Here’s a comparison I can’t believe took me over a month to draw:
Occupy Wall Street
A literal occupation. It’s there in the name. How many of the same people complaining about Ottawa would have said the same about New York City?
It went on for longer, caused more crime and more disruption, and the police were also heavy handed in its dispersal, although I don’t think anyone associated with OWS had their assets frozen.
There were no rapes and beatings last month as far as I could tell, so there’s another clear difference.
Still, all things said, I find myself more sympathetic to Occupy now than I was then. Even if I disagree on their solutions, I’ve come around to seeing some of the same problems. Having the right to gather and protest without fear of a police truncheon remains important. I see the crackdown on OWS in a different light now, if I’m trying to stay morally consistent.
I don’t know though. Maybe the hypocrisy in this case is just the whole “enemy and friend” truism proving itself out again. Maybe all politics can ever be is just an arms race to see who can better articulate their rationalizations of existing if biases.
Just some thoughts while the smoke clears.
Also a reminder that I while Trudeau has backed down for now, there’s still a chance the persecution of those involved will continue covertly. I think they realized they overplayed their hand and are pulling back sheepishly, but never underestimate the wrath of a bureaucracy scorned.
There's definite transparencies, but Occupy failed because the establishment Dems wanted it dead.
It was an embodiment of the upstart grassroots in the Dem machine getting too big for their britches and having to be put down. If you're not familiar, at the time it happened, the Dem voterbase had been pissing the establishment off by rattling the proverbial cages - primarying do-nothing Dems and running outsider candidates that the DNC would need to later crush, and Occupy was the pivotal moment where the establishment Dems fully embraced the Neoprogressives and hard-lefties because they'd be easier to keep on a leash. If you want a really good example of how assmad this made the DNC, take a look at Ned Lamont in 2006, where Dems finally primaried out shriveled triangulating ballsack Joe Lieberman, only for him to run as an independent with the DNC funneling cash directly into his campaign via donating through (mostly RINO, just to drive the point home) PACs.
Occupy
started perfectly civil and with a coherent focus (forcing accountability on the banks for the financial crisis). What happened was that ANTIFA goons started showing up, violently assaulting people, burning, and looting storefronts, then hiding out amongst the peaceful protestors (who would then get the ever-loving shit kicked out of them by the NYPD). At the same time this was happening, more and more neoprogressives were getting bussed in along with more and more slacktivists showing up on their own, all of which immediately demanded to be given full control of the event. Realizing it was screwed, the people who started it (mostly retirees and moderate Dems) fucked off, as did most of the independents and moderate Repubs that had taken interest. The whole thing collapsed into rot soonafter.
It was easy for them to use Occupy as a tipping point because they'd been setting up to deal with the Dem base for years, and they knew something like it was coming because of the Tea Party, which was, fundamentally, the Right's version of it - started perfectly reasonably (Primary out the RINOs!), became a threat to the power structure, at which point massive RINO superdonors intentionally promoted the craziest motherfuckers they could find to discredit the movement. They knew the tactic would work as a result, though fittingly, the Establishment Dems intended to use it for a much longer term.
The majority of the "fringe left now owns the floor" paradigm in leftist circles effectively began at this point. But the Honkpocalypse, for all its flaws, was an opponent they couldn't ignore - far too focused on a single issue (Get rid of the Mandates and Trudeau), one that didn't give a frozen Canadian fuck about what the establishment said about them, and due to the nature of it, no way to infiltrate and destroy it like there was with Occupy and the Tea Party. This really only left them with capitulation to the Truckers or jackbooting them, along with countless gay ops that seemingly only convinced users of Reddit.
