Old and busted, civil-rights edition: Let everyone eat at the lunch counters! New hotness: Let no one eat at the brunch buffet! In several cities, activists demanding an end to “white privilege” invaded restaurants to stage performance-art protests against police violence while diners attempted to have an all-you-can-eat meal.

Notice that they didn’t invade any donut shops:

Dozens of demonstrators today stormed restaurants and targeted white diners in New York and California as part of a ‘Black Brunch’ protest against alleged police violence. Carrying banners, the chanting protesters entered a number of venues in New York City that they identified as ‘white spaces’, including midtown eateries: Lallisse, Maialino and Pershing Square. Once inside, they ‘disrupted’ customers’ meals by reading out the names of African-Americans killed by police, including Michael Brown, 17, who was shot dead by officer Darren Wilson last August.

What does brunch have to do with police violence and so-called “white privilege”? Not much, although there were a few half-hearted attempts to justify unlawful assembly and trespassing in restaurants ex post facto. Much of that centered on the notion that brunching is a manifestation of unfair advantage accrued during historical periods of oppression … which seems extremely fanciful when applied to $19.99 all-you-can-eat buffets.

Charles C. W. Cooke gave a brief but accurate synopsis of the incoherence on display yesterday:

1. Interrupt random people eating and accuse them of “literal” genocide?2. ?3. Racial healing.#underpantsbrunch — Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 4, 2015

There were far better venues to protest “genocide,” especially aimed at minority populations:

@SonnyBunch @theshoebart If they really wanted to protest a genocide, they should rally at their local Planned Parenthood clinic. — Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) January 4, 2015

The whole exercise was silly, absurd, but also corrosive if it portends a new trend, as I argued yesterday on Twitter:

The English murdered & oppressed my "people" for 7 centuries, but I'm not up for #CelticTeaTime. — Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) January 4, 2015

If Oliver Cromwell or those who profited off the famine were still around, I might make a demand or two. #CelticTeaTime — Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) January 4, 2015

Don't even get me started on my Eastern European Jewish ancestors. #CelticTeaTime — Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) January 4, 2015

My ancestors fled Ireland and eastern Europe in 19th century to escape collective punishment for ancestral resentments. #CelticTeaTime — Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) January 4, 2015

Those who want to return to collective punishment for ancestral gripes are the real racists & won't like how it turns out. #CelticTeaTime — Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) January 4, 2015

The new redistributionist effort is ridiculously racist. It homogenizes “whites” into a single class, onto which these racists then project all the ills of their own lives. Thanks to the emigration patterns in the US since the Irish famine, most of us have no ancestors which participated in slavery or the Mexican-American War and its resolution. Demanding reparations from people uninvolved in those transactions on the basis of their skin color alone is racism refined to its most pure form. It’s why we have tried — imperfectly as we have — to eliminate collective judgments and punishments. Such efforts only create more division and racism rather than solve either.

Protesting supposed “literal” genocides by hijacking breakfast buffets shows just how ridiculous this movement is. Why not protest police violence outside of police stations? Why not protest the abortion clinics that actually do kill innocent minority children disproportionately? It’s sheer desperation, and the media response to it demonstrates just how desperate they have become; hardly any broadcast or newspaper outlets bothered to report it at all, even though it took place in urban areas where news coverage is usually the highest. They can’t even get a headline while disrupting upscale bistros in New York. These tactics, as well as their attempts to shut down retail locations during Christmas shopping, will end up alienating the very people who might otherwise be sympathetic to their issues, namely upscale urban liberals. As strategy goes, it’s right up there with Mary Landrieu’s last Senate campaign.

No one has asked Barack Obama for comment yet, but he has a track record on the sanctity of breakfasts: