#operation gridlock

“ ... t would be wrong, however, to laugh off the protesters as stupid or dismiss them as a far right fringe. If the claimed figure of 3,000 is correct, this was a sizable turnout. Perhaps more significantly, the protest had powerful backers in the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party. The Freedom Fund, one of the groups behind the action, was founded by an adviser to the family of billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. ...

“...  DeVos and Trump’s business supporters in Michigan and beyond know that skyrocketing  unemployment has the potential to lower Trump’s popularity before the election. It is in their interests to get the right wing petit-bourgeoisie out on the street, pushing the narrative that it’s the lock down by the Democratic Governors that is creating unemployment, not the pandemic Trump did so much to ignore. The far right can be used in this, but also use the broader milieu to build and mainstream themselves. ...”

At "Operation Gridlock," last month's right-wing protest in Lansing over Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's coronavirus executive orders, many participants rebelled against social distancing guidelines by standing close together and not wearing face masks. Afterward, Whitmer chided the protesters, saying they could have spread the virus across the state. That fear is backed up by newly released cellphone data, which shows the protesters dispersing to smaller communities across Michigan in the following days. A map was released by an advocacy group called the Committee to Protect Medicare, which raised concerns that the protesters could have carried the disease to smaller, rural communities that are ill-equipped to deal with COVID-19 patients.

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At least they should be easily recognisable although it’s hardly fair on the blind so instead of MAGA baseball caps I propose something like this:

Conspiracy by US Right Wing cadre underwrites manufactured protests

Wealthy conservative groups create smoke-and-mirrors scheme to foster anti-lockdown protests CLICK ABOVE to DONATE

Anti-distancing protesters at the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, last week.

Last week, national news outlets carried coverage of a small but disruptive protest at the Michigan state Capitol of stay-at-home orders instituted by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The protesters…

           Stuck at home with your HBO account and food delivery apps? Looking for something to be pissed off about? Wonderful! The mainstream media would like to direct your attention to a coordinated string of right-wing protests for an end to the lockdown, and away from— well, whatever it is the people who cut their checks are up to. Conservatives in power, like Betsy Devos, whose family funded the protest against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Stay at Home order, and Trump, who’s brazenly encouraged the demonstrations, are attempting to shift our baleful gaze to local government, the Democrats, and the Chinese. Authoritarians, they cry! Communists! Elitists! The Democratic elite, through the megaphone of mainstream media outlets they keep in their pocket, would like to convince you it’s the Conservatives’ fault. Racists! Philistines! “Why is it the right-wingers always seem to need their screws tightened?” one man wrote in a tweet about the Michigan protests. And so it goes. As long as you remain in the stands, watching the Reds and Blues bat blame back and forth like a tired tennis ball and cheering for your favorite team, you’re right where they want you. 

          Both parties would like you to believe they’re ardent champions of the working man, their efforts hampered only by the self-serving interference of the opposite side— and, crucially, the ordinary people who elected them. Who they really want us to blame is ourselves. Didn’t vote Clinton in 2016? Might wanna wash the blood off your hands. Not social distancing? Don’t have a mask? This is your fault, and you must be punished (for the safety of the American people, of course). In Philadelphia, a man was physically pulled off a bus by several police officers for not wearing a mask. A New York woman was arrested for not social distancing and thrown in a cell with two dozen others for 36 hours. These are far from isolated incidents. The government primes us to accept them by painting our fellow working people (and the migrants, the Chinese, the Russians, et al., depending on your political leanings) as the enemy they’re protecting us from. If we stay divided, frightened, and vengeful, we remain prey to the real enemy— our American aristocracy. Distracting us with political white noise ensures that the current system won’t be held responsible for the violence it caused. 

         The re-opening protests being pushed in our face are a perfect example of this. The protests are a sloppy spectacle of astroturfing— the practice of concealing the sponsors of a movement so it appears to have grassroots origin and mass support. In other words, something that seems like a spontaneous expression of the zeitgeist but is actually a few rich pricks using their immense wealth to change our perception of the political landscape. Americans on both sides of the party line are falling for it. 

