You may have heard that Antifa and other such marginal groups as the Revolutionary Communist Party* are planning a big to-do on Saturday, November 4.
This is no average street-violence to-do. No, this is the first day of the revolution. Or a civil war. Depending on which group’s doing the shouting. Or maybe just a day of (misnamed) anarchy.
A number of conservative websites are crying alarm.
We had some conversation about this over at Claire’s Cabal. One person was pretty apprehensive. A couple said they’d either be taking extra preps with them that day or would avoid urban areas altogether. A couple of us said we never had any intention of going into urban areas as long as we lived.
For the most part, people seemed to agree that the planned action has potential to cause considerable disruption in cities, with a strong probability for violence (up to and possibly including something along the lines of the “stabbing intifada” against Israel).
But despite their rabid desire to see everyone who disagrees with them dead, it’s hard to believe these people have the ability to start either a revolution or a civil war. The will? Sure. The support, the numbers, the weaponry, the strategic and tactical know-how? Not likely.
IMHO, November 4 is just another day that’s likely to give a bad name to anarchism. But what’s new there? Defacing statues (as they plan to do this Monday and terrorizing unarmed college professors seems more the level these people operate on.
Should they ever actually cause major violence in multiple cities (forgetting that cities are the home base of what little support they have), I expect they will get “war.” War (from police, National Guard, and freelance opposition) that won’t go as their online drumbeating would have it go.
D., who sent me the above link from SilenceIsConsent.com, commented:
I suspect they are — if this is even real — such urbanites that they think they can control the nation from a few large cities.
But, as I pointed out to a friend, NYC is connected to its supply of everything by 9 bridges and 2 tunnels. So one guy with a rifle could shut down any access to NYC from a particular bridge, simply by disabling several vehicles. One more to protect the first, and 22 rebels could starve NYC into riots, burning and hunting Antifa in the streets in about a week. Other cities aren’t so easily cut off, but cutting off the interstates (same way) and major arteries would do the same thing.
What are your thoughts on November 4, and for that matter on the future of these increasingly intolerant groups?
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* How that differs from the regular old Communist Party that was going to bomb us all into slicks of nuclear glass or infiltrate our institutions and pollute our precious bodily fluids back in the 1950s, I don’t know. The Revolutionary Communist Party’s website looks as if it was designed about then, though.
November 4 is a Saturday and I plan on staying home. I live in an outer ring suburb and I doubt any of the trouble will make it out my way, but it it does, I have a shotgun and will protect myself and my place.
If they can scale up the actions we’ve seen at individual protests, they can generate a lot of chaos and violence in cities. If. Who knows?
If RevCom/Avakian are indicative of the groups involved, I doubt they can scale up as much as they want. And they’ll mostly get their own killed.
I just spent a while trying to read Avakian’s stuff. Disjointed, skipping from one incomplete point to another, jumping back and forth temporally, quoting stuff from the Declaration of Independence that isn’t in it, odd interpretations of history (England and US had nothing to do with the defeat of Nazi Germany; it was all the Soviet Union). It all reminded me very much of a young woman I saw who suffered a severe schizophrenic break; sitting at her table surrounded by piles of annotated books, pulling out conspiracy theories, points changing in mid-sentence…
As near as I can make out, their “plan” goes like this
1. Society bad.
2. Kill everyone in cities who isn’t us.
3. ????
4. Glorious Communist Agrarian World Collective.
It would be amusing to let them take L.A. Once they’ve killed off everyone else, they can turn on each in socialist purity battles. When the lights go out, some survivor would flick the switch a few times and ask another punk with a degree in Underwater Social Justice Basketweaving when the power will be restored. USJB-it will reply by noting that there’s no food left in the stores and wonder when the shelves will refill themselves.
Yeah, they can have L.A. If they promise to keep it.
Speaking of cutting NYC off, the comics series DMZ, by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli, is a good Science fictional take on that.
Antifa is a terrorist organization, plain and simple. Everyone wearing a black hood and rioting on Nov 4 should be shot on sight. Simples.
