Different Agendas

These are photos of two very different sets of protestors confronting police.  The first is from a 1967 anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon, the second is from a BLM demonstration in NY in the past month.

Someone asked me why today’s protestors seem so “mean and angry.”

The woman in the lower photo certainly looks angrier than the young man in the top photo placing flowers in the guns of the police.  But is she?  Or is it a different kind of anger stemming from very different underlying motivations?

I am a “veteran” of anti-war protests of the 60s.  While my experience was mostly one of loud, rowdy, but mostly peaceful protests, that does not mean that there was not also some violence at some protests.   There were organizations that sometimes seemed more interested in creating violent situations than in having their voices heard in protest.  I can recall attending a couple meetings of the radical SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and learning “guerrilla warfare” tactics that could be used for violence within a crowd.  (I did not participate in those protests). 

SDS was a Leftist or perhaps Socialist organization; its militant faction the Weathermen were inspired by other revolutionaries and believed that by creating or inflaming violent confrontations they could “bring the war home” meaning force the U.S. out of Vietnam in order to deal with a violent domestic revolution.  Whether their hopes for their revolution went beyond that or not, I don’t know.

Protesters of the 60s talked about peace and love, but they were also angry.  The anti-war protests channeled the anger that many had toward what they saw as a conflict that the U.S. should never have become involved in and should get out of as soon as possible.  The anger was at what the protesters saw as a misguided policy giving way to incorrect if not immoral actions of our government.  The hope was that the government would change course.  The protesters were passionate about their cause. 

Today’s protesters are also passionate.  Many of the protesters are peaceful and, not unlike SDS of the 60s, there are also more militant and violent groups.   But their focus is broader than one defined misstep and mistaken policy of their government.  The protests look, feel, and indeed are very different.

I suggest that the difference is the underlying agendas.  The vast majority of the anti-war protesters of the 60s wanted to end the war.  They may have had different reasons (pacifist; saw this war as unjust; didn’t think US role included this war; didn’t want to be drafted; pro-communist; just want to be with the cool kids; and many more) but the underlying agenda was to stop the war.  Not the government, but the government’s participation in this unjust war.  That was the underlying clear focus and the belief was that if that participation ended the country and the government would be better.

I would note that there were other protests during the 60s – civil rights, women’s rights are two that I was also acquainted with.  Like the anti-war protests of the time, these protests also had a very focused target with the underlying agenda of causing the government to correct that targeted wrong and hence move forward to be better for its correction.

At times the 60s protests might very well have sounded like and looked like an expression of hatred for the government generally, but in reality it was for most of the protestors a hatred for a particular policy or action of the government.  Stopping that action, not the entire government, was the agenda.  The anger was a constructive and positive movement forward. 

Not so the current protests.  Today’s protests, whether peaceful, or attempts to incite violence, or actually violent are not directed at one act of our government but at the entire government (the “system”).  While today’s protesters may speak of justice and a better America, their agenda in achieving that is not to correct misguided actions but to actually dismantle the entire structure of America and rebuild it as something else. 

This is classic Marxism. Any good Marxist or Socialist understands that a revolution which seeks to restructure a governmental system must involve violence.  And, like any good Marxist leader, the leaders of this revolution have created a coalition of victim groups and pitted them against the “system.”    Lenin, in engineering the Russian revolution, used the workers as the ones to press that revolution and destroy the existing system.  (Once it was destroyed, however, power was once again taken from the workers and returned to a new power group to build a new system from the top down.)

Today we do not have a worker class revolting against czars, but we do have identity groups fomented to “hate the system” and hence to tear it down.  While the protestors of the 60s still, for the most part, respected the “system,” today's protestors do not.  They don’t want to fix it, they want to destroy it.  Why?

When they were children, the 60s protestors were taught that America is a great country.  They were told of America’s strengths and weaknesses, of her achievements and her sins.  But, most importantly, they were taught that the American “system” provided a voice and a means of making corrections and improvements that would move America forward and to even more positive achievements.  They learned that this voice (and its accompanying responsibilities) belongs to them and that while our government through our Constitution protects and preserves that right, it does not own it.

Today’s protestors have not been taught how the “system” works for our and the country’s good.  Rather, they have been told that America is generally bad and its “system” is not good.  Rather than being taught that the Constitution protects rights that belong to each individual, they are taught that rights are something the government creates and then gives these rights to (or takes them away from) the individual.  The government, not the individual, owns the rights.   From there it is an easy step to convince those who do not have all that they want or that others have acquired or achieved that they are victims of the “system.”

So, while the 60s protestors respected the system because it protected their individual rights (including their right to protest), today’s protestors rebel against a system that they see as not providing what it should.  This is a big difference.  And the anger that is generated is also very different. 

If the perceived or desired “system” is one of large government that, rather than protecting individual rights, doles them out as it sees fit and thus, takes from the people their right to guide themselves, then it makes sense that one who feels that he or others are unfairly dealt with might want to overturn that “system.”  And, so, today’s protestors work not to correct a misstep of our current system, but to overturn it entirely.

The 60s protestors, and many similar protests from our history (women’s vote, civil rights, union and labor laws, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, etc. ) have all had an agenda directed at correcting what was viewed by the protestors as a wrong action of government.  Working with the system and the right it gives people to conduct such protests, these groups worked and channeled their anger to better the existing system.

Today’s protestors do not have a similar narrowly focused agenda.  Theirs is not to correct a specific wrong, but to dismantle an entire system.  This is a revolution going on.  The anger it generates is destructive. 

The language and demands and future visions of the movement sound a lot like the pretty promises of Socialism.  The tactics are the same – create a victim group or groups and pit them against other groups that are labeled to signify the victimizers and the current system.  Step one – destroy the system.  Step 2- rebuild to the design of a new ruling class.  That is the agenda and it is very different from simply wanting to fix something within an otherwise functioning and good system.

So, the soldiers in the protests may have the same passion, but the anger is very different and is the product of a very different sort of war.  While the 60s protestors for the most part had a general respect for and wanted to correct and improve the “system”, today’s protestors have little respect for the “system” or any of its institutions.  Their anger is different, and their agenda is destructive. 

Today’s protestors are not interested in improvement of what exists.  They want to tear down America.   Their anger is that of a manipulated socialist revolutionary.  It is not directed at anything other than destruction.  And that is why today’s protests look and feel very different.