Occupy Chicago and... NATO?
So something you probably don't know is that wiggin's sister is an active part of the Occupy Chicago movement. I can't say I really agree with her (okay, that's a vast understatement), but I respect her right to protest, and if it makes her happy, then more power to her.
What has puzzled me lately, though, is the recent hullabaloo about the NATO summit taking place in Chicago over the next couple days. Previously, the G8 summit was also scheduled for Chicago, before it was moved to Camp David. I had definitely expected that the Occupy chaps would be involved with G8 protest - things like unreasonable fear of globalization and conspiracy theories about the New World Order fit in quite well with their anti-corporatist rhetoric. It's not new to have leftist types shutting down cities during various meetings of global economic or financial bodies, so I wasn't surprised to hear my sister talk about preparations for it.
What was weird was that after the G8 was moved, the Occupy Chicago chaps decided they would still mobilize various 'actions' against the NATO summit as well. I asked my sister about this (okay, I actually pressed her quite a bit) to understand the connection between the rhetoric of Occupy Chicago/OWS and anti-NATO protests, and she was pretty much unable to give me a coherent answer. She mumbled a bit about 'solidarity' with antiwar protesters and a bit more about the military industrial complex, but she wasn't particularly clear on what she actually found wrong with NATO as an organization. Now, you might think that she's just not particularly well-versed in Occupy Chicago rhetoric on NATO, but apparently she's not a press liaison for the NATO protests, so apparently the other protesters think she has above-average coherence on the issue.
I did some quick online sleuthing and couldn't find any actual justification for it other than borrowed slogans from antiwar groups that have nothing to do with Occupy Chicago's raison d'etre. I did find this little gem over at HuffPost:
Quote:
Webber, who helped start the group 99% Solidarity, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, said he opposed NATO because it fights wars and because governments fund those wars with money they should spend elsewhere.
"There's definitely a connection between the two and I think they're very important," Webber said. "My hope is 30 years from now, we won't have a need for marches like this."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1528901.html
...which has plenty of logical flaws, but is also pretty thin justification for throwing in with them. Is this just a case of 'well, this is a leftist cause, and we're mostly leftists, so let's jump on the bandwagon'? If it is, it seems to be a very poor choice. The G8/IMF/World Bank/etc. all attract lots of criticism in the Western world from more than just fringe crazies; protesting them (and banks/etc., which no one likes very much right now) is a good way to have a popular cause (just like the Tea Party protesting taxes can't really go wrong). Yet there is not much popular anger in the US against NATO, and I don't see where they're going with this as a movement.
Am I missing something? Is there some deep-seated hatred of NATO simmering in the American public of which I am unaware? Is there a rationale connected the Occupy movement to NATO that I'm simply missing?
I don't much like the Occupy movement - I think they're mostly shrill and spend most of their time complaining without suggesting even remotely workable solutions. But I do recognize that the movement is representing a great deal of frustration on the part of a significant part of the population - hardly the 99%, of course, but a decent chunk of people who feel that they have been treated unfairly. Yet when stuff like this happens I wonder if it's not just morphing into a fringe leftist group without any real sense of what most people are feeling. Have they been drinking the kool-aid too much? Are they too caught up in the protesting 'culture' to have a sense of perspective?
If so, that's a shame. I think that citizen protest groups - right, left, or neither - have a valuable place in allowing people to make politicians pay attention to issues they might not have otherwise. Yet if they marginalize themselves, their main message will be ignored, and they will only be able to blame their own stupidity. Thoughts?
