By Thomas R. Eddlem
Criticism of the upcoming “Rage Against the War Machine” anti-war rally in Washington has me wondering if some people expected it to be all candy canes and rainbows. We’re going up against a Military-Industrial-Surveillance Complex (MISC) that will use every dirty trick in the book to ruin any — and every — anti-war rally.
It’s baked into the cake for rallies like this that we can expect Fed agents-provocateurs at the Mall at our rally in Washington waving Russian flags and praising Putin, making racist statements, putting pineapple on pizza and doing everything else distasteful to most Americans.
But it’s worth doing an anti-war rally anyway.
It’s also baked into the cake that any rally against war will be slammed by regime-occupied media as “Russia propaganda,” using the Fed agents-provocateur as “evidence.”
But it’s worth doing an anti-war rally anyway.
By endorsing the rally, we’ll be attacked as traitors to foreign interests. Every time. Because that’s what happens when you go after the MISC.
But it’s worth doing an anti-war rally anyway.
The bosses will not give up their vacation homes in the Caymans, and the MISC worker-bees will not give up their low-six-figure jobs at fake think-tanks without a knock-down, dragged-out fight.
They’re coming after anyone who can be a threat. Anyone.
Former arms control inspector Scott Ritter claimed that the FBI sting operation that ensnared him trying to entice an under-age girl in a sexual encounter was a set-up and pay-back for his activity against the war narrative.
That’s probably true, even though it does absolutely nothing to make his actions excusable.
The FBI and the rest of the surveillance complex knows the weaknesses of its opponents. All of them. It has our internet history, our television-watching history, all of our texts, our legal history. It can track our locations through our phones. And if it wants badly enough, it can even listen to our speech through our Alexa devices, phones and televisions.
They know, or at the very least they can find, all of our weaknesses and most embarrassing moments.
And they will exploit every one of those weaknesses on every Libertarian Party official (or official of any other party or organization) that ever becomes a credible threat to their ongoing gravy train. Most people haven’t done something so purely evil as Ritter has done, but most also have done something they find embarrassing.
In Ritter’s case, the Libertarian National Committee could probably have avoided this particular controversy by not headlining him as a speaker in the first place. Everyone has some sort of sin or embarrassing situation, but it’s clear that Ritter’s particular sin made him toxic to all decent people.
The rally also headlined a person who was a regular contributor to RT, the official Russian state propaganda agency. In the future, knowing we’ll be painted as agents of a foreign state, it might not be wise for the Libertarian National Committee to help the official narrative by headlining people on the rosters of those same propaganda agencies.
But let’s not pretend that even the most extreme caution by the Libertarian National Committee in helping to co-organize this rally could have prevented the overall result. There was no way to avoid being painted as “Russian sympathizers” by official state actors, statist prostitutes (paid to ape the official line), and the statist sluts (who give away the official line for free).
And speaking of statist sluts, former LP official Vermin Supreme made some news recently.
At one time Vermin Supreme imagined himself as the LP court jester. After all, he wore a boot on his head. And when his schtick employing the same, tired old gag more than for two decades straight stopped getting laughs, he thought in 2020 that his unfunny court jester routine could make him a king as he ran for the LP presidential nomination.
How times have changed.
Vermin Supreme has now taken his freakshow elsewhere, probably to a new social club that wants to remain small and insular. And that’s probably a good thing.
But he’s also a good example of the statist slut, retailing for free some other regime spokes-liar’s false narrative. He’s not so dumb that he actually thinks the people running the Libertarian Party are “pedo-apologists.” There is not an honest person anywhere who thinks Scott Ritter was hired to speak at an anti-war rally because of his arrests on sexual issues, so it’s clear this failed method actor is not an honest person.
Nor is there an honest person who thinks Ritter is pro-war, as several dishonest people have started doing as a result of Ritter’s unfortunate edgelording on Twitter.
War-mongers and empire-lovers don’t care about the truth, and they don’t care about facts in this neo-McCarthy era. Neither do the statist sluts or the petty people bearing grudges against the LNC for losing at Reno.
These people can safely be ignored entirely, because they are a constant. If the rally had gold as its color on the banners, they would have criticized it for not being blue. If the LNC had selected blue-colored banners, they would have criticized it for not being gold.
Small-minded people who sit on the sidelines and criticize will always find a way to criticize the doers, especially when it’s so easy today to say anti-war people are Russian assets. You don’t need any evidence today to accuse someone of being a Russian asset, and there is no penalty to be paid for doing so maliciously. Our imperial overlords want us to be doing that to each other, especially to anti-war people.
They want a divided anti-war movement. Rallies of this kind are necessary because they bring large numbers of people from different backgrounds together in support of the anti-war cause. Our enemies need to isolate us and make us believe we’re alone in order to keep winning and their wars ongoing.
It’s important to note that during this saga that nearly all the critics of the Rage Against the War Machine rally attacked the speakers as an attempt to distract from the rally’s demands and divide the anti-war movement. They don’t have to discuss the issue of anti-war when they can instead keep the focus upon ad hominem and abuse.
I’ve noted that among all the critics of the speakers for the rally, only one even bothered to suggest a different rally with different speakers. Only the Classical Liberal Caucus of the Libertarian Party suggested doing a different rally.
My only objection to the letter above is the demand that it condemn Russian aggression, and not because the Russian government hasn’t been aggressive or that it shouldn’t be condemned. Rather, a rally in Washington by a US Libertarian Party should be focused upon demands for change in policy for the US government. A rally for ending the war in Afghanistan need not have also included a condemnation of the Taliban imposing the burka upon women (though that too is worthy of condemnation), and such a demand would have stunted any impact toward ending the war.
But perhaps more importantly, condemnation of Russia is specifically what drives aid to Ukraine, and further escalation, prolonging the war and the death and suffering occurring in it. That’s why the regime craves these condemnations so much; they are silent calls for continuing the gravy-train to Zelensky. We shouldn’t be doing the job of the war machine with our anti-war rallies.
For me personally, this is more of a strong preference and not an absolute poison pill. An anti-war rally that demands an end to Ukrainian aid and still has an empty and flaccid virtue-signal condemnation of Russian aggression is still worth endorsing. At least I think that as my personal opinion. A condemnation of Russia is terrible messaging, but it still doesn’t say anything I would disagree with. Russia is still a corrupt kleptocracy run by an old KGB thug.
But the “let’s condemn Russia too” narrative is this same dumb as the messaging I’ve seen occurring on an almost daily basis from the Classical Liberal Caucus twitter account, for example that Ukraine has a right to self-determination. (Of course, they have the right to self-determination, and that right in the midst of a war is not dependant upon the affirmation by a political party in the United States.)
A pure anti-war message is focused upon making changes to United States government policy that take this country out of the war business, not on secondary narratives that back up the war machine’s propaganda campaign.
But either way, if we’re successful, we’re going to be smeared badly by all the power centers in Washington, New York City, and Hollywood. So keep in mind that’s what you signed up for when you joined the anti-war movement.
