Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. – W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
As the would-be leaders of the French Revolution could explain (if they were still alive), the biggest problem with rabble-rousing is that if one succeeds, he will find himself surrounded by aroused rabble. If one is a skilled and charismatic leader one can then turn the mob into a horde and conquer most of Eurasia, but if not (especially in cases where there is no clear leader) it simply remains an angry, hysterical and/or fearful mob which then spills out into the countryside, infringing upon the personal freedom of all and sundry. This is what happens in a moral panic: the Great Unwashed become so fearful of the imaginary threat to God, Country and Our Cherished Way of Life that they…well, panic, and start doing all sorts of fear-crazed things that those behind the hysteria never intended. In the long run this is good for the panic’s chosen scapegoats, but before things fall apart completely there is a period in which the violence becomes much worse, both for the primary targets and for anyone the hysterics accuse of being one of them…and sometimes, when Dame Fortune is in an unusually generous mood, for a few of the panic-mongers themselves.
The spiral has been widening for a while now, though it was hard to detect at first. In my column of one year ago today I explained how “anti-trafficking” poster boy Ashton Kutcher escaped from his handlers, made a complete ass of himself on Twitter and thereby woke up a few journalists while causing many others at least to stir restlessly in their sleep. The increasing breadth and narcissism of Nicholas Kristof’s finger-pointing and the growing insanity of the claims made by his “hero” Somaly Mam helped leaders of the Occupy movement to recognize “sex trafficking” hysteria for what it is, resulting in the recent “Occupy Patriarchy” demonstrations against a prohibitionist conference billing itself (as is typical these days) as an “anti-trafficking” event:
…anarchist demonstrators clashed with officers when they were denied entrance to a conference on human trafficking. Demonstrators, calling themselves “Occupy Patriarchy” gathered outside the convention center to protest the conference…An interview we were conducting was interrupted by protestors using bullhorns to blast us down repeatedly, accusing us of being part of a larger conspiracy to assist police. Inside…presenters were meeting to discuss ways to end human trafficking and the exploitation of children…But protesters were not there to listen, they were there to demonstrate. They knocked down police barriers and vandalized the doors of the conference center. They say that to focus on this is to distort their message. They say that this conference is just a launching pad for continued repression of sex workers and the further empowerment of police agencies at their expense…
Though I have serious issues with the “Occupy” movement for its naïve espousal of Marxism, I don’t entirely agree with those activists who have criticized “Occupy Patriarchy” for its violence; as I’ve stated before, I don’t believe that peaceful protest alone can successfully challenge an entrenched authoritarian system which has clearly demonstrated its disdain for facts and its willingness to use violence to suppress dissent. The existence of violent protests did not harm the cause of Indian independence nor that of civil rights for racial or sexual minorities in the United States, and I don’t think it will hurt ours either; maybe if we started occupying a few churches the “authorities” would no longer be able to convince the public that we’re all helpless, passive victims, and smashing that narrative to bits is absolutely imperative if we’re ever to be taken seriously. Melissa Gira Grant makes a similar point in an article about one of the increasing number of timid “maybe banning Backpage isn’t the way to go” voices in mainstream political discourse:
…It’s…laws…that deter people who come into contact with someone forced into the sex trade from seeking help. In some states, like Illinois, laws against trafficking are written so broadly that buying a MetroCard or a meal for someone in the sex trade could make you vulnerable to arrest or prosecution yourself, as someone “involved” in trafficking…to accept that “the problem with sex trafficking” is merely one of identifying victims is falling in line with the anti-prostitution campaigners’ frame. It also prevents us from calling their bluff: along with taking down websites like Craigslist and Backpage, they want more money for more cops, even though sex workers and trafficking survivors alike report that cops are likely to be violent towards them in the course of “protecting” them…so-called anti-trafficking activists…have proven…that their primary concern is putting more power in the hands of police to arrest people involved in the sex trade, to drag a wide net and just sort out who is a “victim” (in their understanding) and who is a “perpetrator” later. They aren’t interested in adopting new technologies to better identify victims; they don’t make such a distinction, and why would they, when their endgame is to abolish any evidence of the sex trade?…
New York is the latest to embrace the sort of laws Grant mentions:
New York cab drivers convicted of felony sex trafficking for ferrying prostitutes to illicit liaisons would lose their licenses under new legislation passed on Wednesday by the New York City Council…city taxi and livery drivers would face up to a $10,000 fine and lose their New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission licenses if convicted of a felony related to sex trafficking. The legislation goes to Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his signature…
Philanthropic Divine: “May I beg you to accept this good little book. Take it home and read it attentively. I am sure it will benefit you.”