This may get interesting… going to have to invest in at least a pound of popcorn…
If they actually do anything, most will fold at the first sign of actual defense, either from police or from motorists who run them over. I expect to not even notice it happened, except for the usual alarmism the next day from the MSM.
Be sure to pass the popcorn, MamaLiberty! 😉
Nobody here to pass it to… except Laddie! Or if you decide to come visit. 🙂
The whole thing sounds like “let’s name a date and get some lulz from watching the Antifa Derangement Syndrome go wild” to me. I doubt that much happens other than that.
Here in the Northleft coast the big cities like Seattle and Portland might be a problem and worth avoiding on 11/04 just like I would recommend avoiding every ghetto in every major city 24/7.
Hmpf! If “they” had the support, the numbers, etc., Hillary Clinton would be President.
And like her, they are mostly of Hot Air. Unfortunately even hot air can do damage.
“But, as I pointed out to a friend, NYC is connected to its supply of everything by 9 bridges and 2 tunnels. So one guy with a rifle could shut down any access to NYC from a particular bridge, simply by disabling several vehicles. One more to protect the first, and 22 rebels could starve NYC into riots, burning and hunting Antifa in the streets in about a week.”
NYC also has several gang-infested areas, and a serious mafia presence. All of which have incentive to keep the money and other goods flowing. How long would those 22 rebels last after they piss off the Mob?
I don’t think this “Day of Rage” will turn out like the organizers want. If we’re lucky, the most that will happen is it will turn out like the last one, which gave us the Occupy movement. If we’re not lucky, the pawns will find themselves with targets painted on their backs, and those of us who didn’t do any shooting will get blamed for it.
Note to self: Popcorn.
I’ll be interested to see what they’ve got. If the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement guys/gals/others decide they’re going to violently abolish gender (yes, a stated goal) I think we’ll be able to dust off Lennon’s “You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”
Not much chance I’ll need the rifle way out here, but the magazines are loaded and I’ve got a shovel.
Is this noise but creation of a few, in some outhouse someplace, with a phone and an internet connection?
A plan for social media to take over the world?
A media opportunity not to be wasted?
Should I stock popcorn now?
Because in three weeks it will all be sold out?
John – you may be ‘on’ to something. Much ado about nothing.
Ellendra – do you seriously think there are only 22? Not perhaps 2200 who would shut down the city? Also,trucks can be disabled anywhere on the highway. They don’t need to be at or on a bridge. And personally, I suspect the mafia and drug gangs will be more likely to try to keep their operations from being burnt out than worrying about getting food in to feed the rioters. It’s probably more in their interest to maintain the current status quo than to do anything to support a commie insurrection and takeover.
The Occupy movement was a bunch of people who couldn’t organize a decent campsite telling us how to run the world.
If Antifa is similarly “organized” they won’t be taking anything but loot, A black hood and a stick do not a revolutionary make.
As we can see by their announcing an attack in advance, and by their staging it on Saturday, when all the city officials they need to capture or kill won’t be there.
David: Recheck the quotation marks. I’m not the one who brought up the number 22. It was in the original blog post, and even then it was quoted from elsewhere.
Brings back old memories, specifically, May Day 1970 in D.C. I was a rookie doing press coverage which eventually led to, and included, the planned anti-war demonstrations. Which was college kids who, lacking any understanding of strategy and tactics, wound up throwing trash cans in the street and setting newspaper boxes on fire. Think “large, semi-sober frat party.” I interviewed one of the supposed organizers (which, significantly, was done while he was in custody) and pointed out that since D.C. was connected to Virginia by only four bridges, all of which were ridiculously easy to locate on a map, a little creative traffic manipulation could shut down all 4 connections between D.C. and Virginia for most of the day; I got Deer in Headlights as a response. Maryland traffic would have been harder – no bridges – but substantial distruption would have been easy (anyone who has seen what happens in D.C with 1 inch of snow would instantly understand). I suspect it would take a lot more to shut down NYC than a few poorly trained SJWs with rifles, but NYC traffic is a very fragile monster (bridges and tunnels, plus a few very strategic arteries) and not very much carefully planned disruption would go a long way to crippling most of the the city’s traffic for 12-24 hours.
