What is the Difference Between Revolution and LARPing?

good question, professor

Experts agree that when the ordinary middle class invades the Capitol that is “armed insurrection.” I agree. If those peasants ever got into control it would be the end of expertise as we know it.

But the bigger question, to me, is what to think of the “activists,” the “protesters,” the faithful rank and file of the “Resistance.”

OK. I am sure that they all think of themselves as devoted revolutionaries fighting for justice. But what are we to think of them?

Paid Protesters, anyone? Ya think? John Hinderaker writes about a an anti-Critical Race Theory tour his organization did in Minnesota.

Off-duty Duluth police officers provided security. At one point, one of them told me that they knew the protesters. These are the same people who protested against the pipeline, he said. And, he said, they are being paid. Just watch: at the top of the hour, they will all take their signs and leave. Sure enough, they did.

Paid protesters? You gotta problem with that? Hey, Bill Maher’s live audience is paid, hired by “Standing Room Only.”

We like to think of protestors as LARPing, as in Live Action Role Playing. But not when they are being paid. Then they are paid actors.

And if the paid protesters aren’t getting arrested, or pushed around, then I think we can take it as read that the protesters are basically supporters of the ruling class, or at least tolerated, as in “wink, wink.”

And then there is AntiFa in Portland, Oregon, that gets to surround the ICE facility night after night in Portland and nothing happens. What exactly is AntiFa, and who pays for it? Just askin’.

It is rather obvious, I would think, that if you go to university and actually take classes in revolution and organizing and protest, then that is not revolution.

But what is it?

If we say that youngsters, just like in West Side Story, are ready for a “rumble” with the other guys, then we might be tempted to think that LARPing and Cosplaying are similar enthusiasms of the youth. Hmm. “According to a psychologist,”

“Cosplay allows enthusiasts to momentarily change their identity in order to create an exciting, extraordinary and contented self rather than attempting a real-life transformation. It is a form of role/identity-transformation from an ordinary person to a superhero, from a game player to a performer and from adulthood to childhood,” the researchers write.

But when Bernstein’s Romeo and Juliet actually get killed in the “rumble” then that’s not LARPing and Cosplaying any more.

But whatabout when a lefty protester throws gasoline on an 82-year-old woman in a pro-Israel protest? And what was the deal about the kid that shot President Trump at Butler, PA last year? Suppose some white guy had taken a shot at Barack Obama. YOu think liberals would ever shut up about it?

So what is going on with the protest culture? Is it the ruling class benevolently allowing its young supporters to show their stuff, rather like monarchs reviewing their troops in the olden time? Is it a cunning effort to identify people and groups with political ambition, and keep them onside?

I don’t know. But I do know that more research is needed.