« Donald Trump’s “Giant Ego Trip”
Gallup Poll: Gingrich Soars Among Republican Voters: 37% to Romney’s 22% »
‘Occupiers’ Betray Western Bankruptcy and Lack of Ideals (Voxpublica, Romania)
Dec 6th, 2011 | 5 responses
Does the global “Occupy” movement reflect the very best of Western dedication to social and economic justice – or is it just a craven reflection of a civilization in moral decline? Columnist Iulian Leca of Romania’s Voxpublica writes that juxtaposing the mad rush for Black Friday shopping bargains against images of the protests exposes the ‘Occupiers’ as no better than the adolescent vandals that ravaged London just a few months ago for lack of the latest audio and hi-tech products.
For Voxpublica, Iulian Leca writes in part:
It’s already hard to recall how many times the “occupation” movement has been invoked alongside images of young and old across the world storming supermarkets on Black Friday as if it were their last. Retirees standing in line to buy plasma and HD TVs because they have become considerably cheaper – from 1000-1490 lei [$306-$457]! In America, millions of people are actually trampling over one another to grab the most products at the lowest prices. Not free, but at a discount …
There is a basic hypocrisy in these images. It is a bigger hypocrisy than that which characterizes man in general. They betray the frivolousness of every anti-capitalist slogan. And they reflect the paradox through which the West is living. It is the product of a consumer society that indulges every whim. How to revolt against a system that has created democratized luxury?
Westerners no longer have reason to fight revolutions. All of their great pains have passed, their injustices have been resolved, their freedoms won and their ideals lost. All that is left are frustrations, but these are ephemeral and within the context of the moment. “Occupy” is an expression of these and perfectly expresses the hypocrisy: a wish to bring down the banks and major corporations, but to secretly run to the shopping mall and buy products at half price!
READ ON IN ENGLISH AND ROMAINIAN WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
5 Responses to “‘Occupiers’ Betray Western Bankruptcy and Lack of Ideals (Voxpublica, Romania)”
Occupy holds a strong BUY NOTHING approach to XMAS. The author’s message is intriguing but doesn’t hold, occupiers are not scrambling for new HD televisions.
Nonetheless, I found the author’s position amusing and well written, for what it is worth.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/23/1039414/–OccupyXmas-Begins-With-Buy-Nothing-Day,-aka-Black-Friday
What a rediculous article. Every bit of everything said is wrong.
First: dismissing the London riots as just a bunch of adolescent idiots. Then: snobbishly condescending to the people who are trying to buy gifts for thier kids at prices they can afford. Third: pretending that the occupy folks have nothing to be angry about. Furthermore: nobody in the west has a reason to want change? This writer is either ignorant or stupid. Either way, this dude doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
There are parallels to be drawn among these groups, and messages to take away, for sure. Whoever this author is is missing all of them, though. By miles.
Eastern Europe still has a leftover Communist mentality that “all the people move as one”.
Here in America we have 300 million people who all move in 300 million different directions. Sometimes people accidentally operate in parallel, forming movements, but they’ve never represented “the will of the people”.
Even in 1776 significant portions of the population where Loyalists and wanted nothing to do with Revolution. And significant portions were more interesting in keeping their farms running than whose flag they flew.
We like to pretend were homogenous, and yes, our corporate capitalism helps us in that way, but we are really random particles. Free radicals, perhaps.
The one time I had a chance to talk to any occupier (Indianapolis) was with my brother. We asked about donations, and she said that they were looking for things like blankets in preparation for the winter, but not money, because there was no organization to account for it.
That doesn’t sound like any consumerism that I know.
Terrible terrible article. Barky pretty much nails it.