Protesters with rifles watch outside the State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., Wednesday, April 15, 2020. Flag-waving, honking protesters drove past the Michigan Capitol on Wednesday to show their displeasure with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s orders to keep people at home and businesses locked during the new coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Protests against the extreme and, in many cases, facially illegal ‘social distancing’ regulations being imposed by governors, mayors, and other lackeys, lickspittles, and catchfarts for the administrative state. I detailed some of those earlier today (see here), my colleague Brad Slager posted on one case where California skater trash actually engaged in manual labor in response to a particularly stupid regulation (read Encouraging the Next Generation to Distrust Government — California Youths Defy Officials Filling in Their Skate Parks With Beach Sand). Imagine that, a local regulation getting these people to do something in just a few days that their parents could prevail upon them to do for a couple of decades.

The slowly gathering storm of Americans from all walks of life eventually coming to realize that they do not care to live in a society characterized by petty and mindless tyranny imposed for their own good is not a joke to the people who have pushed this nonsense. The Washington Post is trying to portray this all as some sort of a grift…I guess when your only contact with even marginally conservative people consists of Bill Kristol, Rick Wilson, David French, and the like, it is all to easy to imagine that every conservative movement is, at it’s core, nothing but a grift.

A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is behind some of the largest Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests around the country, offering the latest illustration that some seemingly organic demonstrations are being engineered by a network of conservative activists.

The Facebook groups target Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, and they appear to be the work of Ben Dorr, the political director of a group called “Minnesota Gun Rights,” and his siblings, Christopher and Aaron. By Sunday, the groups had roughly 200,000 members combined, and they continued to expand quickly, days after President Trump endorsed such protests by suggesting citizens should “liberate” their states.
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The online activity instigated by the brothers helps cement the impression that opposition to the restrictions is more widespread than polling suggests. Nearly 70 percent of Republicans said they supported a national stay-at-home order, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. Ninety-five percent of Democrats backed such a measure in the survey.

Just a quick reality check here. Polls didn’t believe the Tea Party would flip the House in 2010 (or in 1994, for that matter). They didn’t believe the Senate would change hands in 2014. If you believed the polls rather than the people, you woke up to President Hillary Clinton one Wednesday morning in November 2016. There is zero doubt that there is a lot of anger building over these regulations that are senselessly destroying people’s lives while apparently doing damned little to keep us safe.

Facebook, however, has taken the lead in crushing the building tidal wave of dissent. Here is CNN crowing about Facebook taking down protest announcements:

Says it is working to get answers from New York, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as to whether anti-quarantine protests breaks those states' social distancing measures.

— Donie O'Sullivan (@donie) April 20, 2020

Full story from @donie: "Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook," @andymstone said. "For this same reason, events that defy government's guidance on social distancing aren't allowed on Facebook." https://t.co/0Ni4pKxx0A

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) April 20, 2020

That Facebook would quickly fall in line behind a totalitarian government is not a shock. If you deal with Facebook over any period of time you will find that they are quick to shut down any story they don’t like for some specious reason.

The fact that Facebook would stop announcements of completely legal demonstrations against illegal regulations calls into question not what place Facebook has in a free society but if it even has a place. Under Facebook’s logic, the students who organized the sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC, would not have been allowed to use Facebook to announce it. The black students trying to attend school in Little Rock, AR, would have been forbidden to use it. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been barred from using Facebook to announce most of his activities.

One good thing the Wuhan virus has done is reveal the deep seated authoritarian impulses within the bureaucracy and the general gutlessness of elected officials in opposing those impulses. Another good thing has now been revealed: Facebook is fundamentally hostile to civil liberties and will act in concert with any petty totalitarian to crush dissent.

They did the same for China over Hong Kong protests.

If Zuckerberg is begging to be hauled in front congress again, this is a good way of making sure that happens. https://t.co/dJP64wixwn

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 20, 2020