Lady: “Bless me, Sir, you’re mistaken. I am not a social evil, I am only waiting for a bus.”
Bloomberg publicly expressed reservations about the bill, apparently recognizing that it would discourage cabbies from picking up any unescorted female fare who in his mind looks like a hooker. The law’s promoters insist (naturally) that it would NEVER EVER EVER be used to persecute cabbies for chauffeuring escorts, because as everybody knows laws are always used only for their stated purposes and women are NEVER EVER EVER arrested as whores for winking, carrying condoms, not wearing underwear, etc. As demonstrated by this illustration from Dr. Laura Agustín’s column on the law and others like it, reasonable people have understood the impossibility of identifying a whore by sight since at least 1865. But that doesn’t prevent cops from claiming to have the ability, even when it’s blatantly obvious that they don’t:
A [Florida] sheriff’s…deputy was arrested…after unknowingly stepping right into an undercover prostitution sting. Christian Benenati, 40, was arrested and charged with Soliciting Another for Lewdness…[the] off-duty Benenati approached a female officer working undercover…and solicited her for oral sex…the department that set up the countywide sting was the one Benenati works for, and he was nabbed on the street he patrols…
Snaring their own thugs is only one of the unforeseen side-effects of runaway “trafficking” hysteria; I predict we’re going to start seeing more cases like this one, too:
…Barry Laprell Gilton and Lupe Mercado watched, dismayed and helpless, as their 17-year-old daughter was lured away from home by a known Compton gang member…Calvin Sneed. They sought help from law enforcement — to no avail — and later added the girl to several missing and exploited children registries…Prosecutors contend they…gunned [Sneed] down in his car [after discovering] that she was appearing in escort ads, and that she seemed to be working for Sneed…
Buried in the story is the telling detail that the girl left home about a year ago; though I think it highly likely that Sneed was a revolting person who probably would’ve ended up dead one way or another, depicting a teen runaway as an innocent damsel led into whoredom by a mustache-twirling “pimp” is a blatant attempt to hide the real problem behind an increasingly-erratic cultural meme spinning wildly out of control, whose far-flung debris is going to cause a lot more damage before it finally disintegrates.
i dont know,Maggie,i honestly think that the biggest problems that sex workers face dont come from idiots like Ashton Kucher or trafficking fanatics but from former sex workers themselves.its touph to argue that sex work is like any other job and that whether the people involved in it will have a sad time of it or not depends on the person,when former escorts are shown on tv saying that abuse led them into the life and that they have ptsd.its hard to argue that sex workers can be good and honest people, when you see so many cases of escorts outing politicians and soccer players that have been clients of theirs and even try to blackmail them.you have stated that prostitution is not only nessecary for society(buying a basic human need),but can also be healing(a Samhat type experience).its hard to stand by this opinion when a well known sex worker, with a newspaper column ,who also held that type of opinion until recently turns 180 degrees,decries the attempt of ”enoblement”of prostitution and heads up with organizanizations that try to find alternative means of employment for prostitutes and adult entertertainers.blogs such as yours and of many other women are a breath of fresh air as well as the fame of dr.Magnanti or Veronica Monet but it seems for the most part those who stand for ”sex workers are victims”,”prostitution is a social evil”or have genuinely immoral behaviour seem to be in the spot of the public eye.
