26 January 2005 >> President Bush’s re-election left some Americans distraught and depressed. And with Inauguration Day set to rub salt in those still-healing wounds, I decided to act in the interest of national unity and extend an olive branch across the great Red/Blue divide. Would my overtures of peace be rebuffed? Video >>

21 January 2005 >> Funny how the folks who protest for peace and tolerance sometimes demonstrate so little of it themselves:

Ten minutes after telling his fellow protesters to stay safe, Gil Kobrin lay huddled in the slush and mud as two anarchists repeatedly kicked him in the back.

How he got from point A to point B is simple enough. Kobrin, accompanied by a dozen members of the conservative group ProtestWarrior, crashed a rally of hundreds of anti-Bush demonstrators at Meridian Park in Washington, D.C. Holding aloft signs that read “Say no to war unless a Democrat is president” and “Not to brag, but Bush won, so shove it!” they had set off earlier on inauguration morning in search of their opposites.

The ProtestWarrior contingent didn’t have to search for very long; the party came to them.

[...]

“I expected it, but I didn’t expect to be kicked in the back,” Kobrin said later. His boyish, twentysomething face wore a wry smile and he stood upright, but conceded that he was in some pain.

[...]

Patrick McKale, 22, an anarchist from Baltimore, said he was pleased that ProtestWarrior members took a few licks. He said he saw no irony in beating people up at a peace rally. “Just because you’re anti-imperialist doesn’t mean you’re not against violence.”

[...]

“Dude, you got your ass kicked,” one of them taunted at the ProtestWarrior group. Several anarchists, their bile neutered by the police presence, resorted to creative hand signs. It brought to mind something Kobrin had said in an earlier interview: “Ideally it should be a nice, cordial, open dialogue.”

Some in the anti-Bush crowd said they resented the fact that ProtestWarrior’s “man bites dog” schtick eats up a disproportionate amount of press attention.

“They’re taking the media away from us!” exclaimed one angry protester.

The left pats themselves on the back for their bravery in dissent, but look what happens when confronted with a little dissent of their own.

15 June 2004 @ 7:13PM >> Cinnamon Stillwell reports what happened at a San Francisco peace protest when word came of Ronald Reagan’s death:

[...] late in the afternoon one of the A.N.S.W.E.R. speakers informed the crowd that he had ‘’good news'’ to share. His gleeful announcement that Ronald Reagan had died brought a round of cheers from the crowd.

Peace indeed.

26 April 2004 @ 11:20PM >> If you’ve ever wondered who benefits from the peace movement, consider this:

A group holding three Italians hostage in Iraq has threatened to kill them in five days unless Italians take to the streets to publicly denounce their country’s involvement in the U.S.-led occupation.

Let’s see if the protesters take the bait. If so, it’ll be another example of the European left helping terrorists achieve their objectives.

24 March 2004 >> Some people would like you to think President Bush lied when he talked about Saddam Hussein’s weapons. The funny thing is, many of the president’s current critics are politicians who made strikingly similar claims about Iraq in the not-too-distant past. To find out if the current spin was sticking, I impersonated a game show host and quizzed a few protesters about some particularly hawkish quotes from notable Democrats. Video >>

19 January 2004 >> On January 15th, New Yorkers awoke to single-digit temperatures and a few inches of new snowfall. In what has since become known as “the Gore effect,” former Vice President Al Gore chose that day to give a speech on global warming. The speech was sponsored by MoveOn.org, a website-turned-political-action-committee that recently gained notoriety by hosting two political ads equating President Bush with Adolf Hitler. Although such comparisons were common at anti-war rallies, I still wasn’t sure whether this mindset was now infecting the Democratic base—the sort of folks who’d brave the cold to hear Al Gore speak. To find out, I spent a few shivering hours outside the Beacon. Video >>

3 November 2003 >> Mary Lou is an articulate spokeswoman for liberal causes. She is also an example of why so many on the left refer to President Bush’s intellect in derogatory terms: their standards are simply too high. It is unfair and unreasonable to expect that every candidate for elective office demonstrate the level of mental acumen shown in this speech. Watch, and you will see why Mary Lou is my new favorite protester. Video >>

