December 16, 1773. Boston. Looters and vandals terrorize business, destroy private property

[unblock]

British king George calls for law and order and calls military out to protect colonists and businesses in the colonies from radical "antiro" (anti-royalist) thugs. Says Boston is ablaze and he will not stand for that and will bring calm to the streets of Boston by force if necessary.

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Interesting how no one talks about the Boston tea party like that. There were, no doubt, some loyalists at the time who thought if it like that, probably even some newspapers of the era. But certainly the dominant voices, and the voices that prevailed, covered the story rather differently.

Instead of dwelling on the specific act and only noting it as a legal violation, they put it in context and noted the *point* of the act. It was a protest against a tax first and foremost. It was technically a violation of law second, but only because that's what it took to get noticed, because king George and the British parliament didn't listen to colonists.


So today, notice how *once again*, the whole *point* of the black lives matter movement, the whole *point* of the protests, gets pushed aside and yet again, the media dwells on the "looting" and "vandalism" that is a minor secondary thing that is associated with (but in many cases not even done by the same people as) the protests. Indeed, protesters are getting hurt and shot and killed by both the people as well as the tories, and still the media dwells on the protests and the idea of stopping the protests by force.

Many years ago, when the Iranians took 52 Americans hostage, abc news ran a nightly program focusing on the hostage situation, counting each nighy the number of days they were in captivity.

The news today should run a nightly show counting the number of days since Colin kapernick first took a knee (1468 days) and relentlessly talk about unequal treatment of African Americans by police.

Instead the are burying the lede. The real story is that still, no significant actions are being taken to curb police violence and unequal treatment in practice under the law.

[Jim__]

1. Some Texas parents are upset over a history lesson that depicts the Boston Tea Party as an act ...

... of terrorism.

From Huffpost November 2012:

The historical protest against taxation without representation will mark its 239th anniversary next month. But a report by The Blaze, a right-wing site started by Glenn Beck, reveals that as recently as this January, the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative included a lesson plan that portrays the Boston Tea Party as a non-patriotic act, instructing teachers to read a story to their students as a recent news report:

News report: New Act of Terrorism

A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.

The lesson plan then asks teachers to ask students if the event in the news report meets the definition of a terrorist attack, and whether the act is “from a previous time in our history.”

...

The protesting parents won out, the lesson was dropped.

[Decoy of Fenris]

2. As a historical aside, that's kind of exactly how the Tea Party was framed and responded to.

Hence, the institution of the Intolerable Acts which were about as close as you can get to a 'crackdown', choking off the city economically and repealing many citizens' rights that we now hold as self-evident in our Constitution, and all damages rendered upon the Crown by the Tea Party was repaid in full. Soldiers were allowed to quarter without permission to maintain order, et cet. Furthermore, the Intolerable Acts themselves were met with carefully-curated protests and demonstrations, culminating in a Continental Congress, appealing legally and diplomatically to the Crown, asking for a reprieve from the Intolerable Acts.

Your point is well taken, but the 'theoretical' you propose was the actual reality of the situation and was reported/responded to quite similarly to our own dictator-in-chief. Equally, the 'protesters' of 1774 had a far more organized and structured series of demonstrations and legal maneuvers than the ongoing protests of today.

[abqtommy]

3. I've mentioned that The Boston Tea Party and indeed the entire American Revolution was

a vigilante, extra-legal act. There's no reason not to consider that a precedent here in 2020.