There are many examples you can pick if you want to point out bias in media, day before yesterday was not one.
For reference, conservative subreddits remain active, Donald Trump is the one that's banned.
By this logic pro-BLM democrats (including some high level pro-BLM politicians) incited numerous violent mobs over the course of 2020 to attack Seattle and Portland and usurp rule-of-law. But when it happened then the protests were "fiery but mostly peaceful" because "collateral damage is okay if it is done in the name of grappling with racism". Now that the other side has gathered to protest what they see as injustices, it's "a coup" and "terrorism" because of the bad actors who postponed congress for a few hours despite the fact that the vast majority of the people at the protest were peacefully protesting.
BLM was protesting the injustice of systematic oppression that results in black people bejng murdered by police. 93% of the protests were entirely peaceful. In the other 7%, it is not clear if the violence was instigated by citizens or police.
On the right, you have people who storm the US fucking Capitol building while they are confirming the next POTUS. They were trying to disrupt the federal government. Some of them had zip tie handcuffs and were reportedly looking for VP Pence.
If you cannot see the clear daylight between those two things, and insist on reducing it to “violence on both sides”, then I simply don’t know what to say to you except to please re-examine your humanity as well as your critical thinking skills.
Could you directly address that time back in June when armed BLM protestors stormed Capitol Hill in Seattle and kicked out all the police for a month?[0] Why does that event get a pass in the context of this conversation?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone
My understanding was the police decided to withdraw from the area due to the intensity. It looks like the Seattle people rejected law enforcement, but weren't trying to overthrow the government.
Not all violence is equal. Overthrowing the US federal government because you didn't win is very different than CHAZ. Both can be disgusting while acknowledging that FEDERAL INSURRECTION AND ATTACKING DEMOCRACY IS WORSE THAN CHAZ.
This is largely attributed to systemic racism, but also to poverty.
Citation needed
I’m willing to believe them, frankly, if there’s any data or responsible analysis to back it up.
This is a bit like saying "citation needed" for "the mitochondria is the workhorse of the cell". You just sort of gesture broadly at literally an entire field that studies this stuff.
It takes almost no effort to look up some faculty member at your alma mater who studies crime, race, and policing, look up one of their books, and check it out.
(Also, this article was not written by him. That kind of diminishes your point, unless you argue that all authors on 538 deserve your disdain by association?)
For doing the SAME thing in the SAME location.
I know, it's hard to prove, here say, but you know it's true. Snipers would've been out in force. Cops were high fiving and letting these people in. National Guard was told to stand down. Police were taking selfies with confederates holding flags in the People's building.
This was a desecration of democracy and the rule of law in America. Everyone responsible needs at least 20 years in prison. No exceptions. Trying to disrupt our republic should have some consequences, no?
However, from my understanding, the research all seems to be pretty directionally consistent - minorities in the US receive worse treatment from the justice system. Here's a good overview of why the statistics might be under-reporting the size of the impact: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dont-cap...
This equivalence between BLM and the mobbing of the Capitol is confusing to be because it's so obviously a false one.
What's the difference? In both cases the stated goal of the protests was not to "break stuff" so if that ends up happening, is that the protest's fault?
> There's also a difference between a protestor throwing a firework at a courthouse and taking tactical gear and weapons with a couple hundred buddies into a legislature.
What about armed protestors forcibly ejecting police from a section of the city and setting up a police-free zone?
> This equivalence between BLM and the mobbing of the Capitol is confusing to be because it's so obviously a false one.
It's not equivalent, just similar. In both cases peaceful protesting of perceived injustice is the stated goal, and in both cases bad actors go renegade and break down rule-of-law.
This wasn't just a riot. It wasn't just a protest. Wasn't just an attack on a building. It wasn't just some vandalism. It was an attack on the last step of the presidential election process.
Or, you can recognize the right to assemble and protest while condemning non-peaceful protesting. I personally unequivocally condemn the violence that occurred in both BLM and Trump protests. I also support the right to gather and peacefully protest, for both BLM and Pro-Trump supporters.
Still, I see a difference that matters between a small minority trying to take over a police station or destroy a Pizza Hut (bad enough, and worthy of condemnation) and a small minority trying to interfere with the presidential succession (much worse).
