Pretend with me for a moment that the following events, some of which have already occurred and some of which are scheduled to occur this April 19, 2010, might have occurred during the Nixon Administration in the early 70’s. Then ask yourself this question: What Would Nixon Do?
Imagine for a moment it is 1970, not 2010. Imagine further (though as we know this never happened) a large group of radical protesters to the Nixon administration descended on a National Park just outside the District of Columbia, followed by a march on the Capitol. Imagine that these groups stated their intention to hold speeches and rallies to Restore the Constitution from the “tyranny” of the then current President, Richard M. Nixon.
Now imagine that the organizers of this group were encouraging every attendee to bring with them and openly carry their firearms as a signal to their government regarding the seriousness of their purpose. Imagine further that one of the main speakers at this event was to be the leader of a group of individuals dedicated to defying any order by the federal, state or local governments they consider, in their sole discretion, to be unconstitutional.
Imagine further, that this rally was scheduled to be held days after the FBI raided and arrested members of a heavily armed anti-government group which had plans to kill and murder thousands of law enforcement officers in an attempt to spark a civil war and overthrow the government.
Now imagine that the date of this rally was the same day a domestic terrorist opposed to Nixon’s policies and the policies of his administration, who was considered a hero to many of the individuals planning to attend these rallies, had killed over a hundred people, including children, and wounded hundreds more, by exploding a truck bomb outside a federal office building.<p.
What do you think President Nixon's response to this unprecedented show of force against the government he led would have been?
Well Nixon is dead, so we can’t ask him, but we do know what he did do to unarmed antiwar protesters in Washington in 1971. He called in 10,000 military reinforcements, canceled a permit the protesters had been granted to hold a rock concert in Washington Potomac Park and in the early morning of May 2, 1971 had police attack the sleeping protesters by knocking down their tents and firing with tear gas causing most of them to scatter and eventually leave Washington, Of those who stayed. some of whom participated in non-violent acts of civil disobedience such as shutting down streets and blocking intersections, the police conducted massive sweeps in which they arrested over 7000 people. Nixon also secretly told his staff that he supported the use of Teamster “thugs” to attack and beat up anti-war demonstrators.
Of course, this was not as horrific as the events of the May. 1970 Kent State and Jackson State massacres in which unarmed civilians had been gunned down by National Guard units at Kent State and by police at Jackson State.
Andn I suppose we don;t need to go as far back as the early 70’s to get an idea of how Republican officials might respond to protesters. All we need to do is recall the mass arrests of thousands of New Yorkers and others during the 2004 Republican National Convention at which President Bush was re-nominated.
His hair so long a police officer called him “Jesus,” Sebastian Licht said he set out Tuesday to celebrate his 22nd birthday, only to be swept up in one of the largest mass arrests in the nation’s history.
He emerged two days later from court – smelly, bleeding and determined to become the activist he says police feared he was.
One of more than 1,700 people arrested this week at demonstrations aimed at the Republican National Convention, Licht gained his freedom on on Thursday morning. A judge, frustrated at the city’s pace in moving protesters through the criminal justice system, ordered the immediate release of nearly 500 of them. […]
Wearing a Polo Sport Ralph Lauren shirt and khaki shorts, Licht described his 6 p.m. arrest Tuesday in Herald Square, where he said he approached a subway station that he learned was closed only to be caught in a police sweep of the area.
“Because I have long hair and a beard, they took me,” he said.
He recalled spotting another young man at the same time step outside his apartment building and get arrested even as he tried to explain that he too was not part of any rally. […]
Tim Kulik, 22, a photography student at the Rochester Institute of Technology who was transporting film for photographers at The Associated Press when he was arrested late Tuesday on his bicycle, was freed Thursday after 35 hours.
He said he was scraped on his face and bruised on his leg and neck when a police officer tackled him before other officers completed the arrest. The officer who tackled him later made his handcuffs tighter when he asked that they be loosened, he said.
Or what about the response to the pro-immigration rally in Los Angeles in where police conducted what can only be described as a violent and over the top military response to mostly peaceful demonstrators:
AMY GOODMAN: Angelica Salas rejoins us from Los Angeles, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights there. In the protest that the police opened fire with rubber bullets on last night, where exactly were you, Angelica, and who were the people that were affected?
