Protest Warrior has infiltrated an International A.N.S.W.E.R. meeting and secretly filmed it. Enjoy, but try not to laugh so much- the meeting starts with this proclamation:
“Good morning. Welcome back to day two of the International A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, national organizing conference against war, colonial occupation, and imperialism. Those of us here in this room are the most important people in the United States today. We are the people who will build a permanent, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, movement here in the heart of the empire. We are the ones who will build a true solidarity movement with the people who are struggling for self-determination and civil liberties.
This was the opening remark from the workshop:
Okay. So let’s get started on the portion of the agenda where we all get a chance to talk, and I would like to appeal to my fellow European American males to not be the first ones to shoot your hands up or to get up on the floor, but to give everyone else a chance to speak first and try not to dominate the discussion.
They don’t like the Constitution either.
I hate to point out that the Constitution itself sucks; there’s a lot wrong with it. There’s no right to healthcare, no right to education, no right to jobs, none of that is in there. Racism, anti-gay bigotry, none of that is outlawed by the Constitution. Those are the things that need to be in a real peoples’ constitution. It’s important to point out because we keep defending the Constitution, but it’s a Constitution that’s extremely weak and does not represent what people need. And when we defend the Constitution we have to go one step further and say “this is what a real constitution should look like.”
There was a deep understanding of economics in the group, as well:
It really clarified things when the economy starts to you know go sour and I actually picked up a copy of Communist Manifesto and started reading what Marx said, that every ten years there’s a boom and bust system, and it’s like, “Oh okay, I get it!” You know like I read it before and didn’t get it, it didn’t apply, you know? And now that I read it again it applies! It’s like, “Oh okay, I get it!” You know, I think.
Also, some of you have gone around suggesting that, we’ve held all this protesting; it doesn’t seem as though the administration is listening. So you know, why don’t we just pick a day where everybody just withdraws their money from banks, just massively just go up to their money, go to banks, get their money out, and hold it for a weekend?
You know, that’s something that we can do, you know? People can do, they can do it quietly so they don’t have to go to a protest or anything you know, just do it. And you know, just don’t buy anything for a few hours, and say, say you know, “We’ve against this administration, so why should we contribute, you know, to the economy of this country?”
Giggle. The whole time I was watching this I was thinking of Monty Python’s Holy Grail (‘Help, help! I’m being repressed!). Don’t forget your tin-foil hat.
Andrea Harris
“Don’t buy anything for a few hours”? I think these people have deeper problems than warmed-over Marxism. I manage to successfully not buy anything for several hours every day. It’s called “sleeping.”
Terry
These excerpts from their meeting read a lot like the comment boards on sites such as Eschaton.
Barney Gumble
Goofballs, true. A lot of them have a bad case of “young”. Ever notice that the right always magnifies them out of all proportion to a threat to our very country?
JKC
Gotta agree with Barney. They’re goofy, dumb, and misguided but not all that scary.
The Christian Identity movement, Army of God, and the militias… now those folks are scary.
HH
Uh this crowd put together the biggest anti-war protests. They’re hardly marginal.
richard
JKC
“Christian idenity movement, Army of God”
Never heard of them. I’ve never seen them marching through the streets of San Francisco, trashing the neighborhood.
Moe Lane
“Uh this crowd put together the biggest anti-war protests. They’re hardly marginal.”
I believe that the standard answer from the Left to that is, “We just used them for their 133t permitting ski11z; we don’t actually take them seriously”.
Have I gotten this essentially correct? – because (fair warning) I have a fairly sardonic comment in reply to that assessment, so I want to make sure that I got that position right before I unload it.
John Cole
Ever notice that the right always magnifies them out of all proportion to a threat to our very country?
You mean like claiming that Eric Rudolph is a Republican problem/creation?
Matthew
John, never interrupt a liberal while he’s fringebaiting. You might break his concentration ;-)
JKC
John- I hope you’ve figured out by now that I don’t hold the GOP responsible for Eric Rudolph, Tim McVeigh, or even David Koresh. By the same token, I don’t expect the Democcratic Party to be held responsible for the Greens, ANSWER, or some of the fruit loops in PETA.
I suspect that a lot of folks showed up for ANSWER’s anti-war protests because they were the only game in town. Or maybe they didn’t do enough research on just who ANSWER is.
So how’s about we put the “fringebaiting” smear to bed, Matthew, eh?
JKC
Richard-
FYI, while the Christian Identity folks and the loons in the Army of God didn’t march in SF, the great unwashed of ANSWER haven’t espoused racial violence or firebombed OB/GYN clinics.
M. Scott Eiland
“I suspect that a lot of folks showed up for ANSWER’s anti-war protests because they were the only game in town. Or maybe they didn’t do enough research on just who ANSWER is.”
Gee, nothing like laziness to justify marching with apologists for the murder of countless millions. Somehow, I doubt that you’d cut that much slack for pro-war activists who marched with David Duke or the American Nazi Party.
JKC
Scott- intellectual laziness isn’t confined to the left, as I’m sure you well know. Nor am I trying to defend ANSWER: for me, they fall into the category of People Who (almost) Make Me Want To Vote Republican.
But to me, castigating anti-war protesters because ANSWER sponsored the rally is as silly as dismissing principled anti-abortion protesters because of the actions of the Army of God.
jack
“FYI, while the Christian Identity folks and the loons in the Army of God didn’t march in SF,”
Which means they didn’t engage in random acts of vandalism disguised as protest. Tell me, when was the last time you heard of ANY mass march of racists? Christian Identity people are as rare as their bigoted brethren. You are as likely to be harmed by one of them as you are likely to get hit by lightening.
” the great unwashed of ANSWER haven’t espoused racial violence or firebombed OB/GYN clinics.”
What’s all that ‘jews=nazis’ stuff they peddle then? Or is it okay for the left to engage in the same kind of anti-semetic crap the Christian Identity people do because they mean well?
And does inciting class violence simply get a pass?
And I have to agree, ANSWER isn’t really into bombing ‘OB/GYN’ clinics–but they, and their backers, sure don’;t extend that courtesy to much else. Random bombings and arson, vandalism at every march. Please.
JKC
Jack-
Hope you don’t think I’m defending ANSWER’s antics. I’ve little use for them myself. My point here and on similar threads has been that both sides have their “fruit and nut” contingent, and it’s unfair to judge either side based on their fringe supporters.
David Duke is a malignant narcissist.
David Duke is a malignant narcissist.
He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke’s predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke’s personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as “victims of persecution”.
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion’s ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people – or humanity at large – should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche’s “superman”.
But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things “natural” – or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as “nature” is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial – though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols – not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism – and the cult’s leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the “old ways” – against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or “others” – often arbitrarily selected – constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is “wrong”. They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are “decadent”, they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin … They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm – together with Stalin – as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime – Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office – it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. “Earth shattering” and “revolutionary” scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite – is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply – have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. “The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)”, “they don’t really know what they are doing”, “following a rude awakening, they will revert to form”, etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized – is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called “splitting”. To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The “small people”, the “rank and file”, and the “loyal soldiers” of David Duke – his flock, his nation, and his employees – they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated – is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.