Editor's Note: Occasionally, I send you a free sample of TIA Daily just to remind you of what you're missing. Below is my latest analysis of the Occupy Wall Street movement. To receive this kind of analysis all the time, subscribe now at www.TIADaily.com/subscribe.—RWT 
TIA Daily • November 7, 2011
FEATURE ARTICLE
Occupy Wall Street Has Become a Roving Gang of Political Thugs
by Robert Tracinski
Well, that was quick. In less than two months, the Occupy Wall Street movement has gone through the full life cycle of a leftist movement and is beginning to lose its image as a group of idealistic and well-meaning (if naïve and misguided) college kids and is starting to be recognized as a dangerous lurch toward thuggish mob rule.
It was inevitable. As they came under more scrutiny, the Occupiers weren't coming off well. An MTV documentary following young Occupiers made them look shallow, unfocused, and self-indulgent. And that's from a sympathetic reviewer.
Adding to the Occupation's "Flea Party" reputation is the news of an infestation of head and body lice at Occupy Portland. The parasites have parasites.
Then there is the Daily Caller's search of arrest records from the New York Occupation, which found that many are comfortably middle class and live in the kind of homes you would associate with the wicked 1%. Note to the mainstream media: this sort of investigation is called "reporting," and you might want to try doing some of it.
Even one jaded leftist is lamenting the "commodification of Occupy Wall Street," which "is now being exploited by corporate interests."
As a result of further exposure, the Occupation is dropping fast in the polls. In an utterly predictable irony, it is least popular among the poor and lower middle class. As the Washington Examiner notes, "the highest net negative rating of Occupy Wall Street comes among middle income Americans earning between $30,000 and $50,000," and "with the media trying to portray this as a populist movement, it's worth noting that two-thirds of those earning under $30,000 either haven't heard of the movement or have an unfavorable view of it."
So much for all of that "We are the 99%" guff.
It is only going to get worse from here on out, because the Occupation has passed its initial phase, with its well-scrubbed façade of naïve youthful idealism. By its own inexorable logic, it is turning into something much uglier.
A local CBS affiliate reports that Occupy Boston is "deteriorating" as it gets overrun by crack dealers. One Occupier tells the reporter, "Things have changed drastically. It seems to be deteriorating. A lot of drug use, alcohol use, people getting into fights. It's deteriorating pretty quick." Hey, there's that "reporting" thing again. Maybe it will catch on.
In Vancouver, the mayor is threatening to clear out the city's Occupation camp after a woman died there from an apparent drug overdose.
The New York Post, the center for hard-nosed, gimlet-eyed reporting from the Occupied territories, tells us that "Zuccotti Park has become so overrun by sexual predators attacking women in the night that organizers felt compelled to set up a female-only sleeping tent," which they call the "safety tent."
This is what happens when you purposely set up zones of lawlessness in the middle of big cities: you create a safe space that attracts drug addicts and dealers, violent and crazy homeless people, and criminals.
What is more significant is the increase in political violence coming from the Occupation.
Oakland, California, has long been a hotbed of political radicalism, so it is no surprise that its Occupation was the first to branch out to a forcible shutdown of one of the nation's busiest container ports, which quickly devolved into a riot.
And that is what they are trying to bring to your neighborhood: the latest idea from Occupy Oakland is to occupy foreclosed homes. Meet the new neighbors.
James Taranto has a good rundown of the general collapse of the Occupation into rioting and violence. And despite claims from the sympathetic press that this is just a "fringe" of the movement, some reports indicate that Occupation organizers participated in the smashing of store windows and in running street battles with police, while one of Occupy Oakland's leaders turns out to be a "political rapper" who once defined his "basic statement" as "death to the pigs," and who pumped up the Occupiers by performing "5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO."
It's not just violence directed generally toward the police and big corporations. The Occupiers are now singling out and targeting individuals, particularly those whom they see as political opponents.
Occupy Seattle surrounded a hotel where JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was speaking, with the goal of detaining Dimon in a "citizen's arrest." But as with "civil disobedience," the Occupiers are horribly misusing this term. An unruly mob attempting to seize an individual who is guilty in their eyes, but who has not been found guilty in a court of law, is not a "citizen's arrest." It is a lynching.
Incidentally, what is Dimon's guilt? That he took a government bailout? Those whose memory stretches back three years might remember that Dimon and other big bankers were strong-armed by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury into taking those bailouts. That's an evil pincer movement for you: the government elites force you to take a bailout, then the leftist mobs in the street want to "arrest" you for it.
