Months of violent anti-Trump protests across the country, a rash of Islamic terrorism across the world, and the racially motivated deaths of eight police officers in just the few weeks on the road into the Republican National Convention in Cleveland have been bloody, but the convention itself contained only minor skirmishes with the law.
Despite Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors’s statement months ago that the group would “shut down” the RNC, a much smaller-than-expected turnout of leftist activists, combined with an effective police presence with officers from both Cleveland and around the country, nothing even resembling the shutdown transpired.
To better understand the dynamics of the protest movement that fizzled in Cleveland, we spoke to the veteran protest documentarian Jeremy Segal, a.k.a. Rebel Pundit, about what went wrong for the left and whether he thinks things might be different at next week’s Democratic National Convention.
https://youtu.be/1Fr5P-vgc-k
LEE: We’re out here at the RNC. We’re talking to Jeremy Segal, Rebel Pundit. Jeremy, the crowds were pretty lame for the protesters. Why do you think that is?
REBEL PUNDIT: Well, you didn’t have MoveOn.org here. You didn’t have any labor unions here; labor unions haven’t protested Donald Trump this entire election cycle. So no MoveOn, no unions, there’s no illegals out here, I think, because of the law enforcement presence, so you don’t see the Mexican flags waving. So when you take away those three key players from the mix, the anarchists have no cover, and they can’t disperse and disappear into the crowd like the fleas that they are, that cause the violence that they want to cause.
LEE: Okay, so you called them fleas. What do you mean by that?
REBEL PUNDIT: Well, there’s a revolutionary movement that’s going on in this country right now, and the revolutionaries – the revcom, Revolutionary Communist Party, the anarchists, and a lot of these left wing groups and organizations – come in, they get involved in these mass protest movements, and they’re the ones that come out to create violence which draws a violent response from the police. They broadcast the imagery that they want out to the world, and it draws more support for their movement.
LEE: And so one last thing: do you think the DNC is the possibility for having bigger protests than we saw here at the RNC?
REBEL PUNDIT: I would think so. There’s a lot of division among the radical left right now because of the Hillary nomination versus the Bernie nomination, so we don’t know what we’re gonna see, but seeing light protest activity here seems to me would be indicative that there’s gonna be a bigger show at the DNC.
LEE: Cool. Jeremy Segal, Rebel Pundit. People can check you out online, right? And they should, right?
REBEL PUNDIT: Absolutely.
Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and director of the upcoming film The Bloody Road to Cleveland Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.
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