Playing in the Dirt with Occupy
Zombie ventures into the moral wilderness of Occupy’s latest project:
The farm they seized was not a working farm per se, but rather a “research farm” for the University of California, near its Berkeley campus. The only difference between the way the farm used to be (prior to a week ago) and the way it is now is that the Occupiers have transformed what was essentially a well-maintained and important open-air laboratory into a dishevelled and ultimately purposeless pretend-farm for trustafarian dropouts… The scientists themselves are for the most part royally pissed off at the Occupiers and some may have years of work ruined by the Occupiers’ juvenile prank.
Ah, but pissing off random people is how a leftist radical gauges just how radical he is. See, for example, this. And this. And this. It’s the Occupy way.
This being Berkeley, several faculty members felt a need to display their own mighty radicalism:
Some leftist U.C. professors are lecturing today at the farm to show their solidarity with the Occupiers, including Laura Nader (famous for helping to lead the field of anthropology toward self-critical Political Correctness); Gill Hart, a Gramscian anti-capitalist; and Paul Rabinow, a deconstructionist anthropologist. What do any of these professors know about farming, or plant biology? Nothing. But hey, they know about the significance of what it means to spout off a bunch of revolutionary socialist verbiage while absconding with stuff that isn’t yours.
Property is theft, man. Well, your property is, anyway. Theirs, not so much.
As these are ersatz radicals with ersatz principles, the “farming” they do is also of the pretend variety.
Breaking into gated property and “liberating” land is exciting; the tedium of then spending endless hours over the next year in the blistering heat, in order to legitimise your actions and prove you’re not just jacking everyone around — not so fun. […] Only a handful of rows, right near the entrance, were planted all along their length, from end to end. Soon enough, those rows gave way to other rows with just a few plants near the walkway, seemingly just for show. Many rows’ plantings were pretty pitiful, or perhaps just symbolic; in this case, for instance, a single full-grown leek was stuck in the ground at the start of one row, to simulate the concept of “farming leeks.” […] Prediction: Very few, if any, of these “crops” will ever be harvested, or even grow to maturity.
Why, it’s almost as if the Occupiers’ “farming” were just a pretext for fatuous grandstanding and self-admiration. Say it isn’t so.
As the camp’s official volunteer sign-up sheet reveals, nearly 80% of the activities at the “farm” have nothing whatsoever to do with farming.
But on the upside, they are offering workshops in yoga and poetry. Oh, and group hypnosis sessions.
Update:
Meanwhile, in entirely unrelated news…
The FBI arrested five men Monday evening, saying they had planted what were believed to be explosive devices under the Ohio 82 bridge over Cuyahoga Valley National Park as part of a May Day protest… One of the leaders of the Occupy Cleveland movement, Brandon Baxter, is one of those arrested.
Via Daniel in the comments, Jim Treacher has more background here, along with the obligatory disclaimer: “Remember, everybody: Whenever an Occupier commits a crime, he’s not really an Occupier. All Occupier crimes are completely unrelated incidents, because shut up.” Sharp-eyed readers will notice that Mr Baxter – aka Skabby, the would-be ninja of social justice - is seen tapping bongos in front of a banner that reads “greed kills.” Unlike exploding highway bridges, of course, which have no physical consequences whatsoever.
Update 2:
Occupy Cleveland claim to be “shocked” by the attempted bombing and are now trying to distance themselves from their own associates. But in terms of worldview and self-indulgence, I don’t think there’s quite as much distance as they’d like us to believe.