ANGELICA SALAS: Yes, I was actually the main MC of the event, and I started seeing the police rush into the park, and we voluntarily—we started seeing people running. We voluntarily cut our program at 6:30. We had our permit that would go until 9:00. We cut it. We made sure that people—we told people to start leaving the park slowly, not to run, with their children.
I stayed towards the end, and what I saw was, instead of isolating a problem group, they pushed them into the crowd. They started shooting rubber bullets into a crowd of just innocent people. I was caught in the middle of all of this, as we were trying to send people out, had to cover a mother with some children. So I am just indignant. I am outraged at the manner in which the police dealt with a family event. We have had millions and millions of people in the streets of Los Angeles. We have worked daily with the police, and for them to actually engage in this kind of action is ludicrous. And I just want to once more say, the majority of the people that were there were assembled in peace, and they were demanding their rights. They were demanding an opportunity for legalization. And to have our police act in this manner is completely outrageous.
Let’s roll the tape shall we:
Suffice it to say that Republican officials’ response in the past to non-violent protest was to use overwhelming force and not to pay much attention to the civil liberties of the individuals they arrested and assaulted. What would they have done to armed protesters? We can only speculate, but based on their past history it’s clear that tear gas and rubber bullets likely would not have been a major part of they tactics they employed.
Yet, for all their cries of leftist traitors and agitators, during the Bush years there was no incident of any protest against the Bush administration in which liberals, Democrats and anti-war organizers advocated violence or the carrying of firearms. This despite the numerous abuses of our civil rights such as the use of torture on US civilians, indefinite detentions of “terror suspects” in concentration camps, the massive, illegal and warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans by their government, the rifling through library files to see what books you may have checked out to read, etc.
I went to the 2005 anti-war protest in Washington D.C. I saw protest signs, American flags and heard many speakers condemn the actions of President Bush. Actions that have come to light and are well documented.
Yet I saw no guns being carried by my fellow protesters. There were no “liberal” media calling for a “revolution” or suggesting we “reload” or use our “ammo boxes” or claiming Armageddon was at hand because of the illegal and immoral actions of our government. No one shouted “Death to Bush!” or Death to the Tyrant!” No one argued that the “tree of liberty needs to be watered periodically with the blood of patriots.”
Yet based on inchoate fears of “socialism” and “fascism” and “a secret Obama police force” and the “planned confiscation of their guns by Democrats” and so many other lies and falsehoods spread by Fox News, right wing talk radio and Republican politicians there are large numbers of people in this country who unreasonably fearful of their government. People who believe that they must arm themselves and display those firearms openly in order to intimidate their government and their fellow citizens.
What would Nixon do if faced with such a vast network of sedition, insurrection and gun toting extremists on the left? He’s have likely already declared martial law and arrested thousands of political opponents, innocent ordinary citizens and members of the media on suspicion of inciting violence and the overthrow of our government.
If Nixon were President, and Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh were leftist critics making the same extreme statements against his administration they routinely make against Obama they’d be in jail. If Nixon was President facing the daily lies and slanders of Fox News they already would have been shut down. Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin and god knows how many others would be under arrest for sedition if they were leftist extremists.
Anyone bringing a gun to a protest of President Nixon would be in some dark, dank cell in Guantanamo Bay being subjected to torture.
That’s what Nixon would have done if faced with the same level of extreme level of dissent, thinly veiled calls for violent resistance to his rule and revolution, the rapid growth of extreme anti-government militias and the levels of actual violence and death threats that have been directed against liberals, President Obama and Democrats over the last year.
These tea party crazies have no idea what real tyranny would look like. If Obama was Nixon they’d have learned pretty quickly however just what jack boots grinding their faces into the dirt really felt like. Lucky for them we have a President that believes in the Rule of Law. If he didn’t their worst nightmarish fantasies would have already occurred.
We seem to be living in upside-down world. It’s mind boggling. The key lies in who is behind the two movements. The peaceniks of the late 60’s/early 70’s were a genuine grassroots movement who opposed Those Who Rule. The Tea Party/militia types are serving the goals of The Ruling Class. I wonder how the citizenry will respond if these poseurs burn down the White House… does it matter? All scenarios seem to lead to martial law and a corporatist state.
We also know what in 1967 LBJ, the DC police, and Pentagon security did in the dark of night to unarmed protesters who claimed to be “levitating the Pentagon”.
Not up to speed on what happened in the middle of the night to those protesters. Details please.
