The First Amendment is a wonderful, clear, unambiguous statement of some of our most important liberties; it does not grant these rights, it recognizes them and protects us from government interference with those rights. Here it is:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note the wording in the penultimate statement: "...the right of the people peaceably to assemble." People across the political spectrum have this right, but with that qualifier: Peaceably. No rioters need apply. You might remember the Tea Party movement, when people on the right not only peaceably assembled but usually left the venue cleaner than they found it. That presents a stark contrast to the left, when they are rioting, looting, burning - and most recently, attacking Tesla dealerships and Tesla drivers.
City Journal's Christopher F. Rufo and David Reaboi, on Thursday, gave us the details. This "Tesla Takedown," as the loony left calls it, is being sold as a grassroots movement.
It's not. Here's why.
On February 21, Rolling Stone published an article by activist-filmmaker Alex Winter describing the genesis of the Tesla Takedown protest campaign. Within two weeks of its publication, multiple Tesla properties were attacked with incendiary devices, and three men were arrested for separate attempts to firebomb Tesla locations in Salem, Oregon; Loveland, Colorado; and Charleston, South Carolina.
Alex Winter tried to sell this as a homegrown, grassroots action, but it's pure astroturf, and Winter himself provides the names behind it:
But the footprint of professional activists, whom Winter admitted having “reached out to,” was evident from the start. Each of the nationwide Tesla Takedown protests were scheduled and posted at The Action Network, a progressive for-profit company that provides online tools for left-wing organizing. It promises its customers the tools “to help you capture a moment, rally supporters to your cause, and sustain relationships with activists.” The pricing for these services—which include databases and sign-up forms like the ones Winter described—can run more than $4,000 per month.
The Disruption Project, a Philadelphia-based far-left organizing group, was initially identified as a host or co-sponsor of all the Tesla Takedown’s protests at the Action Network’s event listings. The Project has since been scrubbed from the Action Network’s site, but it still shares an SMS “short code” with Tesla Takedown—a sign of ongoing linkage.
The Disruption Project’s founder is Jeff Ordower, a longtime activist whose background runs the gamut of professional left-wing activism. He trained at the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute, led the Missouri chapter of ACORN, and worked for both SEIU and the Industrial Areas Foundation. He was an organizer for a group associated with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2011, and helped organize the “Ferguson uprising” in 2014. His latest project, 350 Action, is linked to an international organization with ties to the Clinton Global Initiative, the Climate Action Network, Extinction Rebellion, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and many other left-wing groups.
It's a veritable laundry list of far-left bomb-throwers - in some cases, literally, by strictest definition - as in, people who actually throw bombs, or at least, Molotov cocktails and rocks.
These people would have felt right at home in Russia in 1917, except for the lack of smartphones and the possibility of being accused of being a Trotskyite.
What's more, these people are making money off of the useful idiots who are doing their dirty work for them and, in many cases, are getting jailed for it. But we presume this is all about money at our peril; these people, these far-left agitators, are committed to shaking our republic apart. That's what revolutionaries do.
In other words, the Tesla Takedown shows all the markings of a professional operation. It’s hardly a grassroots movement—it’s the product of experienced activists, unafraid both to instigate and take advantage of “ruptures” to pursue their agenda.
There are some uncomfortable parallels here. Leftist revolutions have, throughout history, almost always succeeded only in poor countries where most of the population were poorly informed, poorly educated, and easily manipulated peasants. Russia, China, North Korea - they all fit the pattern. But the United States isn't like that; the United States is a wealthy republic, with a (comparatively) well-informed - and well-armed - population. These leftist agitators, the ones cajoling their useful idiots into acts of vandalism, arson, and assault, are for some reason incapable of understanding that.
It's as I've written repeatedly; the left sees political violence as a dial that they can turn up or down to suit the moment. But the right? It's a toggle, with one side marked "peaceable discourse," and the other, "raise the black flag." The left doesn't understand that, never has, and they don't understand the likely consequences, especially in the United States.
It's as William Butler Yeats wrote:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The upshot of all this? The middle is having a harder and harder time holding. The Tesla organizers are people who would unleash Yeats' mere anarchy. On the left, particularly, the lunatics are taking charge. And they have blood in their eyes. It's almost like they want a civil war, mostly because they have little or no idea how such a thing would certainly end.
A second civil war would be a catastrophe. It would be fought not on distant fields, not by massive armies maneuvering against each other in open country, as was our first civil war. It will be fought in the streets, in the towns, amongst us in ways no other war has touched us since the Revolution, and if similar conflicts are any indication – see not only Bosnia but also the Spanish Civil War – it will result in hatreds that will last generations. That's something nobody on the right should want. I'm afraid it's something that some on the left are going to insist on starting.
Rufo and Reaboi conclude:
Because of the campaign’s massive scope, as well as First Amendment constraints, law enforcement and policymakers have been slow to recognize the far-left’s activist ecosystem. Those responsible for our security need to understand how violent and nonviolent agitators work together to advance their revolutionary goals.
And it's not just "those responsible for our security." All of us need to understand how these people work, and we must all be prepared to counter them, if worst comes to worst.
