Sunday, May 8, 2011

Definitively why the Judy Ancel quote is entirely in context

Let's recap: videos released show Judy Ancel endorsing violence. Predictably, the left says they are "out of context." Is that true?

Here's the full context of her remarks.

STUDENT 1: I have a question for the class militants. Do you think that the contract would have been signed had the protests continued? In the smashing windows, breaking storefronts, looting, thing.
STUDENT 2: I think there was an element of it that really shocked people. I’m sure it brought a lot of people’s attention to it. I don’t think it’s the answer. I don’t think it’s like, the, a solution to the problem. But, I’m not willing to put any tactics off the table and I think it played a part.
STUDENT 3: I think it came to the people saying we’re not gonna shop, we’re gonna stick together and we’re not buy your goods. It was like a deal like with Gandhi where he started with a lot of that, but I think they would have stayed true to their goal of not buying economic power.
STUDENT 4: When they’re willing to give up violence, then I will too.
ANCEL: The one guy in the film, one of the guys who had been one of the young, um, SNCC types, said…What?
STUDENT: The Invaders [name of the militant group in the film]
[ANCEL:] — he represented the kind of thinking that went into this student on the coordinating committee and then later probably — well, coinciding with the Black Panthers. You know, he said violence is a tactic and it’s to be used when it’s appropriate, when it’s an appropriate tactic. Whether — they never come back to him to ask him what he thought of the window-smashing in that march or whether or not that was done by them or others or provocateurs. We don’t know that.
STUDENT 4: One more thing is that they’re trying to be a part of the larger society, we don’t, I don’t, necessarily want to be a part of of capitalist society. I want to take over the state with revolutionary movement which doesn’t exist.
STUDENT 2: For King too, he opened the doors and had a conversation with these guys [people using violence as a political tactic]. He didn’t denounce them, he didn’t lock them out.
STUDENT: I just think it’s interesting now, It’s mainstream to revere these figures like Martin Luther King and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and we forget how radical they were in their time and even today. Martin Luther King was all about social justice and like a radical vision for America that people today think they were only about civil rights and died with his work completed. FDR, I didn’t realize until I read a book about him, he wanted a second bill of rights that said everyone had a right to a job with a living wage, social security, health care, housing, that those things were rights. Today that would be, not even, he would be laughed out of Washington.
Also, per a previous post, here are the seven reasons why it was entirely in context considering the other things being said at the same time:

1. Violence was effectively used in the past.
2. The specific comment is made that "no tactics are off the table."
3. Another student says "when they're willing to give up violence, I will too" after a student says that economic tactics are the right way to go.
4. Ancel follows that comment about endorsing violence up by further approvingly citing to a SNCC leader who said that violence is a tactic, to be used when appropriate.
5. The comment is then made, following her direction, that the student "doesn't want to live in this society."
6. The same student then says, I want to take over the state with revolutionary movement which doesn’t exist.
7. Another student then points out to how FDR and MLK were just as radical as these people using violence.
This was always in context. This was always the intent, tone, diction and communicative desire of Judy Ancel: to teach impressionable student that violence was a tactic, to be used when appropriate.
Judy Ancel was always cited in context. Her remarks were never taken out of context. The school is covering for her because they've gone "all-in" defending her now and don't want to lose face. Media outlets are repeating the lies from Media Matters and other minor left-wing blogs. Only a few on the right are showing this for what it is: Judy Ancel teaching violence as an appropriate political tactic to be used when appropriate for labor organizing.

Answer from the left? Silence.

No comments:

Post a Comment