Paul Krugman’s Protest Hypocrisy

I n the New York Times, columnist Paul Krugman argues that the anti-vaccine-mandate trucker protest in Canada is “a slow-motion Jan. 6.” Hey, what isn’t? Krugman is unhappy that a mere gaggle of protesters, many of them “right-wing extremists” — as if there is any other kind — have “occupied” all of Ottawa. The Nobel Prize winner laments that much of the Right in the United States supports this “economic vandalism.”

In a follow-up Twitter thread, Krugman takes the time to explain why his contradictory positions on the Canadian trucker protest and Black Lives Matter is a nonissue: “Fox myth-making to the contrary, BLM wasn’t an orgy of arson and looting, in fact remarkably peaceful,” argues Krugman, who once referred to BLM as the “best-behaved protest movement in history.”

It’s important to push back against this kind of revisionism. Krugman’s arguments only work — and barely — if we completely ignore the rioting, the hundreds of attacks on cops, the murders, the arson, the vandalism, and the looting that transpired in 140 cities during the BLM protests. While the meaning of “orgy” is subjective, the phrase “remarkably peaceful” is self-evidently absurd.

In the United States, BLM protests resulted in the most expensive insurance-claim payout in our nation’s history, easily outpacing the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Krugman concedes that the economic cost of the trucker’s protest is “roughly comparable to insurance industry estimates of the Black Lives Matter protests — mostly in lost trade.” But the link that Krugman provides from the Insurance Information Institution puts the BLM total at upwards of $2 billion. BLM protests racked up hundreds of millions more in costs for states and cities that were forced to react to the “overwhelmingly peaceful” protests. The State of California, for example, spent more than $63 million deploying law enforcement and the national guard to rectify the disorder.

Then again, if “economic vandalism” were a criminal activity, virtually any protest could be shut down by authorities. (On the bright side, I suppose, we’d be spared any more Keynesian spending sprees.)

Damaging economic activity is a good way to get attention, but probably not an especially effective long-term strategy in convincing fellow citizens to take your side. The clogging of trade routes — a tactic I believe is misplaced, though in support of a principled cause — is an act of civil obedience and well within the Western tradition of political protest. Surely Krugman doesn’t believe that peaceful economic boycotts are morally equivalent to burning down parts of cities?

In this regard, Krugman’s headline, “When ‘Freedom’ Means the Right to Destroy,” is, indeed, ironic. Many progressives offered justifications for the violence and rioting during the summer of 2020 — it was the only way, we were told, that the voiceless and powerless could make their point. “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence,” argued Krugman’s colleague at the New York Times. “We don’t have time to finger-wag at protesters about property. That can be rebuilt. Target will reopen,” said one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter. Another of Black Lives Matter’s leaders argued that rioting was “a legitimate, politically-informed response to state violence.” “Who, really, is the agitator here?” asked the New Yorker’s editor. Not every liberal made these morally reprehensible arguments, but the whitewashing of the destructive side of those protests was rampant. When sections of Portland or Seattle were shut down and transformed into long-term autonomous zones — “economic vandalism”? — with violent Antifa protests plaguing those cities, Krugman was busy pretending that it was a figment of our imagination.

Finally, Krugman argues that BLM “was about *demonstrating* — showing solidarity — rather than deliberate infliction of damage.” Are trucker protest leaders threatening “riots, fire, bloodshed” if they don’t get their way? Are they not in solidarity? Are protests valid only if a majority of the nation’s citizens supports their goals? That doesn’t bode well for BLM.

These two protest movements, of course, aren’t perfect comparisons. One was marred by rioting and violence. That has not yet happened in Canada. But Krugman’s hyperbole is more likely informed by the fact that he’s a proponent of the authoritarian and technocratic policies being protested in Ottawa. That’s the real difference.