist with a lack of knowledge about the mechanics of the criminal justice system in the US and also about the drivers of criminal behaviour. I'm not saying that Matt is ignorant of these, but I think a lot of people don't care too much for the detail. Attacking the victim is a way of avoiding the complicated reality. It's a motion to simplify.

      Attacking the victim puts the victim and their supporters on the defensive. It turns the tables. And it is also a demonstration of a lack of tolerance towards a response from those who have grievances. Arguments that say: he was a criminal, an abuser, an altogether culpable type of person, or, she had a boyfriend who was a drug dealer, where there's smoke there's fire, etc., aren't really arguments. They are generalisations that are secondary and tertiary to the specific, personal circumstances of an event, and the immediate context in which it took place.

      Why settle for a diversion if you're really after the truth?

      How can the truth of some other event inform the truth of this event?

      Re the second question, I have something on my mind as I think about this. I was reading a book yesterday by Jon Krakauer about the prosecution of sexual assault in Montana. He mentioned the "rape shield" in Montana law: discussion of previous sexual conduct of an accuser is not allowed during trial. And that I think is an attempt to prevent past stereotypes from having a meaningful role in the present determination of the facts. Some people likely disagree with this: of course past behaviour is relevant. Still the culture of victim blaming in cases of sexual assault is rife. In an attempt to determine the truth of a matter, in order to deliver justice, they account for the accuser only in the present, not the past. That doesn't hold for the accused. Relevant past conduct is taken into account. It's not about the accuser and the accused being treated equally. It's about protecting the facts of a case from the prejudicial influence of sexist and/or sexual stereotypes. I guess I found it interesting because of the way that time is applied differently to the people involved. Both characters are examined and argued over, but the (relevant) character of the victim is in the immediate present, and the character of the accused is something that exists over a longer period of time.

      Delete
  2. Like most I have been following the protests in the US. My automatic response is anti-establishment it's a bias I can't shift. I will always side with victims of state violence. These protests seem to be hijacked by the anti-Trump brigade, which is fine, but what happens on day two of the next administration when Trump's gone and Biden doesn't deliver the proper reform?
    My knowledge of their politics is admittedly limited, to me it seems the Democrats continuously misread situations. The people want change, they put forward Clinton. The me too era, they nominate a sex case. Now with people worried about law and order they call rioting largely peaceful. It's baffling. They've surrendered a lead in the polls to an extent Trump could win after the year he's had.
    I don't agree with the author on the chances of a revolution happening while their system is deeply unjust there isn't the level of desperation required.

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  3. This piece is reminiscent of the criticism of the IRA commercial bombing campaign, with the questions of how anyone can cause destruction and at the same time want improvement, the voice of support for capital, the sanctity of private property and also the simple name-calling. Maybe that critism is correct, merely odd considering it's coming from a republican.

    "It is probably foolish to seek any logic in the nihilistic violence unleashed by Black Lives Matter supporters and Antifa which is being closely watched by their would-be imitators in other democracies."

    People were left with little option but to protest. Much of the protesting at the start of this was peaceful and was crushed like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Little is known about the extent of agents-provacateur in these riots or their origin but I don't doubt their involvement. Tony Benn gave detailed descriptions of how police agents started riots during the miner strike. It is an easy way to excuse police brutality.

    I prefer the politics of Bernadette McAlliskey who gave her golden key of New York to the Black Panthers than the crass name calling of "There was a similarly motivated movement in the late 1960s and early 70s, and it too took as its totems jail psychopaths like George Jackson and the comic opera criminal gang known as the Black Panthers."

    Noting how some of the protesters had criminal convictions is a straw-man argument. The chances of a protester having a criminal conviction is quite high. More than 1% of the population of the USA are in prison at any one time. The USA has one of the highest prisoner per capita figures in the world. It doesn't mean the whole crowd had convictions.

    If you are black you are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be arrested once stopped, more likely to be charged, more likely to be convicted, more likely to receive a heavier sentence and the death penalty and less likely to get parole than a white person, for similar offences. This is true even when socio-economic circumstances are taken into account.

    The same bias was found here in the North towards Catholics, with both political and criminal suspects. The parallels between civil rights campaigning in the 1960s in Ireland and the USA are obvious. How someone with a republican past can have such a strong feeling against the destruction of property and at the same time a lack of empathy for the disproportionate number of black people killed by the police or by counter-protesters in the USA is anyone's guess.

    When a recession occurs society lurches to the left or the right. We have seen a slide to the right during this global recession. Thankfully and despite this lurch to the right, more people value the ideals of the Bernadette McAliskeys of this world than for those of Matt's. Many would welcome an increase in the internationalism of republicanism and less insularity.

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    1. Republicanism is in the doldrums now Simon. I think the most we can hope for is republicans realising the limitations and using their republican conscience to put their shoulder to the rights wheel. It will require a big change in mindset, reaching a point where republicans can accept that citizens have more rights against them they they have against citizens. If republicanism continues to behave like a religious cult waving the bible of 1916 (and I acknowledge that your use of 1916 does not resemble that) then it will face a corresponding secularization: there is no reason for people to be bound by or tied to republican projects. Richard O'Rawe once said how he seen so much within republicanism that resembles fascism: when we look at the current notion shared by some that people have no rights other than those approved by the republican soup makers of the day; the authoritarianism, the intolerance, he had a point.

