Leftist Protest Culture And The Rise Of Lawlessness

Federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Ore. are once again under constant attack. Since earlier this month, left-wing activists have held almost daily demonstrations outside the building that houses the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch. 

Two weeks ago, demonstrations on Wednesday and Thursday led to arrests, but both proved to be dress rehearsals for the greater violence on Saturday which was declared a riot. Again this week, agitators were arrested for launching fireworks and knives at law enforcement.

The clashes evoke the Portland riots from the long, hot summer of 2020, where hundreds of agitators gathered nightly to assault officers guarding the federal courthouse, and where the term "Antifa" entered the popular lexicon.

The cause is slightly different -- protesting immigration enforcement instead of police brutality -- but the storyline appears to be the same.

In fact, every left-wing protest looks remarkably similar. Always an element seeks confrontation with police -- throwing bottles, spraying graffiti, and other minor mayhem. Often the protestors are clad in black with their faces concealed. Often they are united in their object, supplied with identical gear, and organized into platoons.

The left-wing agitators contingent almost looks like an army. Thus, a local news outlet, Oregon Live, described the June 14 riot, "an impromptu shield wall was formed around 5 p.m. near the main gates to the ICE facility. ... Later, several people could be seen using a stop sign as a makeshift battering ram."

The locations change, the tactics vary, but the character of these left-wing disturbances remain the same regardless of the ostensible cause. It could be about immigration, or police, or Palestine, or the environment, or abortion, or the LGBT agenda -- whatever meets the controversy of the moment. The protests all have the same character -- enough to make one suspect they are carried out by all the same characters -- to the point of creating an independent phenomenon some have called "Omnicause Leftism."

Because these protests adapt to the controversy of the moment, and because there is more or less always a political controversy, these protests are more or less constant. One might even call it one perpetual protest, one which tours from city to city, exchanging causes like soiled t-shirts at every stop. In fact, the perpetual nature of the protest seems to be an essential feature of the phenomenon because many of the participants have adopted street agitation as a lifestyle.

Have you ever stopped to wonder how protests can run on for days and days? Normal people with jobs, families, and other responsibilities cannot afford to simply camp out by a government building for a week. For the left-wing protestors who gather day after day, such protests are at best an intensive hobby and at worst their whole life -- perhaps even their livelihood, if someone sponsors their activities.

Recognizing that the protest events are perpetual helps to explain other facets. For example, the protests are well-organized, with innovative and constantly evolving tactics, because the participants are well-practiced.

The perpetual nature of the protests also explains the violent confrontations that occur. News media often report individual protests gathering as discrete events, which they try to contextualize by connecting their rhetoric to the related political cause. But only the most dramatic protests -- those which involve arrest and confrontation -- catch such attention. Thus, the protestors must engineer ever-increasing drama to gain attention.

As to what gave rise to the leftist protest culture, that question can be answered on multiple levels. On the surface, this is a strategy of Marxist ideologues to achieve political and social change. Above all else, Marxists desire power and revere oppressed categories of people. They therefore admire the civil rights activism of the 1950s and 60s, which brought an end to segregation, but they also eschew the standard democratic methods of seeking political change -- persuasion, elections, and legislation -- that made that movement successful.

Left-wing agitators are LARPing ("live action role playing") their own civil rights movement -- or, at least, the way they fantasize it in their heads. The civil rights movement succeeded in drawing attention to unjust, legal segregation by mass protest and peaceful civil disobedience. It took an issue of deep, abiding injustice to draw out so many mothers, fathers, and children -- most of them poor, blue-collar workers -- for extended protest. This, along with the brutal repression they faced, caught the nation's attention.

But left-wing agitators try to cheapen the civil rights movement into a set of political tactics they can cut-and-paste onto any political issue. And their insincerity is the reason they won't succeed. First and foremost, left-wing agitators lack a cause of sufficient rightness to justify the tactics they employ. They also don't have to face the same level of personal sacrifice that made the civil rights movement so remarkable. Nor do they commit themselves to the same degree of non-violence.

This points to another essential point: while the civil rights movement was largely produced by black Christians appealing to Christian values and the fundamental moral law, today's left-wing agitators fundamentally reject all authority. They participate in "the mystery of lawlessness" that "is already at work" (2 Thessalonians 2:7), which seeks to "cast off restraint" (Proverbs 29:18).

Left-wing agitators oppose not only God but every institution he has established, from the family to the church to the state. This is not only for a single day or single issue, but it has become a pattern, a habit, a lifestyle, a culture.

Originally published at The Washington Stand