The New Left’s “Obedient” Children Take to the Streets
Note: This is a rapidly unfolding story. Even since I began writing it Saturday evening (May 30), rioting has spread from half-a-dozen to dozens of cities. Looters in wealthy areas, like Scottsdale, Arizona, are racing through malls, breaking into fashion stores, and carrying away armfuls of clothing. The situation now is characterized as “chaotic” nationwide. Police injuries now are beyond counting. The National Guard has been deployed. And President Trump and Attorney General William Barr have announced that Antifa and other organizations have instigated and carried out the violence. Antifa will be categorized as a terrorist organization and treated accordingly. That means that membership in Antifa, association with it, or communication with a member, could trigger a full-blown FBI investigation. Penalties for domestic terror include capital punishment.
Driving on Saturday to New York City on the Long Island Expressway, almost every overpass with a digital sign (for traffic warnings) flashed a two-part message: “We are NY tough.” And then: “Cover your face when in public.”
A study in Europe showed that mostly men scorned to wear masks because it was effete (or as they might say “gay” or “wimpy”).
You would wonder: Is this a message from Gov. Andrew Cuomo (the LIE is a state highway) talking about how New York enforces the law? No, to understand you must follow the New York Times. A study in Europe showed that mostly men scorned to wear masks because it was effete (or as they might say “gay” or “wimpy”).
New York State’s governor, always “hip,” probably has decreed (in one of his hundreds of decrees) that mask wearing now will be repackaged as “tough.” This cutting-edge sociology went visibly into practice where overwhelmingly white middleclass commuters travel daily. They are not the culture that prioritizes “tough.”
Before driving into the city, we had tried to ascertain the risk from the riots that had spread from Minneapolis to other big cities. Last night, rioters in Manhattan, then Brooklyn, had fought police, throwing bottles of urine, rocks that cost some officers teeth, and Molotov cocktails—one through the window of a police car. They burned a police van and fought police trying to clear the way for firefighters. As usual, they looted and burned stores. They invaded a police precinct station and tried to torch it. They were protesting law breaking.
The law-breaking “atrocity,” of course, was the death of a black man, George Floyd, in the course of being arrested in Minneapolis. A video captured footage of a cop kneeling on the neck of the handcuffed suspect and the man’s protests. Three other cops were present.
Mr. Floyd died. The police officer was not immediately arrested. And thus the well-oiled machine, “Black Lives Matter,” went into action with almost instantaneous rioting, looting, and battling with law enforcement officers. Each night after that, one or more big cities got hit with riots. New York’s turn came last night.
By then, the police officer had been charged with murder in the third degree and manslaughter. It did not matter. The weather has been beautiful in New York City, with clear, sunny days, and mild evenings. Thanks to the “lockdown,” with state and city decrees shutting businesses of almost every kind; closing schools, churches, and all other gathering places; and ordering people to “stay home,” normally restless street people and others have been stressed to the limit.
The appeal was irresistible, which is part of the reason that the riots have spread and grown despite demands (to arrest and charge the police officer) being met.
What could be as exciting as getting into the street with the guys and girls, putting on the ultimate “tough,” and protesting injustice? The appeal was irresistible, which is part of the reason that the riots have spread and grown despite demands (to arrest and charge the police officer) being met.
We had checked with several friends, all midtown Manhattan high-rise dwellers, who said nothing was going on. Certainly, nothing was going on when we drove through the Queens Midtown Tunnel and west across 37th Street. Then, we turned down Fifth Avenue.
In her most famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand characterized the strangulation and death of New York City by means of a few unforgettable concretes. One was a description of Fifth Avenue, the premier shopping street in America, perhaps the world, with every fifth store boarded up. Today, we drove down a Fifth Avenue with all stores closed, perhaps two or three pedestrians per block (walking dogs, skateboarding), and a handful of cars. As a New Yorker for decades, who worked on Fifth Avenue, this ghost street beggared belief. Miles of enterprises owned and operated by the world’s retailing giants closed by the decree of one man. All judgments of relative values, all calculations of short term versus long term, and all considerations of perspective left to essentially one man: a lifelong politician from a family of politicians.
It is a fact that among all cities in the world, New York was hit hardest by the coronavirus and COVID-19. The toll is not insignificant. But for the first time in the history of America the government power to quarantine has been applied not only to those infected and thus contagious, but to everyone. As soon as the crisis began, Gov. Cuomo, who relentlessly angles for the presidency, arranged hours a day of prime airtime to report on the epidemic. It became an occasion for demonstrating “leadership.” Literally millions of dollars of free airtime taken up with brief reports available everywhere and then exhortations, reassurances, scolding, warnings, “identifying” with voters, sympathizing.
