Dixie Outfitters....designated protest stations

     This week Silver Dollar City is not Branson's most visible venue.  The "twitter trending" accolade goes this week to a tackie little retail shop on Branson's "Strip" that sells cheap Confederate memorabilia.  It has for decades, with little notice and almost certainly little profits.  Arrive BLM, looking hard for an object to receive their verb, i.e. disruptive protest.  We, the locals, found it perplexing that the protest designee was not Dixie Stampede, Dolly Pardon's upscale theater just a few blocks on down the Branson Strip....but it may well be that BLM is somewhat more discerning in the Ozark Hills than in LA.

     Regardless, last Saturday the BLM supporters did peacefully congregate at the store site such that they disrupted traffic, much of which, given the COVID story, were locals just out for a safe drive.  And then, just as spontaneous as a Facebook post, up show the "KKK/Racist/ White Supremacist/Libertarians/skinheads/neo-nazis, etc,  in aggregate refereed to as the "alt-right". They, in both number and intimidation visuals, easily outdid the dwindling BLM protester.  They took up the defensive position in front of the Dixie Outfitters doors.  The BLM protesters were pushed to a vacant driveway on the other side of Highway 76.

     Today, with a week passed,  all around Branson there are rumors and rumors of rumors that in response to the strong alt-right showing that ANTIFA agents will be spilling into Branson with ominous consequences as they encounter Branson's ample "home grown" alt-rights. The Branson locals, most of whom, live in a conservative/fundamentalist paradigm, hold images of ANTIFA as akin to the Taliban/Isis revolutionaries, probably from Hollywood.  When they arrive, they will need a third designated protest site somewhere along the 76Strip.

     My personal sense is that neither, at least in the Ozarks, BLM, nor alt-right, nor ANTIFA, are much beyond "identity badges" useful to find a friendly party, not in substance different that the local college rivalries between Hogs, Tigers, Sooners.  

     Will the inevitable encounters occasionally get out of hand?  Yes, but not at a concerning level....no Tieneman Square thing happening here.  Although within each of these "attractors" there is no doubt elements of extreme violence.  When the Dixie Outfitters needs another designated protest station for the adherents to the (dare I mention) "boogaloo movement"....well that's another matter.