Anarchy in the US

Anarchy changes nothing.

Riot erupts in downtown Portland after peaceful protest of George Floyd killing:

After hours of largely peaceful demonstrations, violence escalated late Friday in downtown Portland, as hundreds of people gathered to protest the Minneapolis police killing of a black man.

…The situation erupted a little around 11 p.m. after people marched to downtown from an earlier demonstration in North Portland. Protesters congregated at the Multnomah County Justice Center, which houses the downtown jail and police precinct. People smashed windows and caused fires inside a first-floor office while corrections records staff were working inside, said Chris Liedle, a Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson. Workers were able to leave unharmed and the building’s sprinklers doused the flames, he said.

There are groups of anarchists up and down the West Coast. They use any protest they can to mobilize and destroy. They’re particularly active in Portland and Seattle but will travel wherever necessary to destabilize society. The peaceful protest of George Floyd’s murder has nothing to do with these people or their motivations other than to be the latest cover they use to damage property and loot. 

In Minnesota, the situation is much the same: Stunning, unless you’ve seen this script before. 

Shaken by another night of chaos that overwhelmed law enforcement, Gov. Tim Walz said Saturday he will fully mobilize the National Guard to combat what he called a “tightly controlled” group of outside agitators, some of them from out of state, who have turned city streets into scenes of looting and arson.

The struggle to control the mayhem could bring another 1,000 National Guard soldiers into the cities, supplementing a force of 700, already the largest civil policing authority in the state’s history. Law enforcement officials said it would be the first full mobilization of the Guard in Minnesota since World War II.

“Our cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are under assault,” Walz said, suggesting that a growing number of rioters are coming from outside the city, and possibly outside the state, in what he called “an organized attempt to destabilize civil society.”

Walz said as many as 80% of the people causing destruction and fire in the cities could be from elsewhere. He distinguished the wanton looting and vandalism from the legitimate and mostly peaceful protests that began Tuesday, the day after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody.

It was not clear if the outside groups suspected to be playing a part in the mayhem are made up of white supremacist agitators, left wing anarchists, or both.

Leftwing or rightwing, it doesn’t matter. Ultimately the political spectrum is a circle, and in anarchy these groups may have found their shared idealogical cause. I’d round up the lot of them and throw away the key. Until we do, no one will be able to “peaceably assemble.”