From the overall accounts in the standard books, you have some hundreds of arrests in the March on the Pentagon, but no one killed. One reason the policing forces didn’t overreact more or do more violence was that SecDef Rbt McNamara ordered that all those guarding the Pentagon building have no live bullets in their rifles.
With LBJ and Nixon and their attitudes towards antiwar protesters, you have far more similarities than differences, which overall tend to be differences of degree not of kind. Both were too paranoid about dissenters gathering to protest their admin’s policies, both enlisted a vast overreaction by all available and relevant gov’t agencies. Both saw antiwar protesters as commie-influenced, or, with Nixon, DFH/beatnik no-gooder types.
Under LBJ for instance, not only was the FBI brought in to investigate, infiltrate and disrupt peaceful protest groups, but Johnson also called on the CIA and Army Intell to do the same. Nixon continued this, while the policing forces tended to do more arresting.
Students from well-to-do colleges expected their government to protect them in the Civil Rights movement and to a great extent within its power it did after Robert Kennedy ordered it.
The same students from well-to-do colleges expected a polite hearing and some action in 1965. By 1967, the antiwar movement involved street theater folks as well (that was what the “levitation of the Pentagon” was about.
In the middle of the night after the press had left and most of the thousands of demonstrators were either talking or asleep, the police forces waded through the crowd, randomly hitting folks with nightsticks and arresting those who complained. There were students from well-to-do colleges who were beaten, went back to campus shaken, and the discussions about what to do next lead down the path to the disaster in Chicago.
The excuse that “no one was killed” would have been both laughable and shocking in 1967. And it undercut the Cold War exceptionalism that the US was using as a propaganda point. Only totalitarian dictatorships like the Soviet Union beat up their own citizens who were peaceably gathered to protest a government decision.
Under all presidents since Wilson, the FBI was at the beck and call of J. Edgar Hoover. He formed a sort of shadow government within the government. Had Hoover not died before the Watergate breakin and had he still been head of the FBI, Nixon never would have had to resign.
No intent here to make excuses for improper or unlawful police excesses with the demonstrators, just the mere assertion of fact that no one was killed (as some protesters were of course during Nixon’s watch in two major incidents). I did intend to highlight McNamara’s measured and responsible role however. Probably because of his level-headed thinking, no marcher was killed. He did what he could to protect the marchers’ lives.
As to marcher expectations of police response, they should have heard by then of the Univ of Wisconsin antiwar protests which were brutally broken up by local police, which happened a few days earlier. A few months before the Pentagon march, a large antiwar march on the hotel in L.A. where LBJ was staying was also violently stopped by club-wielding LAPD, with many peaceful demonstrators bloodied.
Dunno what the Pentagon marchers expected given this recent establishment crackdown backdrop and as march leaders (including some from the militant wing of the SDS) sought to march aggressively on such an obvious and important center of military might as the Pentagon. It certainly would have been naive in the extreme for them to expect to be greeted with cookies and milk and warm blankets. Certainly not with a very concerned and paranoid Lyndon Baines Johnson ultimately calling the shots and setting the tone for Washington’s response.
The generation that entered the Sixties was pretty much naive; they believed what they had been taught in high school civics class. SDS then was not what it became but it included veterans of the civil rights movement who had seen the FBI pull back contra to orders in Mississippi. And any way, there were only a few dozen SDS folks there in spite of the fact that SDS was one of the coalition that organized the march. Lyndon Johnson was not known to be paranoid at the time. The Washington police and federal authorities did not have the reputation for police brutality that the LAPD and the Chicago PD already had. Besides most of the thousands at the Pentagon had not registered the Madison and LA incidents and presumed that with the media there “the whole world would be watching” to paraphrase a later slogan.
History looks so simple when you look back, have copies of all the memos on both sides, and have a political climate that is less naive and more cyncical.
This march in 1967 was the end of naivete for an extremely large number of American college students. But there was enough naivete to believe that (1) the Democratic Party would not continue to vote for war and (2) a National Guard that killed students would be brought to justice. Neither of those happened. And the Democratic leadership sat on its hands and let McGovern lose in 1972 and a President burglarized the offices of the opposition party. In 1966, every one of these things was unthinkable in American politics. Especially with the liberal LBJ in the White House and Nixon completely out of office.
“Lucky for them we have a President that believes in the Rule of Law.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh Steve, you are TOO MUCH.
