Chaos erupted in Ferguson last week, and days after the grand jury declined to indict officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown, protests continue to take place there and across the country. Things have only escalated in recent days, with Louis Farrakhan loudly encouraging people to "tear this goddamn country up" over the decision. But Glenn said the protestors and revolutionaries like Farrakhan will ultimately fail, and he had two theories as to why.
Watch Farrakhan's comments below, and scroll down for Glenn's reaction:
GLENN: All right. So there's Louis Farrakhan. This is, quite honestly, stuff that is happening all across the country and the world. They're sewing these seeds and people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in particular are sewing these seeds. The president is even saying, hey, let's keep this protest on track. I'm not saying the president wants violence or anything else.
What I'm saying is they believe it will work to their advantage to have an uprising. It's no different, quite honestly, than Occupy Wall Street. When you think about what happened in Occupy Wall Street. How did that go? They were talking about revolution. They were talking about the 1 percent. They were doing everything they can to pit the rich against the poor. Now, they're pitting the white against the black.
What did they find from Occupy Wall Street? They found out there were enough people to stand out in the cold for a while. Then it got kind of call, but then it's starting to get chilly and I don't want any of this stuff that much. That's what happened. It just dissipated. It feel apart. They were shocked. That's when Frances Fox Piven came out and said, look, where is the outrage? Why are people not protesting?
Remember, the Cloward-Piven tragedy was based on the Watts Riots. I contend that what they did -- what the real radicals and revolutionaries did, when they saw we couldn't pit rich versus poor in America, because honestly most people in America have it pretty well off. Even if you're struggling, we're still in the top 1 percent as a nation. The poorest Americans are in the top 1 percent of the rest of the world.
PAT: And they aspire to one day have wealth. How can you hate wealthy people when you want to be one?
GLENN: Right. That didn't work. They went back to the drawing board. And they looked at the original Cloward and Piven tragedy and that was race. You have to get the race riot to happen. You have to get all that pent up hatred on race. And unleash that. And you know that this is the strategy because look at what's happening at the border. Look at what they've done in the last six months. Try to poke race, race, race, race. And as soon as we have any kind of shooting with police, they will look to exploit that any way they can.
Now, the people who are on the streets in Ferguson, a lot of those are not from Ferguson. The real organizers, the ones putting this together are from elsewhere, as we showed you yesterday, many of the attorneys are the attorneys from Occupy Wall Street. One of the attorneys said yesterday, Occupy Wall Street is the gift that just keeps on giving.
So you have a different scenario happening here than what's being reported. What's being reported is this spontaneous movement, the same thing they were saying about Occupy Wall Street. It wasn't spontaneous. It was coordinated. Same thing happening here. It's coordinated. It's happening all over the country and happening in all the typical hot spots where all the real radicals are. Now, you're hearing people like Louis Farrakhan ratcheting his people up. You hear the uber left. This will go the same way that Occupy Wall Street did.
And here's why: And there's two theories. And I'm hoping one of these are right. You get to pick which one I hope is right, and you get to pick which one you think is right.
The reason why the progressive movement took off in the first place is because - as we've talked about in the book Dreamers and Deceivers, about Upton Sinclair - there were calls for revolution. There were calls for revolution. Communist revolution. By 1919, the communist revolution happened in the Soviet Union and, even Woodrow Wilson said, that was a "glorious revolution". That was power to the people. Finally the Russian people would be free. And he loved it. Progressives believed at the time that communism or fascism. They were split, which one would work. They no longer believed in the Constitution. They no longer believed in the Declaration of Independence. They no longer believed that man could rule himself.
There needed to be a strong centralized government ruled by elites. They all agreed on that. This was the time before Hitler and Stalin and everything else, so you can give them the benefit of the doubt.
They saw this new way involving medicine, technology, and superior elites up at the top. And those people could control the masses. They could control the masses through advertising and through propaganda, and they could get the dummies to follow along because the elites knew the best way to handle the country and the world's affair and what the world should look like. They could also weed out the undesirables through things like Planned Parenthood, sterilization, medicine.
We look back and judge them. But don't. Look back with their eyes. They had never seen any mass slaughter at the time. But the people like Woodrow Wilson and the people at the beginning of the progressive movement, they knew one thing about the American people. That is, the American people are generally good. The American people do not want violent revolution.
