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This really pissess me off.  >:( http://www.cafemom.com/groups/?prism_id=133341&utm_medium=sem2&utm_campaign=prism&utm_source=outbrain&utm_content=1007

If holding someone at gunpoint isn't reckless conduct, I'd like to know what is.

It would have been better just to kill the burglar, but make certain his body fell in the window; then plant a gun on him. One less loser for everyone else to deal with

Classic Fox news story.

What exactly does this have to do with Fox News other than they along with dozens of other media outlets and websites picked it up after it went viral and became a topic of conversation, much like any other story that "breaks" nationally after being seen or read in local news? It was reported locally then picked up by bloggers and went viral.

An update from New Hampshire, now over a month old: All charges against this homeowner have been dropped. According to the law, he did nothing illegal. And the man whom he caught breaking into another neighbor's house that night had broken into his house as well.

The full story from ABC affiliate WMUR, which is the only news station local to Manchester:

Charges dropped:
http://www.wmur.com/r/30524687/detail.html (http://www.wmur.com/r/30524687/detail.html)

Burglar appears in court:
http://www.wmur.com/news/30505607/detail.html (http://www.wmur.com/news/30505607/detail.html)

Armed homeowner tracks down burglary suspect:
http://www.wmur.com/news/30495514/detail.html (http://www.wmur.com/news/30495514/detail.html)

I think rockandroll means that the story is designed to get the reader angry and emotional over a small issue, which fox news does with its stories all the time.

And tell me the news media in general doesn't do that same thing which you're singling out Fox for doing every single minute they're on the air? And I disagree if that's his theory because Fox News would pick up a story generating buzz just like any other network. Don't think picking up a story that could generate emotions is limited to Fox News, because it's the entire heartbeat of the news media industry.

I'd like to know how the idea started (or who is promoting the idea) that a news organization would run a story designed to play on the emotions of their viewers is somehow limited to Fox News.

It's not limited to Fox News. However this particular story would be more likely aired on Fox News on not on CNN or NBC....if only to get the bible-pushers and gun-clingers upset.

Let me clarify a few things here.

Yes, I meant it's a classic Fox news style story. I'm sure you realize too that your response to me that all mainstream media do similar things is very much preaching to the choir, since I've said the same thing countless times on this board. All mainstream media is a theatrical farce and it all represents the status quo ruling elite interests that produce the news and keep it running. With that in mind, I have also said that the status quo ruling elite while encompassing a very narrow range of interests still nevertheless cover a range - generally from the centre-right liberal position to the extreme right Republican position. What I think makes this story particularly Foxy ( 8)) is that it essentially boils down to whipping up hysteria about government power in order to protect a particular brand of ruling elite corporate interests who desire unfettered tyrannical unchecked power and control. Now you see some of that with other mainstream media outlets too - God knows they believe in the sanctity of corporate power since they are corporate power. But nevertheless, their focus can veer a bit more into center-right territory, which means supporting neo-liberal mixed economy interests.

Now, let's get to the facts of this story, some of which guitarfool has pointed out. The initial article posted by the OP states that a "New Hampshire grandfather has been arrested and is facing a possible prison sentence for firing a shot into the ground and holding a burglar at gunpoint until the cops could arrive." What the article doesn't mention is that this incident occurred in the afternoon probably 20 minutes or so after Fleming noticed his house had been broken into and occurred well outside of Fleming's home, down the street. The point that he was "holding a burglar at gunpoint until the cops could arrive" is misleading since Fleming himself didn't actually call the police. He simply grabbed his gun and went patrolling the neighborhood, saw someone coming out of someone else's house who he assumed was the same man who broke into his own house, shot his gun, and then held him at gunpoint. Is this reckless behavior? Yes. Did the police have a right to charge him? Yes. Should the charges have been dropped? Yes, and that's exactly what happened. Outside of a man patrolling the neighborhood with his gun looking for someone that he never identified in the first place, this is a perfectly reasonable chain of events.

Think too about how we're being conditioned by this story because of rhetorical tricks. There is the aforementioned "until the cops arrived" line which misleads us into thinking that Fleming knew the cops were coming when he held the man at gun point when in fact not only did he not know, but instead of him calling the police when he witnessed a crime had taken place in his home, he instead grabbed his gun and went on a vigilante-style hunt for a man he never saw. Also, what's with the terms, "Grandfather arrested for holding a burglar?" Grandfather? What does his status as a grandfather have to do with this? How would we read this story different had the title been "27 year old held at gunpoint by a 61 year old man"? I'm not saying that's a reasonable headline either - merely pointing out that we are being conditioned from the very beginning to be sympathetic to this "grandfather."

This is one of the original local reports, posted/aired by ABC in N.H. the Sunday after that Saturday when the incident occurred:

FARMINGTON, N.H. -- A Farmington man is creating plenty of buzz around town after he said he tracked down a burglary suspect and held him at gunpoint until police could arrive.

"I fired into the ground, to the left of him," Dennis Fleming said. "There was nothing but woods behind him. I've owned guns my whole life and I pretty much was sure what I was doing."

Fleming said his home on Ten Rod Road had been burglarized Saturday afternoon. He said personal belongings were stolen, and instead of calling police, he picked up his gun and spoke with neighbors to see if they had seen the suspect around.

Fleming said shortly after he heard a loud sound coming from a neighbor's home, and saw a man running out back.

"I saw the guy, he crash-banged out of a house right down the road here and I happened to see," Fleming added. "I approached him with a gun, told him to stop, fired a warning shot."

Neighbors called 911 and police quickly arrested 27-year-old Joseph Hebert. Police said Hebert is accused of breaking into two homes on the street within a short period of time Saturday.

"He was very apologetic," Fleming noted. "It was just too bad it happened."

Neighbors applauded Fleming.

"For what little we have nowadays and people just come and take what you got, I think it was good that someone finally did something about it," said David Bernardini, who lives nearby.

But police were not as happy, and later arrested Fleming Saturday night on a felony reckless conduct charge. The charge came because the shot had been fired.

Fleming was released on personal recognizance. He said was only trying to protect the neighborhood, but admits he should have approached it differently.

"You're supposed to call the police, but I was so mad because I felt so violated, that I just went looking for the guy and I shouldn't have done that," he said. "I should've just called the police."

Police said Fleming acted in the wrong. Fleming will appear in court next month to answer the felony charge.

Hebert is scheduled to be arraigned later this week. In addition to the two burglary charges, police said Hebert is also facing a felony charge.

Read more: http://www.wmur.com/news/30495514/detail.html#ixzz1prRQ3pUA




The guy admits he should have handled it differently, ultimately the case has worked out, the homeowner wasn't charged in court and the idiot breaking into the houses is in jail for numerous offenses, where he belongs. One aspect that bothers me is as much as perhaps we shouldn't be empathetic to the "grandfather" label (I agree, that's loaded and unnecessary for this story), the frustration of having the privacy of your family's home violated by a burglar, having personal property stolen from that house which you or someone in your family owns, and then having the same suspect breaking into other neighbors' homes trying to steal their property could lead to frustration and in those moments wanting to do something about it. All of that can lead to pure emotion and irrational decisions, which happened here.

However, If there were malicious, vigilante-style intent at play, the man with the gun would have more likely fired it at the suspect instead of firing a warning shot *into the ground*, mind you, not even a shot into the air which would put more people totally unrelated to this case at risk. If his recklessness were beyond wanting to stop this guy, or his irrationality went beyond where it actually stopped, he wouldn't have given the decision as much thought as to fire the gun into the ground rather than into the air or into the suspect.

First, we should feel no sympathy, no empathy, or try to relate the man breaking into the homes in some moral equivalent to the man whose home was broken into. The burglar at the moment he was breaking into another home and running away after already stealing from another was ignoring some of the basic principles of living in society, namely respecting the rights of others...not to mention the laws against such behavior.

Firing a warning shot into the ground was a mistake, it was wrong and the homeowner admitted it, but let's not take this to some ridiculous end where the sheer act of him doing this equals the illegal act of the burglar violating peoples' homes then running away.

And again, whatever happens after the initial publication of a story becomes whatever those passing it on make of it. Why not also call it "classic ABC style" since this N.H. affiliate is ABC, and ABC has just caused a major uproar that is touching everything from the USDA to local schools to supermarkets by borrowing a term "pink slime" from a blogger somewhere and having Diane Sawyer run an expose on "World News Tonight" about this ground beef additive, causing a near-panic among consumers of ground beef in the US?

The term "pink slime" was all but unknown to the general public until Diane Sawyer's report, now it is part of the lexicon and causing major issues...why didn't they just use the official industry term instead of "pink slime"? Emotional impact, and ratings. Money. Profit. Exposure. All of that stuff.

The more we continue to single out Fox News as the most evil thing to ever hit the news business, the more we give a free pass to the networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, etc. to do the same thing. Do we want that at all, even if we agree more with one network than another? If you agree with MSNBC's news coverage or CNN's version of events, that's a choice and make that choice based on preference, but don't try to say they're any different, better, or occupy a higher ground of honor or trustworthiness when it comes to the way they gather and report news. It's a business. The only high ground is who generates the most profit. :)

A few replies which may be relevant.


According to what Fleming told Foster's Daily Democrat, a local broadsheet newspaper, he didn't know "right away if anything from his home was missing." If items were stolen, Fleming probably only knew that was the case after this incident took place. The fact that this was "the same suspect" while being a strong assumption was nevertheless an assumption. Fleming hadn't identified the burglar, wasn't around when his house was broken into. The fact that the burglar was exiting another house is somewhat coincidental too. Fleming simply grabbed his gun and began looking for someone suspicious - that the person had to look suspicious was all he had to go on. The fact that he happened to catch a man on his way out of another house does make Fleming's actions seem much more justified only in retrospect. But as the events actually unfolded, Fleming did not grab his gun to catch a burglar coming out of a house, but rather to hunt for someone who looked like the kind of person who would burglarize a house.


