7/9/2020 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com
A
TikTok video that recently went viral on social media showed a recent Harvard
graduate threatening to stab anyone who said "all lives matter." In
her melodrama, she tried to sound intimidating with her histrionics.
She
won a huge audience as she intended. But her video also came to the attention
of the company that was going to give her an internship later this summer,
Deloitte, which decided it didn't want to add an intern who threatened to kill
strangers who said something she didn't like.
She
fought back tears while complaining how unfair the world had been to her. Her
initial TikTok post had earned cruel pushback from the social media jungle she
had courted. Deloitte, she sobbed, was mean and hurtful. And she wanted the
world to share her pain.
The
Harvard grad instantly became an unwitting poster girl for the current protest
movement and the violence that has accompanied it. What turns off millions of
Americans about the statue toppling, the looting, the threats and the screaming
in the faces of police is the schizophrenic behavior of so many of the would-be
revolutionaries.
On
one hand, those toppling statues or canceling their own careers on the internet
pose as vicious Maoists -- the hard-core shock troops of the revolution. Their
brand is vile profanity, taunts to police, firebombs and spray paint.
In
homage to Italy's blackshirts of the past, they wear black hoodies, don
makeshift helmets and strap on ad hoc protective padding -- part lacrosse
attire, part cinematic Road Warrior costume.
The
televised stereotype of the antifa activist is a physically unimpressive but
violent-talking revolutionary. He seems to strut in laid-back, blue-city
Minneapolis but wisely avoids the suburbs and small towns of the nation's red
states. He spits at police when standing beside fellow agitators but would
never do that when alone confronting an autoworker or welder.
When
police march against the antifa crowd and their appendages in order to clear
the streets, they often scream like preteens, objecting to mean officers who
dare to cross them.
When
arrested, the trash talkers are usually terrified of being jailed or of having
an arrest on their records.
What
is going on?
Black
Lives Matter, antifa and their large numbers of imitators and loosely organized
wannabes are mostly made up of middle-class youth, often either students or
graduates. They deem themselves the brains of the rioting, the most woke of the
demonstrators, the most sophisticated of the iconoclasts. In truth, they are
also the most paranoid about being charged or being hurt.
What
explains the passive-aggressive nature of these protesters and rioters?
Many
no doubt are indebted, with large, unpaid student loans. Few seem in a hurry to
get up at 6 a.m. each day to go to work to service loans that would take years
to pay in full.
While
some of those arrested are professionals, many are not. Few seem to be earning
the sort of incomes that would allow them to marry, have children, pay off
student loan debt, buy a home and purchase a new car.
Historically,
the tips of the spears of cultural revolutions are accustomed to comfort. But
they grow angry when they realize that they will never become securely
comfortable.
In
today's high-priced American cities, especially on the globalized coasts, it's
increasingly difficult for recent college graduates to find a job that will
allow for upward mobility.
The
protestors are especially cognizant that their 20s are nothing like what they
believe to have been the salad days of their parents and grandparents -- who
did not incur much debt, bought affordable homes, had families and were able to
save money.
Earlier
generations went to college mainly to become educated and develop marketable
skills. They weren't very interested in ethnic and gender "studies"
courses, ranting professors and woke administrators. For the students of the
1960s who were, protesting was a side dish to a good investment in an affordable
college degree that would pay off later.
But
when such pathways are blocked, beware.
The
woke but godless, the arrogant but ignorant, the violent but physically
unimpressive, the degreed but poorly educated, the broke but acquisitive, the
ambitious but stalled -- these are history's ingredients of riot and
revolution.
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