It seems like the anti-activist approach is gaining as more traction, as people realize that activism does not work:
I told people to stop those marches for now, Cville changed everything and all marches will been seen as "Nazi," and complaining won't stop. https://t.co/1HEpSqxaqX
— Mike CernovichAugust 26, 2017
And a recent article from The New Yorker, Is There Any Point to Protesting?, went massively viral on Reddit and Hacker News.
More and more people, especially smart people on Hacker News, Reddit, and 4chan, are realizing that activism does not work. Look at how OWS failed (with the stock market at record highs, Wall St. is stronger than ever). The 2003 protests against the Iraq war were also ineffective. Look how little all those post-Trump protests and rallies have accomplished: he’s still in power. The only reason why Trump isn’t more effective is not because of protests, but because of infighting within his own party.
Mike is correct but for the wrong reasons. Bad optics are irrelevant; as stated by a Social Matter podcast, the left will portray anyone to the right of Mitt Romney as a Nazi. As quoted by iSteve, the liberal media is looking for the ‘Great White Defendant’. In this case it’s James Fields, who is now representative of all white people.
The reason why activism (which includes protests and demonstrations) does not work is because it’s ineffective in terms of changing policy, but also because institutions themselves are hopelessly biased. The police would rather stand with antifa than be impartial. And then when ‘right’ try to defend themselves, are treated by the media and police as ‘aggressors’. Chris Cantwell was arrested for something as vague as “allegedly pepper-spraying protesters at the University of Virginia”…after reading several reports, I still don’t understand what exactly he is being charged for or if that is even a crime. There is hardly any context. It seems he was arrested for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
But another problem with activism (and this also includes Twitter activism) is that it’s like a giant loop that plays over and over, with no discernible resolution or progress. You could take a screenshot of Twitter in early 2017 (and all the major right-wing accounts like James Woods and others) and it would be pretty much same as a screenshot taken today, but with some of the names and dates changed. Same antifa, same protests, scandal, same violence against Trump supporters, etc. In January 2017, Flynn was ejected; now Cohn called it quits. Is McMaster next? Who knows. In February 2017, antifa forced UC Berkeley to cancel Milo’s speaking event. Now they are back.
The problem is politics moves at a glacial pace (that’s the way the Founding Fathers intended it to be), but to keep the excitement going, everything, no matter how small or inconsequential, must be amplified. But also, social media is addicting, according to some studies providing the same dopamine rush as elicit drugs.