What Motivates America’s Revolutionists?

“Revolution is the solution, not voting!” chanted a group of kneeling protestors in Manhattan in June this year.

“Our fight for liberty, justice, and freedom continues. Together, we can — and will — transform. This is the revolution,” reads a posting on the website of Black Lives Matter. In the accompanying video the narrator says, “We continue the tradition of revolution. We feel earth shifting beneath our feet… Now it’s time to transform. Together change is coming.”

“Milwaukee’s Protest Leaders Say ‘This Is the Revolution’” proclaims last week’s magazine headline.

Another writer observes: “These are not just riots; this is a revolution to change America.”

“This Is a Revolution! ”declares the title of a piece on the website called “The 74 Million.”

In recent months it has become clear that we are in the midst of a revolutionary push whose objective is nothing less than a complete remaking of our society. The assault has been coming not only from the crowds in the streets but also from other corners such as academia, the media, and even the highest reaches of the US government. Recently, for example, Ilhan Omar, a member of the US House of representatives, has openly called for a dismantling of the American way of life as we know it:

“We can’t stop at criminal justice reform or policing reform. We are not merely fighting to tear down the systems of oppression in the criminal justice system. We are fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in health care, in employment, [and] in the air we breathe.”

Omar’s revolutionary zeal has been shared by many of her colleagues in government who have been more discrete than herself, but who have nevertheless done all they can to further the cause. One of the many ways in which they do this is by implementing legislation that ties the hands of law enforcement in order to set loose the insurgent mobs that have been burning our cities and terrorizing America’s communities.

In the past five months, the insurrectionists have made impressive gains by changing America’s mindset and forcing their agenda on our nation. In this short time, they have been able to dramatically reshape the way many Americans perceive themselves and their country. It is now commonly accepted in many quarters that America is a racist and oppressive nation. America’s history has been discredited as a tale of oppression and iniquity. Statues of our great men have been desecrated and removed. Scores of Americans are now ashamed of their country, of their past and of themselves while the issue of race has become the most important consideration in virtually every aspect of our life. The hard-left activists have forced upon many Americans the idea that they are racists. They have convinced us that our racism is subconscious and that any attempt to deny this fact is the clear evidence of its existence. To drive their point home, the revolutionists have terrorized our neighborhoods, disrupted our ways of life and injured countless people. For good measure they have torched dozens of cities and caused billions of dollars in damage in what the insurance industry has described as “riot and civil disorder” catastrophe in multiple states.

The revolutionaries have been able to achieve all this with astonishing speed and without much resistance. Many people have been puzzled by why there has been so little opposition to this subversive movement, which is based on untruths and furthered by violence. The answer is quite simple: the absence of a pushback is due to the fact that the rioters have been able to seize the high moral ground.

The notion that the revolutionaries are driven by lofty and noble goals has become the unquestioned foundation of the official narrative. It is the desire for justice and equity, we are told, that motivates these people. What they want is to end racism, oppression and discrimination. Having managed to clad themselves in a garb of righteousness, their actions and persons have become almost sacrosanct. Their allegedly noble motives sanctify whatever they say or do, no matter how outrageous or criminal. Because of their lofty aims, their assertions and demands must not be questioned or their acts second-guessed. They must be permitted to do pretty much what they want, and no one is allowed to stop or touch them. Having been thus anointed, they have been able to move with virtual impunity. Most of those who do get arrested by the police in the field for their criminal behavior get promptly bailed out or released by the Soros installed district attorneys. On the other hand, those who dare to oppose their radical agenda are immediately labelled as racists and all around despicable human beings. They are quickly shamed, cancelled and fired.

It is this ability to position themselves on the high moral ground that accounts for their remarkable gains. In this they follow the template that has been successfully exploited by all the great revolutionaries of the past. Robespierre, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro and their cohorts have all claimed to be driven by lofty and noble impulses. They have all portrayed themselves as the champions of the oppressed whose efforts were fueled by the desire to improve the situation of their fellow men. Interestingly, they all used the same basic formula to justify the overthrow of the existing order: end oppression and bring about social and economic justice.

More than twenty-three centuries ago, Aristotle articulated a profound insight into the nature of man as a political animal: “Men start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives.” What are those reasons? According to Aristotle, the motives of revolutionists are usually selfish and gross in nature. They include such base sentiments as envy and the desire for personal gain and power. We read in Book Five of his Politics:

“The universal and chief cause of this revolutionary feeling has been already mentioned; viz., the desire of equality, when men think that they are equal to others who have more than themselves; or, again, the desire of inequality and superiority, when conceiving themselves to be superior they think that they have not more but the same or less than their inferiors… Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions. The motives for making them are the desire of gain and honor, or the fear of dishonor and loss.”

The truth of Aristotle’s insight has been borne out by history many times since. The cost of not recognizing the true motives of insurrectionists has been immense indeed. In the 20th century alone those who toppled their societies under the guises of ending oppression and bringing justice killed more than one hundred million of their fellow citizens.

The question before us is this: Is the present crop of American revolutionists actuated by exalted impulses, which is the claim that has earned them license to do as they wish. Or are they motivated by the base urges of the human psyche? On the answer to this question our national and personal destinies depend.