These women are only empowered because of anti-prostitution hysteria, though. Everyone with two brain cells to rub together recognizes that every profession from war to banking to politics to hairdressing has its disgruntled ex-members, but only in prostitution are these individuals imagined to be representative, and that’s only because the prohibitionists have succeeded in convincing the illiterati that it’s so.
what annoys me most of all is that although the large percentage of abuses within sex work are the result of bad laws,not because of the job itself, which is defined as accepting money for sex,people attack the social evil of prostitution.prostitution doesnt have to include getting arrested and abused by police officers,it doesnt have to include humiliating medical check ups or not being able to leave the brothel you work at.besides,its normal that it is going to attract a large percentage of people who are poor,mentally ill and have addictions or debts,its a job that will gain them fast and large sums of money without the risk of getting fired,because of being deemed unsuitable.why dont they ask people who work in mines and factories what background they have and try to rescue them from their exploiters?such jobs dont have members that are driven into it,because they see it as a stepping stone towards a goal or might do it to supplement their income,or in weekends while doing an office job.sex work is that diverse. i wonder,though if the fear of the moralists who want to keep sex work illegal and stigmatised is sometimes true,that more women will choose it.certainly,not all women will jumb at becoming sex workers,but its true that now that some of the stigma has gone more women prefer it while studying,instead of becoming waitresses,salesgirls etc.i also see women from all walks of life jump at participating at a swiss project that seeks out sex workers for disabled men.(which btw,the woman who promotes it says that theese women are not prostitutes,because they dont do it merely for money and they do care about the clients!).i wonder if as years go buy we will see an even bigger influx of women with middle class backgrounds,education and stable family life enter sex work than its already the case.
i wonder if as years go buy we will see an even bigger influx of women with middle class backgrounds,education and stable family life enter sex work than its already the case.
The Chinese regime is quite worried about an increasing number of prostitutes coming from well-off families. Han Konglin, a prosecutor in Shanghai said about a recent case, “They were engaging in prostitution only to earn money for shopping”. Prohibitionism always feels more threatened when the motive is self-advancement rather than just making ends meet.
“They were engaging in prostitution only to earn money for shopping”.
Interesting that this has beome an issue, since Confusionist societies tend to place A LOT of emphasis on sexual purity in women (see Iris Chang and her book “The Rape of Nanking” documenting Japanese war crimes in WW II China. Chinese women comitted suicide in large numbers after gang rape by Japanese soldiers, and especially if they became pregnant as a result. Ms Chang explained that Chinese women were anathema to their families or to potential suitors after rape, and that suicide…often by jumping into the Yangtze River… became commonplace. There may be some confusion, however with the vast number of bodies that Japanese soldiers dumped into the river by truck loads to dispose of them.)
If upper middle class young women no longer feel social pressure to maintain the appearance of virginity before marriage, then old school communist party patriarchs might be feeling a bit threatened. Just speculation on my part.
>so-called anti-trafficking activists…have proven…that their primary concern is putting more power in the hands of police
This is the very last thing we need, and our democracy can’t stand it.
Laida, one of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that sex-work, like acting, focus a lot of attention on an individual without a lot of note-worthy achievements. So it draws the drama queens. Even once out of the business, they crave the drama, and often they can get it by constructing a sob story.
“As the would-be leaders of the French Revolution could explain (if they were still alive), the biggest problem with rabble-rousing is that if one succeeds, he will find himself surrounded by aroused rabble. ”
Not sure I agree here. Robespierre was able to use the “sans-cullotes” and Hebertists to his own ends, but the radical phase of the French Revolution fell apart because Robespierre really, really believed his own propaganda (That is, a moral and righteous government could remake society and produce a ‘New Man’. The comparison with Communist imagery of a new man arising from the ashes is rather inescapable)
Robespierre did not believe in letting a good crisis go to waste, so when the Vendee’ erupted in open revolt while other parts of France where under occupation by Austrian and British troops, he led the aforementioned rabble in a coup against the Girondin assembly. Robespierre and the sans-cullotes wasted no time in setting about smashing the Vendee’ with the “infernal columns” as well as putting down a Girondin revolt in the south…all the while when the machinery of secret agents, informers and newly appointed judges began to fill the tumbrels with victims bound for the guillotine.
