When the “Occupy” movement began a year ago, many initially dismissed it as a gathering of harmless college students. But the late Andrew Breitbart saw in the movement professional left-wing anarchists and radicals who sought to use the “Occupy” protests to violently overthrow the United States government, then destroy its institutions and the free market system.
Breitbart’s friend, Stephen K. Bannon, was one of those who had initially not taken the “Occupy” movement seriously until he saw occupiers shut down the Brooklyn Bridge. He knew then Breitbart was right, and immediately started a project with Breitbart that would turn into “Occupy Unmasked,” a movie that opened nationwide in theaters this week that systematically dismantled the notion that the Occupy movement was good-natured and peaceful.
The lessons from the movie “Occupy Unmasked” are important to keep in mind as liberal intellectuals again try to mainstream a radical and violent movement to breathe life into something that, for now, has faded. The movie documents all the violence, filth, rapes, and systemic coordination between left-wing radicals and labor unions like the SEIU that was the real story behind the “Occupy” movement.
In glorifying the “Occupy” movement and looking ahead to the its future, liberals revealed that a potential second coming of “Occupy” could be even more dangerous and violent than the first.
Last week, progressive journalist Zeeshan Aleem, writing in The Huffington Post, claimed the Occupy movement “rivaled the Arab Spring” when it started. Though he was being complimentary in his comparison, his analogy may have been more apt than he realized.
The Arab Spring led to violent radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power in countries like Egypt and heralded a wave of violence throughout North Africa and the Middle East — attacking U.S. interests and murdering and ambassador in Libya — as radical Islamists gain more of a foothold. Liberals celebrated these radicals and the “Arab Spring,” which ended up becoming more of an awakening for violent Islamists.
Similarly, the second phase of Occupy has the same potential for more widespread destruction, chaos, and violence.
Aleem conceded that for now the second phase of Occupy has not been as successful as the first. He admitted that a recent “Occupy”-style protest attempt on Wall Street “could not be called a success,” mainly because the NYPD was better prepared this time around.
But Aleem disturbingly asks, “What if instead of being fragmented into dozens of free-forming groups, all the Occupiers targeted one bank or one intersection simultaneously?”
These flash mobs, often violent, have popped up throughout the country, with crowds beating up random strangers or stealing merchandise from stores.
Could these focused, violent flash mobs be in Occupy’s future?
Aleem writes that “Occupy is far more than the autonomous and spontaneous ethos that informs its approach to direct action,” and while “the tents are gone,” the movement’s “ability to unite people with disparate backgrounds and different utopias for contentious collective action remains unrivaled.”
What Aleem is saying is the Occupy movement has the potential to unite people of all backgrounds who believe in overthrowing the government.
Journalist Nicholas Mirzoeff, a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University who also describes himself as an “activist,” wrote, “Occupy has transformed the American political landscape by opening a space for radicalism.”
He defines “radicalism” absurdly, as “a questioning of the fundamental ways in which life is lived. “
Mirzoeff writes that the Occupy movement has opened a space for “radicalism” by “defining and executing a form of political practice that is a hybrid of grass-roots organizing, direct action and digital-era networking.”
Mirzoeff says the future of the Occupy movement will be extending its radicalism into four areas: the debt, environmentalism, education, and issues concerning the so-called 99%.
But as Breitbart pointed out in “Occupy Unmasked,” radical leaders of the movement often used students as pawns to achieve their ends, convincing students to “occupy” banks and protest against police.
The same leftists who mobilized Occupiers could do the same in the future by attempting to rally people against the looming budget cuts the country and many states face. In Europe, there have been protests against “austerity” measures, and similar protests could happen in America. Occupy leaders could also use teachers’ union strikes, like the most recent one in Chicago, or environmentalist movements to try to achieve their ends of overthrowing America’s system of governance. They can gin up the so-called “99%” on a variety of issues in order to breed resentment against the wealthy.
Should this occur, it would be in the name of revolution, and that is what a Bloomberg News discusses in a piece that conceded Occupy Wall Street has faded but its “powerful ideas may live on.”
The article cites two Occupy slogans (“We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!” and “The only solution is world revolution”) that “permeated” last week’s anniversary commemorations.
These slogans advocate a radical overthrowing of government and its institutions. Even Bloomberg News admits these ideas and slogans “Occupy pushed into the public consciousness” are “rooted in anarchist history and theory.”
Bloomberg News continues that these leftist ideas have a “a long and powerful precedent” and actually “may prove more durable, and more influential, than the movement itself.”
The article then glorifies how radicals in the past were inspired by “the Paris Commune,” when workers “seized control of governance in the French capital” in 1871, and cites examples in American history when left-wing organizers took over governments and shut down shipping and steel facilities.
For instance, the Bloomberg author lauds a strike in Seattle in 1919 in which “the only vehicles allowed on the streets were those sanctioned by the strike communities.”
“Short-lived and fragile, these experiences all shared the basic principles — exemplified by democratic decision-making, individual self-fulfillment and opposition to capitalism — that were cherished by the Occupiers at Zuccotti Park,” Bloomberg News reminisces. “Taken together, they fall far short of a global revolution, but at the very least they prove that another world is possible.”
Occupiers have shown they will resort to violence to try to bring about this “another world,” and that is why when FOX News’s “The Five” discussed “Occupy Unmasked” on Friday, co-host Greg Gutfeld said “Occupy Unmasked” was the year’s “best horror film.”
Left-wing magazine The Nation continues to be bullish about Occupy, and that is why these potential horrors of a second “Occupy” movement need to be kept in mind even though other liberal websites like BuzzFeed concede the movement has fizzled.
The “Occupy” movement is like a horrific cancer currently in remission, but this in no way means the anarchists and radicals who descended upon places like Zuccotti Park may not come back more virulently.
But their intentions should be a surprise to nobody, no matter how much liberals and the mainstream media try to sugar coat them. Unmasking the true nature of the Occupy movement will be one of Andrew Breitbart’s most enduring legacies.
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