          If it seems like this movement popped up overnight, it’s because it did: tech-savvy Redditor sleuths discovered that the protest websites (reopen[state abbreviation].com, although in some cases this re-directs to a page on a different website, like minnesotagunrights.org, the domain always registered to the same LLC) can be traced to at least two professional astroturfing firms (or, as they call themselves, “digital advocacy solutions”). The sites for PA, MN, IA, VA, WI, and OH— all presidential election swing states— were made by OneClickPolitics, and the sites for MD, MJ, and NJ were made by UJoin. Strategies like this can be incredibly impactful; digital astroturfing was employed by AggregateIQ/Cambridge Analytica in the Brexit campaign, for instance. If you’re confused about what exactly these companies do, that makes two of us— but you can get an idea from OCP’s website: 

“Are you launching a new coalition or association and need more members now? Want 10,000 signatures for your petition from residents of a certain state? Are you battling a legislative issue in a location where you don't have enough advocates, who are constituents of the legislators you are attempting to influence? Or would you like to impress your boss by reporting a 15% growth in membership in less than 90 days? If your answer is yes, keep reading!

OneClick Acquisition is your solution for generating immediate legislative actions from new supporters within mere days. We deliver “on demand, organic supporters” through our proprietary digital ad placement technology.”

          It’s unknown who’s paying for these campaigns, but I could hazard some guesses. After all, Republican puppetmasters are making less effort to hide than ever before— FreedomWorks, the thinktank behind the Tea Party movement, is “holding weekly virtual town halls with members of Congress, igniting an activist base of thousands of supporters across the nation to back up the effort,” according to an Associated Press article titled “Powerful GOP allies propel Trump effort to reopen economy”: history repeating itself as farce. Besides DeVos, these “powerful allies” include The Heritage Foundation and Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity. 

          Americans have become so reverent of wealth and power, so blind to class distinctions, that they see billionaire chessmasters as their “allies” protecting their inalienable “right to work”: the right to sacrifice themselves at the altar of capital so their families get some Eucharistic breadcrumbs. It’s incredible that elites funding supposedly populist political maneuvers can be construed as a good thing— a philanthropic thing, even. In case it isn’t obvious, not only is the ruling class not acting in our best interest, or trying to keep us healthy, or preserve our freedom, they are acting in their best interest, which is to limit our freedom and maximize our productivity as much as possible. And before you go and tweet about those MAGA hat-clad #FloridaMorons, you should consider the elites you’re prepared to trust— like, I don’t know, richest man in the world Bill Gates, or certified worst person in the world Nancy Pelosi and the “experts” bearing her seal of approval. 

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Fox News hosts are rallying to the cause of conservative activists who are protesting Michigan’s social distancing measures, raising the probability that similar movements will spread across the country with potentially catastrophic results.

In order to enforce limited face-to-face contact and reduce the spread of the contagious and deadly novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, governors across the country have banned large gatherings, closed schools, bars, restaurants, and non-essential businesses, and issued shelter-in-place orders instructing people not to leave their homes unnecessarily. These efforts appear to have succeeded in limiting deaths caused by the virus, but at the cost of an unprecedented unemployment surge.

The economic decline is triggering a backlash among conservatives against social distancing measures. President Donald Trump is reportedly fixated on reopening much of the country on May 1. Fox hosts are similarly pushing for a swift end to the lockdown, claiming that the lowered death projections show not that social distancing has succeeded but that public health experts were wrong to recommend it because the virus isn’t that dangerous. And conservatives are beginning to launch protest movements against the measures, with the support of Trump’s political allies.

This is incredibly dangerous. Public health officials, governors, and members of Trump’s own hand-picked council of business leaders are all warning that if people return to work without a drastic increase in testing capacity, it will both lead to a new wave of COVID-19 cases and fail to significantly improve the economy. And the increasing calls for public defiance of the measures are reportedly raising alarms inside the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, with officials worrying that the president’s base may stop following public health recommendations.

Wednesday saw the largest public demonstration against social distancing measures so far, as thousands of people swarmed the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, in a protest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order. The protest, dubbed “Operation Gridlock,” was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to the DeVos family, which heavily funds right-wing organizations and politicians in the state and nationwide.