Here we have a movement that claims to be “non-hierarchical” and to have no leaders – thereby giving license to all manner of exciting unofficial behaviour – but which has a remarkable number of “organisers” gorged on the same self-flattering, self-justifying worldview. A movement whose “non-hierarchical” founder says Occupy is “about antagonising people and slapping them around a little bit.” A movement whose favoured “non-violent” tactics rely on mobs and coercion – and the moral anonymity that mobs make possible. A movement that’s explicitly premised on the seizure and violation of other people’s property, and which measures its impact by the disruption and distress it inflicts on others. And oh yes. A movement whose cheerleaders tell us that mobbing random retailers and intimidating their customers is “a perfectly justifiable form of protest.” And whose apologists and hagiographers have told us, repeatedly, that they “have no problem with principled, thought-through political violence,” that property damage is “not the same thing as violence,” and that setting fire to occupied buildings isn’t “real” violence.
For members of this movement to then affect “shock” when that same thinking is taken one notch further requires colossal dishonesty. But hey, that’s who these people are.
Occupy Law #1: Smiley-faces and peace signs make theft OK.
Zombie is funny. So are Occupy but for different reasons.
” a single full-grown leek was stuck in the ground at the start of one row, to simulate the concept of “farming leeks.”
A Potemkin village leek.
But on the upside, they are offering workshops in yoga and poetry. Oh, and group hypnosis sessions.
Beyond. Fucking. Parody.
They don’t even have the brains to be embarrassed.
Not Lurking No More,
“They don’t even have the brains to be embarrassed.”
It’s as if modern history is a mystery to them. And so another generation of frauds and suckers are regurgitating the bogus ‘radicalism’ of forty, fifty years ago. It was absurd then. It’s absurd and contemptible now. Strange how so much ‘radicalism’ requires vanity, pretension and utter credulity.
On a not entirely unrelated note, I recently saw a few episodes of the Seventies sitcom The Good Life. It’s remarkable just how often the Good’s radical “self-sufficient” lifestyle is only kept afloat by endless favours and the neighbours’ chequebook.
I feel sorry for the staff and PhD students at Berkeley who have just seen their work get vandalised. These scientists were doing research work on agriculture and crop yields, the results of which would have been of far more benefit to humanity (and the Third World in particular) than all the useless posturing of the clowns who belong to the ‘Occupy’ movement.
I can think of no better illustration of the combination of political absurdity and childish posturing than the ‘occupation’ of Gill Tract. I’m just glad I haven’t got an air force at my disposal.
Sackcloth and ashes: “, the results of which would have been of far more benefit to humanity (and the Third World in particular) than all the useless posturing of the clowns who belong to the ‘Occupy’ movement.”
I think almost any activity under the sun would be of more benefit to humanity that the actions of the Occupistas.
Also, I’m thinking there will be an opportunity to write an interesting Occupy Farm/Animal Farm comparison in, oh, about a month when they all get bored and drift away and the power struggle and blame game starts.
Guess who hates other peoples free speech??
http://twitchy.com/2012/04/30/twitter-you-have-a-problem/
Occupy is one big demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Sackcloth,
“I feel sorry for the staff and PhD students at Berkeley who have just seen their work get vandalised.”
Quite. And remember, academics from U.C.’s Clown Quarter – cultural anthropology, social theory, etc – are championing the thieves and vandals – perhaps in the hope of lending them credibility. It might almost be funny. Except of course the consequences and clear-up of Occupy’s little stunts are always presumed to be someone else’s problems. And the Occupiers will only stop being arsewipes when the personal cost of being an arsewipe is sufficiently high.
“the Occupiers will only stop being arsewipes when the personal cost of being an arsewipe is sufficiently high.” I see they decided to ‘occupy’ a research farm rather than a standard variety farm farm. The ratio of shotguns to crusties might not have been so congenial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xd_zkMEgkI
Trust me, folks – you really, really don’t want to seriously piss off a PhD in Chemistry.
Another Occupy success story.
Interestingly, pre-Marx the main thrust of Socialist endeavour was to create utopian communities. Back to the land; all property held in common. Places such as New Harmony (created by Robert Owen), Nashoba, Brook Farm, over 100 Phalanxian communities (Bellamy), Shakers, the Oneida community, the Equity Colony, Kaweah Co-Operative Commonwealth, Tuscarawas, and in the modern era The Farm Eco-Village of Summertown and of course Jonestown.
