Portland, Oregon And Dublin Ireland: A Lesson

[Pat Mustard]

There are news reports that federal agents - without warrants or cause - are driving around Portland in unmarked vans and grabbing protestors off the streets on ‘suspicion’ (it isn’t immediately clear what these people are suspected of).

This is GREAT! Nothing recruits people to a movement like illegal, baseless security overreactions. Precisely the same thing happened in the aftermath of the Easter Rising in 1916 (along with executions, but let’s hope this doesn’t go that far). People who supported the movement from the sidelines and even some who had been indifferent to it, flocked to the cause.

People agitating for civic or political change always have the goal of goading the government into a clampdown of exactly this sort and the result is always the same - it swells the ranks of the people in the streets.

Just a handful of years after the Rising, the Irish Free State was established, followed shortly by the Republic of Ireland.

Boru

I don't think what's happening in Portland has anything to do with law and order (not even the twisted version of rightists). It is Trump's brownshirts engaging in live fire training for their anticipated coup in November.