In fact, bringing out a gun and patrolling the streets in broad daylight when there could be children around looking for someone you've never seen without having called the police is serious recklessness, in my opinion. Yes, it would have been more reckless had he started shooting arbitrarily but let's face it, it's reckless behavior all the same.


But of course, nobody did that here. Saying that this story sounds like a classic Fox news story is nowhere near stating that Fox is "the most evil thing to hit the news business." Rather, it's saying what is exactly true - that Fox more than any other network has an agenda to whip up anti-government hysteria because their interest is in protecting the ruling elite position of unchecked corporate tyranny. Now what ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC do is equally farcical - but, I should add, it's farcical in a different way and although it's farcical in a dangerous way, I would suggest not as dangerous as the kind of attitude that Fox appears to be fostering. The fact is, every outlet you mentioned should be heavily criticized but that doesn't mean that what Fox does is the same as them. It's different and I think we somewhat miss a real complex situation by not pointing out these nuances.


Well, in fact, I think we're looking at this the wrong way. I don't necessarily think that news organizations aim for "emotional impact" because it will lead to a larger audience share. In fact, the audience doesn't figure in too much when it comes to major media decisions. Revenue, for the most part, is generated not by audience but by advertisers and it is they who end up shaping the way that stories get told - not because they are personally all in the room making decisions but because the people who are are aware of where the money is coming from.

I should add too that I don't think anyone is doing this, either.

I'm not suggesting anyone here is doing anything of the sort here on this board, however if you peruse the various websites, blogs, and commentaries posted under this story there are underlying attempts to lessen the "wrong" of someone caught breaking into a house, multiple houses, actually, and emphasize the recklessness of a homeowner firing a warning shot. When you lessen one and then emphasize another, it's attempting to set up a moral equivalent where both are either bad judgements or both are wrong, but both exist on the same level.

If the homeowner with the gun admits he should have handled it differently, that's the end of the story, and it's a done deal. No one was hurt, the bad guy is in jail where he belongs, some neighbors are glad this guy did take action though it wasn't the best decision, and the guy with the gun is free and clear of anything.

Honestly, what purpose does it serve at this point to second guess what Fosters Daily Democrat reports versus WMUR? On the TV report transcript I posted above, it said the gun owner *did* know his items were stolen, rather than "assumed" he had been robbed. Maybe the Daily Democrat or the WMUR report got something wrong - it happens all the time. Let's not set up a second-guessing assumption on the homeowner on when exactly he knew he'd been robbed. Or have whichever outlet published the mistake correct it, because he either knew or didn't know he'd been robbed.

Both papers can be right. The one you posted doesn't state a timeline the way the Foster's one does. It merely places "He said personal belongings were stolen" before "he picked up his gun" which suggests that he noticed that his belongings were stolen before he picked up his gun, but doesn't necessarily mean that that's what actually happened or that that accurately reflects what Fleming said. With all the information the writer had, they could have simply put the sentence together in a clear way. At any rate, I wasn't questioning the truth of the article you posted -- merely your assertion that Fleming reacted the way he did as a result, among other things, of "having personal property stolen from that house which you or someone in your family owns." I'm just saying that with the information we have, even though personal belongings were stolen, there is no way to say for sure that Fleming knew that when he grabbed his gun and went looking for the burglar.


They don't exist on the same level but I might understand the impulse, especially when someone is combatting the way the story is usually packaged, like the one provided by the OP, which is a patently absurd telling of the story.

The last point is the issue, and I'll come back to it saying it was worded in a different way than the original story was reported to make a certain impact, but that practice isn't and shouldn't be exclusively tied to Fox News because they all do it. If someone leans right, they'll point to MSNBC. If someone leans left, they'll point to Fox. It just gets tiresome.

Just consider when the film "Network" was released and became a sensation, spawning the "I'm mad as hell.." catchphrase, television journalism was limited to 3 networks: NBC, CBS, and ABC, along with PBS. There was no Fox news, no cable news alternative to the "big 3". And among the big 3's anchors was a man some still call "the most trusted man in America".

If so much blame can be placed on Fox News, what parts of the news media in 1976 was the film Network ripping to shreds? The same themes in that film ring true today.

Or how about Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry", another anti-news-media song from the early 80's? "Bubble-headed bleached-blondes" and "crap is king" and all of that sloganeering...there was no Fox News network in 1983, so who exactly did Henley have a beef with when the only new kid on the news block at that time was Ted Turner's upstart CNN? Gotta be the "big 3", and they're still at it. Yet it's Fox News that gets blamed most often, and ironically sometimes by those pundits and commentators collecting a paycheck from one of those "big 3" networks. Fair is fair, spread the blame as far as it should go. :)

Okay, but again, you're talking to an actual person here not some abstract figure somewhere out in the blogosphere. And this person had said again and again, both elsewhere and on this very thread, that there are very deep-rooted problems with the entire mainstream media. The movie Network, which deals with these issues somewhat trivially I think, does get at something that is essentially correct, that the news is shaped and controlled by its ownership - namely corporate power. Now it would be purely fantastical to pretend that things haven't changed dramatically since 1976 and 1983. Yes, things were dire then, but they are much worse shape now. In 1983, about 90% of the mainstream media was controlled by about 50 coporations. Today, that number has been reduced to 5. Now, of course, this radically changes news. Were there problems in the 70s and early 80s? Of course. Are the problems we face now the same problems as they faced then? Yes but, I would add, on a dramatically larger scale. Now this change in the media is reflective and even part of an even larger issue which is that now an even smaller group of people control an even larger amount of overall wealth in the entire country.

So, yes, when I say that a problem with the mainstream media is that it is owned by a small percentage of concentrated power, then I am not targeting Fox. I'm speaking about the problem of the mainstream media as a whole. Now, with that in mind, one would also be foolish to not take into account the nuances in the narrow political perspective that consitutes the ruling elite. Differences within narrow political perspectives can nevertheless have enormous consequences. As far as I'm concerned none of the consequences of mainstream media are good ones but the consequences that come out from Fox's perspective are much more negative. Take, for example, The Tea Party. The Tea Party is, of course, ridiculed unfairly by, say, MSNBC, because of their opposition to Barack Obama. But the problem with the Tea Party is much more serious than that. Let's put aside the fact that they are organized by the ruling elite. Putting that aside - what do they stand for? Essentially, their platform is to hate the government when it is in favor of doing something for them, and love the government when it is in favor of doing something for the ruling class - that is, pure, unchecked tyranny. So, for example, you are supposed to hate the idea of government getting involved in health care, but at the same time support health care being controlled by private interests who, according to the framers of the HMO policy, can benefit most by not giving care. Now that's extraordinarily dangerous. Moreover, people are being taught to distrust sciences, education, and so on, and all of that serves to, in fact, disarm the population of their potential political power rather than reinforce it. And this distrust of the sciences and education as some kind of arrogant liberal institution in fact, could lead to the destruction of the human species (I'm thinking here about climate denialism). On a smaller scale, it has led to a rise in what were previously nearly eradicated diseases because of the anti-vaccine movement. Now it is that extreme wing of the political ruling class that Fox represents, as do the Republicans. So yes, mainstream media as a whole is a problem but that doesn't change the fact that the point of view that Fox represents is probably the most dangerous one circulating at the political level in the United States right now.

But to be fair, you're focusing on the left calling the right extreme, which is par for the course on both sides. In the last paragraph above you are labeling something dangerous based on your opinion and your perception of what a group like the Tea Party stands for, and what helped form that perception? Is Fox News dangerous because you or someone else disagrees with them, or are they a legitimate threat to someone or something?

If we substitute "Occupy Wall Street" or any of the other "Occupy" offshoots for "The Tea Party" in your post, does it still add up to the same conclusions and suggestions of tyranny? If not, why not? Is it factual, or is it opinion? There are some people who might consider the motives of some of the groups organized by Boots Riley around "Occupy Oakland" on the same level as you have suggested Fox News exists, as "dangerous" or as a threat to something. If you agree with Occupy, then they're far less dangerous than Fox News. If you agree with Fox News, they're less dangerous than Occupy. And it keeps going around in circles.

I haven't been convinced that Fox News is doing anything different than the major media outlets have been doing for decades, and how they are more dangerous because of the way they report the news. Again, in theory, why only focus on Fox News and the Tea Party instead of MSNBC and Occupy, if there is something more to the point than a simple political disagreement with either side?

I'm not calling the right extreme. The right is a large area of a variety of political opinions. I'm referring to a particularly extremist position on the right, not the entire right. So, for example, the Democratic party represent right wing interests but not extreme right wing interests. Fox news and Republicans, on the other hand, do represent extreme right wing interests. Being on an extreme end of the political spectrum is not in and of itself a bad thing - it's what those extreme positions represent that could or could not have negative consequnces.


What helped form that perception was taking the Tea Party at their word. That they and others like them on the extreme right hold positions that are extremely dangerous is not my opinion. Take, for example, my point about the anti-sciences and education position. The measles have now re-emerged in communities who have high rates of people who have exempted themselves and their children from vaccinations. In 2010, there were over 2000 cases of the whooping cough in California. Ten infants died, only one of which had a vaccination. Now is it my opinion that those infants died or did they actually die?

Now, this is not to say that the anti-vaccination crowd and the Tea Party crowd are one in the same but they do come from similar places and they come out of similar mindsets and both result in objectively dangerous consequences. So, again, you take away money from social programs and instead shift it to private power, then that will inevitably have negative consequences - and we know that because it is historically verifiable. So take a Tea Party position - namely, keep health care private. Again, according to the main policy framers of the HMO, John Ehrlichman, the reason why this "private enterprise" health care system works is because "All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make." Now, according to the main framers of health care policy in the United States, a privately controlled health care system functions to give "less medical care" in order to profit. Now again, is it my opinion that less medical care to people who need it is dangerous? Of course not - that's patent nonsense.


I disagree with all of them, so this doesn't quite hold up. They are dangerous because they offer a dangerous point of view.