I think there are differences between that and Antifa, but not so many that comparisons can’t be made. First, May Day 1970 was a Friday, with heavy commuter and business traffic, but this November 4 is a Saturday, which is big for traffic in the ‘burbs but not so much downtown, and suburbs are too widely distrbuted for limited resources to compromise, Antifa is All Lefties All the Time, so strategy and tactics, unless heavily assisted by outside expertise, will be minimal, and even with that expertise the emotional high of Children Acting Out will overcome much of whatever organizational discipline gets imported. I’d figure a fair number of broken store windows, lots of trash spread around, and a few car fires. Great fun for all, overtime for cops and firefighters, extra sales for the glass people and car salesmen.
The wild card is a potential semi-coordinated attack to destroy someone’s livelihood, or a direct and immediate threat to the life and safety of Someone Carefully Minding Their Own Business. Which might result in gunfire, possibly substantial and well-aimed gunfire, and once that genie escapes the bottle, it’s not going back in. The ramp-up on both sides will be significant and rapid.
I think Antifa is: 1) underestimating the lack of patience and tolerance for their crap among the general population, and; 2) the proverbial Useful Idiots of behind-the-scenes manipulators desirous of manufacturing what they perceive as a Crisis They Can Use For Leverage.
It’ll either be a “nothing burger,” rambunctious kids misbehaving on a Saturday, or the Start of Something Much Bigger. My money’s on the first, along with lots of welcome overtime for public safety employees. If it turns out to be the latter, things will get very interesting very quickly.
I predict a big yawn,overblown by CNN, MSNBC.
[…] while reading Claire’s take on the latest Antifa nonsense, I got to wondering about something. Following a rabbit hole I found myself at the 90’s-style […]
1) underestimating the lack of patience and tolerance for their crap among the general population,
Pretty much what happened with Occupy. After a couple of weeks or so of pointless* protest the local folks were like, “Okay. They had their fun. We want our town back.” Then it was the LEO baton and pepper-spray drill.
It’s always popcorn time when protestors demanding more government regulation get what they wish for.
It won’t take a week this go-around.
* Protestors with 47 different causes who reject any sort of organization.
I live in the second largest metro area in Florida. My guess is that I will have to go online on Sunday to find out if anything happened on Saturday.
These clowns are so committed that they won’t take a day off work to “start the revolution.”
Ellendra – the number was mine. I was making a point – but literally one guy with a rifle could shut down a bridge or tunnel by disabling vehicles for a time. The po-po would be getting really busy trying to clear the lanes, and if the vehicles can’t be driven, it’s a much longer process. Perishable foods in the trucks would make things more urgent. But in 5 minutes they could be shut down again. It would be more like a cat and mouse game.
I didn’t seriously mean that 22 guys would sit in place 24 x 7 to blow holes in radiators and tires. That’s just unrealistic. The same thing applies on an interstate. If all lanes were suddenly closed the disruption would be tremendous. Just plain delays in delivery of foodstuffs would get riots going – because by now everybody and his brother knows that the local grocery has a 3 day supply – without panic runs. So when the shelves start getting bare, the rioting will begin. Or looting of the groceries, perhaps.
At that point, every cop ‘inside’ the disabled vehicles (in the NYC example – it means on the west end of the island) will become unavailable for clearing access points. What happens outside that point is debatable. However, with only a 3 day supply of food, diapers, water, etc., I don’t think it would take too much of shutting down the highways until things got really heated in the urban areas.
Sabotage is a remarkable tool. Just look as what the ‘deep state’ sabotage in DC is doing to government today, without firing a single shot. And that is what is going on – people working their agenda to the detriment of the elected (like it or not it was legal) administration’s agenda. And they are stalling the Trump administration pretty effectively.
Now, having said all that – I really believe Nov.4th may involve a few urban riots, but nothing to write home about. Not unless you’re either caught by surprise and end up in the middle of one, or you join in and get to brag about getting your head busted by a cop.
Are these Antifa folks smart enough to know how to mess with the power grid? Just wondering.
The linked webpage is pure hokum, a work of fiction. It is vaguely frightening entertainment aimed at mentally unstable people who enjoy being being vaguely frightened.