There was another round of No Kings protests this weekend, I heard. There were protests all over, big ones. I didn’t attend (only partly because I had work that day), but I followed along on the socials…

…and I got annoyed by a talking point I saw deployed a few times, which I’ll paraphrase as:

“The mainstream media is trying to downplay No Kings! Look at how big the crowds are! They relentlessly hyped the Tea Party protests, and those were smaller! And they were astroturfed!”

Um, what was that last part?

“The Tea Party was astroturfed by righty billionaires!”

Oh.

Some people have short memories, I see, or (more cynically) would rather we had short memories.

Righty tax hawks had been using the name “Tea Party” for years beforehand – I’ve been reminded by Wikipedia that Ron Paul did a fundraiser on the Boston Tea Party’s anniversary – and some lefties have tried to blame it all on a corporate-capitalist tobacco-company conspiracy dating back decades, which I’d rate about a 5 on the batshit-conspiracy-theory scale.¹

The “Tea Party” being referenced here, though, was a reaction against the 2008 bank bailout, which most of the moneyed and powerful were in favor of. Only later, when the entire populist right climbed on the Tea Party bandwagon and its meaning collapsed –

“BUT THE KOCH BROTHERS!”

Most of the moneyed and powerful were backing the 2008 Establishment position, I said, not all of them.

Now search “George Soros No Kings.”

…that’s all coming from righty foes of No Kings, you say? No shit. And the shouts of “KOCH BROTHERS!” are coming from lefties opposed to probably only some of the things the Kochs have supported.

Some people on the left clearly feel a need to distort the facts while protesting the Assclown. Either they can’t think of facts damning enough (which… how did they hear about the protests, then, if they’re that oblivious?) or they’re just that comfortable lying, which I’ll note for future reference.

1. A 10 on the scale would be “The Blackburne Covenant was a documentary; all of society really is run by a centuries-old occult conspiracy against Gaia.” The scale is exponential, in other words.