“Rule of Law”?
yes, “rule of law”.
“rule of law”. I want some of what YOU’RE smokin’.
Followed your link to Glenn’s story – that is really troubling news.
for some hilarity, drop by Oliver Willis’s place, where he’s arguing that “our troops are the good guys and some liberals hate that”.
It’s remarkably stupid garbage.
Notice how certain segments of the left now hate Jane and Glenn for pointing out the obvious? I had to point out to someone at TGOS the other day that they’d hammer Dubya to no end for some of the stuff Obama is doing.
but barack obama is a progressive. the most progressive president ever.
No the left doesn’t use violence. And the left loses. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe we shouldn’t be more menacing. A lot of this is because the rightwingers think Lefties are wimps and will just lie down and take their totalitarianism.
The left hasn’t used that kind of violence in 40 years(notwithstanding stuff like Seattle a few years ago)
One doesn’t have to engage in violence to be a deterrent. Just remind the rightwing that liberals and progressives have guns, are military veterans, and outnumber their wannabe soldiers. And are just as free to carry in open carry states. And remind them that this includes men and women, whites and blacks and Hispanics and Native Americans and Asian-Americans, LBGT and straight.
Difficult as the non violent way is, it is the only way to lasting peace and justice. Violence will only bring mass suffering and pain; indeed, the Armageddon that the tea-baggers so blithely predict. This is a great time of trial and tribulation but whoever said that transformation of society would be easy? We can start the truth process by recognizing the real enemies of democracy — that powerful, blood sucking elite at the top of the American pyramid of wealth and income. You know, the one that controls the leadership of both political parties.
We need some of those old time progressives, the ones that brought us such things as the graduated income tax, social security, the eight hour day and forty hour week, the abolition of child labor and the public education movement. Hey, we did it once; we can do it again.
But that would mean that progressives would have to do electoral politics, where there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference between the parties”.
And media would actually have to cover the news honestly.
And Congressfolk elected as progressives would have to act like progressives.
And we would have to ignore the thirty or more years of violence against the labor movement. And hope that unlike a hundred years ago, our elites would not seek violence against women.
And most of all, we would have to have a critical mass of women of the elites and clergymen active in progressive causes.
The success of nonviolence depends on the conscience of the society in which the campaign of nonviolence is undertaken. The current social climate is far nastier than it was a hundred years ago.
But even if the other side doesn’t have a conscience, eventually the non-violent side does win, for a time anyway. Because the distinctions are just too much to ignore.
Who is left to not ignore the distinctions?
It happens eventually. In the case of the Soviet Union, it took 75 years. In the case of South Africa, a much longer time.
Opposition through violence doesn’t win if you are overpowered, which in most cases of tyranny you are.
Opposition wins when enough ordinary people refuse to be afraid and it is their relatives in the police and the military who are sent to suppress them and instead side with the people. Which takes clandestine persuasion, organization, and symbolic actions.
Or through persuasion, organization, and elections.
If our elites tried any violence against women, they would reap a world wind. Ditto, if they tried anything against clergymen. I think the recent tragedy in West Virginia demonstrates how nasty times were before federal agencies came on the scene in their not so successful attempt to alleviate the problems of the working poor.
It has never been easy to take on rank privilege. But, it can be done and successfully. We are all the beneficiaries of those magnificent progressives of yesteryear. God grant that these wonderful people come to the fore once again.
Happily, the United States even after Bush and Cheney still has a conscience.
I agree with your sentiments, but Ron Blankenship for example would not respond to a nonviolent strike with nonviolence. And if company thugs caused violence, would the Democratic governor of West Virginia intervene on the side of the workers instead of on the side of Massey Coal. He would, if he had a conscience. He would turn the WV National Guard on the workers if he didn’t have a conscience.
It that on a broader scale is the dynamic of national policy–that national leaders have forgone their consciences–no amount of nonviolent passive resistance will change it. Until the time when either the movement is so widespread as to not be ignored (i.e. the authorities lose the ability to have their orders to the military and police be obeyed) or until the leadership is replaced with those who do possess consciences (Willem deKlerk in South Africa or the UK’s Mountbatten, relative to India, or RFK and the civil rights movement come to mind) does non-violence actually win.
The alternative — violence — always loses unless you have overwhelming force, which most issue movements do not and most regimes do.