Well, in fact, what gets us out of those circles is actually examining the issues. In the real world, people who think about issues and who understand issues don't call things dangerous because they disagree with people. They call things dangerous because things are dangerous and they recognize that things become more dangerous the more people ignore that fact.

Now, Occupy is different. It is a legitimately grassroots organization, unlike the Tea Party which was created and is entirely controlled by corporate interests and corporate funding. Much like the media, the Tea Party reflect the positions of the people who own it. Now nobody owns the Occupy movement - it is a genuine reflection of populist concerns - namely, reversing the corporate coup that has taken place in the United States which has rendered the citizenry impotent. Now, in my opinion, the Occupy movement is probably the most exciting and most beneficial political development to happen in my lifetime. The consequences of it could be enormously positive - and most of that is because it's completely populist based and communal in structure rather than tyrannically organized, but that's for another time.

Ron Paul's tea party was hijacked by the corporate powers like Dick Armey and the religious right after obama got elected.

Meh, the Tea Party was organized from the beginning by industrialists like David Koch.

I don't like the Koch Brothers either, I'm worried that occupy will be taken over as well.

I hope not  but I remain optimistic. Ultimately, the movement seems to work on the assumption that real progress is a result of communication, education, and awareness, rather than someone with a lot of money bankrolling your movement and telling you what to do or what the next step should be.

Interesting conversation so far.

I do have to question the accuracy of the information on the Tea Party, though. Much of my disputes and disagreements come from seeing scenarios where groups want to have it both ways, on both sides of the ideological aisle. Or of telling one story to fill a need one year, then revising the story to fill a different need later.

In the case of the Tea Party, are they a "rag-tag bunch" of disorganized, barely cohesive local groups as many in the Democratic party and in the media including Chris Matthews described them in the months leading up to the 2010 congressional elections? Are they just local gatherings of pissed-off voters who have no cohesive national message? Or are they really a well-oiled and smartly funded political machine organized by the Koch brothers in an attempt to defeat Democrats at the polls? The initial tactic was to portray the Tea Party as insignificant, disorganized, inconsequential, a fad. Then we had commentators mocking the movement calling them tea-baggers, which still holds true today.

Yet when this rag-tag bunch of unorganized folks turned out to vote in 2010, and cost enough high-profile Republicans and Democrats their jobs in politics including during the primaries, the Tea Party suddenly became a well-oiled attack machine funded by the Kochs.

Which is it, are they a machine or a disorganized cadre of local groups? Were the Kochs behind a candidate like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, who unseated a long-serving Republican only to lose to Democrat Chris Koons that November, a loss which gave the D's an extra senate vote to pass the health care bill where the seat before O'Donnell's upset victory was almost a guaranteed win for the R's? Or was the O'Donnell candidacy a smoke-screen to cover the real story behind the movement?

The thing I have to make clear is I follow politics very aggressively, I devour news every day about politicians and their shortcomings, yet I despise the whole system. I'll give anyone a fair shot to win me over, but when I see warning signs start to appear that things aren't what they seem, my cynicism takes over. For the Tea Party, I watched some rallies on TV, I listened to them on local radio and internet, I heard them out, and some of what they said made sense. However, as soon as I heard that Dick Armey was somehow associated with them, they lost me and I lost interest.

Likewise for the Occupy movement(s), don't believe the hype. At the beginning, when they first got attention in the media, I had to agree with some of what they said regarding Wall Street. The innate greed of a Goldman Sachs corporate entity sickens me, I'm all for raising a fist in the air and saying "I'm mad as hell!". Then Occupy started to look more like the same familiar group of bandana-wearing idiots who regularly follow events like the G4 and G8 summit meetings at various locales and decide to protest them by smashing windows of local businesses, waving the anarchy signs in the air, and in general acting like loons in the name of their cause. And in that process disrupting the local people and local businesses who have nothing to do with either the cause or the ideals these folks are railing against.

We had people in Philly for several weeks inconvenienced by these folks camping out and deciding to march in traffic during rush hour, which only caused problems and delays for the working people either commuting to or from work or being delayed in doing their job...those working people being the so-called 99% that the occupiers were supposedly there to help.

One way to get people cynical about your cause is to disrupt the very people you're claiming to be supporting. And the anarchy sign...appearing on various tents, shelters made of shipping skids, and various cardboard signs and hats...is that really about anything? As relevant as a Che t-shirt on a college kid sitting on a trust fund? :)

There's my acidic side, but damn it if the occupy folks had stuck to being regular people angry with the Wall Street mentality and abuses, I'd side with them. As they began looking and acting more like the G4 idiot crowd than regular working folks, and flashing anarchy signs, and as various groups like the Free Mumia crowd and MoveOn started to appear in the midst, they became a caricature. And caricatures do not win people over to a cause. Just like Dick Armey becoming a Tea Party guy...they lost it.

However, having followed the Tea Party story as a story rather than with a vested interest in the group or their agenda, I will step in to say "time out" when someone isn't being accurate with the history or the facts of the group. The original Tea Party groups were in fact grassroots local organizations, where word spread through internet word of mouth, social media, and yes...some stragglers left in the dust of Ron Paul's failed 2008 candidacy.

Whatever happened after the Koch brothers and Dick Armey and whoever else threw a hat in the Tea Party ring is what it is, just like the Occupy rallies in Oakland and New York among others morphed into the bandana, teargas, and bullhorn stereotypes of an anarchist rally...but the story that this Tea Party movement somehow went from starting as a disorganized bunch of angry conservatives wanting to blow off steam to having its real roots as a highly organized attack machine has to be told for what it is: untrue. I guess we should flip a coin and decide which version of Chris Matthews' description of the movement we should trust, either the one from spring 2010 or the one from spring 2012. :-D

Again, though, I am not some fantasy person who encompasses these "groups" that "want to have it both ways." I mean, if your problem is with the reporters of MSNBC, or people in the blogosphere, then I'm certainly not going to defend them and you'd have to take their arguments up with them, not me. Furthermore, I don't particularly see the relevance of bringing it up. Naturally an organization like MSNBC is not going to stand firm on a particular issue, because they don't care about the issues. They are not interested in giving any substantial information, only in defending the power structure that produces the network. For them that simply entails discrediting the Tea Party -- it doesn't matter how.

Also, I'm not sure on what you mean by "both sides of the ideological aisle." It seems that you are referencing Fox vs. say, MSNBC. To me, both Fox and MSNBC are part of the same ideology in that they both represent the interests of the same ruling class. Yes, they encompass two mildly different points of view but they do so from within the same basic ideological structure. Rather than say two people fighting over whether to go see a basketball game or a baseball game, this is more like two friends fighting over where to sit at the same baseball game.


Since I'm not Chris Matthews and since he himself probably didn't know, I'm not particularly concerned with what he had to say on the matter. Matthews is a showbiz entertainment figure, just like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. He has nothing of value to say. Nor am I concerned with what one half of the ruling elite (the Democrats) had to say about the other half of the ruling elite (the corporate-controlled Tea Party). As far as I'm concerned that's just an example of the one half protecting their interests from the other. Naturally, they're not particularly interested in investigating the real substance of the matter - they are simply interested in protecting their place in social hierarchy. That the Tea Party have a message is debatable, though I think they do have one and, in my opinion, it comes from a fairly rational place - that is, we are people who have done the right things in life, we do what an American should do -- why, then, are we getting screwed? This basic fundamental question being asked by the Tea Partiers is, I think, a very rational one. Now the problem begins when they aren't given the answer. Now historically this lack of an answer has had several negative consequences. Going back several decades, your average working Americans looked at the major media and saw particular racial figures being demonized and so forth. And so it became that the reason my life is crummy is because of the racial figure, therefore once we get rid of the racial figure (the African-American, the Latino, the immigrant, etc.) who is taking what's rightfully mine, then I'll be able to actually have some kind of social mobility. Now there's still traces of that -- but what extreme right wing sources have now replaced the racial figure with is the government. The reason my life is crummy is because the government is unneccessarily taxing me to death. Consequently, you have the Tea Party as a result -- they become organized and controlled naturally by corporate figures who do desire a nanny state but only for the wealthy. Therefore you get a group of people organized to despise the social spending that helps them, and support the social spending that exploits them. In both the case of the racial figure and the government, the real source of the problem is displaced but of course nobody discovers the real source because the real source is what's producing mainstream information.

That the Tea Party is a smartly funded political machine is uncontroversial. And it's not uncontroversial because MSNBC is currently reporting it that way, it's uncontroversial because it's factually accurate. Whether the goal is to defeat the Democrats is more debatable. Ultimately, the Democrats serve the interests of the corporate controlled Tea Party quite nicely whether they agree with them or not. As long as iThe Tea Party gets people (both inside and outside their organization) to hate the government and, therefore, ignore the real source of the problem, it really does its job. It's not so much about who or who doesn't get into power since whoever gets into power is going to protect the status quo regardless.


Keep in mind there has been a great deal of effort to discredit protest movements over the years in order to diffuse their legitimacy and part of that has been to concoct an image of the protestor as "bandara-wearing idiots." This has taken all sorts of insidious forms. Take, for example, the now notorious incident from 2007 in Montebello, Quebec where protest organizers identified three undercover police officers in the crowd, one of which was carrying a rock, clearly with the intention of disrupting the event and discrediting it. What's unique about this incident is not that police were going undercover with intent to disrupt the protest, causing damage that would be sourced to the protesters. What's unique about this incident is that they were caught doing it. In fact, you have to be living in a dream world not to accept that the disruptions that occur at protests are mostly caused by police officers, not necessarily disguised as protesters as was the case in Quebec but in generally inciting violence.


To be honest, I don't particularly care. If working people are more upset about that kind of disruption than they are about the very conditions of their existence, then that only goes to show just how deep the level of ideological indoctrination runs and how necessary it is to communicate to them in a way that will make them aware of the issues. Now one could debate about effective means of communication, and I don't necessarily believe what you describe is the most effective but it is not necessarily less effective than say keeping within the boarders of a march along Wall Street where people can either hear or not hear about issues. People typically become most aware of issues if they are personally affected by them - or are shown how entangled they already are in the issues.
 

