In today's Los Angeles Times (Jan 31,2002), Norah Vincent's

column, "Anarcho-Terrorists Cut Their Teeth on Video Games" steps up the propaganda campaign to demonize and dehumanize protesters for global justice.

Since Vincent perceives the demonstrators not as human beings with moral consciences and political rights--"legions of protesters are poised like locusts to descend on New York City to protest the World Economic Forum beginning today" -- no wonder she calls on police to respond to them with lethal force. Tear gas and rubber bullets are just not real enough for her.

And of course, since she equates mass street protest with terrorism, all means need to be used to stop the terrorists, right?



Please read the column and then send responses to letters@latimes.com. Remember that the Times requires name, address, and phone number. They will call to let you know if your letter is being considered for publication.

Norah Vincent has been a guest on Politically Incorrect and is a columnist for Salon.com. The most recent piece under her name at Salon is titled "Cold, hard facts The new Cold War will be dirty and covert -- and the Vietnam-era left better get used to it". She is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies a "non-partisan", non-profit think tank founded in September 2001by Jack Kemp.

Kemp was one of the original promoters of supply-side economics, inner-city Enterprise Zones, and a plan to make public housing tenants buy their run-down apartments (thus becoming their own slumlords.) He is currently on a leave of absence as co-director of Empower America an organization he co-founded in 1993 with William Bennett and Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.

The FDDs President is Clifford D. May, former Director of Communications for the RNC.

Ifminist.com described Vincents politics this way:

"Norah Vincent, a biweekly columnist for Salon.com, wrote the 'Higher Ed' column for The Village Voice from 1999-2001. As a libertarian, 'pro-life' lesbian, Vincent is the antithesis of the feminist norm and challenges the conventions of the left and right alike. Recent topics for her column include abortion, the First Amendment, affirmative action, and public intellectualism."

She seems to be following in the footsteps of David Horowitz.

I too read that article in the LA times. She seems so sure of a link between protest and video games, that is quite preposterous. Anarchists, obviously being such consumerists who simply love violence, must be influenced by these video games. Oh well, I guess idiocy is to be expected from those who defend state repression.

When will people learn that video games are an escape from reality?!

My friends and I play GTA(Grand theft Auto)III. We are not going to steal a police car or beat an old woman to a pulp.

Why? Because we know it is not real. We can tell the difference between reality and games.

I would never throw stuff at a cop or Gap or what ever because I know that it would not solve anything.

It is not video games that make people violent. Nor is it TV or movies or music. The lack of logic and intellect makes people violent.

given that pubs like LA Times will likely not publish challenging letters of any substance or truth, I suggest people post their responses here as well as sending in to the publication itself. I send in Letters to the Editor and actually got a really good one challenging Thomas Friedman's crap slipped in to the Downtown News (yes, small fish circulation, but guess who reads it--elites and downtown office workers). so yes, send in letters, and consider posting them here as well, along with some context.

there's probably something like this already out there somewhere, but it might be cool if IMC had a section of "Letters to the Editor" complete with links to the pieces being commented on, context, etc., and updates of whether letters got published, if the author responded, stuff like that.

Re: "Anarcho-Terrorists Cut Their Teeth on Video Games" by Norah Vincent (1/31/02)

With nary a blink or wink, Norah Vincent describes the virtual reality of video games as something which "elicits and abets the worst and darkest instincts of human nature," allowing for an intoxicating "sense of freedom" and "unmitigated license" that makes you "invisible, unaccountable, unencumbered by fear of retribution and monstrous." Until her subsequent non sequitur dismissal of global justice and democracy activists, I actually thought she was setting up an oblique critique of greedy, unaccountable multinational corporations and the repressive, dictatorial states that help them pursue (with "safe bombs" and carefully edited green nightvision footage) their agenda of a "free-for-all fantas[y]" world where "[e]verything is permitted" and "[n]othing matters.

Without downplaying the dangerousness and irresponsibility in Vincent's suggestion that real bullets might be just what the protestors need to "wake up," it's fascinating and scary to note how the misdirected language of corporate media continually reflects its own self-criticizing subconscious and self-awareness. Who's really pulling whose joysticks here, Norah? Which (virtual) warriors really need to be jolted out of their fantasies and woken up to the "real blood" and "nasty fallout" of a world subjected to greed-based value systems?

Quest for Social Justice Is No Video Game

 

   

Re "Anarcho-Terrorists Cut Their Teeth on Video Games," Commentary, Jan. 31: When Norah Vincent compares World Economic Forum protesters to "locusts" and encourages martial law in New York, she couldn't be more wrongheaded--or ignorant about the people she condemns. As a participant in the anti-globalization movement, I can say that most of the protesters I have met are motivated by a deep concern with social and environmental justice--not by some video-game-inspired call to anarchy. Vincent needs to listen to the message of the protesters instead of fogging the issue with her ignorance of economic reality.

Scott Svatos

Thousand Oaks



The odious Norah Vincent continues to ply her illogic in the pages of The Times. This most recent bout has it that "anarcho-terrorists" have become blissful addicts of video game violence and thus deserve a whuppin' by the New York police. Surely she is aware that the real needle alley exists in the Pentagon, where addiction to simulated killing is called "training" and where graduates go on to zap for real. But those victims are usually Third World riffraff, so I guess on her screen that must not count.

As one protester of the global power grab, I've never come close to a joystick. Like most demonstrators', mine is a desire for justice, not violence. I wonder where that figures on her ugly menu.

Doug Doepke

La Verne