Big Government has learned that Occupy Wall Street activists and supporters are circulating this blog post from the left-wing site Firedoglake, entitled: “What to Do When the Media Says a Protester Attacked a Cop.”
The plan is simple: find someone else to blame for Occupy violence against police.
The Firedoglake post was published on Saturday, October 22. By then, there had already been several incidents of violence and attacks on police at Occupy demonstrations throughout the country. Moreover, it had become clear that some Occupy activists were determined to initiate or provoke clashes with police, such as those witnessed on the streets of Oakland last night.
Once posted on Firedoglake, the proposed public relations strategy for dealing with accusations of anti-police violence was then circulated via email to organizers of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demonstrations.
One activist suggested: “Might it be useful to put it out to the media that OWS is expecting infiltration and agent provocateur violence, and OWS is concerned about how it will play out, since OWS is peaceful?” (See below – email addresses redacted.)
The Occupy strategy outlined on Firedoglake consists of five steps:
1) Challenge the assumption that the violent protester(s) are actually Occupy Wall Street protesters…
2) Scour all the footage and photos you can find of the instigators of the violence at the protest…
3) Crowd-source the images and ask for help identifying them…
4) Write a post about it on a blog with info on the person(s) andtheir background…
5) Contact the media and point out who that protest was started by…
“That is what you do in this age of easy access to video, photos and social media,” the post continues.
The problem is that video, photos, and social media from the Occupy activists have often captured evidence of their own enthusiasm for violence and provocation.
Occupy activists sometimes try to edit out that evidence–as in the following example, in which a policeman is shown swinging a billy club at demonstrators:
[youtube 3QtIqrv1Z_o]
However, that video appears to be an edited version of the one below, in which it is clear that the activists attacked the police first.
[youtube X6zsR6MQSMI]
The first seventeen seconds of the second video are missing from the first. The last seventeen seconds of the second video–in which activists taunt police with profanity and shouts of “Whose streets? Our streets!”–are also missing from the first video.
It would be far simpler for Occupy to avoid embarrassment if it were a proudly and self-consciously non-violent movement.
But that’s not what Occupy’s leading organizers, like Lisa Fithian, want or believe. For the anarchists and socialists of Occupy–to whom President Barack Obama, the unions, and the Democrats are inextricably tied–non-violence is merely a dispensable tactic.
The sad truth is that there is no PR strategy slick enough to hide the true face of Occupy–not when so many Occupy activists are so eager to reveal it themselves.
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