It’s happening across the nation: Angry anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are undermining democracy, science, and civil society. They are disrupting school board meetings, town council meetings, any gathering where a loud minority can shout down elected officials.
What’s happening in New Hampshire is emblematic of a frightening national trend. Garry Rayno of indepthnh.com writes here about the collapse of civility in the Granite State.
He writes:
Anyone who follows politics in New Hampshire had to be disturbed by what happened at the Executive Council meeting last week at Saint Anselm College.
To have the workings of government halted by a small group of aggressive and vocal mobsters is new for New Hampshire and a sad day for state government.
The meeting was halted after Department of Health and Human Services employees felt threatened and left the building under State Police escort, not something that has happened in New Hampshire before.
The state has long been known as fiscally conservative, but socially moderate or tolerant. That has changed in recent years, largely over abortion or reproductive rights for women.
But what happened last week is far more than the erosion of the state’s moderate views on social issues and that is also apparent in this year’s legislative session, when bills passed that never would have in the past.
New Hampshire’s political discourse can be heated and passionate, but it has always been essentially civil.
A new group of activists is creating foundational change to the political playing field.
The anarchistic outburst that halted the Executive Council meeting, was not the first and it surely will not be the last.
Traditional political philosophy is not the driving force for Free Staters, Libertarians, Rebuild NH or Liberty 603, individual freedom at all costs is and the consequences are monumental.
The goal of the uproar was ostensibly to prevent the Executive Council from approving $27 million in contracts to expand the state’s lagging COVID-19 vaccination programs to protect more people from the virus.
The COVID-19 pandemic and government actions to stop its spread have been the target of the groups, some that even propose the state secede from the union.
This movement does not follow the usual political processes to achieve its goal, but instead uses intimidation, threats and other tactics best described as bullying.
What they want to achieve is minority rule, because the vast majority of the state’s citizens do not agree with them.
The insurrectionists have had help along the way, as they have been allowed to drive the “Republican agenda” in the legislature and Gov. Chris Sununu, who was one of their main targets at the council meeting, tried to placate the near anarchists and signed a budget largely dictated by the Free Staters and Libertarians.
What happened at the Executive Council meeting was a significant victory for a couple hundred protesters who achieved far more than stopping the approval of a couple of contracts.
And that is the real problem New Hampshire faces going forward.
With about 50 law enforcement officers at the meeting, a number of particularly vocal, abrasive and threatening activists were allowed to “do their thing” to shut down the meeting and not one was arrested.
The next time there is no reason to stop going a little further and a little further.
Many of the same people picketed Sununu’s Newfields home after he instigated a mask mandate, the last one in New England and the first to be rescinded.
Protests at the State House or where a governor is making an appearance are acceptable behavior, but a governor’s or senator’s or official’s home has always been off limits, but not any more.
The anti-maskers planned to disrupt Sununu’s outdoor inauguration ceremony in January, but Sununu cancelled the event.
Instead he was sworn in with few present at the State House and gave his inauguration speech remotely.
Several weeks ago, a public hearing on proposed rules for the state’s vaccination registry had to be cancelled when the same groups turned out protestors and overflowed a hearing room in Concord.
And last month, they shouted down Republican legislative leaders at a press conference called to criticize President Biden’s vaccine mandates. The protesters told GOP leaders they and the governor had not done enough to protect them.
At a press conference after the council meeting Sununu downplayed the council protest and said it was a few unruly aggressive actors who crossed the line and that there was passion on both sides.
That sounded similar to President Trump saying there are good people on both sides after white supremacists’ violent protest in Charlottesville that claimed one life and injured many more.
And while Sununu, the Executive Council and state employees had a couple of dozen police to protect them, many school boards and selectmen do not and face the same aggressive behavior and unruly people objecting to whatever the boards decide.
People need to understand what the protesters and some politicians want. They want to stop the state from spending federal money on programs to increase vaccinations to stop the spread of COVID-19.
They do not want to be vaccinated, which is short-sighted in itself as they are willing to infect others for their “personal freedom,” and they are trying to stop anyone else from being vaccinated.
It is not enough for them not to be vaccinated, they don’t want you to be either and they don’t want you to wear a mask.
That is not freedom, that is tyranny. And it is just as tyrannical as they claim Biden’s mandates are.
While the state has fallen behind others in the percentage of citizens fully vaccinated, still almost 60 percent of the state’s residents are showing at least that many people do not agree with the anti-vaccers and maskers.
