The Right Wing Rebellion Rises to New Heights!

Long term readers of Green Eagle may know that I have made a habit of collecting a record of right wing demonstrations and rallies, in an effort to make it clear what a gigantic fraud the whole notion of a great Conservative movement in the United States really is.  Well, here is another one.

Though we in the real world may have missed this, there has been a tremendous amount of attention drawn by right wingers to their latest grand act of rebellion, the "Rock Stone Mountain" rally, held today at the suburban Atlanta location of the founding of the KKK, in 1916.   The rally, as you can guess from the photos below, is intended to shove the Confederate flag in the faces of decent people. Here's a little coverage from CNN:

"Rock Stone Mountain -- the name given to Saturday's rally by organizers -- was held two days before the observance of Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia, a paid day off for some state employees. John Estes, an event organizer with the group Rock Stone Mountain, said Saturday's rally was intended to focus on what he called attempts to erase Confederate history and the white race altogether. 

When asked about perceptions that the event carried a hateful message, he replied "Everything we do is out of love. Love of our people. The only thing we hate is what the Bible teaches us to hate."

Apparently, the Bible teaches us to hate black people, whoever "us" is in this case.  Anyway, how did it go?  Well here are a couple of pictures:


Of course, all sorts of ludicrous claims are being made about how many people actually showed up for this idiocy.  As is my habit, I am showing the photos that I could find that showed the largest number of people.  I couldn't count more than 50 or 60 people in any one photo, so I'd guess that maybe 100 or 125 showed up.  Not exactly a new American revolution, but then it beats the number the Bundys could get in Oregon, I guess.  Or, as CNN reported:

"One "pro-white" demonstrator and eight counter-demonstrators were arrested Saturday during a rally at a suburban Atlanta landmark that pays tribute to Confederate leaders. 

The eight counter-demonstrators were among a crowd that appeared to outnumber by nearly 10 to 1 those wearing "White Lives Matter" shirts and waving Confederate flags."

So there you go.  How many of these humiliating failures will the right have to put on before the mainstream press reports the obvious truth: there is no there there.  The supposed massive right wing movement of furious patriots ready to come together to overthrow the government is a fiction.

I remember during the Vietnam era, we could get crowds of 5,000 or more in 20 cities simultaneously with only a day or two of notice.  The last anti-Iraq demonstration in Washington gathered 350,000 people, and the Occupy rallies drew tens or hundreds of thousands on many occasions.  These events are routinely all but ignored by the mainstream press, but three dozen people camping out in Oregon get wall to wall coverage for weeks, almost non-existent tea party rallies were covered over and over again, and things like today's event are treated as a real phenomenon in American politics.

Well, it all serves to keep up the illusion that there is a real popular force in the country  behind the corporate agenda that is all that right wing politics is really about.

Enough already; I've made my point.

Comments

Grung_e_Gene said…
Spot on as usual GE. Left-wing protests are dismissed or actively suppressed while right-wing protests mo matter how small, ridiculous, or violent are supported by the corporate media.
Green Eagle said…
If I could wax historical for a moment here, the first time I really started obsessing about this phenomenon was with the Terry Schiavo case. The protests surrounding Terry Schiavo received nearly daily coverage for months, and continued to be regularly reported on for years, presented by the press as a major phenomenon representing the opinions of a large part of the American people. Curious, I started looking at all of the photos of those protests I could find. In fairly short order, I had looked at well over two hundred, and there was not a single one I could find with more than a few dozen protesters- a number that could easily have been bused in by the Catholic Church or any other well-financed right wing religious group. Yet the press constantly misrepresented them as huge hordes, while ignoring any protest, no matter how massive, from the left.

I've never trusted mainstream portrayals of these largely synthetic right wing activities (the tea parties, of which I attended a number being the greatest example) since then, and my mistrust has proven perfectly justified, as these events turn out over and over again to be synthetic, astroturf Kabuke theater, which represent no one but their rich financiers.
Green Eagle said…
I just want to add one thing to this historical record. When you look at pictures of the march, like the two I included here, it is somewhat hard to distinguish the right wingers from other people who were against the march, or who just showed up at this popular Atlanta recreation spot the day of the march. I counted all of the people in the photos and included them in my estimate of attendance; I have since read further accounts suggesting that as few as thirty actual participants showed up. So, let's be fair and say that under a hundred people came to this jackass event, after weeks of national publicity. Not much of a revolution.

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