Fun Protesting Times in Melbourne, Nov 2021

Some dills are saying the protests in Melbourne on Saturday were 500,000 or wild figures like that which is utterly absurd but it probably was the biggest protest day in the city for a very long time, just a question of whether it was bigger, in per capita terms, than the “treason of the clerks”, the anti Vietnam War marches of May 1970 which estimates put at 70,000 on the biggest day, in a population of 2.5 million (you win a lifetime free subscription to this site if you know who referred to them as “treason of the clerks” (ultimately the phrase comes from a 1928 book “La Trahison des Clercs”, usually translated as “treason of the intellectuals”)).

It was a fun festive atmosphere and people were unfailingly polite after they’d bumped into you, and demographically mostly lower to middle class Anglos, lots of wogs, fair numbers of browns probably mostly Islanders but not really Indians, few Chinese and of those that were present many seemed to be in mixed race relationships, and the rare jilly-babe Muslima.

Flag sperging here, in numbers an even split between the national and red ensign, then many Eureka, some boxing kangaroo, fair few Greek, and some Croatian, Lebanese, US, St George, Irish, and lots others but some of them out of ignorance can’t name.

No videographer here, some snippets of things, raw footage from a cheap phone, but they give an idea of the sort of people there (and you’ll have to squint hard to find the neon-nazi far right conspiracy theorist terrorists that people go on about), and the size of things, to an extent, starting with milling about at Parliament House:

Walking from Parliament to Flagstaff Gardens:

Comedian:

This boy looks older than his years and spoke like it sometimes, should have got more of him but he was saying things like “we pay our taxes but…”, pre-pubescent boomin:

Arriving at Flagstaff Gardens for speeches you couldn’t see or barely hear, gives an idea of the crowd size around 1:50:

Hare Krishnas turn up at almost everything but they can have a good vibe, and you can bet they didn’t bother going to the small antifa counter event:

The media give the impression of being bought and paid for by Pfizer and they are dishonest about these protests in innumerable ways so this hapless Sky crew and its tree trunks for legs journowhore got only a small taste of what they so deserve:

All good wholesome fun, enjoy it while it lasts, while the sun is shining, and the girls are pretty, and the beers are cold, it may get rather ugly come winter.