Some argued that at least half of deaths from the illness were in long-term care facilities for the old; all the edicts imposed on the general population had no effect on those deaths. Others points out that very energetic measures such as identifying and quarantining the ill and tracing all their contacts was effective and within government’s legitimate powers. Others point out, and documented as the lockdown proceeded, that destroying tens of millions of jobs, creating financial disaster for millions, and immobilizing people would cause deaths in the long run that would outweigh short-term, cost-no-object, damn-the-economy dictates. But Gov. Cuomo and other mostly Democratic governors saw no valid option but totalitarian control.
Contrary to my assumptions, the protestors were not overwhelmingly African American males. Many were young white women.
Along Fifth Avenue, at about 14th Street, without warning, we faced protestors marching up the avenue against traffic, filling the street. It gave me a chance to observe the protestors firsthand. Contrary to my assumptions, the protestors were not overwhelmingly African American males. Many were young white women, mostly in shorts with bare midriffs, some were white males. In signs that streamed past, “fuck” and “Trump” were prominent. After rerouting by police, we reached our street. There was a steady stream, on every street in the West Village, of protestors with signs converging on demonstration central (probably Union Square).
Of course, this is not about the death of a black man at the hands of police. It is a protest over what the rioters, most of them, perceive as lifelong victimization. That blacks are victims, they genuinely believe. How would they not believe it? Through school and college, in newspapers and on television, on the internet, the most often repeated theme today is that black Americans are oppressed. And white Americans are the oppressors. That is a bedrock premise, an axiom, of the philosophical worldview that dominates U.S. intellectual, educational, and communications discourse. Its name is Postmodernism.
Of course, protestors view excessive police force, and death at the hands of the police, as an exemplar and symbol of all oppression. But if the loss of black lives were truly their concern, they might be motivated to learn why many blacks die unnecessarily. There is no sign of such motivation. Indeed, when the facts are discussed (rarely) by visiting campus speakers—students riot, of course.
Heather Mac Donald, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes:
Every year, approximately 6,000 blacks are murdered in the United States. This is a number greater than white and Hispanic homicide victims combined. … Blacks are killed at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. … Who is killing them? Not the police … but other blacks. … Blacks of all ages commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and at eleven times the rate of whites alone.
In all of this, the percentage of the homicides of black Americans that involve the police (in any context) is miniscule. As Mac Donald reported in her brilliantly researched and written books, America today is gripped by a powerful crimewave of black-on-black homicides, rapes, assaults, armed robberies, and other violent crimes. five times as many violent crimes by blacks against blacks as by whites against blacks. (There are 32 times as many violent black crimes against whites as there are violent crimes by whites against blacks). Deaths of blacks during police actions (justified and unjustified) are rare.
But far more important, as Mac Donald demonstrates, the police, more than any other group in America, are daily concerned about crimes against blacks. They are the only defense of black men and women against black-perpetrated crime. And, almost certainly, the anger and frustration of young black men (overwhelmingly the demographic group that accounts for violent crimes) stems from the constant involvement of police officers in preventing, interrupting, investigating, and making arrests where black men are the criminals. The riots are a rare opportunity for them and others to loot while police are somewhere else battling rioting and arson. (See: “Who Will Save Us from Black Lives Matter?”)
When the Black Lives Matter demonstration ignited into looting, arson, and attacks on police, the response was appalling appeasement.
Timing of the slogan “We are NY tough” is truly unfortunate. Because when the Black Lives Matter demonstration ignited into looting, arson, and attacks on police, the response was appalling appeasement. Gov. Cuomo said: “We still discriminate on the basis of color of skin–that is the simple, painful truth, but this is a moment for truth.” Mayor de Blasio said in his news conference at Cadman Plaza on Saturday night: “To the peaceful protesters out there tonight, we hear your desire to change these issues, the relationship between police and community, the need for justice, the need for real change in our society, we hear you loud and clear.”
He then argued that violence just does not work. Both Gov. Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio phrased their comments to include in the same sentence, first, that the riots were “righteous,” “heartfelt,” “understandable”—and much more—and then, as the afterthought, “of course” we do not condone violence.
Isn’t it obvious? “Of course” really means that “of course” we must pay lip service to opposing violence. Both the governor and the mayor announced as their major initiative the day after riots “a thorough investigation” of police action in response to the riots.
