{"id":4097,"date":"2016-03-12T14:34:46","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T20:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=4097"},"modified":"2016-03-12T14:34:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T20:34:46","slug":"trump-protests-etc-whose-fault-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/03\/trump-protests-etc-whose-fault-is-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump, protests, etc. – whose fault is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In case you haven\u2019t been following the news, yesterday Donald Trump cancelled his scheduled rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago stadium, shortly before he was scheduled to begin speaking, while the crowd waited for Trump to arrive, when it became clear that protesters were beginning to take actions to\u00a0disrupt the event, from chanting anti-Trump slogans to rushing the stage. \u00a0Here\u2019s a report from ABC News<\/a>, with the basics of the story. \u00a0Here\u2019s another report from AP<\/a>, which cites a protester:<\/p>\n

Chicago community activist Quo Vadis said hundreds of protesters had positioned themselves in groups around the arena, and they intended to demonstrate right after Trump took the stage.<\/p>\n

Their goal, he said, was \u201cfor Donald to take the stage and to completely interrupt him. The plan is to shut Donald Trump all the way down.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was not a spontaneous protest, but planned well in advance. \u00a0And protests continued in the streets after the stadium was cleared. \u00a0The Gateway Pundit (not my favorite source, as he\u2019s a Trump supporter) reports that some protesters even blocked an ambulance from passing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There was similar disruption, and subsequent clashes in the streets following a rally earlier in the day in St. Louis, as reported by the L.A. Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reports link this up to a general tenor of belligerence at Trump rallies. \u00a0Articles cite him as having said<\/a>, of one protester, \u201cI\u2019d like to punch him in the face,\u201d and, in another case<\/a>, saying \u201cI will pay any legal fees. I promise, I promise,\u201d if someone acts on his statement, \u201cIf you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?\u201d<\/p>\n

And in the immediate aftermath of these events, each of Trump\u2019s opponents\u00a0said that Trump at least bore some of the blame for the events of Friday night. \u00a0Rubio said, \u201c\u201dYou can\u2019t just say whatever you want. These words have real consequences,\u201d in a Kelly File interview<\/a>, and Cruz went further<\/a>, saying, just prior to the Lincoln Day Dinner (which I could have gone too \u2014 as it happens, it was the annual fundraiser dinner for my own local Republican organization, that I had looked at a couple weeks ago when I checked their website in one of my occasional \u201cmaybe I should get involved\u201d moments):<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a campaign bears responsibility for creating an environment, when the candidate urges supporters to engage in physical violence\u2013to punch people in the face. The predictable consequence of that is that it escalates and today is unlikely to be the last such instance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the trouble is this: \u00a0we\u2019re not talking about a situation such as an outdoor protest march or rally with counter-protesters turns violent almost organically, or in which a mob incited by Trump moves on to attack others.<\/p>\n

This seems like something altogether different, for protesters\u00a0to move from simply registering their objection outside the rally, to entering in the rally in large numbers, and to move from protesting to, as the AP-cited activist says, intending to shut Trump \u201call the way down.\u201d \u00a0When did this start happening? \u00a0It feels very new to me, the idea that you\u2019d actually enter a venue such as this with the specific plan of protesting the event, and not even silently, but vocally and disruptively, throwing tomatoes or worse \u2014 and not just isolated hecklers, but routinely and coordinatedly, with the loud \u201cF*** Trump\u201d chants that have been reported.<\/p>\n

And, indeed, with apologies for the lack of citations here, the general mood on twitter and in activists quoted in articles I read last night, or on the news, is that \u201cfree speech\u201d is\u00a0not just to the right to say what you will, but the right to shout down others. \u00a0And in that sense, this rally fits with a pattern of conservative speakers on university campuses being shouted down, or chased away by leftists, and of university administrations cancelling other such speakers to avoid this.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, these protesters are motivated by Trump\u2019s anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim statements, and by a general opposition to his positions on immigration and other topics, and come out of the Occupy, MoveOn, and Black Lives Matter movements. \u00a0And perhaps if there were no Trump, they\u2019d direct their attention to Cruz rallies similarly.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, you can\u2019t split out these chains of events from Trump\u2019s statements along the way; everything\u2019s intertwined. \u00a0Did Trump\u2019s statements in the past motivate this crop of protesters? \u00a0No, not in isolation, though it perhaps contributed to their escalation from prior smaller protests. \u00a0But the very fact that Trump has said these things has meant that it\u2019s not possible to know what would have happened had he not, and that, in itself, without trying to to untangle anything further, is the reason to stay away from such statements in the first place.<\/p>\n

Finally, something fun: \u00a0as I was typing this up, I got a phone call: \u00a0a robocall push poll on this very topic! \u2014 asking if I agreed or disagreed that \u201cAmerica is better than this\u201d and whether the events last night made more more or less likely to support Trump. \u00a0I googled \u201cAmerica is better than this\u201d and the top hits say this was a Ted Cruz quote, hoping to use this incident to boost his chances on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you haven\u2019t been following the news, yesterday Donald Trump cancelled his scheduled rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago stadium, shortly before he was scheduled to begin speaking, while the crowd waited for Trump to arrive, when it became clear that protesters were beginning to take actions to\u00a0disrupt the event, from chanting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[253,344,325],"class_list":["post-4097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cruz","tag-protest-violence","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump, protests, etc. - whose fault is it?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In case you haven't been following the news, yesterday Donald Trump cancelled his scheduled rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago stadium,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/03\/trump-protests-etc-whose-fault-is-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump, protests, etc. - 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