Image of Saddam Hussein statue being pulled down, from 2003

Image: Pulling down statues of national heroes is also an act of insurrection. Just ask Saddam Hussein. Or as Pelosi might say, “People will do what they do.”

We are excited to report that the American mainstream media (MSM) has finally, after months of BLM/Antifa-inspired riots and mayhem, discovered the term “insurrection."

Why it took them months to rediscover this term, which most of us learn in grade school, is anyone’s guess. But as if on cue, numerous “neutral” and “reliable” news outlets began this morning to describe yesterday’s protest-turned-riot at the Capital as, accurately, an “insurrection.”

Because the meanings of words matter, we fully support this epiphany on the part of mainstream media, no matter how corrupt, biased, and hypocritical its motivations may be. As dictionaries make clear, the term “insurrection” describes

an act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government

It’s pretty clear that charging the Capitol and interrupting a session of the Congress satisfies this definition.

However, it’s also pretty clear that lawlessly occupying entire blocks of cities (trespass, disturbing the peace) burning down businesses (arson) firebombing police stations (arson, attempted homicide) attacking and intimidating people in public (assault, battery, disturbing the peace) or mobbing a courthouse (trespass, disturbing the peace, other crimes) and defacing or pulling down state-owned monuments (vandalism, destruction of property) are all actions that, especially in the aggregate, meet this same criterion of open revolt against established government.

fire at mostly peaceful BLM protest

Image: After a summer of “mostly peaceful” leftist protests, a right-wing “insurrection” is a fantastic outrage and a dangerous assault on “American democracy”… whatever that is.

BLM and Antifa as insurrectionist movements

This is especially true when the stated aim of the protest organizers is revolt or even “revolution” – which, in both the case of BLM and Antifa, it is, even if they don’t use this word. If you do not yet see the clear connections to communism in BLM’s demands and to the 1930s German communist Antifaschistische Aktion in Antifa’s creed and tactics, please look a little closer. And note that there can be no such thing as “democratic” communism or “democratic socialism," except on paper; and that the goal of “social democracy” is socialism – via “reform” rather than revolution, but only because revolution has repeatedly failed; and as Lenin said, the goal of socialism is communism. This is a matter of definitions and of the historical record, and the informed and intelligent agitators on the left, including the organizers, do not dispute it. (This constitutes 1% of them. The other 99% may in fact dispute it, but they have no idea what they’re talking about. They just chant, hold signs, and burn things.)

We claim that leftists of all stripes want the same thing in the end; the only difference between them is what they are willing to destroy in order to get it. The obsession with “equality” that underlies all of leftism is not noble equality but rather the “depraved equality” that de Tocqueville described:

There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which compels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.

The desire for coercive collectivism of any variety is the desire for “equality” at any cost, including universal poverty and slavery, rather than liberty with inequality and the burden of being responsible for living an individual life.

Since leftism is incompatible with liberty and the rule of law, and in direct opposition to the founding principles of America as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we view any effort to implement “socialism” or “communism” in America as insurrection, whether or not it violates the law in its means, since it must destroy law to accomplish its ends; but we especially condemn any leftist movement whose means violate the law and endanger life, liberty or property, making it morally reprehensible as well as intellectually vacuous.

Unfortunately for the leftists, this is the only way they can accomplish their ends. Socialism and communism can not be democratically or morally realized, because the right to liberty is inalienable. Both systems must violate this inalienable right, in order to function. In particular, without protection of property rights, there is no real possibility of liberty.

Yet none dare call it “insurrection”

Given this, why has the media never used the term “insurrection” to describe any of the lawless events perpetrated by Antifa and BLM “protesters” in the last year? (Or the last several years, for that matter?)

Remember when the MSM gave Biden grief for condemning arson and “anarchy” by leftists back in the summer? Biden didn’t even dare use the term “insurrection.” (Or perhaps he doesn’t know it, or had trouble reading it from his teleprompter.) You can’t even criticize arson and mayhem when they are carried out by (or in the vicinity of) a left-wing “protest.” After all, those people are oppressed. (Or secretly white supremacists!) And none dare call it “insurrection,” no matter how much property is destroyed, including government property, in the service of political aims that are clearly incompatible with democracy or liberty, no matter how they are achieved.

Perhaps the reason for this double standard is that, to paraphrase Sir John Harington’s famous epigram, when insurrection prospers, none dare call it insurrection. For whom can the Antifa and BLM insurrections be said to “prosper?” We suggest that the obvious answer is the American radical left, for whom the adjective “radical” is becoming more and more superfluous.

When the “news” is this laughably unreliable, maybe the most useful coverage you can get is satire, such as this article entitled “Raz of Chaz vs. MAGA Viking: Who Did the Techno-Barbarian Aesthetic Better?"

The coming fall of Big Tech

As a side note, we are euphoric that the social media oligarch Mark Zuckerberg has temporarily (and perhaps permanently) banned President Trump from Facebook properties after he and others claimed, without evidence, that Trump instigated the “insurrection.” Deplatforming major figures like Trump will only hasten the move to alternative social media platforms that are censorship-resistant by design, and bring the inevitable downfall of arrogant, censorship-happy, Deep State friendly, amoral and corrupt Big Tech, which is long overdue.

hate speech zone

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