. . . maybe it really is grassroots? Jesse Walker decodes some of the hysteria around both the protests and the official responses:
Clashes keep breaking out at the “town hall” meetings devoted to discussing health care reform. Usually the excitement amounts to some angry questions and heckling, but sometimes there’s more. Six people were arrested at a demonstration outside a meeting in St. Louis. Violence erupted at a town hall in Tampa after opponents of ObamaCare were locked out of the building. A North Carolina congressman cancelled a meeting after receiving a death threat; the pro-market group FreedomWorks, which was involved in some of the protests, fielded a death threat of its own. Supporters of the president’s health care reforms, who used to tout the support he’d received from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, are now accusing the very same companies of riling up “mob violence” to stop the plan.
As the charges and countercharges fly, here are three maxims to keep in mind:
1. It isn’t Astroturf after the grassroots show up.
[. . .]
2. It isn’t unprecedented if there are obvious precedents. When someone like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claims that the “mob aspects” at the meetings are “something new and ugly,” all he’s demonstrating is that he’s an economist, not a historian. When it comes to bands of angry citizens being disruptive, it isn’t hard to find earlier examples in American history. It isn’t even hard to find earlier examples in 21st century American history. Just go to Google and punch in phrases like “guerrilla theater,” “antiwar protest,” and “Code Pink.”
[. . .]
3. It isn’t fascism if…actually, you can stop there. IT ISN’T FASCISM, you numbskulls.
