No Kings Protests Confirm Westerners Irrelevant in Fight Against Imperialism
Why the Global South is right: Western public opinion is meaningless.
Do you know what was happening while Bruce Springsteen played his new single in Minnesota? Do you know what was happening while a woman in Los Angeles wore a blow-up flamingo and told a reporter that the protest was an “opportunity to make a statement and respond with silliness to the silliness the administration is doing?”
Silliness.
One hundred and seventy-five schoolgirls in Minab were dying. Thousands of Iranians were dying. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian innocents were dying. That is what was happening.
Silliness.
It is the perfect word — not for what happened to the victims, but for what the West chose to do instead. Dancing, waving flags, squeezing into costumes — this is what passes for protest when the protest is designed never to threaten the thing it claims to oppose.
On March 28, 2026, an enormous wave of demonstrators flooded streets across the United States in a vast, simultaneous show of opposition to President Donald Trump. The No Kings movement’s organizers declared the day could surpass every previous domestic demonstration in scale. The marches stretched from affluent suburbs to dense urban centres and remote rural communities alike, with participants brandishing placards and donning an array of blow-up costumes. In Saint Paul, Minnesota, the event drew figures including Bruce Springsteen, Senator Bernie Sanders, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, and Maggie Rogers. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on social media that the demonstrations were drawing “record turnout,” calling them “a very strong sign of what’s coming in November.”
It was, by the numbers, staggering. By any other measure, it was a funeral dressed as a carnival.
