In an earlier blog I emphasized the importance of moral clarity for an effective protest.  The case of George Floyd dripped with moral clarity — so much so that 78% of the country agreed that Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Mr. Floyd’s neck till he died, should have been arrested immediately.  However, such a national consensus and borderline unity was intolerable for the anarchists.  It was necessary for them to muddy the moral waters to accomplish their objectives.  And so they began to divide us.

Everyone knows that food left out in the right conditions will draw roaches — pests that carry disease, destruction and death.  In the last weeks, we’ve watched once-peaceful, constitutionally protected marches draw parasitical ideologies that commandeered the demonstrations for their warped intentions and destructive aims.

Moving beyond whether we agree with the reasons for a person’s peaceful protest, the destructive elements who’ve attached themselves to these current demonstrations should cause all living in a democracy to ask: in what other ways can we express our convictions when the infestation begins?  In what ways can one safeguard against an infestation altogether?

If you’ve ever dealt with a parasite in your home, you know they have numerous ways of infiltrating, and then adapting to just about everything you throw at them.  Homeowners and apartment dwellers alike know this to be true…parasites have to be admired for their smarts and constant adaptability, if for nothing else.  They adapt to all your tactics in order to gain or maintain their advantage.

Protest is one of the oldest and favored tools of social change.  However, in this pause in the protest we must reconsider the cost and effectiveness of the protest.  Some will now hail protest as a continued success — or at least as making progress — considering the charges filed for all four police involved in the George Floyd incident.  However, it would be extremely unwise and dangerous to move on to the next cultural moment without first assessing the high cost of the infiltration of destructive forces who care nothing for the cause, or for its outcome.

If organizers of every stripe don’t stop to count this cost and consider how to mitigate the abuse of innocents caught up in unintended destruction, they will yet again leave opportunistic ‘food’ lying around for another ideological infestation.  And indeed, the people under the influence of this parasitic anarchist ideology seem to have altogether disappeared, their exploitative destruction done, our institutions devastated, and their point made.  They have left the rest of us to pick up shards of broken glass, trust, bodies, and lives by morning light.

The time for analysis is overdue — anarchists have appeared at peaceful protests over the last few years, but we underestimated the scope of destruction they wished to inflict. This time, dark forces rode in unawares, mingling with each peaceful tribe that assembled on the streets.  Some nefarious insurgents tactically organized and prepared in tribes of their own, yet no one saw these anarchists coming.

Now that we know we have a deeply destructive and (it seems) tactically organized ideology of chaos unleashed in our midst, what can we do on the ground about this “roach?”

The Larger Problem

In the last few years we have had a laser-like focus on racism, and rightfully so, since it is a cancer in our society.  It’s a manifestation of human depravity, which is in itself the fatal disease of all mankind.  We have even begun to finally ask hard questions about classism, a more modern and more inclusive manifestation of the same fatal disease.

Now, we have seen a devastating evil appear that makes racism, as evil as it is, look harmless by comparison.  That evil is anarchy.  Don’t misunderstand: I reject the evils of racism, classism, and any form of dehumanization in all its iterations — they are all antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in which I believe, and are taught as an offense to God throughout the Scripture I hold dear.  But after seeing the surprisingly powerful and manipulative destruction that anarchy has left behind, I believe that before anybody executes another massive march for social change — whether it’s the March for Life or a demonstration for religious freedom or liberty, or what have you, choose your cause — we must examine how anarchy is lying in wait to feed on our constitutional rights, and on our naiveté about our own vulnerability.

Anarchy is the “absence or denial of any authority or established order.”  More formally, according to Merriam Webster, it is “a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority.”

I’m sure some anarchists have a utopian dream of a society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.  But they, along with many others who care about justice and equality, are being used as cannon fodder by those who are bent on the destruction of all social order — a nihilistic situation where brute force wielded by flawed humanity rules, unrestrained and unchecked.  The most brutal social situation is one where “might makes right.” That’s the inevitable outcome of anarchy.  On the contrary, we should always strive toward a society where “right makes might.” We may disagree on what that “right” is. We may debate or even fight about it.  Even if we do agree about rightness and wrongness, we will probably fall short of its full implementation.  Even so, this flawed social order would be far more tolerable than the anarchist alternative.

Muddy Waters

In an earlier blog I emphasized the importance of moral clarity for an effective protest.  The case of George Floyd dripped with moral clarity — so much so that 78% of the country agreed that Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Mr. Floyd’s neck till he died, should have been arrested immediately.  However, such a national consensus and borderline unity was intolerable for the anarchists.  It was necessary for them to muddy the moral waters to accomplish their objectives.  And so they began to divide us.

Appealing to “the cause,” in this case the memory of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, had no effect on the anarchists because they don’t give a damn.  They don’t give a damn about justice or equality either.  They just want to destroy governmental authority and the existing social order, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.

There is no love for humanity in the anarchist ideology; it is a nihilist’s dream, manipulating the inclinations of non-anarchic nihilists like looters, and exploiting the rest of humanity merely as objects to be used, tossed aside, or crushed if they stand in the way.

The anarchists understand flawed human nature well enough to know that all they have to do is break a few storefront windows and toss a few incendiary devices while passions about “the cause” are running high.  They know that things will snowball from that point as criminals, who similarly don’t care about “the cause,” will take it from there — looting and burning — followed by the opportunists (Black, White and other) for whom access to instant merchandise will override “the cause.”  From there they hope things will go viral.

Anarchists understand human depravity, even as they practice it.

The anarchists know they can get away ‘scott-free’ because the news media and others will lump all this under the heading of “the demonstrators.”  Isn’t it incredible how many under the influence of the anarchist ideology were seen doing their destructive work, yet how few were actually caught?  They also count on well-meaning but naive protest leaders and sympathizers who will attribute all this merely to the “anger and pent up frustration of the community.”  Yes, there is anger and frustration, but who initiated the destruction?

The anarchists, who exist on both the far-left and far-right, have absolutely no vested interest in the affected community.  It doesn’t matter to them that the destruction they cause wipes out decades of economic progress.  They don’t care if the targeted communities may take a generation to recover or may never recover at all.

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