The best part about the Occupy movement, though, is that it is so open. It is not led by an overarching figure - it is, thankfully, leaderless. So consequently they veer from the extreme left to some centrist figures from MoveOn. The consequences of that is that you get a variety of people. The answer to that is not, I don't think, to simply weed out the people you don't like. That's a version of Stalinism, as far as I'm concerned. Rather, Occupy is an opportunity for groups of people who have been entirely shut out and disenfranchised to communicate with each other. Now that's a very dangerous thing for the ruling elite, because they are used to having the monopoly of mainstream communication. So naturally there have been enormous efforts at discrediting what is ultimately the most vibrant and productive protest to occur in my lifetime.


In fact, in the weeks before the first Tea Party Tax Day protests, the David Koch-run Americans for Prosperity was hosting a website for offering talking points to protestors. This is at the very beginning of 2009. And, in fact, according to a New Yorker investigation from 2010, a Republican campaign consultant noted of the Tea Party that "The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it."

On a lighter note, is it just me, or are the Koch brothers a sort of real-life version of the Duke brothers?

(http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/assets/images/content/koch-brothers.jpg)

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YGLQQZTHoU0/SUhHY_MGXdI/AAAAAAAAGkY/e86lt8-DrGA/s400/the_dukes.jpg)

I'll say it again, three things that bother me especially in politics and political discourse are hypocrisy, deliberate ignorance or "ignorance by choice", and the notion of groups of like-minded individuals wanting to have it both ways.

This is a general statement from me, in regards to many issues of the day. The Occupy movement happens to encompass several points in my statement.

I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions on these points, and understand that I have researched these things on my own, free of leaning too heavily on any national news group like Fox, NBC, NY Times, any magazines, etc. You have to wade through a lot of crap to find direct names and references, then more specific information comes out...from both sides.

Here are a few points and a few web links to check out, to start with one particular facet of the issue. In some cases the information comes directly from the groups in question.

First, I'll go on the record as saying I do not agree with the general principles of communism as a philosophy, as an ideology, and especially not as the foundation of government. I have seen, read, discussed, etc. many different topics and points pro and con, and my opinions on communism are what they are and will remain so, and I say that so I don't get a barrage of points explaining how my opinion is "wrong", "illogical", "intolerant", etc. It won't work, I respect other opinions, just respect mine in return and we'll agree to disagree on the pros and cons of communism.

As such, when I see someone like Boots Riley acting as a de facto spokesman but unnamed leader of the Occupy Oakland movement, which turned the everyman protests into attempts to close the city and its ports and led to chaos and violence, I have to raise an eyebrow. Boots Riley has been an activist and a professed communist for several decades...now if a group or movement wants to get me personally interested in their cause, the way to do it isn't to feature someone on the fringe of the left like Boots Riley as a mouthpiece. Put some of Riley's writings, interviews, public appearances, etc. into the mainstream media and allow the regular folks who initially thought Occupy was onto something to see what one of the key organizers of the movement really feels and believes. If they can get past the admitted communist part, many "mom and pop", average-Joe 99-percenters might rethink some things about the movement, and what the goals and desires of it actually are. But the facts need to be available.

Or maybe not - that's the freedom of everyone to choose, but at least get all sides of the story out there before suggesting that as part of the 99%, people like me are standing arm-in-arm with a guy like Boots Riley, when it's just not the case.

As far as Communist Party USA, here is their website with the page specifically addressing the Occupy movement: http://cpusa.org/solidarity-with-occupy-wall-street/ (http://cpusa.org/solidarity-with-occupy-wall-street/)

I urge everyone to read it, take in all the statements, facts, and other links posted, and judge for yourself. I will say again that I do not agree with communist philosophy and I disagree with those who would seek to aspire to a communist-inspired government of any kind.

From my own formative years, I remember seeing the images of Tiananmen Square in Beijing as students *protesting the Communist government in China* took to the streets and hundreds of them were killed, imprisoned, or otherwise silenced by the communist government they were protesting. The image of one anonymous young guy standing in front of a tank column stands as the icon of the event...and is symbolic for many who were protesting against Communist rule at that time.

I also remember seeing the images of the Berlin Wall being torn down, as people celebrated the end of the division between East and West which was also morphed into the division between Communist philosophy and rule and democratic philosophy and rule.

Add into this the history of Stalinist purges in communist Russia during the 20th century, anti-communist activists and eventual leaders like Lech Walesa in Poland, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, and Chinese political activist Liu Xiaobo whose calls to end single-party rule by the Communist Party in China led him to receive a Nobel Peace Prize symbolically delivered to an empty chair since he is imprisoned by the Communist government in China for being a public dissenter...i.e. "questioning the government" in public.

Take just those few examples of many I could have cited, events I saw in my lifetime, and that is the case I'll make when a group who seeks to advertise, celebrate, and implement some the same ideals and philosophies as those being protested and which had been protested in China, Germany, Poland, etc. expresses solidarity with a movement like Occupy. But that's me. Everyone can get the facts from all sides and judge for themselves if they want to agree or disagree.

On the issue of a group wanting to have it both ways, I'll address that separately and with less words... :-D

The Philly area, as were many other urban areas, was saturated with Occupy coverage in the fall of 2011. News outlets even had their own graphic logos designed to flash on screen whenever an Occupy story was going to be shown...ahh, the good ol' media at it again. :)

As such, and as I mentioned before, the anarchy logo was a prominent feature among the participants, especially as the initial fad of the camp-outs wore off. You'd see it on signs, on hats, painted on the tent-city structures and wood shelters they were building...it even began showing up in subway tunnels and bus stations around various forms of vandalism which included dumping human waste inside a subway stop.

So what is the message being sent by displaying the anarchy logo? Are these protestors calling for anarchy?

If Occupy Wall Street was originally organized around the concept of reforming, fixing, or otherwise correcting the abuses and the blatant (sometimes publicly flaunted) corruption of Wall Street, that is an issue which many would agree with, including myself.

The most obvious solution would be in the form of stricter government regulations, correct? Stronger oversight, more vigilant observation, perhaps changes in the codes and laws governing the activities of Wall Street coming from government groups like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. Also, more controls coming from those in any given administration or any elected body, like the various Congressional committees and a cabinet official like Timothy Geithner who is Treasury Secretary.

Yet isn't anarchy at least as it is defined in several dictionaries "the absence of government" and the disorder caused by the absence of government rule?

So a case could be made that if those calling for anarchy and flashing the anarchy sign were to get their way, Wall Street might just become more corrupt and more dangerous than the system it exists within right now in the absence of any government or government-funded agencies to oversee or regulate their activity.

So does Occupy call for *more* oversight and more government controls over various Wall Street activities, yet at the same time have the anarchy sign be displayed so prominently at various public rallies which suggests they don't want any government regulation at all?

Many of the same people would rail against government regulations over art, music, censorship issues, etc. from groups from the government agency the FCC to startups like the PMRC who seek broadcast standards and applied censorship of things deemed inappropriate for general broadcast. So in that case, they do not want government controlling the entertainment or the broadcast business.

Yet Occupy, in calling for more regulation over Wall Street, would seem to want more government control over that business, since the federal government is currently charged with regulating it...yet many Occupy members who display the symbols of the anarchist movement are, as anarchists, in essence seeking to disable or eliminate government control in general in favor of complete freedom from governmental rule and regulation.

Contradiction? Or do these protestors showing anarchist symbols not understand the meanings behind that concept of anarchy?

fringe groups ruin protests for everybody.

Is Communist Party USA a fringe group? How about Tides Foundation? Fenton Communications? Adbusters?

Look 'em up, Google 'em, whatever! Kalle Lasn, too. :)

I would say that a communist party with only a few thousand followers in a nation of 300 million is a fringe group.

A few thousand members, that's what you think? Read for yourself from CP USA's website: http://cpusa.org/press-and-media/ (http://cpusa.org/press-and-media/)   Their own literature suggests more than a few thousand.

How about the Tides Foundation? Find out how much money is transferred and distributed through that organization, and how many organizations are connected through and receive funding through Tides.

As far as Occupy, ever wonder how at some rallies there seemed to be a number of identical, professionally printed signs and placards being carried around? Ever wonder who or what financed and designed these signs? Or who a group may hire to publicize and advertise these events, not to mention offer advice and coaching on media relations and talking points? Look up Fenton Communications and who they list as clients.

Adbusters? A fringe group? Search them and the name Kalle Lasn, look for the information, no explanation necessary there. See who first Twittered the hashtag "OCCUPYWALLSTREET" months before an actual protest was formed. Look up the name Micah White.

Should these well-funded groups, organizations, and public figures be labeled "fringe"?

The communist party literature is propaganda designed to inflate their numbers. Hell ,fringe right wing groups were at tea party rallies. All rallies all over the political spectrum are taken over by wacky groups that only want attention, that is how riots start from peaceful rallies.

First of all, I think you are backing someone into a corner when you state that the Occupy movement is problematic because of its association with communism and that it’s no point trying to make an argument for communism since no matter what someone says, you’re not going to care. In that case, you’ve entirely made up your mind about Occupy already and I am to understand that your starting point that you are “genuinely interested in hearing opinions on these points” is, in fact, not serious.

It is really impossible to discuss your point of view about Occupy without at first disentangling what I believe to be a gross mischaracterization of what communism is – particularly as you oppose it to democracy. Let’s take one of your examples – namely the atrocities of Stalinism. Well, was that communism? First of all, what is communism? What is a communist society supposed to look like? For that, it is necessary to examine the actual philosophy. So you have Marx for example in the second chapter of The Communist Manifesto summing up what a properly functioning communist society is supposed to look like. Namely, it is one where “class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation.” Consequently, Marx adds, there will be no political power in a communist state, since political power “is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another.” In other words, communist societies are non-hierarchal. There is no state power.

