Information Landmine

"The Americans keep telling us how successful their system is. Then they remind us not to stray too far from our hotel at night." - An un-named EU trade representative quoted during international trade talks in Denver, Colorado, 1997.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Jeff Monson at the RNC


A link (and what I'm going to take as a back-handed compliment) from Hywel's blog led me to this awesome collection of photos of the protests at the Republican National Convention. Jeff Monson, UFC vet and long time anti-capitalist, is featured prominently.

Hywell, who's heard Monson speak, had this to say:

I found his political views somewhat naive. I think he supports the principles but doesn’t understand the actual logistics. being an anarchist and anti-capitalist is like being opposed to the concept of sadness. The anti-sad campaigners want everyone to be happy, but don’t understand the causes of sadness or why it exists in the world, and offer no remedy.


I've only heard reports about Jeff Monson speaking, but I think it's probably fair to say that the world of political philosophy didn't lose out too badly when he decided to become a fighter. And while there's obviously a bit of a spotlight fallacy going on there - I've met a lot of very smart anti-capitalists who weren't remotely naive - I think the point about being opposed to capitalism being a bit like being opposed to sadness is pretty sharp.

There again, Monson was protesting at the Republican National Convention, so you'd have to assume he was a bit like a lot of anti-capitalists, and raging more about the whole corporate welfare/perpetual war/police state thing than capitalism in particular. Hell, these days an anti-capitalist protest at the RNC is a bit like an anti-socialist protest at a Labour Party Convention - you just aren't going to find what you're looking for there. If he'd wanted to protest against actual capitalism, he'd have had to have started picking on the folks at the Ron Paul rally down the road.

Also, there always the chance that Monson was protesting on MMA grounds - McCain was the little toe-rag who tried to have the sport banned.

Image from Danny Ghitis's blog

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