Title: Protesters disrupted Shakespeare in the Park in outrage over its Trump-like Julius Caesar (Trump antifa snowflake arrested) Source:
VOX URL Source:https://www.vox.com/2017/6/17/15823 ... eare-in-the-park-julius-caesar Published:Jun 17, 2017 Author:Jen Trolio Post Date:2017-06-17 13:47:35 by Hondo68 Keywords:Trumpkins triggred, Trump antifa snowflakes, gerbils Views:1508 Comments:8
The pair seems to have misread the 400-year-old play.
Tina Benko, Gregg Henry, Teagle F. Bougere, and Elizabeth Marvel in Shakespeare in the Park’s production of Julius Caesar. The Public Theater
Two protesters interrupted the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park performance of Julius Caesar on Friday night, with one of them crashing the stage to yell, “Stop the normalization of political violence against the right! This is unacceptable!"
The incident on Friday night was filmed by one of the two protesters, Jack Posobiec, who posted video footage on Twitter:
The woman in the video has been identified as Laura Loomer, who, according to the New York Times, is a self-described “right-wing investigative journalist and activist.” As Loomer approaches the stage, Posobiec yells and gestures toward his fellow theatergoers, calling them Nazis, likening them to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and seemingly blaming the production for Wednesday’s mass shooting in Alexandria, Virginia, by screaming “The blood of Steve Scalise is on your hands!”
The Times reports that Loomer was ultimately charged with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct and released — in part because she would not step away from Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, where Julius Caesar is being performed, upon being escorted out. “Because of liberal violence like this, a congressman this week was shot in Virginia,” she reportedly declared.
I'm out of jail, but I'm not apologetic. Thanks to everyone who is supporting me & condemning political violence. https://t.co/QkZkxu1yCj— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) June 17, 2017
Many Republicans condemned Democrats and the “liberal media” for promoting a combative tone against the GOP. They pointed to raucous town halls, protests in the streets, and, of course, that controversial photo of Kathy Griffin holding a bloodied, beheaded figure of Trump. "The rhetoric has been outrageous: The finger-pointing, the tone, the angst and the anger directed at Donald Trump,” complained Chris Collins, a Republican representative from New York.
And since the shooting happened in the same week that the uproar over Julius Caesar hit fever pitch, some — including both Friday’s protesters, apparently, as well as the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. — have been quick to draw a direct connection between the shooting and the play:
Events like today are EXACTLY why we took issue with NY elites glorifying the assassination of our President— Harlan Z. Hill (@Harlan) June 14, 2017
But as many Shakespeare fans and scholars have been pointing out since the outrage over the Public Theater’s Trump-tinged Julius Caesar first began to draw criticism, Julius Caesar is an inherently political play with warnings for everyone — and one that specifically implores those who commit political violence, even in service of their country, to consider the futility of their actions. It also lends itself to different interpretations for different political contexts.
Julius Caesar is a political play, one that plumbs the uneasy relationship between power and populism, as well as the conflicts that arise between personal relationships and loyalty to country. It even explores the pitfalls of various forms of government, from democracy’s potential for mob rule manipulated by showy speakers to the potential for personal power seeking in a republic to the dangers of iron-fisted, people-crushing authoritarian rule.
And thus, with regard to the Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar in particular, Wilkinson explains that those who’ve argued that it incites violence are completely missing the point:
You can only read Julius Caesar as a simple revenge fantasy if you don’t actually read the play. And casting a Trump-like character as Julius Caesar does a lot more for him than merely let an audience watch him get assassinated onstage. Just as Julius Caesar is a play with many warnings, a specifically Trump-oriented Julius Caesar contains many warnings and implications — and bafflingly, right-wing media hasn’t bothered to point them out.
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Opponents of the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar, if they were familiar with the text, could have seized on the chance this production handed them. For one, it puts Trump in the position of the beloved leader of the people, casting him as a legendary hero. And it warns about the futility of violence against him (something that has new resonance in the wake of controversy over Kathy Griffin’s “beheading” of the president). A canny right-wing response to the production could have praised it for embedding conservative and even Trump-supporting ideas inside the more obvious, arguably even ham-fisted depiction of the president. (National Review came closest to this approach, calling it “boring.”)
But Friday’s protesters clearly viewed the Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar as a call for violence against the right.
As for what happened post-protest during Friday night’s performance, the Public Theater’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, gave a statement to the Daily Beast in which he characterized the incident as a both minor and meaningful:
Two protesters disrupted our show tonight; we stopped the show for less than a minute and our stage manager handled it beautifully. The staff removed the protesters peacefully, and the show resumed with the line ‘Liberty! Freedom!’ The audience rose to their feet to thank the actors, and we joyfully continued. Free speech for all, but let's not stop the show.
The alt-right types who did this protest are about as repulsive as the Lefties staging the play.
To have more impact, they should raise money and put on their own productions with an 0bama/Hillary/Pelosi/Schumer cast. Make it really outrageous and bloody and just let the Left howl at the moon.
Political matters don't work in your stOOpid and soft, benign world of silliness, pandering to the US government.
It was simply an ill-considered protest. Very few on the Right are backing what they did and how they did it.
The alt-right risks isolating itself by doing this. They need to come up with something the entire Right will get behind.
For all the endless talk about the alt-right, they really don't seem to ever do anything very effective or that is likely to increase the number of people who consider themselves "alt-right" instead of "conservative" or "Republican".
Perhaps you just don't grasp that this is about politics in the larger sphere, not just this one play and an ineffective protest/disruption of it.
Causing a major disruption is something that most conservatives and Republicans and libertarians won't back. The alt-right is left looking isolated. And in an arena in which they are unlikely to make any impact. After all, if they do it and keep doing it, DeBlasio will send a goon squad of cops out to arrest them.
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