As far as I’m concerned, not only is Stalinism precisely the opposite of this, but so is Leninism. This is why the Bolshevik revolution carried out by Lenin was heavily criticized by mainstream Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg and Antonie Pannekoek who argued, quite correctly, that Bolshevism was an enormous perversion of Marxism and that a genuine socialist or communist society would be organized through democratic workers’ councils not state power. The Lenin revolution was in many ways a coup which took power from genuine Marxists. One of Lenin’s first orders of business was to destroy the factory councils, thereby putting into actual practice and reinforcing his anti-socialist and anti-Marxist stance. Stalinism was much worse – an even greater perversion than Lenin but Stalinism wouldn’t have been possible were it not for Lenin deviating entirely from communism, something that the Marxists at the time were far from quiet about – you can go check the historical record on that.

So it seems to me that when you talk about protests against “Communist rule” as you do throughout your post, you can’t actually be talking about communism since the term “Communist rule” is an oxymoron, if we are to accept Marx’s word on what a communist society is supposed to look like.

So, here’s how I see the support of the Communist party: While I wouldn’t call myself a communist, I do agree with the basic Marxist principle that the social relations of production are antagonistic because the capitalist mode of production is inherently exploitative. Consequently, the way out of this antagonistic and exploitative model into something more liberating, free, and productive is to have workers in control of the means of production. Since I agree with this basic principle, I think that the support of the Communist party is potentially productive and useful when it comes to explaining the conditions of our existence.

So this brings me to a point of yours:


I think you are reducing what the 99% slogan actually means. If it was simply made up of “mom and pops” and average-Joe’s (although what an “average-Joe” is, I couldn’t possibly say nor could anyone) then I think you’d end up with a much smaller number than 99%. As I’ve said elsewhere, the slogan is referring to the fact that in the United States, 1% of the US own 38% of the wealth. Therefore, the decisions over what happens over investments, production, distribution, and so on, are in the hands of this extraordinarily small and concentrated network of major corporations, conglomerates, and investment firms. This network of concentrated power likewise owns virtually all of the mainstream media and they historically help get people elected into office. The 99% then is referring not only to people but also points of view, political ideologies, and so on, that are effectively shut out of the major decisions that occur throughout the country.

This is why your point, that “Riley’s writings” should be put “into the mainstream media” to “allow the regular folks” to see what they were participating in is somewhat missing the point because, in fact, Riley’s writings would never seriously appear in the mainstream media because he holds a position that has been de-legitimized precisely because it works to undermine the power of the 1% who virtually run the country. In this respect, that part of the 99% crowd should espouse actual left-wing points of view like communism makes perfect sense since that is a point of view that has been entirely disenfranchised at the political level. It is those points of view that have been rendered entirely voice-less by the mainstream, ruling elite. I would argue that an unfortunate consequence of this is precisely that people end up holding views about, say, communism and anarchism (I deal with that below) that are entirely false. So again, the 99% crowd is supposed to be the disenfranchised and marginalized majority and I would say that any left wing figure would make an excellent symbol for the group.


Again, I wouldn’t agree with your depiction of anarchism, and as an anarchist myself, I clearly take this quite seriously. Note that I use the term “anarchism” and not “anarchy.” Anarchism, as I mentioned in the O’Reilly thread (and here I’ll just cut and paste a bit again) is a crucial historical philosophy that has a vibrant tradition carried out by major intellectual figures such as Mikhail Bakunin and Rudolf Rocker. According to these crucial figures in the movement, anarchism in no way suggests “disorder.” Quite on the contrary, anarchist societies should be highly organized including socialist workers councils in industry and direct, full participatory democracy in communities. Societies would be federated, decentralized, and worked by means of free associations. Anarchism does not simply mean chaos. What it means, according to Bakunin is that, like in socialist societies, workers have control over their own work and also, specific to anarchism, that individuals, associations, nations and so on would all have an equal “absolute right to self-determination, to associate or not to associate, [and] to ally themselves with whomever they wish.”

The end goal of communists, socialists, and anarchists are virtually the same – in each case there should be no political power (what you describe from the dictionary definition as “the absence of government” which is, again, not quite right but I’ll get back to that) although Marx does believe in a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat (also from The Communist Manifesto) while anarchists like Bakunin stress direct, participatory action from the masses in overturning the system. Now certainly the government as we conventionally understand it as a ruling state power would not exist in either a properly functioning anarchist society or a properly functioning socialist society. Nevertheless, both societies should be organized and should carry out major decisions in terms of how the society should be run and how it should operate. The difference is that these decisions are made with the participation of everyone who wishes to participate. And here is where the Bakunin caveat of “to associate or not to associate” is crucial. So there are still governments in a sense, but they are radically re-conceived as being directly democratic in the fullest sense of the term.

Do anarchists then have a vested interest in reforming a system in which a very slim minority holds an extraordinary amount of power? Of course they do.

Now any good leftist understands that the ideal society they have in mind isn’t going to occur overnight. In fact, it wouldn’t occur in five years. It has to happen slowly and part of how it happens is through open, participatory protests like Occupy. In fact, it is in the best interest of any leftist (communist, socialist, anarchist) to curtail the amount of control that the corporate world has over the government, namely because in our current system, it is through the government where the people actually have some sort of influence. Corporations, on the other hand, are inherently tyrannical in structure.

Now a few things:

Do the people who hold up anarchist signs in protests necessarily know this history? It’s difficult to say. I would imagine some do and some don’t. I myself have never used the symbol once in my life. The point is whether or not the movement is discredited because of the anarchists. As far as I’m concerned, if you look at the history, it’s not.

Second, it is not necessary for the long term goals of everyone in the Occupy movement to be the same, particularly if the short term goals are the same. In fact, it would be antithetical for an anarchist to presume that there wouldn’t be differences of opinion, that certain groups of people would focus on some things rather than others, etc.

With that in mind, it seems to me, that the average Occupy protestor would find that clearing up “Wall Street corruption” will ultimately prove to be an extremely difficult if not entirely impossible task given the current structural set-up. It seems to me that the problem can only really be solved when people allow themselves to confront the real source of the problem and once they allow that, they will find that they will be inevitably led to genuine systemic critiques. Only time will tell whether or not people are at this historical moment prepared to make that confrontation, but the good work done thus far by Occupy at the very least provides the stepping stones to some important long term goals that may in fact lead to some sort of genuine emancipation for the people.

It's great to see ideas and philosophies being traded and discussed as they are. Ultimately, I will say my views on communism and why I disagree with it are all but set in stone, and I reach many of those conclusions through a study of history. Namely, what was the result in our fairly modern times when societies were governed under the tenets of communism?

Whether the labels are accurate, and cases can of course be made on that topic pro and con, we have in modern world history the examples of those societies which men like Havel and Walesa wrote against and fought to end, we have scores of writers, thinkers, and other dissenters against communist rule in Russia and China imprisoned and killed for opposing it, and we have examples of countries who have ruled as communist societies which have failed. The falling of the Berlin wall - symbolic of the divisions caused by communism and people seeking to escape that kind of rule which spread into Europe from Russia under communism.

Again, it is correct to challenge how the term is applied and/or defined by those ruling, but seeing the ultimate results of countries who were governed and ruled by communists in modern history makes a very strong case against those wishing to move closer to that type of society in other societies.

Sometimes theories can be argued on paper, through mathematical and theoretical formulas, and in classrooms and think-tanks to no end, yet where they may make sense in theory, once something is put into a test tube of real life and where real people and all their foibles are added into the mix, we can only judge the effectiveness of the theories after they've been tested and put into practice. In the case of communism, specifically in the 20th century, as modern a control as we may find, none of it has been successful, in fact quite the opposite.

So from my perspective, a group advocating communism in everyday practice is not a group I'll agree with. And if something in the Occupy movement's philosophy appeals to those advocates of communism enough to express solidarity and join the movement, I'll not agree with them and I will raise a more cynical eyebrow at their attempts to achieve a set of goals. If their means to an end agrees with communism, and I've seen the results of societies who have been governed under communism, I will not side with those advocating it.

Again, if we are to accept that "the tenets of communism" were established by Karl Marx, then these tenets are simply that a properly functioning communist society is where  the workers have complete control over the means of production in a society or nation that has no political power and no hierarchical structure (see quote I provided above). If communism has any tenets, that's what they are. Once you understand that, I'd be curious to know what societies or nations you think have had such a structure? Certainly not any state in the Soviet Union and certainly not China. As far as I know, I can think of only a few. Namely, Aragon and Catalonia, Spain in the 1930s. These societies that were socialist-anarchist in their structure were quite successful. It is by no coincidence that they were destroyed not from within or from any internal problems but by severe military force mostly coming from Stalinist Russia. What this tells us ultimately is that Marxist principles if applied can have positive results but can also be dangerous to major power centers, as Russia was at the time. It was therefore necessary for Stalin to crush the society that was honestly living by Marxist principles and showing itself as a positive model - something that the repressed Russians probably could have learned something from.

Simply put, Soviet Russia, like China, was communist in name only not in practice. Now why did they hold on to the name for as long as they did? Well, for one, when Lenin was establishing his coup against the traditional Marxist movement, he adopted the term in an act of overt political opportunism. Like I said above, this was recognized for precisely what it was by the mainstream Marxist movement at the time. It was perfectly understood by Marxists, whom Lenin overtly referred to as being part of the "infantile Left," that Lenin did not represent a Marxist position, and ultimately his destruction of the factory councils as soon as he entered power, reaffirmed that in practice. Marxism though was the most popular current amongst the Russian population at that time and therefore it was necessary that Lenin appear to belong to that group as well in order to come into power. The things he said in print in 1917 deviated considerably from the political beliefs he outlined before, and after he came into power, he reverted back to his previous position. After that, as Russia became the Soviet Union and took control of socialism and communism in the international sphere, it became necessary to evoke the names of socialism and communism in order to exploit those names for the moral weight they carried amongst certain populations throughout the world, just as it became necessary for the United States to evoke the names of socialism and communism whenever it became necessary to discredit someone or some country they had a problem with.


