Anarchists Have Support In Toronto...

Meet the Freedom Fighters of the Ottawa Glebe, YouTube Division

Rex Murphy

I presume the ideal society, as seen by the self-styled anarchists who firebombed an Ottawa bank this week, is a society where they get to blow up the buildings of people they don’t like, and the rest of us docile sheep sit around applauding them for their courageous and moral “direct action” against The Man. And what a wonderful dreamscape that must be for the dimwits who inhabit it. The Freedom Fighters of the Ottawa Glebe, YouTube Division — now there’s a liberation movement for the world to rally round.
I pay no attention whatsoever to their pretext of a “manifesto,” circulated in video form along with footage of the firebombing. From the days of the Weather Underground onward, the playactors of Western radicalism always have attempted to wrap their malignant actions in some bubblewrap of concocted rationalization. They want so desperately for us to believe that they take on the burden of violent action “on behalf” of something other than their own egos. Don’t believe them for the time it takes to light a fuse.
They are not moral actors. They are criminals. If this country has one common defining element, and I believe it has, it rests in the belief and practice that whatever differences and disagreements we have with one another, we reach for a resolution within the circle of lawful behaviour.
In shorter form, we respect one another. We do not bomb buildings on our public streets because one set of Canadians thinks it has purer politics than another set. These sad Guevera wannabes are now pariahs, whether they understand the word or not.
We’ve seen steps toward violent action becoming routine or normalized already. Kicking in the windows of Starbucks or bank buildings during global summits is now almost a rite for the anti-globalists — whoever they are. Judging from the mélange of protest groups that troupe around the world whenever world summits are being held, “anti-globalist” is just a convenient brand, a one-size-fits-all psuedo-designation for everyone from green pietists to hard left, time-forgotten Marxists.
But a subset of these angry anti-globalist nomads — recall Quebec city in 2001; recall, more recently the Vancouver games — always ups the ante with a little direct action: a chair through a window here, pelting the police there, scampering around in their black clown masks and moaning with farcical hyprocrisy about police brutality whenever they’re called on their despicable actions.
A portion of the anti-globalist crowd tries to put such assaults on civic order under the rubric of “diversity of tactics” — another evasive, sly euphemism for simple thuggishness. Don’t try to tell us it’s for the Palestinians or the rainforests or the oppressed of the world.
Here’s a newsflash: There are far better men and women working in Starbucks, and in the Royal Bank, than any of the crowd that kick in their windows. And far braver too. For many people, it takes more guts to go to work every day — to do the daily round of often dull and wearying work to better oneself, or to care for a family — than these heroic Glebe guerillas could even aspire to.
Whether the Ottawa bombing is a genuine presage of more violent actions at the upcoming summits is difficult to tell. But it’s hardly a comforting example. The world is in an anxious and unsettling time, and that is precisely the kind of environment most appetizing to those with a taste for harder kind of politics and the street theatre that breeds it.
If the bunch that bombed the Royal Bank in Ottawa are caught they should face the full punishment that their actions call for. And, emphatically, they should not be allowed to dilute the wantonness of their assault against the civic peace of this country by the meretricious pleading that — hey — it was for a “good cause.”
The moment they lit the bomb, they lost the right to talk politics.
National Post

Analyze any of the protest marches over the past few years and any type of violence would be traced to groups like OCRAP, unions, etc. any you would be hard pressed to find a politician that would denounce these groups and in fact, particularly when it comes to city politicians, they support the unions.