March 21, 2003

Interview with Protest Warrior

Now that the war has started anti-war/anti-American/anti-Bush protesters have responded by blocking traffic, vandalizing a Republican office, and just being all-around obnoxious.

Kfir Alfia decided to take on the anti-war protesters in their own arena. Last month he and some of his buddies crashed the San Francisco peace march. Just last week, Kfir and his posse struck again.

When this double degreed (computer engineering and film production) man with an Israeli first name isn't mocking the Left, he's works for a Silicon Vally startup building networking chips. He also started up ProtestWarrior.com to let the world follow his adventures into the heart of the "peace" movement. TAM got Kfir to take some time from work and protesting protesters to answer some questions. This interview took place before the 3.15.03 peace rally in San Francisco.

TAM: I read your account where you said that crashing the march (on 2.16.03) would be a fun
thing to do with your friend, but what inspired you to crash the San Francisco "peace" rally?

Kfir: I thought it would be a great opportunity to see the left in its unalloyed perversity. The left is very skillful when it comes to hiding their true beliefs. They know they can't compete in the marketplace of ideas, so instead they like to work in secret. The mainstream media does a great job of covering for them, witness the plethora of stories about the NRA, about pro-lifers, about the tobacco lobby, while never a word about the NEA, the eco-terrorists, and the ideological McCarthyism at our universities to give a few examples. So I thought this protest would be a rare opportunity to see leftists out in the open, unabashedly hawking their true core beliefs.

TAM: Why did you think that would be entertaining?

Kfir: I must admit I get a certain high from puncturing the moral self-righteousness of leftists. These people claim to have a monopoly on what is good, their entire self-esteem depends on it. So I like to take their premises to their logical conclusions, and show them that the policies they endorse actually lead to what they're purportedly against. For example, take our sign "Saddam only kills his own people. It's none of our business." A sign like that strikes at their ill-conceived mental constructs, because it's pointing out that their anti-war view on Iraq is very selfish and isolationist. And when this is pointed out to them, it
forces them to acknowledge that they are really not for what's good, but that their ideology is based on something far less noble - that in fact they have a hatred of what's good. Witness that the two countries on this planet that stand most for 'liberal' values, the United States and Israel, are the two countries leftists despise the most. As to why they feel this way, it's something I'm still trying to figure out.

TAM: Do you enjoy needling the Left?

Kfir: It depends. Some leftists may be genuine about wanting to help people, they just have bad data. With them, it is a pleasure to educate them and help them, it's like bringing someone out of darkness into the light of truth, it's akin to saving souls. But the other kind, the hard-core emotional based leftists, the kind where you look into their eyes and see confusion, anger, and hatred, I just feel sorry for them, and all you can do is work to create a society where they have no power. And the way to do that is to reduce the role of the State in human affairs as much as possible. Evil is impotent on its own, and I want to do everything I can to cordon them off from decent society.

TAM: Have you been politically active? If so what other activities have you
done?

Kfir: We've always been political junkies, but we've never had any official political jobs. We're just a couple of citizens who can't sit on our hands any longer and let the left get away with what it does. And since the Republican party is sure to continue its tradition of weak, pathetic, uninspiring ads, it's time for the grassroots to pick up the slack.

TAM: Do most of your friends agree with you on Iraq and the war on terrorism? If not, do you get abused? Has it strained any relationships?

Kfir: Most of our friends agree with us, and even the few that don't see eye to eye with us politically love our approach. However, my girlfriend has deep liberal roots, and she sometimes gives me a run for my money. But in the end, she never had a chance.

TAM: Besides Rush Limbaugh, what media attention have you gotten for your protest at the protest? Did you just call Rush's show or was there some news story that caught Rush's attention?

Kfir: We first called Michael Savage, one of our favorite talk show hosts, who loved the signs and told us to send him pictures. Based off him and all the other great reactions we were getting, we called up Rush the next morning, he loved our slogans, and the next thing you know we're being featured on his website. That inspired us to create this website, and we hope to keep getting more national attention, particularly after all the new material we'll have after this next protest on the 15th.

TAM: Give me your best reasons for going to war in Iraq?

Kfir: The primary reason of course is national security. September 11 was a clarion call that America faces a new threat, a threat perhaps even more dangerous than the Soviet Union. That threat is Islamo-fascism.

Now due to a successful campaign in Afghanistan, the Taliban is no more, and Al-Qaeda was largely disrupted. However, it is not enough to simply go after the terrorists themselves, we must also change the conditions that breed them.

The reality is that Moslems are no different than any other group of people, in that when a society is run by tyranny, when there is no economic, social or civil liberty, this breeds frustration, poverty, alienation, and fear. The people in these countries, rather than look to themselves as the cause of their problems, instead need a scapegoat, an enemy, which the dictator is always happy to provide.

Take the issue of the Palestinians. The Arabs have six million square miles of land. They could give their Palestinian brothers a state tomorrow, and with one day's oil profits give every one of them a bar of gold. Instead, the Arab dictators prop up Arafat and his loathsome gang of oppressors, and brainwash their people to be pure monsters. When mothers happily send their children off to bomb buses and schools, this is not based on any rational grievance. No, this is endemic of a sick, utterly immoral, anti-life culture that serves only one purpose: to keep tyrants in power.

For the last 50 years, Israel has been the shock absorbers for Western Civilization, taking the blows, fighting the fight. But Islamic fundamentalism has escalated this war into a global clash of civilizations. It's similar to the Cold War in that is it is Freedom vs. Statism, but what makes it even more dangerous is that Islamic terrorists are so utterly irrational, so willing to kill just for the sake of killing. This menace must be stopped.

So the best reason for going to war with Iraq is that it is time to start draining the swamp of Islamo-fascism. If we see this through, not just the toppling of Saddam, but the rebuilding of Iraq as a free republic, then it is our hope that it will become a paragon of hope for that benighted region.

This is the only way we will ever achieve real national security. But it is more than just about our safety. It is about the moral duty of the greatest country in the history of this planet, the United States of America, to bring freedom to all corners of the globe. We are the only ones capable of doing it. So to all the Iraqi men, women and children who at this moment are being tortured in Saddam's prisons, we have one thing to say to you: The calvary is on its way.

TAM: Plan on crashing any more marches?

Kfir: The next big one is March 15 in San Francisco. We plan on having a big presence there, with lots of new signs and slogans, so be sure to check protestwarrior.com in the days after for a full report.