The liberal movement in the United States – including its “mainstream” media – would very much like to curtail conservative freedom of speech. But it wants to create a “safe space” for rioting advocacy for the “oppressed.”
See the latest offering as Salon.com. The headline is "Baltimore’s violent protesters are right: Smashing police cars is a legitimate political strategy. It's crucial to see non-violence as a tactic, not a philosophy. If it fails to win people over it's a futile tactic.”
Benji Hart (in no way resembling conservative Benjamin Hart) argued destroying some cop cars and “corporate property is quite reasonable:
As a nation, we fail to comprehend Black political strategy in much the same way we fail to recognize the value of Black life.
We see ghettos and crime and absent parents where we should see communities actively struggling against mental health crises and premeditated economic exploitation. And when we see police cars being smashed and corporate property being destroyed, we should see reasonable responses to generations of extreme state violence, and logical decisions about what kind of actions yield the desired political results.
“I’m overwhelmed by the pervasive slandering of protesters in Baltimore this weekend for not remaining peaceful,” Hart wrote, then uncorked some radical-left gobbledygook in favor of rioting, that “firmly drawing and holding boundaries, demanding the return of stolen resources. And from Queer Liberation and Black Power to centuries-old movements for Native sovereignty and anti-colonialism, it is how virtually all of our oppressed movements were sparked, and has arguably gained us the only real political victories we’ve had under the rule of empire.”
This makes more sense when you discover Benji Hart’s “recommended reading” includes that old terrorist pal and benefactor of Barack Obama, Bill Ayers. Hart continued:
The political goals of rioters in Baltimore are not unclear—just as they were not unclear when poor, Black people rioted in Ferguson last fall. When the free market, real estate, the elected government, the legal system have all shown you they are not going to protect you—in fact, that they are the sources of the greatest violence you face—then political action becomes about stopping the machine that is trying to kill you, even if only for a moment, getting the boot off your neck, even if it only allows you a second of air. This is exactly what blocking off streets, disrupting white consumerism, and destroying state property are designed to do.
Black people know this, and have employed these tactics for a very, very long time. Calling them uncivilized, and encouraging them to mind the Constitution is racist, and as an argument fails to ground itself not only in the violent political reality in which Black people find themselves, but also in our centuries-long tradition of resistance, one that has taught effective strategies for militance and direct action to virtually every other current movement for justice.
And while I don’t believe that every protester involved in attacking police cars and corporate storefronts had the same philosophy, or did what they did for the same reasons, it cannot be discounted that when there is a larger national outcry in defense of plate-glass windows and car doors than for Black young people, a point is being made. When there is more concern for white sports fans in the vicinity of a riot than the Black people facing off with police, there is mounting justification for the rage and pain of Black communities in this country.
It concluded:
Black power, Queer power, power to Baltimore, and to all oppressed people who know what time it is.