Again, I'd be curious to see your examples since, again, the only examples that I think are valid are in places like Aragon and Catalonia which were successful in their short time that they were allowed to function by outside power. The examples you give of Havel and Walesca are interesting choices. Havel was used somewhat as a propaganda puppet by the United States because Havel praised the US openly for being some kind of beacon of freedom in the years following massive repression and bloodbaths in US supported countries. The San Salvadoran press reported that had Walesca done in the US client state El Salvador what he had done in Poland, he would have more than likely been murdered like other intellectual or dissident figures had been there by the brutal dictatorial state that the United States supported both in praise and with instrumental financial and military aid. The US at that time too had just ended their period under Reagan when they had been the only country in the world who had not only made an official commitment to commit terror but were condemned by the International Criminal Court for serious war crimes as a result of that commitment. Ultimately, while Havel and Walesca should be praised, the treatment by them by the political and intellectual elite in the so-called capitalist countries was nothing short of sheer hypocrisy as they applauded these men for their courage in fighting against repression while they themselves were either carrying out or supporting some of the worst crimes of the century.

Choosing Havel/Walesa as examples was an interesting choice, enough to list ways in which the examples of these two can be challenged, and it's easy to admit that because both men have skeletons in their closets and can be walking contradictions, I'll agree with that: That's fine in a debate setting, but what about activist Liu Xiaobo? He received the Nobel Prize while (still) imprisoned in China for the crimes of fighting the rule of the Communist Party in power there exclusively. He publicly fought against communist rule in China, and was jailed for it. Was he or his case intentionally left out of the reply alongside Havel and Walesa as anti-communist public figures, or were Havel and Walesa easier to impugn? :) Was Xiaobo basing his opposition to communist rule on a flawed definition of communism as a theory, or was his issue with the way the theory was put into governing practice by the Communist Party currently ruling China?

For other examples I'd say go right to the primary sources and find someone from Cuba who fled the communist government there, find someone from Poland who fled when that country was governed under communism, perhaps find someone from China who fled there as well. Find out what their opinion is of communism and communist government rule, and hear it from the source of people who actually lived through it and chose to flee. I'm not being cheeky and suggesting a face-to-face meeting, but rather looking through interviews and other accounts readily available for some first-person accounts.

And the reason many of them give is one word: freedom. Take it as naive, take it as too simplistic, take it so far as to say it's inaccurate, but try to convince them otherwise.

I'm not being facetious, I'm trying to see this as realistic and outside the scope of debating theory over practice. We can go back and forth on the proper definitions, on the ways the communist philosophy as espoused by Marx and Engels and their followers hasn't been properly enacted but works very well in theory...all of that means nothing to the people who fled Cuba on handmade rafts to escape Castro's communist regime, East Germany, Poland, etc., the refugees who fled as part of the mass exodus of Cambodians to escape Pol Pot.

Bringing up Pol Pot, where does he and the Khmer Rouge fit into the definitions of communism, or the possibilities of ruling a country with communist philosophies?

Pol Pot was a communist in his philosophy, in his writings, in his approach to governing...his design for the country and its people was a self-described communist utopia where no belongings were allowed and citizens worked in collectives, mostly farm-based, where all would work for the general good of society.

And witness what happened in "The Killing Fields" of Cambodia where the numbers estimated of those killed or otherwise missing run into the millions. The Soviet Union under Stalin shared similar practices of imprisoning and eliminating those who would disagree, dissent, or simply weren't useful. The Khmer Rouge killings weren't from famine or denial of medicine or medical treatment, they were killings where the victims would often dig their own graves then be executed at those sites. If there were a grave at all. Cold blood.

Now this Pol Pot was an educated man whose principles of leadership, whose worldview and philosophies on governing a society, were rooted in his communist studies and beliefs, and the results of applying his vision of communist utopia to Cambodia did eventually lead to mass graves occupied by potentially several million people, with that many more perhaps remaining unknown and unidentified since the Khmer Rouge would eliminate any traces of family histories where they were able, destroying all documents and photo evidence that proved someone had once lived in that country.

I would not attempt to say communism as a pure theory is to blame for atrocities like this, however it was worth noting that this government of Khmer Rouge was created and run under the leadership of a man who was student of communist philosophy and who actively sought to govern his country under the banner of communism and specifically the concept of "agrarian socialism".

Again, I'll say, that example is evidence from afar: I'm not Cambodian, I have not personally known any Cambodians well enough to call them a friend, but any number of accounts and first-person narratives describing what happened there under a communist government are available. If the points about pure Marx-style communism or the definitions of communism versus what is practiced in countries like China and Cuba, or what was practiced in countries like Russia and Cambodia would mean anything to the people who either fled communist countries or escaped with their lives in the worst situations, that would be coming from someone who actually lived it instead of someone who knows the issue by researching it from afar.

And if the phrase "some of the worst crimes of the century" is to be applied, I'd say many people wouldn't look too far beyond Hitler's Germany in the 30's and 40's, Pol Pot's Cambodia in the 70's, Stalin's Russia for much of his time as leader, and whomever gets the blame for the atrocities in Maoist China.

Can the case be made to someone whose family or who personally has fled communism in favor of "freedom" in another country that communism as a philosophy isn't as bad as the results would suggest? Or that the definition of communism exceeds in its theoretical potential that which has actually happened when governments and leaders calling themselves "communist" and espousing communist beliefs have assumed power?

I spent all morning crafting a response that for some reason disappeared after I wrote most it. I'm afraid I won't be able to respond for some time now.

Oh, what the hell. I'll try to replicate as best as I can the responses I gave earlier but it won't be nearly as in-depth


First of all, it should be noted that I didn't "impugn" Havel and Walesa. In fact, I said exactly that they "should be praised." What I did say what that their appraisal by Western elites and the reason why they were made very well known in the West is precisely because they were the right kind of victims and speaking out against the oppression that should be spoken against, namely Soviet oppression. Because they didn't say anything about the worse oppression that was occurring under US rule, this made them excellent figures to be placed in the spotlight.

Liu Xiaobo is, of course, an excellent case for the Nobel Prize winner since he's calling for the Westernization of China, a view that inevitably will get you lavish praise from elite circles. I would argue that Liu Xiaobo has not opposed communist rule, since the term itself is a contradiction, but rather has opposed state power and has paid a price for doing so. But if you look at say Charter 08 which Xiaobo played an instrumental role in drafting, you'll see that he is much more concentrated on "authoritarianism" than communism.


You'd get the same sentiment about US oppression in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Thailand, South Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and most of the Middle East.

In fact in some of those countries, the oppressed people would have viewed the Soviet Union as the only hope for self-determination against US oppression. Take, for example, Nicaragua during the 80s under Sandinista rule. The Sandinistas were a reformist government, and raised the standard of living in the country in terms of health, development, literacy, and so on. Because they provided this kind of successful model for nationalist reform, they naturally had to be destroyed by the US government. Now at that point, Nicaraguan trade with the Soviets was about on par with US trade with the Soviets. Once the US began their attack against Nicaragua, they moved to block international aid to the country leaving Nicaragua with the only option of Soviet support if they were going to have any hope of preserving some kind of autonomous rule. This was perfectly acceptable to the US who were desperate to find a credible reason for using unlawful force against a relatively successful reformist regime.

You mention Cuba and Cuba is an interesting case. The US government did everything it could to try and prevent Castro from coming to power but once they couldn't stop that, they ultimately moved to carry out a long-standing terrorist campaign in the country directed primarily towards the people of Cuba as punishment for making the wrong choice in a democratic forum. Since massive poverty was an inevitable consequence of this policy, that could be then used as a way to discredit the Castro regime. Had Cuba been able to develop naturally, it's hard to say what might have happened there.


The plight of the people you mention should be taken with the utmost sympathy and their concerns should be treated seriously, as should the plight of people from Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Haiti, Thailand, South Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, East Timor, the Middle East, etc. The difference is that the plight of the people I mention has been systematically eliminated from the mainstream historical record precisely because the primarily responsible agent for that suffering has been us. You're not supposed to care about those victims and frankly you're not supposed to know about them.

As far as going "back and forth on the proper definitions," I don't really think there's any debate. It's uncontroversial. Communism was constructed as an economic and political philosophy by Marx and Engels and therefore they are responsible for the definition. And furthermore since you are what you do and not who you say you are, the discussion is really irrelevant. So for example, I and a few other people could identify ourselves as being some of the strongest men in the world and we may actually believe it, but then if you give us something moderately heavy to lift we couldn't do it. The conclusion you reach from that is plainly not, "Strong people can't lift moderately heavy things." The only rational conclusion is that "these are not strong men, despite how they self-identify." The reason why is because strength actually means something, as does communism. And you can do two things at that point: you can trust the definition given by the people who created the term, or you can trust the entirely opposite definition concocted by regimes of power (namely the United States and the Soviet Union) who are historically invested in creating a confusion of terminology.


Again, I repeat: a benchmark of communist philosophy is that nations should have no political power. In that sense "ruling a country with communist philosophies" is simply a contradiction of terms. Hopefully that takes care of the Pol Pot example.

But one more thing on that:


The death toll under Indonesia's Suharto for example also runs "into the millions" including about 750,000 people murdered in a purge under Suharto's control (backed by the US) in 1965-66. This bloodbath though was praised, and still is in Western circles (that is the circles where this bloodbath is allowed to be discussed, which is rare) because it targeted communists. Therefore, it was an acceptable bloodbath, unlike the one carried out by Pol Pot.


Certainly the 20th century was notoriously bloody with the examples you give as ranking amongst the worst crimes. That nevertheless doesn't preclude the Reagan Administration from committing or supporting some of the worst crimes of the century. Take for example, its commitment to terrorism in Nicaragua, its force in El Salvador, leading to about 60,000 deaths, its support of the "Scorched Earth" campaign in Guatemala which led to 100,000 deaths, its support of violent military dicatorships in Haiti, its crucial support and aid to the genocide of the East Timorese, its attack on Grenada, its support of Saddam Hussein during his most criminal period, and the decisive support of radical Islamic fundamentalism taking hold in the Middle East. Yeah, this isn't Hitler, but altogether, this certainly ranks with some of the worst crimes of the century.  


