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Comment by gorwell | Hacker News Reader

One idiot or provocateur in a sea of tens of thousands does not override the 99%. That's an absurd, lazy smear.

What this episode makes clear is that many people actually love authoritarianism as long as the actions of the state in the moment appear to align with their own ideology. Next time it won't, which is why it must be resisted on a principled basis. This precedent being set is a dictator's dream come true and you will have no leg to stand on as someone that cheered on the tools of oppression.

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> Next time it won't

Sadly, it most likely will. The left I used to know wouldn't be caught dead cheering on the coordination between federal government and private businesses/banks to deny people the ability to organize and protest. But here we are, and there we'll be when the government decides to label whatever the next movement is as a "threat to democracy."

Let's lean into this.

> to organize and protest.

All the sit-ins in the past 60 years of protesting, ended up in people being arrested. And fines (as well as imprisonment) were levied against the arrested protesters for disruption of government operations and services.

Further these days, often protesters go in expecting to be arrested. Activists will often seek people who aren't afraid of being arrested.

If you cause damage during the protest, you really can't whine about the punishment.

> The left I used to know wouldn't be caught dead cheering on the coordination between federal government...

Oh I think Abbie Hoffman's supporters would still hate the FBI COINTELPRO today. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) Hoover's FBI more or less got away with infiltration and assassination because the enemy was "stinking hippies" or "terrorists".

> Hoover's FBI more or less got away with infiltration and assassination because the enemy was "stinking hippies" or "terrorists".

But don't you see any kind of resemblance to that and what's happening currently with the all the "nazis" and "white supremacists"? It's odd to me that you can mention COINTELPRO and think that things like that don't still happen.

I guess you can rightly say that I have no proof of that. But in 50 years, if we ever get documents released explaining how COINTELPRO was expanded and used against lots of the movements of our time, you owe me a beer.

There's a lot of people that hate the CIA with good reason. The FBI has apparently never met an agent involved killing it didn't like, and sure there's lots of corruption on the local level, from cops to politicians.

But COINTELPRO is the premier example of law enforcement corruption in the US, and those who were affected by it still live with it to this day. And I don't think anyone really wants justice served without due process in the US these days. And arguing that your opponents support that or are willing to look the other way when it happens is rather unfair.

If the truckers staged a boycott instead of an occupation, I feel like their side might have a lot more sympathy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott

As to your red herring about the right being labeled as "nazi"s, I think the media does a pretty good job of portraying the "Racist Right" from the "Right". It's also pretty clear whether a politician/person/group/etc is willing to openly denouce racism or not.

The left you used to know rightly deemed that fascism. Before everyone on the neu-left started painting all of their "enemies" with the term, that is.

Canada did good. The courts will do the rest. It's a democratically elected government, the public gave it this power and approved it's use. This is what the Canadian public wants. The protesters are part of a fringe far-right movement. They had a month to make their case. They made it. It did not do any good for anyone.

> One idiot or provocateur in a sea of tens of thousands does not override the 99%.

When the blockade is significantly funded from outside the country the policies are supposed to be about [0], when effective mechanics of the protest aren't merely speech but crippling trade, when the stated substance is basically claiming the privilege of unrestrained motion across international borders without regard to vaccination status, even if it were true that "one idiot or provocateur in a sea of tens of thousands" were engaging in fundamentally unacceptable (e.g. nazi) performance, there's still be plenty of reasons for sensible and restrained government authorities to intervene.

> This precedent being set is a dictator's dream

Which precedent? That authorities might use authority to stop trade disruption?

Seizure of property from people involved in that disruption? Bigger and far more routine problems in terms of civil forfeiture.

Needing to be vaccinated to cross a border? You may want to look at precedents established over the last century or two and ask yourself why the totalitarian catastrophe you seem to be imagining has only crossed some kind of threshold now, almost as if it isn't coming.

[0] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/where-things-stand-majo...

> One idiot or provocateur in a sea of tens of thousands does not override the 99%. That's an absurd, lazy smear.

Do you feel the same about the BLM protests?

This is a really lazy whataboutism.

Let's assume that both the blm protests and the convoy both had "a few idiots or provocateurs in a sea of tens of thousands." Now compare the media coverage and government handling of the two things, and compare how those idiots are portrayed compared to the tens of thousands. Do you see a difference? It seems to me that all blm-related events are generally considered peaceful protests (even the ones where buildings are burned down), while the convoy is nothing but a big nazi flag waving party. Did any blm related entity have their bank accounts frozen?

What buildings were burnt by BLM in Canada? There was an attempted arson in Ottawa at the time of the trucker occupation, though.

And I bet people who watched fox news have a different perspective on how peaceful/violent some BLM protests were. What's even worse is that people getting their news from social media are going to be fed a single narrative and be entirely unaware of it; at least with entities like fox news/CNN or sub-reddits, someone can actively seek out multiple narratives around an event.

> Did any blm related entity have their bank accounts frozen?

Interesting to think about. Just imagine the headline of "Donald trump freezes bank accounts of BLM protestors" and the uproar and legal battles that would immediately follow. Different countries (laws, rights, legal precedents), different levels of public support for the underlying cause, "black bloc" obscuring the protestor identities.

> Did any blm related entity have their bank accounts frozen?

Yes.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/17/amazon-suspends-black-lives-ma...

Not even comparable example. That is a really sad contribution. Very misleading

Attempting to retroactively and without due process freeze the finances of anyone who donated to the BLM protests would be just as far out of line as doing the same to anyone who donated to the Ottowa protests.

Even in cases like the sanctions on Iran, I don't think we attempt to prosecute people who had financial interactions with Iranian people or businesses before the sanctions were imposed.

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