There is also plain hypocrisy in both camps, when one camp riots, the other camp pretends not to understand that there is festering anger from injustice.
But every time, whenever one camps riots, they feel justified and righteous, and the opposing camp, feels enlightened as to and justified in retaliation.
WOKE is bad. EXTREME privilege is bad.
Finding common ground and coming back to our senses might save us all.
Both camps are just a bunch of babies...
There were many instances where protests got out of hand this summer and courthouses and police stations were destroyed; entire city blocks were taken over and those responsible enacted and enforced their own laws. The actions weren’t referred to as sedition and most media outlets avoided words like mob, treason, etc.
Of course, don’t take my statement to mean I condone ANY case of violence, rioting, property damage, etc. (And in all cases those responsible and those inciting violence should be held accountable) but being consistent and avoiding charged language when depicting civil unrest would go a long way to heal the country rather than to divide it.
Like the way Clarence Thomas's wife made lists of people not loyal to Trump to be fired?
"Axios first reported that a "well-connected network of conservative activists" is drawing up lists of officials they perceive to be anti-Trump, who are then flagged to be fired and replaced with Trump loyalists."
https://www.axios.com/trump-memos-deep-state-white-house-ce5...
https://www.businessinsider.com/ginni-thomas-wife-supreme-co...
Seems to me a certain leader followed this same playbook circa 1939.
"Barr Told Prosecutors to Consider Sedition Charges for Protest Violence"
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/politics/william-barr-...
This is about the protests over the summer, not the recent insurrection. Yes, I'm calling it that. I think functionally it matters a bit more if the USAG is using words like "sedition" compared to media outlets or internet posters.
The white supremacist terrorists's goal yesterday was to prevent a formal certification process that's central to the transition of executive power. Many people were armed and prepared for violence: multiple IEDs were found, multiple people had body armor, multiple people had loaded firearms & extra ammunition, people brought a guillitine, people were shouting chants about killing senators & reps, multiple people had zip-ties or handcuffs. That is sedition.
Unlike BLM protestors, the terrorist's intent was a coup: they wanted to undermine a democracy's most important legal process. BLM wants to use legal means to revolutionize the country's public safety, primarily via re-allocating city and state police budgets to programs that have effective track records of increasing public safety and not ending in the murder of Black people.
Words start out with power - until they're overused to the point of banality and lose it.
The seditious mob injured 50 officers and killed one of them.
You should quit defending them. Stop with the "both-sidesisms". We can clearly point out which group is evil here.
Calling for your people to all organize outside of the capitol building, claiming that the election was fraudulent without providing evidence, and then telling the active terrorists "we love you" should be sufficient evidence for you.
You can see/hear/read (via transcript) starting about here: https://youtu.be/ht20eDYmLXU?t=10186
Romney, American Elections, Press "enemy of the people", American 3rd world country, Republicans Fighting/Boxing, Fight Bad People, Pence and Constitution, Congress addressing assault on country, Walk down to Capitol with me, Show strength and be strong, Demand congress do the right thing lawfully, March over peacefully and patriotically make voices heard, Integrity of elections and country, Country under siege, blah blah
Get up to the final incite: https://youtu.be/ht20eDYmLXU?t=13513
and it's had a tremendous impact that we got rid of catch and release we got rid of all of the stuff that we had to live with but now the caravans they think biden's getting in the caravans are forming again they want to come in again and rip off our country can't let it happen as this enormous crowd shows we have truth and justice on our side we have a deep and enduring love for america in our hearts we love our country we have overwhelming pride in this great country and we have it deep in our souls together we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people by the people and for the people our brightest days are before us our greatest achievements still wait i think one of our great achievements will be election security because nobody until i came along had any idea how corrupt our elections were and again most people would stand there at nine o'clock in the evening and say i want to thank you very much and they go off to some other life but i said something's wrong here something's really wrong can't have happened and we fight we fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell you're not gonna have a country anymore our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun my fellow americans for our movement for our children and for our beloved country and i say this despite all that's happened the best is yet to come so we're going to we're going to walk down pennsylvania avenue i love pennsylvania and we're going to the capitol and we're going to try and give the democrats are hopeless they're never voting for anything not even one vote but we're going to try and give our republicans the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help we're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country so let's walk down pennsylvania avenue i want to thank you all god bless you and god bless america thank you all for being here this is incredible thank you very much
But you are more right than wrong, he could easily have channeled all that energy into something truly horrible just by saying “It’s the Socialists! Let’s get the bastards!”