Since what they are fleeing is not "the results" of communism, the very premise of the statement would be wrong.


I'd like to know which people you talk about who espouse communist beliefs and how they accounted for the crucial Marxist perspective that a communist society should have no political power, thereby making their role non-existent. Yes, it has been very necessary historically for both US and Soviet power sectors to foster the belief that the definition of communism is something wholly different than what the architects of communism wrote about, but that's simply of no particular consequence to me. I'm under no obligation to go along with this obvious ideological charade.

Again with the example of Cuba this time, there is an asterisk placed next to the failure of a government which defined itself as communist. Had it been allowed to develop naturally...the crux of a sentiment like that assumes a social engineering experiment will be free of outside influence and outside stimuli, both pro and con, and that also assumes basic human nature and psychology will not be a factor.

Assuming that in any geopolitical philosophy is like assuming an experiment in a lab under tightly controlled conditions will produce the same results when exposed to natural elements. If the theory and/or hypothesis which has been shown to work on paper and is being tested in a lab depends on the lack of external influences to be considered a viable option or a "success", that theory will never work in actual practice because nothing is devoid of external influences and nothing can be sheltered and allowed to grow naturally without accounting for those external influences.

Thus, the theory of a pure communist nation being organized and allowed to grow and develop naturally borders on utopian fantasy. If you were to take the most pure piece of land available in the world, and populate it with the most devoted and educated residents willing and able to follow the tenets of Marx and communism in general, it would be naive to expect that nation to not be influenced by human nature and interpersonal psychology from within, and the influence of surrounding nations wishing to take your property from outside.

So a theory like having a true communist society, if it depends on strict controls and little or no outside influence, may work on paper and in discussions but would eventually fail when put into the natural environment.

I am, in fact, assuming one thing: that every country has the right to self-determination and the right to not be terrorized by the self-appointed world police because they happened to make a democratic choice that wasn’t liked by the world’s leading superpower. Powerful imperial nations have historically held to a single principle, namely that we have the right to self-determination and this is a right that no other state in the world has. Other states can be free to proceed as intended and will be left alone if they make the choices we agree with but if we disagree then we reserve the unchallenged right to do everything possible to overturn that choice. This is pure, unadulterated imperial tyranny and a shameful affront to anyone who seriously holds true democratic values. The case of Cuba comes down to a simple question – do the Cuban people have the right to self-determination? If you answer yes, then you immediately oppose the long-standing US position on the matter. My point was simply this: had the Cuban people been allowed to determine their own interests rather than have their interests sharply condemned and punished by the world’s leading superpower, then the results would have been different than what they have been though unpredictable. Whatever they would have been, it becomes impossible to characterize Cuba as a failure of communism, since its failures lie predominantly with the power center who has been heavily invested in discrediting the popular movement there for decades.


I agree and also assume it's common sense that there are a variety of "external influences" and that, say, the local climate is different from a terrorist campaign targeting the population.


Well, it would have also been naive to think in the 18th century that a world largely without slavery would be possible. It would have been naive in the 19th century to believe that a world where women could have a considerable amount of real control and influence would be possible. It would have been naive in the 1500s to believe that there could be a workable economic and political system that wasn't monarchal or feudalist in structure. Yeah, history is filled with so-called naive beliefs coming true. And more over, as I've already mentioned, there have been examples that have defied the kind of consequence you outline, namely Aragon and Catalonia, Spain. It is important to note that their destruction was not the result of "surrounding nations wishing to take property." Rather, they were destroyed precisely because they were a model of success. Now if you're saying that communism couldn't work because the world is so brutal that it wouldn't allow it to take place, then we really have to re-assess the kind of world we live in. I don't really think that you actually take this position because it needs to be thought through. After all, there's basically only one group of people who actually believe that you can prove that a system doesn't work by destroying it: terrorists.  From my perspective, this just isn't the case and furthermore, I don't subscribe to any theory that relies on historical givens. In fact, if history tells us anything, it's that seemingly insurmountable tasks can be overcome and that there has been an increasing desire to become more free and liberated. And if we are to say simply that communism only works on paper because power centers are inherently destructive in practice, then that rationally follows that our critiques, our energy and our focus should be specifically on the power centers and not the philosophy. That if what is getting in the way, as it were of this so-called "Utopia" (a term I have enormous problems with) is the fact that states are instruments of violence, then our end goal should be to undermine such power.


You could say the same thing about a true capitalist society at this point. Certainly there has been nothing resembling a true capitalist model in the first world, which has always depended on a protectionist model. The only examples of any kind of "true capitalism" would have to be in the third world where free market systems have been violently shoved down the throats of the population and since it's the Third World, they don't have the luxury of allowing for protectionism and consequently the system has led to enormous poverty - as was the case in Haiti and Nicaragua, the two poorest countries in the hemisphere. One could similarly argue then that capitalism "may work on paper" but "fails when put into the natural environment."

I'm suggesting again that communism as a model may work in theory but not in practice. Going back in history to the 1500's, into issues of Emancipation in the mid to late 1800's, to the Suffrage movement in the early 20th century, those comparisons if we take everything surrounding those events seem to come from a more distant time than even the numbers would suggest. We could say who in the suffrage movement could imagine supersonic jets flying people across the ocean on a regular basis? How about robotics being used in technology, computers, satellite technology, and fiber optics connecting people across the entire globe in an instant, social media, video conferencing, artificial hearts and organ transplants, etc. The list goes on and on. That 100 years could be made to feel like 300 years, whereas examples from as late as the 1980's up to modern times with North Korea, Cuba, and China would feel more relevant to our modern era and modern perception.

If people being asked to decide on the feasibility and the practicality of embracing communist theory would look for examples, again those countries or leaders who labeled themselves and their governments "communist", the examples of failure or outright abuse of the public in those societies can be found in the last 50 years, and in some cases a much closer example of a comparable working society as it exists today rather than going back to 1912.

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome if the communist philosophy were ever to be promoted to the public at large as a viable option would be the precedent set by countries and leaders like Mao, like Stalin, like Castro, like Pol Pot, like Nicolae Ceausescu, like a more recent public figure such as Kim Jong-Il from North Korea. No matter what the definition may have morphed into or had become corrupted into becoming, the examples of those leaders prominent in the last 50 years would serve to dissuade many based on what they know of those leaders and those regimes. And again, the uniting theme of all those men I just mentioned was that they were self-described communists and their regimes were run under the banner of communism. Many may see these examples and conclude it just didn't work. What became of those societies wouldn't equal the ends justifying the means.

Then I'm suggesting again that the same can be said for capitalism. Since I can't think of an example where it has worked "in practice", and since you refused to offer an example, then I assume we can similiarly suggest that we should never support a capitalist run society either.


I really don't understand your point. My point again is that in each case, if someone suggested the world as it exists today as some kind of model, it would have seemed hopelessly naive to those societies. I think that once you understand my point, your assertion about people looking to contemporary examples rather than ones from 1912 is somewhat dealt with.


Which is precisely why the definition has been "morphed" or "become corrupted" as you put it, or entirely mischaracterized, which is the reality of the situation. It is, in fact, crucial for all elite power centers that the population is misguided into thinking that Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ceausescu were communists because they fear people embracing actual communism. The goal of rational thinking people is not to perpetuate this entirely false and gross mischaracterization but instead to explain to people what the terms actually mean, and what possibilities are, in fact, available. This is a difficult thing to do, mind you, since no elite power center wants this because if people actually knew that Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot were not communists in any way, shape or form, that what they really represented was authoritarian state power which is entirely antithetical to communism, then people might actually begin to think for themselves, find out what communism really is, and this puts these power centers at risk. Again, all this gross mischaracterization does is reinforce the same kind of power that you seem to object so strongly to. So, I would object to your conclusion and argue that "One of the biggest hurdles to overcome if the communist philosophy were ever to be promoted to the public at large" is that it is clearly in the best interest of the ruling elite that the philosophy shouldn't be promoted to the public at large and if the name is evoked, that the public should be made to be confused about what the term means. That's the hurdle. The atrocious record of some of the people you mention is entirely inconsequential since if we were honest and rational, we would understand that their ongoing association with communism has simply been the result of relentless indoctrination. Incidentally, a very similar ideological indoctrination is work when we don't call for the end of capitalism when we learn that self-proclaimed capitalist Indonesia was responsible for deaths that ran into the millions, a bloodbath vigorously supported by decades of crucial financial aid and military support by other self-proclaimed capitalist nations like the United States and Canada. People don't typically call for the end of capitalism because we simply don't associate those deaths with capitalism, despite the fact that the association is probably more easily made than the one that connects Stalinist murders to communism. Ideological indoctrination works incredibly well but it only works precisely when you don't know it's working at all.

And again, using Castro is another perfect example of ideological indoctrination since it rests on the assumption that we have not been a responsible agent in helping to destroy the quality of life there. Again, using Cuba as an example of the failure of communism is really saying that Cubans don't have the right to self-determination. It would be the same thing if one used Vietnam as an example.

Refused to offer an example? Of communism not working? What are you reading anyway? :-D

I offered a list of names, their regimes and the countries in which they led. Every example was countered with either an attempt to provide a morally relevant example where the US was involved in something just as bad, or an attempt to explain away the failures of communist societies by saying they weren't communist by a strict definition of communism, and how attempts at true communist societies have been struck down by the powers that be. Then, by whose definition of communism? Your definition, the leaders' own definitions when they lead under a banner of communism, or the definitions of those who lived in these regimes? So, should we assume those leaders calling themselves communists or professing to be communists are somehow lying by labeling themselves communists?

The example of the Nobel Prize winner who is currently sitting in jail, sentenced by the Communist government for protesting the single-party rule of the communist government in China, was answered by this:

Liu Xiaobo is, of course, an excellent case for the Nobel Prize winner since he's calling for the Westernization of China, a view that inevitably will get you lavish praise from elite circles. I would argue that Liu Xiaobo has not opposed communist rule, since the term itself is a contradiction, but rather has opposed state power and has paid a price for doing so. But if you look at say Charter 08 which Xiaobo played an instrumental role in drafting, you'll see that he is much more concentrated on "authoritarianism" than communism.