All rip roaring successes every darned one.
Where I differ from you David is that I would encourage all radicals to repeat the success of their predecessors. The problem is not that a bunch of radicals mucks around on the university farm (or for that matter outside St Pauls) but that the media takes them seriously. The fact that sufficient upper and middle class adults bankroll them while they fail to be self sufficient is just history repeating itself as farce.
‘Trust me, folks – you really, really don’t want to seriously piss off a PhD in Chemistry’.
I think that a fair and balanced reaction would be to set of a stink bomb during one of Rabinow or Nader’s lectures.
Nothing too nasty. Just something that would honk like a dead dog’s arse.
Given that this is Berkeley, there are very, very good odds that the victims of this stupidity have supported similar equally stupid acts in the past which disrupted others. I consider this blowback. As thou sow, so shalt thou reap, etc
Rob,
“I consider this blowback.”
I’m not sure it is. As Zombie notes in the comments over there, although Berkeley is notorious for its leftist pinheads, they’re mostly confined to the arts and humanities departments. The STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and maths – are not politicised and remain quite reputable. Leftist pinheads tend not to thrive there. So far as I can make out, the College of Natural Resources, which does research at the farm, isn’t big with pinheads either.
Rob, to follow on from David’s points, there seems to be a division within Berkeley between the scientific and mathematical faculties and the cretins associated with the ‘arts’ and ‘humanities’ departments. The latter are basically pissing on the former’s cornflakes.
So Occupistas destroy a research farm . . . and we’re constantly told about a Republican ‘war on science.’
I am getting so damned sick of the blatant lies from the media.
Let’s surround it with barbed wire, etc so none of them can get out. Then we can watch their experiment with self-sufficiency develop. Maybe we’ll step in when they start eating each other.
Maybe.
“Armed with crowbars, bats and other metal objects, a group of protesters smashed businesses windows in a five block stretch of Valencia Street… Protesters continued smashing car windshields, side mirrors and slashing tires as they marched…”
Guess who.
Anna,
“Protesters continued smashing car windshields, side mirrors and slashing tires as they marched…”
When they say ‘protestors’ I think they mean predators, or possibly vermin. It’s not a protest; it’s an assertion of vindictive power. When so-called ‘anarchists’ vandalise the local Tesco then run away, they aren’t expecting to bring about political change. They’re doing it because they enjoy it. It’s exciting and makes them feel dangerous.
Again, the victims’ reactions above imply that the thugs and vandals have a meaningful political justification. Why buy into their excuses? Some people just delight in terrorising others and smashing their stuff. It’s how little shits get their kicks.
There have been many successful back-to-the-landers, but they exhibit levels of self-reliance, independence, and commitment to place that would be unattainable by the crowd described here. They have nothing but bad things to say about American agricultural policy and resent its intrusion into their lives (see Gene Logsdon). Their values are frequently conservative (see Wendell Berry). They don’t consider that you have sufficient knowledge of place until you’ve been farming the spot for decades (Berry again, also the Nearings).
This display at Gill Tract is monstrous.
Franklin,
“This display at Gill Tract is monstrous.”
Absolutely. It’s arrogant, self-absorbed fatuousness. (The fact we’ve come to expect arrogant, self-absorbed fatuousness from such people doesn’t make it any less wrong.) And yet the university administrators seem to be taking a hands-off approach, possibly for fear of looking bad. In doing so, they’re showing utter disregard for their students’ work and encouraging more acts of vandalism and witless pissing about.
And then there’s this:
I wonder if that’s what the Diggers were like?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers
New Harmony (created by Robert Owen), Nashoba, Brook Farm, over 100 Phalanxian communities (Bellamy), Shakers, the Oneida community, the Equity Colony, Kaweah Co-Operative Commonwealth, Tuscarawas,
Mormons did it, too. It was called the “United Order” and it failed as well (but without mass suicide or homicide). If a bunch of religious converts—culled and hardened by persecution and a 1000-mile trek across the Great Plains on foot—can’t muster the necessary (and abnormally difficult) level of righteousness, dedication, and unity to pull it off, nobody can.