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    2. Much to be welcomed there. Dogmatism isn't conducive to progress. Standing on principles rather than positions is the answer. Positions become entrenched and are a turn-off.

      Many republicans, for example on Twitter, are more concerned with semantics and dogmatism than valid argument and I find I often have more in common with unionists with a small u who are interested in a rights based society. People intetested in sustainability, environmental protection also rather than defend illegal dumping purely because it's profitable. Profitability should never have the final say in decision making. It just leads to greed and disregard.

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  4. Simon - I think it is a good critique of the piece. Matt was once on the left but is now a right winger and sees the world through that particular lens. Sometimes his writing seems like polemic and at others is an expression of how he feels.
    There is no surprise in republicans moving away from positions they previously held. Recently down here SF refused to oppose the Special Criminal Courts and their members express sentiments seriously at odds with what they were back in the day. Matt has made a different sort of switch, one that I find very disappointing. But keeping open the freeway of ideas and - like curling - brushing the censors/PC/Woke out of the way, is even more valuable in times like these.

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  5. I wouldn't dream of silencing voices like Matt's. Unless someone suggests violence or abuse of those who are unable to change the reason why they are the targe, people should have an opportunity to waffle.

    "There is no surprise in republicans moving away from positions they previously held."
    I am reading Robert White's biography of Ruairí O'Brádaigh and after the end of the campaigns in the 1920s and 1940s there was a movement to the right by a significant number of republicans and a move to the left after the Border Campaign ended in the early 1960s which was influenced by global events.

    I firmly believe the 1916 leaders were ahead of their time focusig on equal rights for all citizens and emancipation of women. People like Casement and his human right's work and Connolly's battle for the working class. If we stick to basic principles based on equality which the 1798 leaders also espoused we would be in a fairer and more just place. The birth of republicanism in 1798 set the model and treating all humans as equals is vital. Self-determination and socio-economic and human rights can only hurt those who aim to control those less fortunate among us. Which is why I am heavily disappointed with Sinn Fein's abstentionism on the Special Powers Act. That was real politik so I am actually more disappointed, even devastated that they voted to allow planning permission for the social vandalism of the Tribeca project in Belfast. Turning the building where Henry Joy McCracken of the United Irishmen was sentenced into a hotel rather than a 1798 museum is a metaphor of where Republicanism is at the moment- in the sewer.

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    1. Nor would I dream of silencing Matt or people who contribute to the flow of ideas. There is a guy on the left called Gerry Corbett and I don't share his take but his ideas always stimulate so I get a lot out of reading them.
      I think you are spot on in recognizing that we can have more in common with small u unionists than we can have with those republicans who think citizens have no rights against them and that only they have rights. Oddly enough I was having a conversation about this very issue with a friend today.
      We are not going to overcome partition without a majority in the North agreeing to it. We tried and lost. Our strategy of coercion failed so what do we do? I don't believe we have to sign up to the SF project which in my view was always more guided by careers than politics. But I think there are ways that republicans can back progressive causes against injustice. When republicans start to sound like religious fundamentalists, that is when I switch off.

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    2. Exactly, by making Ireland a welcoming place for all, more will be attracted to a United Ireland. This may very well be the case with the small u unionists or immigrants who want social and environmental justice, they might prefer it to a conservative UK. Saying that the Irish have been quite conservative over recent history but there are signs of turning towards a rights based society with equal marriage, choice etc. When you think a female teacher had to resign if they married in the 1950s during Dev's relatively recent reign!

      With abortion, I was conservative in school but changed later to 'I have no understanding of what women go through' so was ambivalent and changed again to pro-choice when I read personal stories of women during the choice campaign. This experience has taught me that understanding, education and information is key to decision making not positions handed down from above.

      I think actions by the British state are preventing social change. Things like PSNI illegally witholding evidence from coroner courts and continuing impunity for security force members or the delay in the Pat Finucane inquiry. It gets people's goats up, prevents goodwill or appetite for bread and butter issues. If we find a way with successfully dealing with, pardon me for using the Sinn Fein term for the first time in my life, "securocrats" we could focus on genuine reform and progress.

      The lack of proper reform of the police was a major mistake although I realise unionists woudn't have agreed to anything meaningful.

      Returning to Stormont itself was a mistake. I am all for devolved government but having an assembly in a grand buildimg, miles away, looking down on its citizens isn't conducive to positive attitudes. It should have been in the city centre where it is easier to hold people, who are meant to represent us, to account.

      Social justice is kind to every demographic but the gombeen class.

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  6. There has been much progress. I think secularism is the one strand of republicanism where success was greatest although I am far from certain republicans had much to do with it.
    I don't regard myself a supporter of abortion as such. I Just support all women's right to decide for themselves if they want to have one. I worked on Repeal down here for that reason.
    The PSNI in my view should never have been given the green light. As I said to a friend today I am a conscientious objector to supporting them. But that is a personal choice. Others have chosen to support them and that is their right. Citizens have a right to demand of those who govern them that they also police the society in which they live.
    I think SF rushed their fences on policing and I have long held to the view that career needs determined the timing not the need for real reform.
    I take your point about returning to Stormont, but as they say, The People have voted, the bastards.

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