This is a really interesting observation. I don't think there's a direct analog between brownshirts and corporations because the former were just thugs who Hitler discarded when they were no longer useful. Currently I think the corporations are in charge, at least of the "centrist" core of each party.
We've had a huge, laudable improvement in the rights of marginalized people in the past few decades. This has been happening substantially because many corporations and corporate elite have been supporters.
But I can't help but see this support as at least partially self serving, because improvements in social justice help keep the "culture wars" alive, dividing the population up almost 50/50 into red team and blue team along social rather than economic or class lines.
Right now we have a president who won his election by campaigning against the corporate establishment, but who is also a fully paid up member of that establishment.
He's now picking fights with the very federal bureaucracy he's supposed to lead, as well as the judiciary and many well connected corporations. How it all plays out is something I can't even begin to guess but it's not something the establishment planned for or wanted.
But getting back to your original statement about brownshirts. I think that absolutely we are increasingly developing a system where corporations and the government work together to monitor dissent and then corporations form the enforcement arm of this apparatus (to the extent that dissenters can't be brought up on charges) by denying their economic livelihood.
Isn't this is a list of all arrests, not merely protesters?
Probably also group by citizen id and sort by count. :-)
I don't understand why there's so much fascination with the idea that this is some protester-busting tool. The article merely posits the hypothetical scenario that some people could be punished by their employer, because their employer might get a rap back and they wouldn't be able to tell it was First Amendment activity as opposed to some actual serious crime, because the FBI and local law enforcement is bad at data entry. Somehow people read that and think that the point of the whole system is "corporate fascism stopping the patriotic protesting democracy" when none of the employers actually care about that. Or in other words, an emergent problem in the system that might occur is being assumed to be the central planned feature of it.
Knowing this absolutely has a chilling effect.
1. You're going to miss work because you're in jail.
2. You were arrested for a crime that's related to your work. Like, money laundering or fraud if you work at a bank. Or having sex with a minor if you're a teacher.
3. You work in a field that requires lawful behavior from employees at all times preserve the integrity of the organization. Like, say, law enforcement.
There's a word for those that use random violence to effect change in society -- terrorists.
Except of course you wouldn't use that word for all those planning and fighting in US wars of aggression, correct? Is it just because they're not so "random" or are there other factors, too?
> It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
-- Voltaire
(I'm also curious what instances of protests-turned-riot you're referring to. The US hasn't had many riots, in any meaningful sense, recently. Do you mean someone smashing a window?)
There's the riot at NYU where more violent agitators showed up to prevent Gavin McInnes from speaking, where he was attacked with pepper spray.
On the night at Berkeley, a woman wearing a Trump hat was pepper sprayed while giving an interview for a news network.
These are the facts.
Call it what you want, but this is violence and destruction with the intent to silence people with an opposing point of view. It's not civil disobedience or protesting and more like terrorism.
As for your other question about whether or not I've heard of kettling, I have. The fact that it exists does not convince me that innocent bystanders need to fear that. In instances where you may have seen that, such as the inauguration of the president, charges were brought against some of those individuals. Which suggests the goal wasn't to arrest bystanders.
By the way, I don't know if you watched that one live or after it took place but there was a ton of chaos. People were throwing objects like glass bottles at the police in riot gear. Again, many of the people were dressed in all black with masks on. If you want a very real problem to attack, that's one to focus on.
Terrorism is quite a word for a situation in which nobody was seriously injured, as far as I know. And terrorism of the variety that involves killing people is already less likely to kill someone in the U.S. than a lightning strike. Picking the black bloc as the "very real problem... to focus on", in that context and with everything else going on in the world--including the serious damage done to many thousands of people by cruel and violent policies justified by reference to the threat of terrorism--strikes me as a very poor choice of priorities.
http://q13fox.com/2017/01/24/shooter-sent-facebook-message-t...
Hopefully you noticed that I didn't try to make my feelings on Mr Yiannopoulos obvious.
It's not about free speech. He incites harassment.
Yes, but people are allowed to do that. I don't think "free speech" means what you think it means. It's a comforting idea that other people are too immature/emotional/dumb to consciously think about an opposing belief, but that wasn't the case here. There's no obligation to hear out a side that would do you harm given the choice. w/r/t letting people say unpopular things, the university did decide to host him in the first place, which represents the university's commitment to some form of free speech. Individual people should not be subject to scrutiny for protesting something they disagree with.
Calling me names (or other people) doesn't make what you're saying valid. It wasn't an effective tactic for the left during the election and it's not an effective tactic in this conversation.
At any rate, I don't think you're arguing against points that I've actually made. This sounds more like a response to some hypothetical response that you were anticipating before I responded.
Is your intent here to justify the existence of this watch list?
The first amendment lists a specific purpose for free speech - for the public to redress grievances to the government.
Do you not think that this watch list will curtail free speech infinitely more than what you're complaining about? By monitoring protests and reporting legal political action to employees, you can implicit discourage political protest - which IS a legally protected form of free speech.
We are all patriots, but we're not all terrorists that use random violence to effect change.
However, this is a bit scary. Corporations have become the brownshirts and we are inching towards a one-party authoritarian system like China it seems.
Unfortunately the divide and conquer strategy of the two party system in the US makes people honor party over country and this is a problem. The only solution is to be more independent.
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." -- Thomas Jefferson