The fact is there is a history of Trump supporters turning violent after Trump rallies and speeches. It’s an established pattern that requires willfully ignoring to contend he has plausible deniability.
Also, FWIW, I don't support anything remotely close to storming building, but people on the left certainly are quick to blame when I've watched exact same thing happen over the last year or two.
That being said, his incitement Wednesday was actually pretty explicit. From the Times: Trump said "If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore" before urging supporters to go to the capital. Sounds like a pretty powerful incitement from a sitting President.
I wasn't intentionally leaving anything out though, I took that quote directly from the Times.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today.”
You may believe that the word “patriotically” was a dog-whistle, but none of the headlines characterized the statement correctly.
It's not gonna happen, because it didn't happen. I've asked everyone I know to cite the same thing, and no one has been able to. Of course, that won't stop the narrative, because truth has become irrelevant.
EDIT: I find it amusing that even the people that have responded to you so far, still haven't actually cited anything yet.
https://media-cdn.factba.se/realdonaldtrump-twitter/13450881...
https://media-cdn.factba.se/realdonaldtrump-twitter/13469549...
https://media-cdn.factba.se/realdonaldtrump-twitter/13469004...
Here's a video that he posted after the events at the capitol that was deleted where he keeps suggesting the election was stolen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcfcTB9-S2s
Local news is usually not so biased either.
But Washington Times, Breitbart, Random Youtube Vlogger, etc...none of those can be trusted. That's why they're never linked to on Hackernews, except maybe in comments, I'd imagine.
They're basically tabloids. Good to cross-reference with Snopes or Politifact if you are curious what's true. Personally, I like to read multiple sources and google a topic to get a better picture to see other 'takes'. Only way to not get bubble/group think.
From https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-tells-rioters-i-know-how-...
I'm going to presume the WSJ did their work properly and you can watch him say those words in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X0KIYInLHc - that's a 70 minute long speech claiming (not in the exact words) "we have been defrauded!" and then saying those words. Make a less-than-intelligent, not-shy-to-use-violence (should I cite the demographics of Trump voters for you?), crowd mad and then tell them "We're going to go there and give them a piece of our mind.", geez, what do you expect was going to happen?
No, he never uttered "I want you to go there and beat up the cops with anything you find, break the windows, vandalize the building, and terrorize those lawmakers so they put me back into power.", he's smart enough to never explicitly say things that will get him in trouble, just like the 11780 phone call or asking Comey to back off from Michael Flynn.
He told people to go to the capital, "take back our country", and you can't do it with weakness, you need to do it with strength. That seems pretty straightforward to me. And he did it all while fanning the flames by repeating discredited conspiracy theories that he knows plays to the people in attendance.
If the terrorists are white, they're treated differently.
https://towardsdatascience.com/how-isis-uses-twitter-1006579...
Or were you talking more of an "official" twitter account for the organization itself (the same way Wendy's has a twitter account)?
- Nancy Pelosi
Definition of uprising : an act or instance of rising up especially : a usually localized act of popular violence in defiance usually of an established government
There's plenty of hate and misinformation in those subreddits. None of them have been banned yet.
Here is a nice article on the whole situation:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-mill...
>Totally different than something like "the election was rigged", which was tested and failed in court, but still gets shouted from the rooftops, leading to dangerous outcomes like what we saw in DC.
Yes, that was untrue, ridiculous, and in the end became dangerous. I'm pointing out the usual hypocrisy on both the left and the right when it comes to their own pet causes.
Here is my money quote from the report:
> If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.
That Russia helped Trump is generally agreed upon. Was it the only factor in his win? Of course not.
But your whataboutism here doesn't hold water. Sure, there are subreddits that commonly exaggerated the truth about the Russia thing. Should they should get banned, since r/donaldtrump got banned for supporting violence? The two issues are so very different. I do not see hypocrisy in this case.
It is only agreed upon when you don't talk to people outside of your own echo chamber. In 2016, people were just shocked that so many people could vote for a loathsome person like Trump. Dems were unhappy and looked for someone to blame, except themselves for running such a weak candidate. 2020 was just as fair an election, and Trump got even more votes than 2016.
