Some wonder why they do stuff like this, because it's not "persuading" anyone or winning support to their side - it just makes normal people loathe the Hamas sympathizers even more. The perps do have a goal, but it's not to persuade, win sympathy, or even "raise awareness."
Remember these are trained, funded, organized activists. The footsoldiers have been programmed on campus with Oppression Theology, so they think the Sacred Oppressed and their self-appointed "allies" can do no wrong, while all means of lashing out at "oppressors" are justified.
These people are very big on concepts like "alliance," shared guilt and virtue, systemic racism, etc. It's a sturdy framework for building a totalitarian ideology of justified thuggery. They think allies of the "oppressors" are legitimate targets for "resistance" activities.
They also think anyone who does not show fealty to their ideology is an enemy - "silence is violence" and all that. There are no bystanders, no civilians, no neutral parties. You're either actively with them, or you're an ally of the "oppressors."
The footsoldiers are thrilled by this ideological framework because it makes them feel morally superior even as they perform immoral acts, like wanton vandalism, blocking roads, and mob violence. There is nothing more exhilarating than righteous crime.
But what about the grand strategy? The organizers find these deluded footsoldiers useful for the same reason all terrorists engage in vandalism and violence. They aren't trying to persuade anyone - they're trying to demoralize their opponents and force them to submit.
The short-term goal of every terrorist is to gain legitimacy by forcing civilized people to concede they have valid "grievances." One way of doing this is to badger and terrorize civilized people, who usually have a lot to lose, until they admit the terrorist has a point.
This is also why terrorists and their fellow travelers tend to scream maximalist accusations at the top of their lungs, accusing their civilized opponents of "genocide," "apartheid," and such. They're just bidding high, playing off the compassion and conscience of civilization.
Once they bludgeon a bit of legitimacy out of civilized people, step two is to offer the standard terrorist's bargain: "Give us what we want, and all of this chaos will stop. Deny us, and the suffering will never end."
A lot of Palestinian sympathizers on the Left, especially the high-toned ones with real political influence, are convinced there will never be peace until the Palestinians get what they want. The Palis brainwashed their people into homicidal mania to prove their determination.
One reason you teach grade-school kids how to take hostages and carry out suicide bombings is to send the message that your collective will is unshakeable, that you're ready to kill and die forever until you get what you want. That's how you sell the Terrorist's Bargain.
This is echoed in the thinking of the young Western allies of Hamas on campus, besotted with Oppression Theology. They have the same sense that if they can demonstrate their commitment to cause and appetite for destruction, the normies will eventually make concessions to them.
One thing the Left has in common with radical Islam: they both understand the psychological value of ritualized submission. They are very big on forcing non-believers to abase themselves and verbally confirm their submission to mandated beliefs.
The Left does this through struggle sessions and endless "re-education" programs. A big part of the corrupt DEI system is forcing people to make ritualized gestures of submission to mandatory ideology: mouthing slogans at seminars, signing confessions of racial guilt, etc.
The Hamas sympathizers trashing memorials and blocking streets are operating on the same logic, forcing normies to make ritualized submission to their ideology, demonstrating that the corrupt political and legal system will do nothing to stop them.
Remember Occupy Wall Street? Same principles. "Occupation" was all about demonstrating the activists were "everywhere," there was no escape from them, they could seize control of public life by force, and you had no choice but to listen to their grievances and confer legitimacy.
The goal, always, is not persuasion but submission. The Left deeply believes, in all of its branches and sects, that the first step toward power is breaking the will of the opposition by forcing them to make gestures of obeisance. Then you hit them with the Terrorist's Bargain.
Every radical movement has a "legitimate political wing" standing by to accept payment for the Terrorist's Bargain, and launder forced submission into real power. "Of course we disapprove of violence, but we must listen to what these passionate young voices are saying..." /end
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Among the strangest features of GOP internal battles - be it NeverTrump, or conservatives displeased with nominees like McCain or Romney - is this notion that it would be better to throw an election to the Dems and hope a better Republican nominee comes along next time.
How can anyone still seriously think that way, especially after Obama's "Pen and Phone" dictatorship and Biden wiping his posterior with the Constitution to plow ahead with his student loan vote-buying scheme? No, guys, it is NEVER safe to just toss a few wins to the Dems.
Maybe it's a form of projection, a stubborn illusion that the Dem candidate might be relatively harmless and inert in office, as GOP leaders sometimes are. Those illusions should have been utterly shattered by now.
When pundits wrote a decade or two ago that corruption would become the big story around the world, I was skeptical. People love to COMPLAIN about corruption, sure, but few electorates are prepared to take decisive action against it.
Corruption is absolutely inherent to Big Government. Repeat after me, and teach your children: THERE ARE NO CLEAN BIG GOVERNMENTS. Amassing huge amounts of power and money in a central State is like dropping sugar cubes amid anthills.
One reason Big Governments never get clean is they have so many weapons at their disposal to distract the public from anti-corruption initiatives. Key segments of the electorate get paid off, too. Big Media is easily drawn into the cesspool and made comfortable.
It is difficult to combat totalitarianism through electoral politics because the whole point of totalitarianism is to seize control of elections. They terrorize and propagandize people for years, then hold a "vote" to find out if their techniques were at least 51% effective.
Defeating totalitarianism requires spirited resistance and good humor. Mock them and make them look ridiculous. They can't stand it, because they are driven by self-righteousness. Totalitarians are small people who need to feel large by joining herds and crushing outsiders.
Defy them at every turn. Go where you aren't supposed to go, say what you're not supposed to say, and do it all with a smile. Exhaust their resources while refusing to become demoralized. Raise the price of totalitarianism by bankrupting its corporate partners when possible.
The greatest threat to democracy at present is the deliberate effort to erase nationhood and citizenship through mass migration, against the express wishes of citizens.
You don't have much of a "democracy," much less a constitutional republic, if the ruling elite can ignore voters to erase the border and shower benefits and privileges on foreign nationals. It's an explicit rejection of national sovereignty.
You don't have any kind of "democracy" if the Ruling Class can use mass migration to create a new electorate that votes the way it wants. Votes have little power if the rulers can dilute them at will.
The Democrat Party grows increasingly less interested in pretending it cares about American citizens, or feels any sense of duty toward America as a nation. The Party was never really good at this, but at least it used to make some modest efforts.
As I've written previously, every Democrat thinks their Sacred Agenda is far more important than any vestigial sense of duty they might feel toward the American people. There is no "American people" to them, just groups of favored constituents and despised enemies.
America isn't really a legitimate nation under Dem ideology, which frees them of feeling any sense of responsibility to the country as a whole, or any weight of tradition that might interfere with their quest for power. They see not one nation under God, but the Balkans.
This once again has me thinking about how everything went nuts in American youth culture during the Great Anti-Bullying Crusade, which was really more about the Left studying and adopting classic bully tactics to impose its ideology on vulnerable young people.
One element of the growing social discontent in America today is that you have an entirely feminized Mean Girls ruling class wielding increasing levels of compulsive force to impose its ideology on an essentially masculine middle and lower class.
It's like those Middle Eastern countries where a Shiite minority rules over a restless Sunni population, or vice versa. Centralized power has grown to totalitarian levels, and it's concentrated in the hands of a political elite that shares nothing of the majority's worldview.