What is happening with disruptions like the one at the Executive Council meeting and at school boards around the state is tribalism and not democracy. It is mob rule by intimidation and threats. How civilized is that?
The real target here is not masks and mandates, it is government and their hate for it or anyone they perceive to be telling them what to do.
Please open the link and read the rest of this important article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hello Diane: This has the sound of a combination of (1) Steve Bannon’s idea of breaking down governmental and other institutions combined with (2) an ALEC-like, systematic, multi-state game plan . . . of hiring people to infiltrate and writing curiously similar texts and “talking points” for those whose job it is to interrupt, aggravate, infuriate and fuel the anger of those on the ground, particularly in school boards.
I don’t read the comments here any more; but this post really resonates with what I am hearing in the news lately; for instance, a school board member recently asked Biden for help precisely because she was hearing the same “talking points” from those having the same sorts of trouble in different states. I’m sorry I didn’t catch which state she was from, I think it was PA or Ohio, but I’m not sure, and am sorry to be so vague, but the brief piece was on CNN.
I hope this finds you well, CBK
Thanks, CBK. I miss you.
It’s good to hear from you, and I miss you, too, Diane, and the rest of the “crew.” I AM able to concentrate on my work after I cleared my desk, so to speak, of several sites that I regularly contributed to; and at 74, I never know when it will all end, so several of my self-imposed writing deadlines have come clearly into view. I’m still reading your posts, however. Take good care. Catherine
So, will NH be changing the motto on their license plates to, “I Live Free or You Die”?
A friend in Massachusetts told me that New Hampshire is called “the Florida of the north, with forests.”
“Live Free or Divide”
very nice
Libertarianism and anarchy, two demons that go hand-in-hand in their goal to destroy the government, the legal system, the public education system, the U.S. Constitution et al.
I recall recently reading that Charles Koch and ALEC are some of the big players behind a lot of these threatening demonstrations by the dangerous and mindless anti-vaccine and anti-mask mob.
Attacks on New England democracy. You can’t get more unamerican than that
Here’s a link to that interesting U.S. Supreme Court case where the guy tried to cover up the “Live Free or Die” motto on his NH license plate. Wow! What a state. Really, what a country we live in. As a colleague of mine, a fellow history teacher liked to say, “You can’t make this stuff up.”
https://www.nhpr.org/news/2017-11-01/live-free-die-decades-old-fight-over-n-h-motto-to-get-supreme-court-shout-out
And one more link to a more humorous take on the NH license plate issue: https://www.scribd.com/document/431579814/Unprecedented-Live-Free-or-Try
I mean, people in other places around the world are keeling over because they’re not able to get the COVID vaccine. And, here in the United States we can’t GIVE the stuff away. That strip club in Vegas that offered the vaccine, there’s “joints for jabs” for the folks who smoke weed…on and on and on….
My entire working life teaching history….trying to understand this nation I call home…and I keep going back to the James Brown song, “Living in America.” I’m not quite sure why but there’s some sort of kernel of real truth in “the Godfather of Soul’s” lyrics.
“And somewhere on the way
you might find out who you are.”
Indeed, we’ve been finding out who we are as a nation these past six years.
Thanks for getting the “Godfather of Soul” on here, Diane.
You’re the ‘Godmother of Education’.
Haha.
Verbal threats are indeed criminal assaults. The failure of police to “serve and protect” as these thugs turn up the violence is reprehensible. They need to be called out by the media.
Several friends of mine live in and around Keene, and they have been telling me these stories for about 10 years. Steven Colbert, when he was still on Comedy Central, ran a feature on some of the bozos in that town–which is home to the well-regarded Keene State College and in general always struck me as a town with post-Enlightenment values and culture.
The rabies vaccine would probably help prevent rabid protests, but I’m pretty sure that the people who are most susceptible wouldn’t take it.
But maybe Ivermectin would work as a substitute.
What we need is a vaccine of things, you know, like an internet of things. Things so we don’t have to think.
Leah Cushman, a New Hampshire House rep, reportedly, is one of the anti- vax protestors at rallies. She has the usual libertarian voting record…until it comes to abortion. She voted for abortion limits.
Evidently, theocrats are the necessary allies of libertarians. Cushman’s in favor of tax revenue for private schools and homeschooling.
i watched the video of the 6 citizens that were artrested at that new hampshire meeting ,and I did not see any reason for the arrests whatsoever ..so please tell me exactly why they were arrested for peacefully protesting >https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=420453852918614