(The repression of the rebels in the Vendee’ constitutes an actual act of genocide in my view, and it is still suppressed in French history. Entire villages where lined up and shot right down to new born infants who were spitted on bayonets. This is documented by French soldiers who “claim not to have participated”. Thousands of people were chained and put into boats rigged to sink upon activation of panels in the hulls. Others were line up and subjected to grape shot and canister fire from artillery. Loyalist villages in the area shared the same fate. I actually had to get up and walk away for awhile during reading of this stuff. Nightmarish.)
Anyways, Robespierre was able to deal with the Hebertists (echoed by “The Night of Long Knives” when the SA was eradicated in Nazi Germany) when they got out of line…but he was unable to escape the machinery of death and repression that he created himself along with the “Committee For Public Safety”. When he made threats that he would expose members of the assembly as traitors (after months of terror and bloodshed), he was seized and put to death by his own peers.(after an unsuccessful suicide attempt).
Nobody ever seems to listen to anything unless it’s backed up by violence.
When I was a kid, I thought growing up made you smarter or more reasonable, but civilization just seems like a darkie and edgier version of playground fights. An eleven year old in charge of things would fail utterly but at least he’ll admit he was wrong.
“I don’t believe that peaceful protest alone can successfully challenge an entrenched authoritarian system ”
This makes me think about Prohibition in the US. If everyone had meekly gone along with it, we’d probably still be a dry country. It took violent gangsters willing to fight violent Prohibition Agents to keep alcohol flowing in this country. If you’ve ever seen the old James Cagney movie, “The Public Enemy,” or more recently “Boardwalk Empire” on HBO, you’ll get an impression that when Prohibition was first put through, a lot of people thought it was a big joke. Violent enforcement of anti-Prohibition laws by government thugs soon put that to rest, whatever the people who ran the government privately thought of the law (and many of them privately enjoyed the occasional cocktail) they were quite serious about enforcing it. (Though the impression I get is that if you were a “player,” someone with pull with the government, you could violate the laws with impunity. But, then, I sometimes see that with modern prohibition of sex work when it applies to public officials as well. John Edwards got to have a super expensive paid consort, David Vitters enjoyed New Orleans night life in a prohibited way, but it doesn’t seem to have harmed them over much. I always figure that Eliot Spitzer and Randy “Duke” Cunnigham must have stepped on to many wrong toes during their careers for these types of scandals to bring them down.)
Always remember Maggie: it is Marx’s solutions for the problems of free market capitalsm that are wrong, not his observations about the continuing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and the rising misery and exploitation of the rest of society to achieve it. As former Reagan Asst. Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts pointed out in his article “Marx and Lenin Revisited,” if Marx were alive today he would be receiving the Nobel Prize for Economics for his accurate description of the increasing misery of workers in today’s world.
The concentration is only happening because most business owners do NOT rely upon or support the free market. To them, the purpose of the state is to give them corporate welfare. That is the Road to Serfdom.
Well Mises and Hayek were both hacks, who thought that wealth gave humankind some degree of nobiliity. In this, they were every bit as wrong as Marx and Engels, who believed that labor itself gave humankind some degree of nobility. The only system that will work is a system of checks and balances applied from outside of the system, not some fairy tale invisible hand. In this Madison and Jefferson were right (together with Jackson, Van Buren, Lincoln, Cleveland, and both Roosevelts), corporations represent the greatest danger our Constitution face: worse than religion, worse than Marxism (which the pragmatic American people would never accept in any braod sense), worse than immigration.
The sooner this particular moral panic ends, the better off we’ll all be… especially the women who actually are forced. There aren’t many of them, but they’re being lost among all the phantom sex slaves.
