Melanie Phillips: Obama hails anarchy and mob rule as “a great awakening”

Former US president Barack Obama has expressed satisfaction at what he described as “a great awakening going on around the country”.

Let’s see what this “great awakening” has involved.

Black Lives Matter, the group behind it, is a far left, anti-white, anti-capitalist, anti-family revolutionary movement with openly expressed aims of destroying western culture and society.

In the insurrection it has led, statues commemorating great people in American history have been torn down in acts of mass vandalism and criminal damage on the basis that they represent “white colonialism” or “white privilege”.

Others are being removed by the relevant authorities on the same basis. Statues torn down, desecrated or removed include George Washington who commanded the forces who defeated the British to give America its independence; Abraham Lincoln who literally fought for the freeing of slaves; Thomas Jefferson, author of the commitment to equality in the US constitution; and the 19th century anti-slavery activist Hans Christian Heg.

Now even Jesus, who was most certainly not European and was probably brown or even black-skinned, is being targeted for his “white privilege”. Black Lives Matter activist Sean King has said: “All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form [of] white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.”

In Seattle and Washington DC, there have been attempts to set up “autonomous zones” that exclude the police. According to Andy Ngo,  editor at large for the Canada-based Post Millennial who spent five days undercover in Seattle’s “autonomous zone”,  the area quickly developed into “anarchy, chaos, violence, and unfortunately, death”.

“What I found most disturbing were the various booths and tables set up that distributed extremist literature. The literature not only meant to brainwash an audience, some of it provided instructions for criminality, such as how to create bombs with light bulbs, how to lock up a building to prevent entry from police, how to injure police and kill them.

“Unfortunately, within a matter of days, it spilled over into an alleged arson attack, I should say, an alleged rape, and a death over the weekend. There were back-to-back shootings on Saturday, Sunday. As of this afternoon on Tuesday, there was reportedly another shooting that’s being investigated in a nearby area.So this is exactly what the people wanted. They wanted the police to stay away. They wanted their own people in power. And that’s what we’re seeing”.

Anyone who dares question any of this insurrection risks being vilified or fired. Anyone who supports them will also be targeted in this witch-hunt. As Jonathan Chait wrote here:

“On May 28, progressive election data analyst David Shor tweeted about a new paper by Princeton professor Omar Wasow, showing that peaceful civil-rights protests moved public opinion toward protesters while violent protests had the opposite effect. The tweet violated a taboo in some left-wing quarters against criticizing violent protest and led within days to his firing”.

Shor’s tweet was described as “racist” and he was further accused of having “encouraged harassment” of another member of the list he shared for left-of-center data analysts. Chait goes on:

“The ‘racist tweet’ was of course a straightforward summary of a respected professor’s work. The moderators have not publicly substantiated the accusation that Shor encouraged harassment, nor have they responded to my request for comment on the charge.

“…You might think the ‘progressive data space’ would give more leeway to the citation of data. But that assumption proved incorrect. The majority of posters affirmed that sharing Wasow’s paper was indeed ipso facto racist, because it could be used to support the conclusion that violent protest is harmful…Indeed, one member described the citation of Wasow’s paper not as an effort to inform or persuade but as an attempt to ‘dictate’ the behavior of people of color…

“Not only is the rigor of Wasow’s research no defense, neither is the fact that he is also Black, which is dismissed as a ‘my best friend is Black’ form of tokenism”.

It’s a chilling account; do read it all. And there’s much, much more that’s been happening along these lines.

So what we’re seeing is a society descending into anarchy, violence and chaos, with dissent or objections being stamped out by a vicious cultural auto-da-fe; all of which is destroying the west’s identity as a culture based on freedom, tolerance, rationality and the rule of law.

And yet here is the man who was for eight years the president of the United States emerging from his hitherto silent obscurity to lay his hands in public blessing on this insurrection, and thus present himself, not so subtly, as its inspiration and leader.

But of course, anyone who studied Obama’s record wouldn’t be surprised. For this is a return to Obama the Chicago “community organiser”, the role inspired by the revolutionary Marxist thinker Saul Alinsky whose writings encouraged civil conflict, anarchy and chaos – although he emphasised the need for guile, in order not to frighten the middle-class and instead manipulate them as useful idiots.

For several years, Obama himself taught workshops on the Alinsky method. But Obama brought a special slant to Alinsky’s radicalism. Obama’s politics were governed by the aim of promoting the cause of black people and achieving “reparations” from white society. Accordingly, he saw his role as a community organiser in mobilising black people for action against their white oppressors.

Small wonder, then, that he views this insurrection as a “great awakening”. The rest of us might see instead a great civilisation being bludgeoned into oblivion.

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author - you can follow her work on her website HERE.