So praise from"elite circles" becomes an issue of what, exactly? Is it looking to explain away the prize given to someone whose views seek to "Westernize" a country considered communist as sympathetic to the anti-communist leanings of those running things from afar? Could that standard also be used to effectively challenge the validity of that same Peace Prize being awarded to a president of the US who had not yet taken office when he was nominated for the award, to say the very act of winning an election is a firm enough basis to award a peace prize despite having done nothing in an official capacity to qualify for the award? The man is in jail for opposing communist rule in China! He opposed state power, and that state power labels itself communist! There is no grey area there, take all the misunderstandings about the definitions of communism and they don't add up to equal the fact that this man is in jail for protesting the communist government in China. If he is protesting and criticizing a government and the way they rule his country, and that government is ruling under a communist label and basing decisions on communism, the man is in jail for protesting communism. The notion that he is instead concentrated on "authoritarianism" would ignore the fact that the "authoritarianism" he is concentrated on is a direct result of the rule of a communist government. He's not protesting authoritarian rule in England or the US or some other random country, he protested the Chinese *communist* government and was thrown in jail for doing so.

Honestly, defending communism as a political or social theory is one thing, but suggesting a man who was jailed by a government run by communists, for protesting single-party rule by communists, and who openly opposed the state power brought forth by a communist government isn't necessarily opposing communism seems a bit too far of a stretch of logic. Or it could be a deliberate attempt to convince those reading that an opposition to communism wasn't the basis of either his protests or his imprisonment.

I'd suggest this to the individual groups like CP USA and Occupy and whoever else: The groups espousing communism as a solution should own it. Own the notion of communism, sing its praises, get all the information out there, and if the free will of the people means anything in the process, let them decide. Let them challenge, let them read facts from both sides, let them hear and see direct evidence from those who have lived under communism and those who feel is has been misinterpreted and misunderstood. Or if there is no "true" communism behind any of the failed leaders who have professed themselves to be communists, let them find something resembling a practical working model on which they can judge the theory when put into practice, before deciding to change their current society into one more related to the communist philosophy. If Communist Party USA finds reasons to walk in solidarity with the Occupy movement, then celebrate it! Display the signs, have people admit when given the mouthpiece by the media that we, as communists, agree with this movement and give the reasons why. If it is truly a workable solution, truly a theory which can be put into practice and benefit societies as a whole, then own it and be proud of it. Make those theories a benchmark of the movement, if elements of communism are in agreement with that being expressed by Occupy or any other group.

Such groups can make it so easy for the public to decide by putting it all out there. If certain anti-capitalist sentiment has roots in communist theory, the groups or individuals should shout it out loud and own it. They should also not make exceptions for those 1%'ers who agree with and/or contribute to their causes, if the general good of society is the ultimate goal.

I've never been a fan of the debating tactic where mentioning how many negatives there are on the other side when a negative example is given against your side is used to prove something other than challenging the initial point. If I'm debating the quality of a flavor of ice cream like Rocky Road, why is it necessary to hear how bad five other flavors of ice cream might be in comparison, relevant to my dislike of Rocky Road? :)

I feel bad that I left this thread dangling now.

As I suggested in the above thread, I had to stay away from this thread in particular because it was proving an all-too tempting distraction from my doctorate exams. To my regret I just recently participated in another political thread which I thought wouldn't take up as much time (it didn't) but it ended up proving more frustrating because, apart from The Real Beach Boy who I really respect, the people I had been debating with weren't serious and were not interested in engaging in an actual discussion. This is a shame because it seems to me that guitarfool2002 genuinely interested in having a conversation that was relatively mature and cool-headed (though I still find his already settled conclusions on communism problematic and feel that those conclusions really dictated how are our discussion progressed). If guitarfool is up for it, I wouldn't mind continuing this thread (I'll have to re-read it to re-familiarize myself with all the points) but I will probably won't be able to always respond quickly with my exam being on the 25th. Anyway, let me know!

There have been so many Beach Boys related things going on apart from being busy in general that I haven't had as much time. But based on events of this week, I will chime in with one point that is somewhat related to my last post in this thread:

Does the Occupy movement or any local branches of that movement have an opinion, statement, or comment about this week's Hollywood fundraiser for the Obama re-election effort, hosted by George Clooney, attended by a group of wealthy "1%'ers" to borrow the term, and which raised an estimated 15 million dollars (US) for some entity or fund connected to either Obama or the Democratic Party?

At some point the knife needs to start cutting both ways.

I heard nothing or saw no efforts to protest, disrupt, or make an issue of Clooney's fundraiser. If there were any efforts made, I would like to know of them and that would be the reason for my posting this here. I want to know: Does Occupy have a statement or a message on *this particular event*, and if so, i have not heard it, and if not...why not?

It might demonstrate the "free pass" given to certain one-percenters who might lean a certain way politically. Or it might demonstrate something far more obvious and hypocritical, but until hearing a solid statement or lack of a statement, I'll remain cynical and wait to see/hear the results.

Because, at the end of it all, that 15 million isn't chump change. And it's not coming from the working class in a lump sum like that. So, in essence, fair is fair and hypocrisy should be called out as such.

Haven't been following too closely, but if they did, it wouldn't be the first time:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/12/occupy-wall-street-demonstrates-against-obama-fundraiser.html (http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/12/occupy-wall-street-demonstrates-against-obama-fundraiser.html)

As far as I know, the Occupy movement has been anti-Obama since day 1.

I'm specifically curious about this particular event: I believe even a few items posted on The Huffington Post have mentioned the lack of any kind of protest either at or around this event hosted by Clooney, and the question becomes: Why? It would seem to be exactly the kind of event which Occupy would claim to be against, and exactly the kind of high-profile, media-rich environment which would all but guarantee coverage and exposure for the Occupy movement. So, where are they? Where is the coverage? Where was Occupy?

It just feels like hypocrisy to me. If there is an anti-Obama message, the coverage I've seen (especially locally around Philadelphia) has not reflected that. In fact, in the fall there were protestors interviewed who said they supported and would vote for Obama, and a very vocal group of them took to the streets to disrupt a Philly GOP fundraiser of some kind, yet i cannot recall hearing them say a negative word about the DNC.

If they're all guilty, they're all guilty, simple as that. There should be no "good" one-percenters who escape the criticism.

I agree with you, though I would add that Occupy can't do everything and an event hosted by George Clooney shouldn't really be at the top of their concerns. Seems to me that the primary concerns should be the kind of power wielded by concentrated wealth, and that comes down mostly to labor concerns and concerns over some kind of genuine freedom and liberation. Certain issues can be distracting and I think this would be one of them. Also, I would be wary about coming to conclusions about Occupy based on media coverage.

It's not distracting at all, in fact I'd say a concentration of one-percenters donating 15 million dollars (or more) in one night to a political candidate or party is exactly the type of thing Occupy would rail against in this economic climate, yet they don't seem to have had this on their list. It makes me suspicious, that's all.

Well, actually, from what I've read, about 2/3rd of the money was coming from grassroots supporters. Not sure if I fully believe it. But again, the central purpose of the Occupy movement shouldn't be to protest fundraisers.

Wait, I don't understand this, do you mean 2/3 of the 15 million pledged at Clooney's fundraiser came from grassroots supporters? I wouldn't think "grassroots" is the proper term to describe a house full of Hollywood's registered Democrats.

And the last comment about protesting fundraisers: Please forward that to "Occupy Philly", they don't seem to agree, at least judging from their actions... :)

Me neither, which is why I questioned it myself. Nevertheless, it surely implies that the money wasn't coming from the top-tier. Certainly Hollywood's registered Democrats wouldn't qualify amongst that group either.


I'm just talking about my personal opinion.

I will say, though, that it is probably easier to organize a protest taking place at a hotel rather than one going on at someone's private home.

Ooops! Your ideology is showing...

I just want to understand what you're saying in the first comment: the registered Democrats at Clooney's event wouldn't qualify as "grassroots" or wouldn't qualify as "top-tier"? Because when you have Clooney who commands tens of millions for movie roles, execs like Jeffrey Katzenberg - head of DreamWorks, and others of their wealth and status level paying something like 40 thousand average each to get in, I'd say "top tier" is definitely a fitting description. :)

Katzenberg is, yes. Clooney, no. In fact, Clooney in a Marxist sense, is a member of the proletariat working class, as is any actor. If you are seriously committed to left wing principles you would never condemn someone like Clooney even if he commanded "tens of millions for movie roles."

Are you serious about Clooney? Did you ever hear of Rosemary Clooney or any other members of his family? He was born into a wealthy, successful family with a showbiz background and connections throughout several facets of the entertainment industry, where more doors open and more backing is available for those folks than are to those moving to the big cities with nothing but dreams and determination to their credit, no matter how talented.

Again, I can't see the difference between Clooney being worth that much money for working on a movie when he is only one name out of literally hundreds who are a vital part of the film being completed and successful, down to the people serving the catered lunch and changing the lightbulbs making far less for their work, any more than the Occupy movement would condemn the president of a successful company whose salary far exceeds the guy changing the lightbulbs in that company.

In fact, a serious leftist wouldn't "condemn the president of a successful company" either. This is where it is crucial to have an understanding of the fundamental principles that are driving leftist thought. This kind of confusion is what leads to the mischaracterization of leftist desires as simply "wanting to spread the money around equally."

Yet again, if this were the case, then there is a huge disconnect with what many politicians and activists self-described as "on the left" in the US are saying about company presidents and CEOs and your analysis. Much of the anger towards corporate interests seems directed at those running the companies, which would include "company presidents".

CEO's yes, Presidents no. And again, I would say there there isn't a disconnect but there is a very confusing picture being painted by the media about what the arguments coming from the left are.