Dave on the Great L.A. Bean Riot of '25

They put the muy in the malo, the Frida in the Kahlo, and the agua in the wallow

Look, I ain’t keen to write about politics. I have 14 weeks of Taki’s columns to release (things I’d already written before I left), so why the hell should I write anything new…for FREE. For FREE? What am I, Jesus or something? I spent 10+ years getting paid for this shit. These days I just want to write about my travels as a homeless guy, duffel in hand, looking to drop anchor at a new port (hopefully with a decent restroom because anchors are not all that I drop).

But you people, here and on X, have been pestering me, as Takimag’s resident L.A. expert, to write about the Great Bean Riot.

I’ve promised that this Substack will always be free. No paywall, ever. So I’m not gonna sweat doing the kind of “neat little essay with a beginning middle & end” I always did for Takimag. I’m just gonna free-form it (man), like a good piece of Beatnik poetry (can ya dig it?). I won’t even proofread it more than once. So if you spot an error, DM me and make sure to include a physical address where I can send the rasp grater you can shove up your ass.

1) Maga Manchildren

You can tell that an adult has the undeveloped mind of a child if he can’t differentiate between two types of the same thing. For example, a toddler will look at the family housecat and say “kiiiiiiiiiity!” At the zoo, the toddler will also point to a tiger and go “kiiiiiiiiiity!”

To a toddler, it’s all just kitties, even though as we grow we learn that while technically yes, tiger and tabby are both felines, there are significant differences not to be ignored (or rather, to be ignored at one’s peril).

Was what happened in L.A. with the clashes over ICE deportations a riot? Of course. The LAPD officially declared it as such. But it was a vastly different kind of riot than the Rodney King or, more importantly, the BLM/Floyd riots. MAGAs can’t see that because they’re toddler-brained. They follow their leader in crying “L.A.’S BURNING! L.A.’S ON FIRE! WITHOUT THE MARINES L.A. WILL LIE IN RUINS! HOORAY, GOD-KING TRUMP SAVED L.A.!”

How I don’t miss MAGAs. Especially now that they’re essentially acting as press agents for BLM. Because to equate the bean riot to BLM/Floyd is to absolve BLM of its unpardonable sins.

The beans fighting with police are happy to keep the unrest confined to Downtown, as part of a targeted fight against police, ICE, etc. Sure, there was looting and some cars set on fire, but it was all contained to the official “warzone” area where City Hall, the detention centers, the police station, and the main courthouse sit. Honestly, this is exactly where unrest, when it comes, should be — by Skid Row, away from neighborhoods, away from the bustling parts of the city/county where Angelenos work and live.

To be clear, I’m not saying the riot was good or that I agree with the protesters’ goals. But…one must contrast the rioting beans to the rioting blacks of BLM who specifically and very much on-purpose as part of a plan took the riot to civilians. BLMs took the riot to every major neighborhood in the county, from Santa Monica to Hollywood to Beverly Hills. They took the violence direct to people’s houses, to their streets, to outdoor dining, attacking and humiliating white diners, elderly whites, any white bystanders. Killing whites, pulling whites out of cars, and burning businesses indiscriminately.

For better or worse, the bean protesters are observing “the rules of warfare.” They’re keeping civilians out of it, and though there’s undeniable Mexican nationalism in the crowd, there’ve been no acts of racial hatred.

About the worst the protesters have done to inconvenience civilians is block one of the Downtown freeway exchanges. But no pulling whites out of their cars, no beating whites, no vandalizing cars based on the race of the driver.

Again, this doesn’t mean I agree with the protesters, but they actually DO have a focus: they don’t like seeing their amigos hauled off by ICE. Their fight is with ICE, not white people, Jews, or Asians. BLM had NO purpose other than race-hatred. That lack of any specific goal beyond violence for its own sake meant that every BLM riot was a free-for-all of blacks attacking white people and other racial “foes.”

Two riots, but a significant difference. Still, MAGAs can only look at both and go “KIIIIIIITY!”

2) No, L.A. was NOT “burning,” you dolts

Some of you have the nuttiest fucking idea that Downtown L.A. is like our Central Park, the “heart” of the city. That could not be further from the truth. It’s the boonies, far removed from the areas that matter, like West L.A., Beverly Hills, Westwood, West Hollywood, the Valley, Hollywood, Silver Lake/Los Feliz, Universal City, Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, the South Bay, Torrance, Long Beach, Culver City, Glendale, Burbank, etc. What goes on Downtown is of no importance to anyone else in the city; the only civilians disturbed by the bean clashes were the Skid Row bums.

