Hello rightsmarts, the latest in conservative news. I’m just reblogging this because it’s gotten around to the punk side of things and sometimes it seems like anarchists forget that PR is important in political movements.
The balloon cost around $3k to make and fill, the remainder of the money is going to go to take the balloon on tour. People DID donate $52,000 dollars to the Trump Baby.
They also donated $21 million to The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) to help the children in detention camps. The comparative cost of the balloon is about a quarter of a percent of what was donated to RAICES alone.
You know what’s great about a balloon? It’s ridiculous. It’s got a fun, airy parade feel. You go to a protest with the Trump Baby and you see people who share your values and are equally frustrated with the world - and it’s hard as hell to show a bunch of people having a fun old time with a parade float as dangerous antifa terrorists.
(Also it gets news cameras pointed at protests of Trump, and at this point we should all recognize the value of big stunts that get you free press because Trump sure as hell did.)
That and it gives frustrated, burned-out activists a bit of a laugh. We’ve got to have levity, we’ve got to be able to enjoy things and have a sense of humor. If we’re all grimly grinding away and donating all of our spare change to the ACLU and only ever talking about the horrible things that are happening we’re going to get too exhausted to carry on. Which is exactly what folks like rightsmarts and Imam Tawhidi want.
Oh yeah, that’s the other thing - imamofpeace up there bills himself as a moderate Muslim who wants reform but he’s supported calls for Muslim immigration bans in Australia. He claims to want reform to prevent extremism but denies extremism in his own sect and only targets Muslims of other sects. He doesn’t have many Muslim followers but he does have a lot of twitter followers who seem to like being able to point to Imam Tawhidi and say “see, I’m not islamophobic, I only want to listen to *reasonable* Muslims, like this guy who tells me how backward all those Muslims are and how they’re preparing to take over the west.”
So a professional pot-stirrer is criticizing activists for spending the equivalent of a quarter of a percent of their donations on a fun balloon that bring out large crowds to protest, creates feelings of solidarity and levity, and is an excellent PR tool.
Yeah, fuck off with your bullshit. People recently crowdfunded a couch for Elon Musk and tried to give Kylie Jenner $100 million so she’d be a round billionaire. Nobody should feel the tiniest bit bad for donating to the construction and display of a protest sign.
The Trump Baby balloon is a good investment on the part of protesters and helped ensure that Trump knows he’s not welcome or appreciated by the people of London.
(hey by the way this criticism of decadence and fun is the kind of puritanical authoritarian shit that you get from the right and from tankies and it’s why nobody likes tankies. bread AND roses, motherfuckers.)
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