Minuscule, manufactured and anemic

 Rufo is correct.

Al Sharpton has organized the most low-energy, low-powered protest of @BillAckman imaginable. A small crowd, median age of about 50, summoning up nostalgia for Sharpton's previous demagoguery against New York Jews. Shameful, pathetic, ineffective.pic.twitter.com/3uH4gjMCrm

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 4, 2024

 But there's more.  Or, rather, I would go further.

Its a protest so small that you can almost count every participant.  You can clearly see 20 people in the front  Allowing for short people who can't be seen and perhaps some crowding in the back row, you have maybe a crowd of perhaps 40 people.  Almost all of them seemingly or retirement age, overwhelmingly older black women, holding pre-printed signs.  You can imagine the canes and zimmer frames against the wall.  They aren't marching because they can't march.  They aren't rioting because they weren't paid to riot.  

It inescapably feels like Sharpton, trying to exploit a situation, issued the order "Round me up a crowd of a couple dozen."  His aid then scurryies down to the nearby retirement center with the promise of a day out and $50 for any volunteers who are then each handed their signs as they board the bus to the event.

Minuscule, manufactured and anemic.  Rufo is focusing on the minuscule and anemic.  I am focused on the manufactured.  

I have long wondered to what degree modern protests are essentially rent-a-crowds supplemented with the Antifa militia or tarted up by NGO employees and the like.  

You see the Tea Party or Trump's crowds and you feel the energy of a mass movement.  You see the riots and mayhem of Ferguson, George Floyd, or BLM protests and you feel the atavistic urge for violence and looting.  You see these kind of affairs and it just feels like they are going through the motions.  None of it is real.  It is a bad high-school play, performed dutifully, reluctantly, and, in the end, pathetically.