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Notes -
I'm not sure we disagree on anything. I am saying that these methods are well understood in far-left protest-attendee circles. And trying to make flaky 20 year olds show up on time is a skill most Target managers have grappled with.
I'm just trying to balance out the WOs implication that this is America's Helmand province, or that insurgents might be arming themselves to the teeth, with an IED campaign just around the corner.
I am critical of these groups, believe me. They say they want peace, but they want war. They are incapable of having the kind of conversations that people on this forum consider critical for humanity. Every value is a disvalue, every truth, a lie. Every type of integrity a vilness of soul.
But at the end of the day they're strongest when taking over institutions, moving words around, and forcing compliance through abstract policy. I just don't see the American left as capable of what the WO is implying. These are small people.
I do and don't agree with you. Doubtless some of the extreme lefties would like it to be so, that now finally even the normies have had enough and are going to rise up, but that's not going to happen. It's not Northern Ireland or the US during the Civil Rights era and the days of the Symbionese Liberation Army. There won't be underground militias and the October Revolution.
On the other hand, the professional agitators do seem to have a field of opportunity in Minneapolis (as to the rest even of Minnesota, I don't know how widespread the activities of ICE are). So if they send in organisers to help out concerned citizens, this gives them the seed of setting up cells for guerrilla warfare. If you can talk even a few outraged and committed protesters into "transport this package in your car to the Whipple building, don't worry, this is for The Cause", then we might see bombing campaigns in Minneapolis.
If the FBI have any ability at all, it shouldn't happen - but it can't be ruled out as impossible. Maybe the likes of our "do some protesting in the morning, visit museums in the afternoon" guy won't go that far, but his wife (by his own admission) is much more involved with her 'clear moral conscience'. Work on her to the point that she'll agree that, for the sake of deported four year olds and diabetic abuelas and those great people she met in the Middle Eastern restaurant who are in danger from the jackbooted fascist thug torturer murderers, she'll just take that one little step further into working for The Cause... and we'll see.
EDIT: I don't mean 'they can get her to agree to bomb people' but make it about 'it's only property damage, nobody will get hurt, we're just going to destroy infrastructure, is property more valuable than lives?' and I can see it happening.
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