So the communists and the fascists, both of them wanted to change the system, but both of them wanted the revolution.
The progressives and the Fabians over in Europe decided, no, revolution is the wrong way to go because people of the West, they don't want the blood in the streets. They don't want that revolution. They don't like that.
So we'll have to take this communism or fascism, one of these two, and we're going to give it to them at a bite size at a time because they'll eventually eat the whole thing. By the time they figure it out, it will be too late because we have propaganda, we have the systems, we have the levers of powers. And so we'll be able to feed it to them and be able to play these games -- like Saul Alinsky lines out -- we'll be able to play these games to keep them off the scent long enough until they finish the whole meal. We will progress towards our utopian society.
And, again, look back at the time before you knew about the Soviet Union and before you knew what would happen in Germany, when fascism and communism were a good thing. These people are still trying to progress there and there is still the debate about whether we should take it through revolution or we should take it through the levers of power -- the levers of government and seize power slowly through the system.
But both of them are on full speed because they don't trust one another. It's why you're seeing the president's people fall away from him. The real radicals. The Cornel Wests, if you will, of the world. They're falling away from the president. They're calling him a traitor. Why? Because they know what he believes, but he's fallen in the progressive camp and said, let's just take it one step at a time. Where the Cornel West people are like, take it. You have it, take it.
So the same argument that was happening in the 1919 era, Woodrow Wilson era, is still happening today between the radicals. They both -- they both agree on the destination, totalitarian government of some form. They just don't agree on the vehicle that will take them there and how long it will take them.
But I go back to their original premise: The American people don't like violence. They don't like revolution. They don't burn things down in the streets. They reject that. That's not just the progressives of the early 20th century. That's people like Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King knew, peaceful, peaceful marches. That was the secret. Not violence.
Malcolm X, now today our Malcolm X is Louis Farrakhan. Malcolm X knew the opposite. Take it. Take it. Burn it down. Take it. Cloward and Piven know the opposite. Take it, burn it down. Destroy it. Force them to have talks with you.
This is why it's going to fail. It will fail for one of two reasons. You decide which one, but it will be one of these two, I believe. You decide why -- which one of these will be the leading indicator. And if that's good.
But, one, it will fail because Martin Luther was right. The American people are better than this. The American people are not revolutionaries at heart. They're evolutionaries at heart. But they're not revolutionaries. They're not violent people. How many countries did Hitler need to take over and how many people did he need to kill before we were in that fight? Same thing with World War I.
By the way, both happened under progressive presidents. Why? How long did it take us to get to the Civil War? And did we really want to fight that? How long did it take us to get to the American Revolution? Twenty-five years?
This is not something -- we're not quick to run to the gun. We don't like revolution. We didn't embrace Occupy Wall Street because it didn't take very long to see that it was powered by hatred.
Americans reject things powered by hatred.
PAT: I like that reason.
GLENN: Here's the other reason.
And this may be the reason -- I'm holding my -- I'm holding on to the first reason. But it actually may be this.
We don't give a flying crap. We don't care that much anymore. We're lazy. I'm not -- I'll go out and steal a TV maybe. But I'm not -- revolution? I don't really care that much. We're lazy.
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: We don't care enough about anything.
PAT: Including the revolutionaries?
GLENN: Yeah.
PAT: Including the revolutionaries. They don't care enough to get off their dead butts, get away from the video game, and go ransack the town.
GLENN: Yeah. There's a few, but there's not very many.
Most of them are like, look, it's too cold. It's too hot. That's too much trouble. I got to drive, where? I have to do, what?
PAT: I will say this, last week when it got cold in Missouri, it settled the town down.
STU: That was some of the speculation by the protesters that they were waiting to release the decision until it got cold so people wouldn't come out and protest. I don't know if that's accurate.
PAT: It would be smart.
GLENN: It proves the point that I think both of these will play a role. That we are generally peace-loving people, but we're also pretty lazy.
STU: Once you have the TV and video game, there's nothing to get up and loot. You're already there.
GLENN: I'll stay home.
PAT: You wanted revolution so you could get the TV and video game. Now you have it. So don't worry about it.