Occupy Philadelphia sent demonstrators to disrupt a speech by Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, forcing him to cancel. Occupy DC then followed up last week by laying siege to the Washington hotel where Americans for Prosperity, a right-leaning group with a lot of grassroots Tea Party links, was holding a conference. The valiant Occupiers bravely pushed a little old lady down the stairs. The victim was a grassroots Tea Party supporter from Detroit, and I think a lot of us would agree with her reaction: she initially regarded the Occupiers as earnest, misguided youth but now regards them as dangerous.
This is what the Occupy Wall Street movement has become: a roving gang of political thugs who assault and intimidate anyone who disagrees with their politics.
This is not a distortion of the movement but its logical development. From the very beginning, the whole point of the Occupation has been to create lawless spaces controlled by mob rule (they call this the "general assembly"), populated by black-clad figures wearing Guy Fawkes masks, an anarchist symbol celebrating a man who tried to blow up the English parliament. Which pretty much sums up the degree of their commitment to representative government.
The real significance of the movement's deterioration is that the violent anarchists are trying to take over left. The live-blog I linked to above about the siege of Jamie Dimon indicates the increasing prominence of anarchists in the movement: "Many of the protesters are covering their faces. Flags are flying, many of them the red and black of the anarcho-syndicalists." A recent blog report on Occupy Los Angeles describes how the "general assembly" was overthrown one night by a claque of criminals and anarchists who opposed the adoption of a "code of conduct" that would have discouraged drinking and drug use. Something similar has been happening in the Occupation camp in Zuccotti Park, which has become balkanized, with the college kids on one side and the criminals, bums, and anarchists on the other.
But all of these groups stick together, for the same reason that Arab leftists are cooperating with Islamists in the Middle East: they are united by their only real cause. In the Middle East, it's hatred of the West. For the Occupiers, the cause that unites them is hatred of capitalism and the desire to tear it down.
Oh, and speaking of the unholy alliance between leftists and Islamists in the Middle East, the folks at Occupy Boston found time to invade the Israeli consulate and chant in support of the Palestinian terrorist intifada.
Take it all together and the best description for the Occupy Wall Street movement is the one that they chose for themselves, so you can't say they didn't warn us. They are an occupation, a violent and hostile force attempting to impose its rule on an unwilling population.
The proper response is obvious. Resist the Occupation.
Not much resistance is necessary. This self-styled "occupation" is small and weak, precisely because they represent something closer to the 0.01% rather than the 99%. We need to demand that the timid mayors of the Occupied cities clear out the mobs and reassert the rule of law in their city centers.
Every occupation has its collaborators, and the current leftist-anarchist Occupation has benefited from the craven collaboration of local officials, like Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who gave city employees the day off to join the riots. Other mayors are clearly terrified of being vilified in the press for doing their job by guaranteeing law and order within city limits. And that brings us to the press, which is where we find the most active collaborators.
For the last two and a half years, the mainstream media has smeared the Tea Party movement as a gang of violent racists and murders. Yes, literally murderers: it was the New York Times that first tried to pin the blame on Tea Partiers for the actions of the deranged (and utterly apolitical) man whose shooting spree injured Representative Gabrielle Giffords. This is the same New York Times that refuses to report on anything bad that happens in Zuccotti Park and which excuses the violent anarchists as an insignificant "fringe" of Occupy Wall Street.
The Washington Post has gone farther, suggesting new targets for the Occupation. In short, the left-of-center mainstream media have become propagandists for the Occupation.
In a way, though, they are merely reprising their role as unpaid press agents for the hippies and the "student rebellion" of the 1960s, which Occupy Wall Street is re-enacting in miniature. Since the financial crisis hit in 2008, I have argued that we are living through "20th Century Lite." We are doomed to relive all of the disastrous bad ideas of the 20th century, but on a smaller scale and with a faster timeline. The auto bailout and the Obama "stimulus" were the 1930s, the era of overweening confidence in big government and central planning, which were supposed to ensure prosperity and solve all of our problems. Now we've progressed to the 1960s, when a movement of supposedly "idealistic" college kids rises up to tear down the whole capitalist system, only to collapse into an ugly period of rampant crime, drug addiction, and decay and disorder in the inner cities.
So when do we get to a re-enactment of the 1980s: the revival of free markets and the renewal of American prosperity and power?
Well, first we have to get to the stage when the "silent majority" of decent, self-supporting Americans became disgusted by the destructive lawlessness of the hippies and rise up to resist the Occupation.
Copyright © 2011 by Tracinski Publishing Company
PO Box 8086, Charlottesville, VA 22906
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