Lifted from the comments – two items, not unrelated.

Our betters opine:

When specifically asked about [journalist, Andy] Ngo, who suffered a brain haemorrhage as a result of a violent attack while covering Antifa demonstrations in Portland, Ore. in June, [Professor Troy] Storfjell replied, “I don’t have a problem with it.”

You see, Mr Ngo is a “militant fascist,” a “Nazi.” If only in the minds of bedlamites who are employed to educate other people’s children.

Our betters at large. Or, Trick-or-Treat, the Antifa Way.

The second link, the video, does, I think, reveal the root motives of the personalities attracted to Antifa. Unless, of course, the obvious way to address an ostensibly political disagreement with someone is to find out where their parents live and then harass them at night in a fairly sinister manner, having already doxxed and threatened the person’s elderly mother. The point here being to intimidate Mr Ngo and his family, and to underline their vulnerability, specifically to violence. To make them feel unsafe in their own homes. There’s a spiteful ingenuity.

But hey, “social justice” is all about piety and compassion.

The basic message of the masked night-time visitors – a message illustrated vividly elsewhere – seems fairly straightforward. ‘You see who we are, and show others who we are, and so we will punish you.’

Needless to say, this also reveals who they are, but I suspect they just can’t help themselves.  

Update, via the comments:

Or, Call It A Counter-Protest.

Lifted from the comments and further to recent rumblings, a safe space is violated.

“What is wrong with you?” they ask. 

Says Joan,

We’re going to see a lot more of this. Good.

It seems to me that these ladies actually got off lightly. If you choose to block the roads, determined to needlessly frustrate hundreds, even thousands, of people, just so you can indulge in some in-group preening, while ordering drivers to walk, then you should expect some physical push-back from the people on whose freedoms and imperatives you’ve chosen to piss. Because, hey, sabotaging attempts to get to jobs, airports and doctor’s appointments, while impeding emergency vehicles and thereby endangering lives, is such a lark, baby.

Acts of planned and gratuitous aggression, including narcissistic aggression – which is what these ‘protests’ are – should be treated accordingly. It’s important that these cossetted pinheads, so gorged on their own sense of entitlement, learn to fear those on whom they recreationally impose themselves. Their expectations of impunity should be shattered. Along with the conceit that the way to make people sympathetic with your cause, whatever it may be this week, is to screw them over – because you can – while applauding yourself for doing so.

Update:

Despite the pretence of martyrdom and claims by the participants that they “do not enjoy” exerting power over random passers-by – or would-be passers-by – it seems quite obvious that personal gratification is by no means incidental. These disruptions and obstructions – forcibly immobilising large numbers of people – are very much recreational, a rush of ego, as bullying often is. Now imagine being so privileged, so removed from normal concerns, that being arrested is a form of recreation, a leisure activity, a way to impress your peer group and accrue status.

If your go-to solution, your preferred mode of expression, is to frustrate and harass random people who are just trying to get to work, or to get home – and you do this while feeling enormously self-satisfied about your own imagined radicalism – then this tells us very little about the world or any purported cause. It does, however, tell us quite a bit about what kind of tosser you are.

Two items lifted from the comments: 

When the public have to do what the police apparently won’t.

Our betters at large.

Imagine being so self-absorbed and self-flattering, so untroubled by normal boundaries, that you don’t anticipate how your own disruptive behaviour will tend to be viewed by the wider public – the people on whom your behaviour is being inflicted. A wider public that for the most part can’t afford to spend days on end indulging in Student Union theatrics.

Update: 

In the comments over at Samizdata, Mike Solent adds, 

This is an interesting example of public order being served by the absence of the police rather than its presence.

Well, yes. Quite. 

Update 2:

Know your place.

In the comments, WTP steers us to this crime news item, in which a 23-year-old man, described as “known to police,” attempted a spot of armed robbery at a Dollar General store before being shot and killed by a store employee. Being schooled in modern manners, the family of said man are terribly indignant:

They’re furious about how it happened.

Yes, well. I suspect the staff and customers being menaced at gunpoint weren’t too thrilled to find themselves being preyed upon, for the fourth time this year, by armed criminal vermin. Though I suppose it’s easier on the ego if you can pretend that the problem is that people may defend themselves when your degenerate brother, with a history of involvement in criminal activity, threatens their lives while trying to rob them.

And in case you missed it,

If only these creatures were capable of shame.

We’ve been here before, of course.

“Your future’s gone. How old are you?”

Members of Extinction Rebellion block a bridge in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A lively discussion ensues.

Also, open thread.