Re: Violent Protesters put up to it?

On Fri, 3 Dec 1999, Richard N Hutchinson wrote:

|I am quite certain that the image of militant protest in Seattle
|has cheered millions of people around the world. 

I am afraid of that. What you are overlooking is that the people, even this
nice, albeit not too precise abstraction you call 'millions of people,' can
actually be wrong. The fact itself that 'millions of people' may cheer
something means absolutely nothing. Millions of people have cheered the 
pope,
the Brazilian soccer team (this one with all due reason), the singer 
formerly
known as Prince, the nazi German invasion of Austria, etc. and that has
absolutely no progressive consequence on history. Millions of people *may* 
be
right and they also may be wrong.

N.B., the argument which posits that the cheers of 'millions of people'
legitimates a certain action by itself actually has a name. It is called
populism. And populism has very, very disturbing, extreme right wing
versions.

|                                                        The fact that the
|protest did NOT appear to be tame, in conformity with rules of polite
|society, etc, etc, etc, makes it appear more powerful, determined,
|serious, and in every way contrary to what the rest of the world expects
|from sedated, fat and happy Amerika.

Maybe this is so. But it also may very well be that there also 'millions of 
people' -- probably other millions than the ones you refer to ;-) -- that
think that violence is not so good (see my previous posting).

And yet another set of 'millions of people' might understand that the image
of the protesters as militant and violent is something the global media --
not exactly your unbiased interlocutors of truth -- produced for a very
specific ideological effect. My guess is that quite a few 'millions of
people' are actually much more intelligent than what you give them credit
for. Many 'millions of people' actually know that they are given culturally,
morally, ideologically biased material by the global corporations that make
up the media, and they know how to doubt the messages that come to them. And
perhaps even 'millions' among them understand how violence, particularly
violence for purely symbolic purposes, is the end.

Jozsef Borocz