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Comment by prasadjoglekar | Hacker News Reader

That was what Occupy Wall St and Tea Party movements were. Remember that? Before each of them got infested with social-issue parasites of each pole, both were populist reactions to financial injustices.

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Occupy was suppressed by the entire police state, coordinated at the federal level under the FBI and DHS [0].

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-co...

I feel like the most significant cause of Occupy's burnout was the fact that it was so poorly organized and had no concrete goal. I don't recall any specific legislation or reform that they were calling to enact and there was a cacophony of voices each calling for some kind of societal revolution. Eventually the local Occupy demonstration turned into a homeless encampment with some signs propped alongside the roadway. I certainly won't deny government meddling but I honestly think the movement was doomed from the start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahMGoB01qiA

Peter Schiff did a man on the street with some folks of the Occupy movement, and basically proves your point - the desired goals were so scattered and sometimes even contradictory.

When there is concerted effort to undermine a populist movement, that's how it will end up looking: disorganized, chaotic, unproductive, and eventually dead. It very well could have failed due to deliberate interference where it might have had a substantial impact otherwise. How much would you bet that there weren't covert agents working to put it down?

I don't know if it was from infiltration, or what, but one of the biggest talking points of Occupy was that they were a leaderless organization, and they would establish rules of order that required near unanimous consensus to make decisions. That's a great way to avoid making any decisions.

I remember this comic that ridiculed the "Occupy Wall Street doesn't have a goal" talking point, one of the many corporate-pushed talking points meant to discredit the movement: [1]

1: https://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/2722/TMW2011-10-12colorl...

I feel like the movement could have overcome the "corporate talking point" by actually having an organized and focused goal.

At some point, it starts to feel intentional that every time an issue that could bring us together begins to gain traction, it’s diverted into some media concocted idea about how (left wing or right wing group) is out to destroy (social thing).

It's only starting to feel intentional, eh? While it may not be a result of coordinated and direct pressure, like a secret ban on promoting non-partisan popular causes or something... I don't believe for a minute that our cultish, deadlocked political landscape is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from good faith participation in our system. It's the result of powerful people and institutions throwing around their weight, buying allies and generating propaganda, in order to dominate and shape said system.

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