20 October 2003 >> I was now completely encircled. When I tried to escape, the protesters then started smacking the camera with their signs, while others were shoving me from different directions. I started retreating, pushing my way back from the loudspeaker, all the while leaving the camera running and asking the protesters why they weren’t letting me film. Just when the scuffle between me and the protesters seemed like it was about to take a turn for the worse, I remembered that there were some cameras present from a few mainstream media outlets. I started yelling, “Why are you trying to censor me?” The idea was to attract the other cameras, thinking that the protesters would back off if their actions were captured by the news media. The gambit worked: we were soon surrounded by cameras. Video >>

16 October 2003 >> I was now completely encircled. When I tried to escape, the protesters then started smacking the camera with their signs, while others were shoving me from different directions. I started retreating, pushing my way back from the loudspeaker, all the while leaving the camera running and asking the protesters why they weren’t letting me film. Just when the scuffle between me and the protesters seemed like it was about to take a turn for the worse, I remembered that there were some cameras present from a few mainstream media outlets. I started yelling, “Why are you trying to censor me?” The idea was to attract the other cameras, thinking that the protesters would back off if their actions were captured by the news media. The gambit worked: we were soon surrounded by cameras. More >>

14 October 2003 >> A reader writes to share his experience with belligerent protesters in Las Vegas. More >>

13 October 2003 >> I spent Saturday filming a pro-Palestinian rally at Rutgers University. While there, participants and organizers alike tried to shut down my camera. For a while, they surrounded me and hit the front of my camera with signs to stop me from filming the rally’s speakers. Eventually, they backed off after realizing that cameras from several other media outlets—including NBC News, WCBS-TV, and Channel 12 New Jersey—were capturing their actions.

Update: Apparently, I am not the only one to have faced the wrath of protesters seeking to censor citizen journalists. More >>

30 May 2003 >> The same weekend that I filmed the original Protesting the Protesters video in New York City, Kfir Alfia and Alan Davidson assembled a group to infiltrate the San Francisco protest with signs mocking the protesters. The attention they received led them to start ProtestWarrior.com. Video >>

11 April 2003 >> “It took three weeks for the media to declare the Afghan war to a quagmire, but it took them only a week to make the same proclamation about the Iraq war. Although the media can’t claim credit for accuracy, they at least deserve a pat on the back for increasing the speed at which they’re wrong by a whopping 200%.” More >>

4 April 2003 >> Anti-Israeli sentiment ran strong at the San Francisco protest, in some cases suggesting an undercurrent of anti-Semitism. Is support for a Jewish state the same as ethnic cleansing? Should the Israelis be shipped to Madagascar? Some of the protesters thought so... Video >>

19 March 2003 >> Is Marxism dead? Don’t bet on it! Hard-left ideologies and conspiracy theories were proudly displayed at this San Francisco peace protest. Video >>

7 March 2003 >> The original Protesting the Protesters video generated a huge response and a lot of questions. Here are some answers to the most common ones. More >>

18 February 2003 >> War is not the answer, or so they say. But what is the answer? I went to the peace protest to try and find out... Video >>

29 January 2003 >> “Sometimes, there is no choice but to meet danger with force. To resort to war is not the sign of ultimate failure, as some argue, it’s just the sign of diplomacy’s failure. But we shouldn’t let failed diplomacy fester while stealthy enemies strengthen and scheme. Now that we’ve seen how easily terrorists can bring death to our door, we must prevent them from acquiring weapons from thugs like Saddam Hussein. The best way is to make sure there aren’t any thugs like Saddam Hussein.” More >>

9 April 2002 >> Anti-war protesters, who probably can’t identify any war in history worth fighting, declare this war to be “racist” and say that they won’t help us fight. Don’t worry, guys; we weren’t planning on your support in the first place. More >>

14 September 2001 >> “The vigil—which was supposed to be a remembrance for those who were killed in the attacks—was hijacked by a loud group that tried to turn it into an anti-war protest. About half of this group looked as though they had attended every protest held since 1968 and had been following personal hygiene tips from Wavy Gravy. The other half were college-aged neo-hippies who wielded their moral outrage with an air of self-congratulation, as though their misguided complaining somehow made them superior to those who disagreed.” More >>