Why did you splice out the observations by the Attorney from your quote?
I’m not sure which of the quotes you’re referring to, Glenda, but there are two main reasons I trim quotes down: for content and for length. Sometimes I only want to call attention to a few lines, and so only quote those; at other times I’d like to quote more, but in the interests of keeping the column within my preferred length (750-1500 words) I trim it down. This is even more true in my “That Was the Week That Was” columns, which have to be edited ruthlessly to get them down to 2000 words. I feel that the blog format is best when posts are relatively short; to me any post above 2000 words begins to risk losing the reader, so whenever I have a longer essay I prefer to split it into two or even three parts rather than subject my readers to 3000+ words monstrosities.
That having been said, I understand that the readers may want to read whatever it is I’m quoting in its entirety, so I always include the link so that a reader who wishes to do so can follow it.
You’ll be taken seriously … to jail.
And that action by the police will be applauded by the majority of Americans.
The problem is, Maggie – that the US is NOT a dictatorship, or even an authoritarian regime like the one in China or North Korea.
The US regime has the support of most Americans. You won’t crack that nut through violent protests that do nothing but piss off Americans and drive them further into the “Pro-Police” camp. Oh yeah – you can call them “sheeple” but, love – 400 million sheep marching in lock-step unison will tend to trample a few big “bulls” in their path.
Violence DOES hurt American movements for change. In 1968, Americans were so disgusted with a rising trend in violent and chaotic protests that they turned to Richard Nixon – a Republican who had been all but VANQUISHED from politics since 1960. And they turned to him again in ’72 when they reelected him in a LANDSLIDE over McGovern.
That pretty much ended the social change revolution going on at the time – you really don’t know how far it would have gone had it not been ended by Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public asserting their voices at the polls for more “conservative” politicians who stood for law and order.
Incidentally – George Wallace was a “Dixiecrat” who ran in ’68 as a “law and order” candidate. One famous quote … “If some anarchist lies down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile he will ever lie down in front of.”
Let’s remember here that Nixon defeated both Humphrey and Wallace even though Wallace obtained a historic number of votes for a third-party candidate and both he and Nixon were “law and order” candidates.
The key to America is still through her people – you have the power to excite their passions or provoke their anger. If you add, through violence, to the narrative of the ruling elite you’ll see Americans support the ruling elite. You have to do this the hard way – by winning their hearts and their minds and there is precious little room in that for a role for violence.
But I need to add here also that the reason I LIKE you so much, Maggie – is because you are GREAT at changing “hearts and minds”. Further – you’re not just a “one trick pony” who constantly harps on sex worker rights at the exclusion of all else. If sex workers are going to gain civil rights – it’s going to be as part of a broader libertarian movement for change.
And – you’ve NAILED this part. The connection between liberty and the right of a woman to choose the circumstances and individuals she has sex with is a natural one.
It turns out that the change in the 1960s from “peace and love” to “we have to smash stuff to get people’s attention” had two main causes:
1) the war in Vietnam and some other unpleasant stuff kept chugging along and it didn’t look like peace and love was doing the trick (they didn’t know that Nixon had entertained the idea of using the Bomb and had been warned off of it by his advisers because of the potential blowback from peaceniks), and
2) there were a lot, a LOT, a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT of government agents infiltrating the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the “let’s get high and sing” movement, etc. And these government agents were consistently egging the other folks on toward violent action, sometimes even providing them with guns and explosives. This isn’t conspiracy theory; this has been confirmed by declassified documents. The Occupy folk are talking to some of the old 60s activists, and the old guys are telling them, “Anybody who advocates violent action you should just assume is a government agent, because he probably is.”
If Occupy is turning violent, I’d figure there’s a government agent or two (hundred) behind it.
That was an example where conspiracy theories on BOTH sides were true. The Soviets poured millions into supporting the American peace movement and getting its leaders’ views published in the Western mainstream press — and they were very good at it. Their purpose was to win the Vietnam war, and it worked.
Do you have any links on this?
