May 09, 2017
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The fall of the World Trade Center they”d built coincided with the rise of the internet and digital cameras, especially those in cell phones. Neither the Tea Party nor (to a lesser extent) Occupy Wall Street could have gained their relative degrees of traction without this technology, and the advent of both movements prompted political junkies to look over their shoulders. The Hard Hat Riot was rediscovered, although mostly on the left, in books like the best-seller Nixonland and the more scholarly Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory. This liberal-leaning, comedic pop-history podcast about the skirmish is both thorough and, yes, pretty funny.
As for the right, well, there was me writing about the Hard Hat Riot once a year, and rarely failing to amend a favorite quotation from fellow Canadian blogger Kate McMillan, whose unofficial motto“pre”Tea Party, let alone -Trump”has been:
“Not showing up to riot is a failed conservative policy.”
So now, finally, the right seems to have figured this out. Here at Taki’s, Gavin McInnes is foremost among those celebrating (and occasionally participating in) the long-overdue physical opposition to left-wing fascism, personified by “Based Stick Man.” Yet another Canadian (seriously, folks, don”t be fooled by our sucky self-styled rep) who figured this out years ago, and acted accordingly, at considerable personal cost, is Mark Vandermaas, whose recent “Defending White Conservatives Against Hate“ will inspire and/or infuriate you.
Hey, it only took us almost fifty years.
We “won” the Hard Hat Riot. The will”the spirit”was there. So was the manpower. But we didn”t have the technology to capture and deploy either.
Now we do. So there’s no excuse for the nascent “Fight Back Right” to end up as another forgotten footnote.
Those who fail to repeat the past are condemned to merely remember it, and sometimes not even that.