Nobody who hasn’t descended straight out of heaven, that is.
One of the leaders of the Occupy Cleveland movement, Brandon Baxter, is one of those arrested.
David,
Jim Treacher has more on Occubombers here:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/01/occupiers-try-to-blow-up-a-bridge-near-cleveland/
“Remember, everybody: Whenever an Occupier commits a crime, he’s not really an Occupier. All Occupier crimes are completely unrelated incidents, because shut up.”
Daniel,
Thanks. Post updated.
[ Added: ]
Occupy Cleveland claim to be “shocked” and are now trying to distance themselves from their own associates. But in terms of worldview and self-indulgence, I don’t think there’s quite as much distance as they’d like us to believe.
Here we have a movement that claims to be “non-hierarchical” and to have no leaders – thereby giving license to all manner of exciting behaviour – but which has a remarkable number of “organisers” gorged on the same self-flattering, self-justifying worldview. A movement whose favoured “non-violent” tactics rely on mobs and coercion – and the moral anonymity that mobs make possible. A movement that’s explicitly premised on the seizure and violation of other people’s property, and which measures its impact by the disruption and distress it inflicts on others. And oh yes. A movement whose cheerleaders repeatedly tell us that they “have no problem with principled, thought-through political violence,” that property damage is “not the same thing as violence,” and that setting fire to occupied buildings isn’t “real” violence.
To then affect “shock” when that same thinking is taken one notch further requires colossal dishonesty. But hey, that’s who they are.
[ Added: ]
In other, other news, also entirely unrelated…
Masked Occupiers assaulted a news cameraman in Seattle. Apparently “social justice” is to be achieved by attacking people for no reason, calling them “scum,” and stabbing them in the face. Others brought crowbars, home-made explosives and bags of shit to throw. You know, just in case.
Now this may be going off completely at a tangent but it occurs to me that life really has become too easy. The word ‘decadence’ is thrown around a lot in these here times but is there not a point to be made that we have, as a civilisation, become far too soft?.
The occasional existential threat never did anyone any harm…..
Occupy Cleveland claim to be “shocked” by the attempted bombing and are now trying to distance themselves from their own associates.
Does Nancy Pelosi still say ‘God bless them’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Bg_AB2pBg
They do it because they get away with it. Our establishments view them with almost fatherly affection.
“…setting fire to occupied buildings isn’t “real” violence.”
No, it’s “Felony Arson”, a capital offense, right up there with Kidnapping, Bank Robbery and Murder 1.
Occupy may well have earned a place in history, if only for the degree of violence and pathological behaviour. Obviously, all kinds of activist movements can attract unpleasant personalities. But the Countryside Alliance protests, which drew close to half a million participants, didn’t end with people trashing random shop fronts, setting buildings on fire or shitting in the streets. The Tea Party, whose numbers far exceed those of Occupy, didn’t leave squalor, graffiti and rubble in their wake, or put dozens of people in hospital, or require workers in hazmat suits to clear up afterwards.
But after what we’ve seen here over the last six months or so, it’s hardly surprising that Occupy has attracted so many thugs and sociopaths. (The running total is currently topping 7,000 arrests and around 500 serious crimes.) Given the fatuous and arrogant ‘class war’ ideology, the ludicrous sense of entitlement and irresponsibility, the endless self-flattery and non-reciprocal demands, the continual celebration of mob coercion and ugly, physical tactics… what kind of people did they expect to attract? To whom would such things appeal, and appeal very strongly?
If they want to farm in California, there are still a few operations that the Democrats in the Assembly and Nancy Pelosi haven’t yet shut down by denying them Central Valley Project water.
They’re pretty much like farms in other parts of the country, though. They wouldn’t like it.
