Following recent discussions about contrarian posturing, the Rightwing Prof has steered me towards this piece by George F. Will. Here’s the opening paragraph:
“During the campus convulsions of the late 1960s, when rebellion against any authority was considered obedience to every virtue, the film ‘To Die in Madrid’, a documentary about the Spanish Civil War, was shown at a small liberal arts college famous for, and vain about, its dedication to all things progressive. When the film’s narrator intoned, ‘The rebels advanced on Madrid,’ the students, who adored rebels and were innocent of information, cheered. Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, had been so busy turning undergraduates into vessels of liberalism and apostles of social improvement that it had not found time for the tiresome task of teaching them tedious facts, such as that the rebels in Spain were Franco’s fascists…”
Of course, we live in more enlightened times and such a basic oversight could never happen now.
More rebellion at Zombietime. Related.
The Western liberal activism checklist.
1. Make sure that you are in a country that won’t, you know, torture or kill you for protesting.
2. Make sure you have new batteries for the megaphone ’cause more decibels is a good substitute for actually doing something usefull.
3. Bring plenty of bottled water, because “speaking truth to power” and “sticking it to the man” is thirsty work.
4. Offensive “Che” T-shirts work really well for these protests, because your parents really hate pictures of you looking scruffy.
5. If you have to buy the plane ticket for the journey here on your parents Amex card, don’t show the receipt to anyone.
6. Try to desecrate something: shitting on the American flag is always a laugh, ’cause like, everybody knows that the US has the worst Human Rights record EVER. (NB – Make sure that you are compliant with rule (1.) and don’t desecrate any non-western symbol or you might be committing a hate crime or somebody might cut your head off).
7. Try to have FUN – ’cause lets face it, we ONLY make these protests where there is absolutely no personal risk. I mean, if they actually sent in troops or tanks we’d all be standing in like a huge pool of urine.
During the American Civil War, there was a French leftist editor who took the side of the South because they were Rebels and Rebels are always the Good Guys.