> Father to Son: What I've Learned About Rage
> JBM There could be such people out there. But the Republicans may not
> even need them. There are thousands of 15-, 16-, 17-year-old anarchists
> who are truly angry. These kids don't really know what anarchy is all
> about, but they do know that when they throw a brick through a window,
> it makes them feel good and there's a chance they will end up on
> television. This feeds into the celebrity craze that America is under
> right now of "Get on TV, man! That's when you're really important!" This
> may be the first protest where there will be as many cameras as protesters.
This exchange has to be one of the most illiterate, ignorant, out-of-touch, piece of crap that I've read recently. I could comment further on the obnoxious remarks about the need for "orderly" demonstrations, but let me tear apart the above paragraph.
First of all, this paragraph by JBM is filled with ageist nonsense about anarchists. It's a convenient fiction to promte the myth that all anarchists are teenagers who will riot at the drop of the hat (the Mailers would be scolded if one of them had made a similar remark about blacks). In fact, the average age of anarchists in the United States is in the mid-20s and is trending upward year after year. Not only is it wrong to limit the existence of anarchists to those who are visible on the streets, but it is also wrong to assume that your typical anarchist street militant is a teenager. Sure, many of them are teenagers, but I've known plenty of 30-something anarchists who have marched with black blocs. And there are anarchists in their 50s and 60s who have participated in black blocs.
So the Mailers, like many of the Left, can only see the anarchists on the streets that fit the stereotypes. The Mailers are probably just ignorant, but I know of leftists who misrepresent the anarchist movement as being one of rowdy teenagers because it serves a political purpose. The truth is that anarchists are not outsiders who crash these protests--we're the ones who do the shitwork to make these protests happen. The police understand this, although they spin a different story for public consumption.
Chuck0