The first red flag is their proclaimed cause. Our revolutionaries claim that the reason America’s society needs to be radically remade is because of its deep-seated racism, which they call “systemic.” Anyone familiar with the situation in America, however, must immediately see that this charge is completely bogus. Whatever faults and flaws American society may have racism is certainly not among them. Quite to the contrary, black people in America not only enjoy complete equality with the white majority, but they have been awarded a whole set of special rights and privileges that the rest do not have.

The most frequently cited “evidence” of systemic racism is police brutality which, it is asserted, is unduly directed against black men. However, study after study has shown that cops do not target black men because of the color of their skin. In fact, when it comes to deaths in police encounters black suspects are underrepresented. This is from the analysis done by Heather MacDonald which originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal:

“In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.”

These facts notwithstanding, anti-racism activists absurdly claim that the police are committing genocide against black people. In August of this year Naomi Osaka, one of the world’s top tennis players, withdrew from a tournament to protest this completely fictional issue. This is what she wrote:

“Watching the continued genocide of black people at the hand of the police makes is honestly making me sick to the stomach… When will it ever be enough?”

Whatever is making Osaka sick to the stomach it surely cannot be the police genocide of blacks, because such a thing simply does not exist. Osaka’s missive, however, is instructive in showing how such delusional thinking takes hold of people’s psyches: “I am exhausted of having a new hashtag pop up every few days and I am extremely tired of having this same conversation over and over again.”

The tactics of the demagogues are obvious: they relentlessly keep putting out untruths on the internet, which then keep popping up on people’s screens. When they see this information a hundred times, they take it to be a fact. Goethe’s maxim applies now more than ever:

“Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.”

The fact is, despite what Osaka and others like her may think, white suspects are more likely to be killed by law enforcement than black suspects. Furthermore, policemen are far more likely to be killed by black men than black man to be killed by the police. Continues MacDonald:

“In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.”

Despite their constant barrage of racism accusations, the critics cannot point to a single racist law, practice, custom or institution. And there is a good reason for this: The notion of systemic anti-black racism in America is an utter myth.

The only institutional racism that exists in America today is racism against white and Asian people, mainly in education, government employment and contracting but in other areas of life as well. It was only two months ago that the US Department of Justice found Yale University in violation of the civil right laws by discriminating against white and Asian students in favor of blacks. According to Reuters:

“The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday accused Yale University of illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants in its undergraduate admissions process in violation of U.S. civil rights law.”

Apparently, white and Asian students with comparable credentials have a 90 percent lower chance of being admitted than black applicants. If this is not racial discrimination, what is? Yale, of course, is not alone in this. These kinds of practices are completely normal not only throughout our educational system but throughout our society. If truth be told, black people in America are the most pampered racial minority in history. This is the very reason why black people from all over the globe want to come and live here. In addition to all the special benefits and privileges that blacks in America enjoy over the rest of the population looting has now apparently been added to the list.

Other revolutionaries at least got their initial cause right. Lenin was correct when he said that the workers and peasants were oppressed in Russia at his time. But with today’s American revolutionaries even their ostensible cause is fake. And all the virtue signaling panderers who took part in their charade and knelt either with the demagogues or in front of them should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

But it is not only the obvious falseness of their cause that should make us doubt the nobleness of the revolutionists’ motives. It is their very demeanor and behavior. The way they scream and shout, the way they curse, their insolence and violence clearly show there is something deeply wrong. The mugshots of the arrested protestors released by the police departments across the country tell the story better than anything we could ever say.

Mugshots of arrested protestors released by police departments

All these individuals have been arrested while rioting under the cover of the noble ideal of social justice. These are the “mostly peaceful protestors” who roam our streets and terrorize innocent people. These are the kinds of people that Democrat politicians across the country shield from persecution. Do you think that the society these types would bring about would really be good and just?

These photos have not been doctored or manipulated. They are just as they have been released by law enforcement (which the pictured want to defund). Neither do they represent the worst elements in the protests. The demeanor of the individuals in the pictures is reflective of the bulk of the protestors. Here is a video of some truly privileged ones. These social warriors literally bark like dogs.

The woke harassing peaceful diners at a restaurant

Do you really believe that these woke and progressives are actuated by noble motives of justice and equity as they claim? Watching them, one cannot but feel sorry. Troubled and selfish, most of them are spoiled and disturbed individuals whose moral sense has been seriously impaired by the self-indulgent, undisciplined lives they have led.

Such people are incapable of genuinely caring for the well-being of others. To truly care for other human beings – to have real empathy – one must be unselfish at least to some degree. These people are anything but that. They are not doing what they are doing for the noble reasons they cite. Their fight against (non-existent) racism and for social justice is merely a cover under which they act out their personal dysfunction. Watching today’s activists in action, the truth of Aristotle’s observation becomes painfully obvious: “Men [and women],” indeed, “start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives.”

This is not to say that our society does not need change or reform, because God knows that a number of things have gone deeply wrong. But there is a big difference between serious thought-out reform and a heedless revolution that sweeps everything away. The difference is that of life and death. We have seen what happened in the past when moral desperadoes gain power through revolutionary upheaval. Today’s American revolutionaries want to topple our society in the name of a non-existent problem while ignoring the real ones. Their cause is false, their proposed solutions are wrong and the system they aspire to install would spell disaster for this country and its people. This is why the kind of revolution they are trying to stoke should not succeed.