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PrintDecember 26, 2023
Protesters as 'insurrectionists'
How easily the Deep State forgets shameful episodes whenever it seeks to repeat its shames.
The example we see now is in the draconian prosecutions and sentences handed out to January 6 protestors under the heading of 'insurrection.'
But this is not the first time it's happened.
In 1932, a Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF, aka Bonus Army) of hungry World War I veterans, including Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, marched on Washington. They begged the government to accelerate the bonus payments they had been promised, because, as the Great Depression was unfolding, they and their families were desperate and starving. They were unarmed.
The government responded to these petitioners with an overtly "barricade" mentality.
Four-star Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Army's Chief of Staff, attacked the BEF veterans with calvary-wielding naked sabers, infantry with fixed bayonets, tanks, and tear gas.
He burned the BEF's crude encampment where the petitioners lived with their families. Among the hundreds of casualties were two babies killed by tear gas and a seven-year-old boy who was bayoneted in his leg while trying to save his pet dog. The Nation was shocked and outraged by this over-reaction.
But not the Deep State and Gen. MacArthur. He justified his attacks by saying that the Bonus Army veterans were "insurrectionists" -- his word -- with "incipient revolution in the air," who were "animated by the essence of a revolution."
These facts have been described in many American histories (as will the January 6ers be treated in the fullness of time).
See, e.g., Degler, Carl N., "The Third American Revolution" (1959), in Davis, Allen F., and Woodman, Harold D. (eds.), Conflict and Consensus in Modern American History, Fifth Ed., D.C. Heath, Lexington, Mass., 1980, pp. 354-5; Kennedy, David M., Freedom from Fear, Oxford Univ. Press, New York, N.Y., 1999, p. 92; Manchester, William, The Glory and the Dream, Little, Brown,. Boston, Mass., 1974, pp.3 ff.; Commager, Henry Steele, and Nevins, Richard N. (eds.), Witness to America, Barnes & Noble, New York, N.Y., 1996, pp. 1109 and 1112; Current, Richard N., et alia (eds.), American History, A Survey, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, N.Y. 1961, pp. 719-20.
Those engaged in the current perfervid over-reactions to January 6, such as Liz Cheney, and the weaponization of the criminal justice system against fellow American citizens, should familiarize themselves with the "insurrection" of 1932 so they can better understand the shameful precedent which they now once again embrace.
Image: Library of Congress's Public Domain Archive // no known restrictions
