Adam Johnson: Worst of the alt-center attacks on the protests was Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak who, in “Stop Protesting Democracy. Saying #NotMyPresident Is the Same as Saying #NotMyConstitution” (11/14/16), took false equivalency to heretofore unseen levels of vulgarity.
Setting aside the adolescent writing (Gratuitous. Periods. Make. Platitudes. Seem. Important.), Dvorak is, quite shockingly, equating dumpster fires in Portland with spraypainting “Trump Nation. Whites Only” on a Spanish-language church in Maryland. From the outset, we have two “extremes”: those protesting–and occasionally causing property damage–in the face of emboldened fascists, and the fascists themselves. To the alt-center, these two poles are moral equals, two sides of the same ideological coin, and must be condemned in equal terms.
What Dvorak fails to understand is that the protestors aren’t protesting “democracy” as such, they’re protesting the pending presidency of a man who is stocking his White House with white nationalists, Islamophobes and gay-baiters—not to mention people with a notorious hostility toward democracy itself. They’re protesting someone who has pledged—and to a large extent already begun planning—the deportation of millions. In the face of this crisis, many have chosen to take to the street to send a message his agenda will not be acquiesced to without resistance, both legal and extralegal. More here.