This is moral sickness. It is revolting weakness by those identified as leaders. It is a depraved betrayal of New York City police who all night fought the urine bottles and stones, attempted murder (the Molotov cocktail through the police car window), arson, and endless obscene insults. Their action is to be investigated for “excess”? How did the police “escalate” the evening out of control?
It is the mentality of European politicians who hoped to appease Hitler with endless concessions—and politicians who did the same inside Germany.
On Monday, June 1, President Donald Trump spoke to the issue with his usual impolitic bluntness. He called the nation’s governors “weak” and demanded that they ramp up crackdowns on protesters after another night of violent demonstrations.
“Most of you are weak,” he continued. “You have to arrest people. … You’ve got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years and you’ll never see this stuff, again.”
Exactly like the boys and girls marching up Fifth Avenue to join tonight’s protests, New York’s politicians are in a postmodernist trance. All that their education and media sources of ideology enable them to see, now, is oppression. To be on the side of right is to identify with the oppressed (nonwhites, non-males, non-Americans) and not the oppressors (white men, American society). Of course, that places on Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio the onus of assumed oppressors. And so, in any response to the violent assault on the city, they must acknowledge the moral superiority of the attackers before offering the lip service to law and order that their white voters (the “oppressors”) expect.
Do not blame black Americans as a race. They are manipulated pawns of the neo-Marxist (New Left) postmodernists—just as “proletarians” in the 20th Century were the manipulated pawns of the Old Left in creating murderous communist dictatorships in Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and other countries.
Nor are most black Americans demented by the transparently manipulative line of the postmodernist New Left. Most, I think, certainly among the rapidly growing black middle-class (now set back decades by the lockdown), see who commits the crimes that threaten their lives, kill their children, and devastate their neighborhoods. Their unspeakable tragedy is to see their children, in the grip of New York public schools, and later, sent full of hope to colleges, become the victims of postmodernist teachers and texts fixed on a false ideology. Increasingly, the teachers see their mission as radicalizing the “masses” in their classrooms—not what black American parents work and save and sacrifice to bequeath to their children.
When did education in America, beginning in high school (or earlier) but climaxing in college, turn away from teaching the knowledge gained over centuries in science and mathematics, the humanities, the social science, and the arts—knowledge that once defined the “educated man” and marked competence to master a career?
Most scholars trace it to the 1960s when much of America shed its cardinal values and outlooks and embraced the “counterculture.” Especially on the East and West coasts, especially in elite colleges and universities in those and a few other parts of America, the 1960s and following generations were recruited to postmodernism. That included obviously Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, who bewilder their constituents by paying lip service to expected norms such as law and order (for which they have contempt) and by reserving their moral enthusiasm for the postmodernist vision of American life as a drama of oppression.
Predictably, deans at Harvard University, leftist politicians/commentators like Al Sharpton, and sundry Hollywood types focused on “the real problem,” which they variously identify as a racist America, President Trump, and protections of police against criminal prosecution for actions in the line of duty.
And, as the news anchors like to lead with: “This just in …” came from the New York Daily News:
Two Brooklyn lawyers, including an Ivy League graduate corporate attorney, are facing federal charges over accusations they tossed a Molotov cocktail into an NYPD vehicle early Saturday morning during a protest over the police killing of George Floyd.
Colinford Mattis, 32, a corporate lawyer and member of Community Board 5 in East New York, was charged along with fellow attorney Urooj Rahman with the attempted attack on an empty police cruiser parked outside the 88th Precinct station house in Fort Greene.
Here is the dream of postmodernist philosophy: an educational system infused at every level with an ideology that prepares neo-Marxist American leaders to renew in the 21st century.
Here is the dream of postmodernist philosophy: an educational system infused at every level with an ideology that prepares neo-Marxist American leaders to renew in the 21st century the very same political revolutions that in the 20th century doomed much of mankind to live and die under totalitarian socialism.
Much has changed, but this has not changed: The more than two-millennia-old, religious-secular moral ideal called “altruism,” self-sacrifice, and the ethical exaltation of “need,” and its only possible political implementation, collectivism, enforced by socialism.
Ayn Rand alone, of all modern philosophers, exposed the evil of altruism as the ideal in the name of which reality and reason, the requirements of human survival, individualism, capitalism’s consequent freedom and prosperity, guiltless pursuit of happiness and all “the best within us”—including the only genuine benevolence possible among men—was cast aside.
See also:
Media Wars: The Battle to Shape Our Minds.
Feature image by Pixabay.
About the Author: Walter Donway
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