‘No Kings’ May Be Largely Peaceful, but the Peaceful Are Giving Cover to the Violent
‘No Kings’ May Be Largely Peaceful, but the Peaceful Are Giving Cover to the Violent
Like the last two similar exhibitions of nationwide anti-Trump protests, the third in a series of coordinated “No Kings” protests against Donald Trump were characterized primarily by agitated but peaceful demonstrators engaging in unremarkable displays of political dissent.
For the most part, they were and remain largely banal expressions of Americans’ First Amendment rights. But from the beginning, the “No Kings” protests have also provided the latently violent with cover to indulge their most anti-social impulses. That tendency is becoming more pronounced. Worse, the nonviolent who provide the violent with camouflage are either incapable of or uninterested in policing their own.
Lamentably familiar scenes unfolded this weekend in Portland, Ore., where so-called “Black Bloc” rioters — each armed with “gas masks” and wearing roughly matching garb and face coverings to shield their identity — clashed with police even before night fell. The situation quickly deteriorated after sundown. By 10 p.m.on March 28, Portland police declared the event an “unlawful assembly” typified by “criminal activity including assault and criminal mischief,” including attacks on police with fists, blunt instruments, and the “objects” that were hurled at them from somewhere in the crowd.
A similar sequence of events played out on the streets of Los Angeles. At least 75 people were arrested on Saturday when rioters transformed Downtown L.A.’s “No Kings” protests into a melee. “Officials said the rioters threw objects including rocks, bottles and chunks of concrete at officers,” the New York Post reported, citing the Department of Homeland Security. “Two federal officers were struck by cement blocks and required medical treatment.”
Again, police issued a dispersal order. Again, they were ignored. Law enforcement deployed crowd-control ordnance, including tear gas, to suppress the unrest, but the rioters were ready for that. “Some protesters wearing shields and gas masks on the other side of a fence at the federal complex picked up the canisters and tossed them back at police,” the Associated Press revealed. In addition, violent demonstrators bearing Palestinian flags kicked in unison at the temporary fencing protecting the federal buildings that had become the focus of the rioters’ anger:
About 10,000 people turned out at Denver’s “No Kings” protest. But by midafternoon, small contingents of shock forces within the crowd attempted to block a highway entrance ramp, compelling riot police to attempt to disperse them using irritants and pepper balls. “At least eight people were arrested, as was a ninth person later who police said was throwing objects,” the AP reported.
Maybe the most troubling incident took place in Dallas, where anti-Trump demonstrators clashed with equally incendiary right-wing counterprotesters. Footage of the scene suggests that everyone involved in that display of costumed vigilantism sought out a confrontation, and they all got what they wanted.
The organizers of these protests often point out that the vast majority of participants in these well-attended events are concerned citizens engaged in peaceful activism. That is doubtlessly true, but that lopsided ratio does not absolve the event’s organizers or participants of the fault they share for their roles in incubating violent elements and creating the conditions in which they can and do act out their quasi-revolutionary fantasies.
Americans are becoming inured to a certain level of political street violence. But the whole point of actions like these is that they shock the conscience of polite society. If scenes like these no longer horrify their targets, the rioters and the organizations that fund themwill have to up the ante. When they do, the results will not be pretty.
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