>Sure, there are subreddits that commonly exaggerated the truth about the Russia thing. Should they should get banned, since r/donaldtrump got banned for supporting violence?
What is the standard? Misinformation is OK? Anyway, I don't think an argument here will change anyone's views. People will eventually realize that the Dems have been conning their supporters for quite a while now.
You're telling me this whole entire article is fake?
> What is the standard? https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy
Edit: every time I post a comment like this here I get downvoted. I’m not complaining, downvote away. But I have to wonder if the folks downvoting realize how much this site is moderated and how much they’re actively participating in it.
Only because the cancel mob hasn't also figured a way to shut down those sites and prohibit you from building a platform of your own.
Yet.
This site currently doesn't ban people just because the post is disagreeable. I've managed to respectfully discuss inflammatory topics here before, even though I'm usually the one with the unpopular opinion. On reddit people just get downvoted to oblivion or banned on sight if they post anything that offends the sensibilities of the group.
From the post itself. The subreddit was banned for breaking ToS. I'd expect the same on this site if I were to repeatedly call for violence.
Fixed it for ya ;)
A major city would have approximately four local TV stations with any kind of news organization and two newspapers. Maybe you'd have CNN if you had cable, which a lot of people didn't have. I could guarantee you right here that none of them would platform extreme viewpoints, and the country was much better off for it. I guess if you lived in NYC you'd have a few more options, but they were still pretty limited. And none of these were interactive in any way we'd recognize: maybe, at the most, you'd get a letter to the editor published if you got lucky.
The idea where anyone could say anything and be given a massive platform on an international social network that most of the population uses is a very, very new development.
Algorithm-driven social media where anyone can post whatever is actively harmful to our country. Right now, if you view any YouTube videos about WW2, you'll start getting videos "explaining" that the Holocaust was a hoax in your recommendations. If you're thinking about getting into hunting, and you look up gun reviews on YouTube, your recommendations are going to fill up with "Stop the Steal" and QAnon and other boogaloo propaganda. This is the kind of behavior that, if allowed to continue, will absolutely and utterly burn down society.
So Parler should be mandated to host democrat/left views, too, right? After all, it'd be egregious to shut down the views of so many people.
Wait, no, Parler openly and happily deletes "non right wing posts, users and forums". My bad.
> Ownership of the house changes every couple of decades
If you can't control your house, what's the point of owning it? This undermines the whole concept of private ownership.
Perhaps the issue isn't that black and white.
I don't know how old you are but do you recall the mid to late 90s/early 2000's in the US? Back then we had to fight so shows like South Park could be shown on cable television (a private platform) due to the fact that the general consensus among the population was that content like that offended their personal and religious values and should be prohibited. Those exact people won't be in power again, but people similar to them almost certainly will. Moves like this hand them a weapon to use against you.
There's no way your idea makes any sense. It's impossible to implement -- unless of course we have no private ownership and the government runs and pays for everything but I feel like that would be even worse.
Cable TV didn't want to run "offensive" shows because their advertisers wouldn't pay to advertise with them if they did. So who's going to pay under your plan? Who's going to pay to host all this on the Internet?
Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and only post when you can keep that standard. Yes, we tell everyone else (including ourselves) the same thing. There's no exemption for being right, or feeling strongly. Nor does it depend on how badly other people behave.
People promoting the “election fraud” lie, or supporting the insurrection/coup attempt are undermining democracy and are borderline seditious. It’s not okay to spread that lie, and if not ban, HN should at least officially condemn those false and odious beliefs.
Right now I believe it’s our civic duty to make clear that those beliefs are unacceptable and anti-democratic and will not be tolerated.
I don’t know if you really understand that an armed mob attempted to take hostage members of Congress in order to stop the certification of the new, legitimately elected President.
What do you believe? If supporting that isn’t the line that someone should be condemned for crossing, and shunned, then what is?
HN - your silence is complicity. How do you think people of color feel reading HN comments where folks argue how racism isn’t really a thing or was “solved” in the 60s? Do they feel like people are being kind according to the guidelines?
What does it say about you if you ban me for what I said, but keep the racists and folks who wouldn’t mind seeing Trump get three or four or five more terms, because I’m honest about my beliefs but they hide behind junior-high level verbal wordplay?