Far from being like the BLM riots, the bean riot was more like the 2011 “Occupy L.A.” madness. From October 1st, 2011, to November 29th, thousands of leftists took over much of Downtown, hooting, hollering, vandalizing, defecating, raping, marching, chanting, fighting cops, building encampments, and nobody anywhere else in the city gave a damn.

It might as well have been on the moon.

Yes, MAGAs love to portray all of L.A. as Skid Row, so it stands to reason they think anything that goes on Downtown is RIGHT IN THE CENTER OF OUR DAILY LIVES!

Retards.

3) Shut the fuck up…

…about the fact that some of the beans assaulted cops. You’ve no right to hold an opinion on that, MAGA. You defended J6 and cheered when your god-king pardoned every rioter who assaulted police. You’ve no moral high-ground, Cletus. Your shrinking violet feign of outrage sickens me. I’m consistent; I condemn all violence against cops across the board: the J6ers who attacked police should still be rotting in prison, and the beans who attacked police should rot there too.

At least the beans have the balls to admit what they’re fighting for (illegal bean immigration). You? You dickless wonders pussied out the minute the FBI came for you. “Jeez, I dunno why I was at the Capitol! I wuzn’t tryin’ to stop the certification of an election or anything. Garsh, I wuz just, like, walking near the building and a gust of wind blew me inside and then somebody tossed a can of bear spray in the air and I caught it to turn it over to the authorities so that nobody would get hurt but it accidentally went off in a cop’s face poor guy then the FBI impersonated me and broke a window then stuck the baton in my hand and ran off but honestly by gum I was only trying to leave the building to get back to my tour of the Potomac cherry blossoms!”

Fucking cowards. J6 cop-beaters are scum, bean cop-beaters are scum. But at least the beans have the courage of their convictions. The bean rioters are bad men, but at least they’re men. J6ers? Again, toddlers.

4) “What do you think of your precious Mexicans NOW, Cole?”

I’ve been pilloried with messages here and on X by the MAGA dumbshits who routinely accuse me of being too “pro-Mexican” simply because I point out that crime rates in L.A. have plummeted as the black population’s been phased out and traditionally black areas have either been gentrified (all former black Westside communities) or beanified (South and East).

Even though the drop in crime is 100% factual, MAGAs do what MAGAs always do when facts displease them - they say “I don’t wanna believe it so I shan’t.”

And all these MAGAs who’ve been messaging me have been practically foaming at the mouth, “hahaha Cole, see? Your beloved Mexicans are as violent as blacks! HAHAHAHAHA we got you NOW, Cole! Take THAT, Cole!”

Okay, let’s put aside the fact that the police officers fighting the protesters were beans as well.

Let’s also put aside the fact that the LAPD estimated the protest crowd size, at its peak, to be 6,000.

6,000…in a city of 1.8 million beans (for contrast, the BLM riot in L.A. was estimated at 100,000, in a city of only 300,000 blacks. And while, as I pointed out in 2020, many in those crowds were leftist whites, during the sacking of Beverly Hills? Naw, that was all black, baby).

Let’s put that aside, and instead look at Depeche Mode. March 20, 1990, 20,000 white kids descended on a West L.A. record store where Depeche Mode was due to sign autographs. When the crowd grew beyond LAPD’s ability to control it, the event was shut down and the kids rioted, smashing windows, cars, street signs, and attacking cops and each other.

Now let’s look at the 1999 Seattle WTO riot, one of the costliest in any city at that time. The almost entirely white mob of at least 40,000 destroyed entire city blocks, causing tens of millions in damage and resulting in numerous injuries to cops and bystanders.

Okay, so what do our two examples prove?

Whites can riot. They can riot over something frivolous (a synth band) or weighty (the WTO).

And yes, beans can riot, too.

But in the case of whites, and in the case of beans, rioting incidents don’t represent a larger, endemic pathology, as they do regarding blacks, in terms of frequency of riots, quickness to riot, riot as expression of racial hatred, and the egregiously sadistic nature of the violence during a riot.

The question was never “can Mexicans riot.” Of course they can, you twats.

Oh right, MAGAs don’t read history. Maybe I can meme the Zoot Suit Riots and that way MAGAs might learn something.

What matters is the black pathology and the beneficial trade-off when a city exchanges blacks for a populace like beans, in which the problem of youth violence, and again, that’s always been there (there were Chicano youth gangs in LA. long before the first Daquan got off the train; Daquans ended up doing the street gang thing too but added their signature penchant for sadistic violence and civilian victimization), is tempered by a gung-ho attitude toward joining law enforcement to keep order and beat down their own lawbreakers.

