Mass arrests in LA as police enforce night-time curfew
President Trump has called for Los Angeles rioters who burned American flags to be jailed for at least a year and suggested that California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has so botched the response to the bedlam that he could “in theory” be charged with a crime.
In the inaugural episode of Post columnist Miranda Devine’s “Pod Force One” — which will feature some of Washington’s most influential movers and shakers every week — Trump said all rioters found to be setting the Stars and Stripes ablaze should earn an “automatic” one-year jail sentence.
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The Right’s preferred take on the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles is that they’ve brought together the full spectrum of hard-Left ideals — what Mary Harrington has labelled the “Omnicause”. At National Review, Jeffrey Blehar sighed that in LA, “all the radicalisms combine into one.” Some of the riots’ college-age protagonists no doubt accept that framing, donning kaffiyehs to signal that they are united in one universal struggle against white supremacy (or whatever).
Yet the most dominant images and slogans from the riots suggest that the motive force might be something else entirely. Consider the numerous photos and videos of balaclava-clad rioters waving the flags of Mexico and other Latin-American nations and shouting slogans such as “Viva La Raza!” — long live the race. Rightly understood, these symbols and watchwords evoke not progressivism, but instead nationalism and reactionary cultural revanchism, with Mexico and Hispanic identity as their objects of devotion.