That’s all I’ve got. Wish I could contribute something profound about these foolish adolescents.
No, I’m sure they’re going to succeed. Just like the occupiers, I suspect that on most small family farms the family is only really tending to the land about 20% of the time. Beyond that small time commitment most farmers, I imagine, are just doing yoga and massage. Can’t miss.
At risk of banging on about this, the levels of naiveté, projection, dishonesty and delusion are also prodigious. For example, writing for The Stranger, Brendan Kiley offers A Beginner’s Guide to Targeted Property Destruction. Because he’s just so incredibly edgy. He tells us that those whose definition of violence includes property damage – say, attempts to shatter glass onto Starbucks customers – are “politically irresponsible.” (Unlike the people attempting to shatter glass onto Starbucks customers, who are presumably yardsticks of probity and restraint.) Kiley wants us to believe that the rioting and random vandalism was analogous to precision bombing, only affecting people he thinks we shouldn’t feel sorry for or be willing to defend – Nike, local banks, coffee shops, people with expensive cars, etc. Mr Kiley also tells us, quite emphatically, “There are reasons why thoughtful people sometimes smash windows…”
Well, here are those thoughtful people in action. Indiscriminate as usual, but thoughtful, obviously.
I suppose that’s what’s called friendly fire.
[ Added: ]
And when people claim that the vandals and thugs have very serious political motivations, I point out things like this. Yes, they’re smashing Nike’s store windows while wearing Nike shoes.
That’s how deep they are.
Tim has more on this as well. The Hannity-video is also interesting…
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/he_shoots_he_scores/
-S
David,
http://www.cafepress.co.uk/occupywsbs.642395121
“You can’t spell brown shirts without OWS.”
Not Lurking No More,
“You can’t spell brown shirts without OWS.”
Heh. What took them so long?
Simen,
“The Hannity video is also interesting…”
Oh my. As I said, naiveté, projection, dishonesty and delusion. Incidentally, this may amuse. The Occupiers really don’t like it when the property being damaged is theirs. “Shame on you,” indeed.
If any of the scientists or researches ever voted for Obama, supported feminism, deconstructionism, etc., or affirmative action in the humanities, then I say: “Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.” Why should they inflict their hideous ideologies on others, yet remain exempt from it themselves. Without some bona fides that the former operators of the Gill tract haven’t typical Berkeley opinions, this is of no more interest than any other communist purge.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/05/horror-neo-nazi-occupy-phoenix-protester-goes-on-shooting-rampage-5-dead/
STEM faculties are less prone to bolshevist infestation, but they are by no means immune to it.
Cal-Berkeley is a case in point. Back in the 1930s, one leading light of the Physics Department was J. Robert Oppenheimer – who may not have been a Communist himself, but his wife, mistress, brother, and sister-in-law were. The Physics Department had a group fundraising scheme for the Spanish Republic. (I recall seeing a biopic about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project which had a brief reference to this in the beginning.)
Unfortunately, scientists who are purely researchers are often sufficiently removed from day-to-day economic realities to find Communist theory persuasive. Especially the parts about “scientific planning of the economy”.
Some very able scientists have fallen into this trap.
Then add to this the conflict between the sciences and social conservatives, especially religious conservatives. (Which is in part due to religious fanatics panicking at scientific discoveries that threaten their beliefs, and in part due to militant atheists using science as a stick to beat all religion.)
STEM faculty are part of the same academic culture as the humanities and social sciences. It would be a miracle if they escaped their influence.
Occupy Cleveland claim to be “shocked” by the attempted bombing and are now trying to distance themselves from their own associates.
NBC news has the usual non-coverage.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/05/nbc-nightly-news-ignores-ows-connections-in-cleveland-bomb-plot
http://www.jammiewf.com/2012/bombing-suspect-who-has-nothing-to-do-with-occupy-cleveland-signed-lease-for-occupy-cleveland-warehouse/