Protests

 "Kamala Harris on Inciting “Good” 2020 Or Stopping “Bad” 2024 Street “Protests”? Here is a question for Vice President Harris: what makes some protests that turn violent good, while others this week may be similar and yet will be seen as bad? In other words, do we remember your own 2020 quote and tweet about “protests” that had certainly turned riotous and violent (contrary to the disinformation of obsequious “fact checkers”)? So here is Harris, on June 17, 2020, in a nationally televised interview with Stephen Colbert following the continuous Washington DC protests of late May and June that had proved nightly violent and engaged in nonstop vandalizing of iconic monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial: “But they’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. They’re not. This is a movement. I’m telling you. They’re not going to stop, and everyone, beware. Because they’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop before election day in November, and they are not going to stop after election day. And everyone should take note of that on both levels. That they’re not going to let up. And they should not, and we should not.” And here is an earlier Harris June 1, 2020, tweet, seeking to raise bail money for those arrested for violent protests in Minneapolis: “If you’re able to, chip in now to the MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” So, Vice President Harris, will you also encourage protestors outside your nominating convention this week “not to stop”? Will you praise them as a “movement”? Will you boast to the American people to “beware” that those in Chicago are “not going to stop before election day in November, and they are not going to stop after election day. And everyone should take note of that on both levels.” And when some of these protestors call you Hitler and genocidal, and get a little violent, and perhaps rush barricades, brawl with police, light fires, destroy property, loot, and vandalize leading to their arrests, will you go back on Twitter/X and try to raise bail for the arrested so they can get right back to their business outside your convention? Or are there some good “protests” that turn violent and are a “movement” that should not stop, and whose rioters should be bailed out asap? And then again there are other protests that are disruptive, dangerous, and demand mass arrests and jailing to protect the safety of their targets? Are your candidacy and career sacrosanct in a way a grandmother’s small business was not in Minneapolis? And finally, if the protests outside the convention in Chicago prove similar to those in Washington DC and Minneapolis in May and June 2020, will your running mate Tim Walz give us a repeat performance by demanding the National Guard not help out overwhelmed police—for at least three-days to help out the protestors during the convention? And will Mrs. Walz open her Chicago hotel window to get a whiff of the fumes from good arson, and will his daughter again find out from her dad whether the Guard will be deployed so she can warn the good protestors outside the convention to keep at it on the good information they won’t be arrested and so won’t have to bailed out by Ms. Harris?"

 

Victor Davis Hanson