I doubt it. This was the accusation leveled at the End the War movement by the John Birch Society and J. Edgar Hoover forty plus years ago. The Soviets didn’t have to spend a kopek: the Pentagon’s stupidity and My Lai, together with an actual free press–not embedded reporters–took care of it quite well.
That was kind of my feeling. Really, this sort of fund-the-hippies thing doesn’t seem Old Moscow’s style. Still, if there’s evidence to back it up, I’m willing to look at it. If.
You’re ignoring the fact that peaceful black activists would’ve been ignored if not for the existence of the Black Panthers, and years of gay rights protests accomplished nothing until ACT-UP appeared on the scene. As long as a civil rights movement allows itself to be contained by middle-class norms, it will remain just that – contained.
I also think people tend to conflate violent and disruptive, which I think is unfair. The peaceful civil rights movement in the US had no problem, moral or otherwise with disrupting things. Strikes, boycotts, human chains and otherwise interfering with people’s comfortable middle class lives were the order of the day.
I’d also argue that the Civil Rights movement was a bigger boon to Nixon than some people realized. My parents voted for Wallace when he was running on “segregation now, segregation later, segregation forever.” It wasn’t because they liked his stance on anarchism or the war, it’s because they hate black people and figured he would crack down on them and derail the civil rights movement, which they hated and feared. Of course they were pro-war too, but if you asked them, “Would you rather nuke Vietnam or have Martin Luther King hanged for treason?” Well first they’d ask why we couldn’t do both, but next they’d reluctantly support MLK’s execution for being a dangerous communist. (World communism being a disease of the skin for them, local communists like MLK being a disease of the belly for them, to use a Chinese proverb.)
I should point out that I find my parents stances on this stuff to be truly horrifying, and I tend to treat them as one would if a beloved relative had a serious mental illness. My parents love me a lot and have helped me out of a lot of jams in my life, so this side of them is more a source of sadness than rage.
It’s particularly frustrating to come from a family where Aryan purity is the admired ideal when you’ve been sleeping with a black woman for 14 years. I suppose Strom Thurmond and I would have been in sympathy on that, although he wasn’t much of a rebellious son, otherwise.
Of course, the Black Panthers were immediately seized on as an excuse to legislate all kinds of gun contro in California…by Ronald Reagan no less…and are still used as a right wing conspiracy meme today. I have to agree with Krulac that violence almost always plays into the hands of the government and business elites (even non violent strikes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were portrayed as acts of violent anarchism in the popular press and used to justify union breaking and repression against Slavic, Irish and German emmigrants) and gives them an excuse to use overwhelming force against you.
If you resort to violence, it has to be seen widely and unequivocably as self defense in order to have any chance at popular support, and even then many people will still want to blame you for challenging the status quo. (see the wikipedia article on the Battle of Balir Mountain. Miners were brutalized and often murdered when trying to unionize, and their wives sometimes sexually assualted in “rape rooms” in the back of company stores. When violence did break out, the coal companies got help from the army and the army air corps and actually used aircraft with bombs and gas to put down the rebellion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain)
1.If we haven’t reached China, Cuba, or Korea’s level of suppression, it is only a matter of time until the oligarchs through the government make it every bit as bad as any Communist Regime. See http://EndtheLie.com/2012/07/02/three-former-nsa-employees-expose-mass-illegal-surveillance-in-court/
2. Wallace is still second to Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressives in terms of percentage. If women could have voted in 1912, TR would have won.
3.”Law and Order” candidates are elected when the government succeeds in scaring the people enough with their lies to give up their liberties. This is not a good thing.
“anarchist demonstrators clashed with officers when they were denied entrance to a conference on human trafficking. Demonstrators, calling themselves “Occupy Patriarchy” ”
Note the cunning association of “Occupy” with anarchists, and divorcing demonstrators from any legitimate political movement. Clever, and sick.
[…] My column from yesterday: Like all moral panics, “trafficking” hysteria will spin wildly out of control before disintegrating. […]