5) Bifurcated minds (Schrödinger’s MAGA)

The funny part is, some of the same MAGAs who are coming at me like “hahaha see how your beloved beans are violent like blacks!” are also posting on X that the protestors are PAID SOROS OPERATIVES! PAID BIDEN CRIME FAMILY ROTHSCHILD KILLARY KLINTON DEMONRAT OPERATIVES and the entire “protest” was astroturfed.

Wait, those two concepts are contradictory: “the riots show how beans are organically and intrinsically violent!” / “the riots had to be artificially induced by paid professional agitators!”

You can’t believe both at the same time.

Oh, wait — MAGAs can! MAGA waters run still; ideas just kinda float. No rocky rapids to pummel and test the strength of theses. The MAGA mind is a puddle.

6) The sleuths forgot their magnifiers!

Don’t you just hate it when the greatest Sherlocks who ever lived, the soopersleuths who solved the PAUL PELOSI GAY LOVER WHODUNIT and the SCHOOL SHOOTING CRISIS-DWARF RIDDLE and the TIM WALZ CHILD MOLESTATION MYSTERY (because when an anonymous X user tweets, it’s always true) and the PUZZLE OF THE UNBURNED TREES, forget their sleuthing gear?

The week that Trump launched the ICE operation in L.A. had been the worst week yet of his second term. It was the week of the Musk/Trump feud. The week of that one very bad day of insanely vicious and accusatory tweets and counter-tweets and it looked like MAGA might fracture in a way that could cause long-term damage, as MAGAs realized they may have to choose sides (hell, Musk even unfollowed Catturd. CATTURD! That’s how deep them lines in the sand were bein’ dug).

I’m saying this from some insider knowledge. That very bad day had the “tech right” sweating bullets. A disastrous rift was on the horizon, and MAGA “tech bros” were in a panic because they’d be the first to have to declare an allegiance should Musk vs. Trump civil war break out.

Things looked bleak. Even Trump seemed winded by the end of the day (feuds usually energize him, but this one…he could see that it was an existential threat).

Trump needed a way out, a way to unite all of MAGA against a common foe, to bury those bad, bad headlines but also to distract his exceptionally distractable base to an extent that by the next week, there’d be no memory of the “very, very bad day.”

All that fuss, all the rioting and clashes in L.A. during the weekend of the 6th, you know how many beans ICE actually apprehended?

118.

118 beans in a city of 1.8 million of ‘em. Barely worth the gas for the paddy wagons.

Were it anyone but Trump, MAGAs would be sleuthing. “It was a stunt to distract from Musk claiming Trump was on the Epstein list!” Remember (because you don’t) that in 2023 after the Titanic submersible imploded, MAGA influencers claimed that Biden faked the tapping sounds the Navy picked up, in order to draw out the drama for an entire week, as a strategy to distract from the Epstein files!!!!

But here’s Trump, being called out by Musk for being IN the Epstein files (Musk even demanded that Trump be impeached!), and before you know it Trump launches special ops-style raids in L.A. that nab a paltry 118 illegals but start a riot, then he sends in the Guard, then the Marines, and the news cycle is altered to completely bury what Musk claimed, and not one MAGA sleuth pulls out his Sherlock glasses.

Were it anyone else, MAGAs would see “distraction op.” But remember, MAGA sleuthing isn’t based on any kind of actual sleuthing acuity. It’s just partisan reflex. And I’m not suggesting that Trump masterminded the ICE raids to bring MAGA back together after its most divisive, schismatic week ever. Unlike some of you, I don’t see him as Gröfaz. But Miller? Or someone like that? Yeah, I think it’s possible that somebody suggested, “let’s start some shit in L.A. by rounding up a hundred beans military-style. You’ll see how quickly the Musk feud is forgotten by all sides. In fact, send in the Guard even if the LAPD has everything under control! That’s all the left will talk about!"

Also, having rounded up his precious 118, uniting MAGA and shifting the news cycle, Trump proceeded to announce that he’s slowing down the immigration raids to protect agribusiness and the hotel biz. So either those 118 nabbed in L.A. were of some incredible cosmic importance as villains, or…they served another purpose.

It would, of course, be funny that if after falling for every false conspiracy scenario in the book, MAGAs missed the only real one.

Funny, and typical.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going back to my BURNING CITY to have a drink.

Remember, I used to get paid for this. So if you enjoyed it, you can BUY ME A BEER or contribute to my GiveSendGo.

Or just leave a comment. It’s all bueno!