Chris Plante is the host of “The Chris Plante Show” on WMAL in Washington, D.C.
Since the Occupy protests sprouted a D.C. branch, Plante has observed the movement up close. The Daily Caller recently interviewed him to get his impression on the movement, whether it will hurt the Democrats next November and how it compares to the tea party and the other protest movements he has witnessed. (RELATED: Ginni Thomas’ interview with Chris Plante)
You visited Occupy DC on several occasions. What has been your impression of it as a movement?
It appears to be a bunch of California-style, lazy, dope-smokin’, entitled, largely confused, apparently anti-capitalist miscreants who seem to think that someone owes them something. They are the grandsons and granddaughters of the 1960s generation who have been raised with the misunderstanding that this country is all about what the government can do for them. They’ve been brainwashed by the academic Left, and a thoroughly corrupt “news” media, into believing that if they stamp their feet for long enough, and if they are loud enough, that someone who actually works hard will come along and simply hand them what they want — pay their student loans and give them lots of nice stuff. They have taken the famous John F. Kennedy quote about asking not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country and turned it upside down and inside out, to paraphrase Diana Ross. In short, a generation of spoiled brats has taken to the streets. They are koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs, and they want them now. And they emit a rather unpleasant aroma as well.
Have you been able to determine what their message is?
The “message,” as far as I can tell, is simply “rich is bad,” whereas “stupid, greedy and violent is good.”
They appear to be bent on demanding that the government perform the role of private thug for hire and steal from the rich and give to the loud. Kind of a know-nothing variation on Robin Hood. Their so-called “message” is as incoherent as any message ever carried by any mob. They want to lynch someone, they just can’t tell you who. In reality, although most of them don’t know it, they are the cannon fodder for an as-yet undefined effort by the far Left to tear down the existing order. That is at least their fantasy. Behind the curtain are the likes of the George Soros funded adBusters group out of Vancouver, the self-described communist — as silly as that sounds — Van Jones (a former “Czar” in the Obama administration) and the likes of Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). And the direct links to the Obama White House are undeniable. Although the phony “news” media are happy to deny them.
This movement is about the politics of resentment, selfishness and the worst of human nature. And make no mistake about it, it is the politics of today’s Democrat party — from top to bottom. This is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy. Not by a long shot. He’d be kicked out of today’s party just like Senator Joe Lieberman was.
Have you gotten a sense of the demographics of the movement?
Well, as Chris Matthews was fond of pointing out when the tea party was peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights, they are white, white, white. They’re largely college educated, and greedy. Yes, greedy. And lazy, of course. This movement — if it is a movement — is about lighting a fire under the greed of the largest number of people. It’s a part of the Democrat Party’s strategy to divide us. To pit us against one another. It’s about igniting an irrational anger across the land — about appealing to the greed of “The 99%” that they pretend to represent, but don’t. That’s a big lie, of course. They represent closer to 1 % of the American people.
Some people have compared the tea party to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Do you see any commonalities?
The two movements are almost identical. Well, if you take the tea party and add violence, rape, murder, heroin, anti-Semitism, rampant mental illness, vulgarity, thousands of arrests, dozens of injured police officers, millions in taxpayer costs, widespread public defecation and masturbation, fecal bombs, and signs like, “All My Heroes Kill Cops.”
In reality, the Occupy people are antithesis of the tea party. The tea party is patriotic, pro-American, pro-free market, pro-individual liberties, pro-individual responsibilities and believes that you are actually entitled to the fruits of your labor. The Occupy movement also believes that they are entitled to the fruits of your labor. The tea party demands that our government leaders get taxes and spending under control, and calls on them to live by the strictures of the Constitution. The Left — the Occupy movement — has no use for the Constitution. In fact they disdain the Constitution. The Constitution is a nuisance, a speed bump on the road to their fantastical dystopia. They demand more spending, more debt, higher taxes — on someone else, of course — and they call on our leaders to kick the Constitution to the curb. It is an inconvenience to them. They’ve got demands that must be met and they must be met now.
No Justice, No Peace. The age old Lefty chant, which should be recognized — at long last — for what it is: an open threat of violence.
How about any comparisons between Occupy Wall Street/D.C. and the other protest movements and rallies you have witnessed during your years in Washington?
I’ve been going to rallies and protests and marches in D.C. for more than twenty years. I love them. I see them as free street theater. Live entertainment. I went to The Million Man March, the Promise Keepers rally and the anti-George Bush marches, which pretended to be “anti-war” marches — with the sea of Che posters that the press never saw — and I have never seen a movement like this one. They don’t even know what they are there for. This is the damp fantasy of the SDS crowd of the 1960s. They have finally brainwashed enough stooges to create chaos in the streets of American cities from coast to coast.
I just know the William Ayers crowd is atwitter. Smiling their slimy little smiles behind their creepy doors as they watch it all on their 65-inch flat screen TVs made by evil corporations, knowing that they did this.
Several political leaders, including President Obama, have praised the protesters. Do you think that could ultimately hurt them politically?
Look, let’s be honest. President Obama is the Occupier In Chief. This is his movement. He owns it. His people, Van Jones, Andy Stern, and other pals of his are pulling the strings. The Soros funded AdBusters. The unions were proudly out there Thursday providing numbers to the otherwise imploding mob. Nanny Pelosi says she’s down with the message, man. Own it, Nanny. It looks good on them. I hope they carry it right through to Election Day next year. This is their base. A part of it, anyway.
What do you think of the media coverage of the Occupy DC movement?
I could teach a college-level, semester-long course on the phony “news” media’s corrupt coverage of this whole affair. It’s a near perfect demonstration of everything that is wrong with the so-called MSM these days. They have white-washed, cleansed, sanitized and otherwise misrepresented this entire affair for your viewing pleasure. My class would take the media’s tortured misrepresentation of the tea party movement as an angry, violent, racist, terrorist, mob — and juxtapose it with the equally corrupt misrepresentation of the Occupy mob, which actually is all of those nasty things. They knowingly mischaracterized the tea party, very much to the detriment of the tea party. And they mischaracterized the Occupy movement, very much to the benefit of the Occupy mob. Find me a story by the TV networks on the rapes, like the rape of the 14-year-old girl at the Dallas Occupy. The number of cops injured by the Occupy mob. The crime and the filth and the disease, for the love of …
Where do you think the movement goes from here? Do you think they will have the fortitude to remain in their tents throughout the winter?
I think they will largely retreat to someone else’s basement for a few month as the cold comes through. Notwithstanding global warming. They will eat someone else’s food as they lurk and plot like lunatics. But I think that they will re-emerge in the summer to bring mob violence to the political conventions and the election season. They have “organized” during this period. They have local “leaders” and email lists and they have created the kind of infrastructure that Saul Alinsky would want them to establish. Next summer they will be spring-loaded. They’ll be in a position to “just add water” (or urine, as the case may be) and it will leap back to life like an army of Sea Monkeys. Stand by for plenty of violence next summer.
Anything else you think people should know about the Occupy Wall Street movement or Occupy DC in particular from your time observing the protesters?
Anti-capitalism and redistribution of wealth are not American values. This is a movement controlled by the monsters of the state. They are kleptocrats. And it is time we started looking at the institutions that created them: academia and the mass media. Something has gone terribly wrong in America and we need to wake up to that fact.