Claiming such protests are "violent mobs" is nothing new: https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574/p...
Also note that some of the violence was instigated by the police: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-p...
OTOH mobs in DC, Michigan were motivated by "masks=slavery" & "election fraud" both of which are completely imaginary, and EXACTLY one "leader" has been promoting it: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-longstanding-history-c...
Some of the protests that happened in the civil rights movement were indeed violent although this has been rather aggressively whitewashed in government approved public school classes meant to teach students the way to affect real change is to stand around with signs and sing songs and have racist white police officers beat you until you win (Kings flirting with communism and advocacy of reparations doesn't get much mention either). Ever hear of this guy called Malcolm X who wrote quite a bit about violence, he's definitely not somebody who could be allowed on social media. Race riots happened, people got beaten, some were killed largely by the police (just like in this most recent protest) but also by protesters (just like in this most recent protest). Did this delegitimize the civil rights movement? No, it was a noble movement, people just whitewash and dramatize it instead to prevent any degree of cognitive dissonance, and then compare modern day movements to the whitewashing to whitewash the modern day equivalents.
Back then like today, the degree of violence was greatly exaggerated, disproportionately by the media and by racist segregationist's. Protests are mostly a dull affair filled overwhelmingly with non-violent people and only the exciting bits hit the front pages. The extent of violence by Trump supporters too is greatly exaggerated, mostly by media and their political opponents. If one police officer dies and 4 protestors, the only reasonable reaction is a speech crackdown against those who blame this incident on democrats dubiously. Since obviously cracking down on the free non-violent exchange of ideas and advocacy of peaceful protest is what prevents violence from happening.
Point I'm driving at is that if the entire argument is based around the idea that any violence, or even violent mobs, delegitimizes a large movement than virtually all movements from BLM to the Civil rights movements to... whatever this is.... are delegitimized. Really the issue people have with the Trump supporters, above all, is that they're wrong and unpopular. As such they're a good test for exactly how much people REALLY support freedom of speech and the right to protest a cause that isn't broadly supported.
But you can't compare people committing act of violence to perpatuate a lie at the greater expense of society to people protesting for civil rights. And no the people that stormed the Capitol building, which hasn't happened since the war of 1812 and was committed by a hostile foreign nation, were not 'protesting'. Sedition is not a right.
I've been seeing lots of people write things like this very recently. But honestly, when did you start using the word "sedition" and when did the word acquire emotional weight to you, as a dastardly crime? When and how do you think other people got familiar with the word?
If I'm being honest, my association with the word sedition before pretty recently was almost entirely a very dim memory of the Alien and Sedition Acts being mentioned in grade school. And an even dimmer memory that they were unpopular and probably unconstitutional.
It's not that I think it's necessarily wrong to use it, I just feel suddenly surrounded by people who are pretending that we all are used to using it and viscerally being outraged by people who commit it. Which feels weird since I can't remember seeing it in normal conversation in like 30+ years.
Maybe it sounds better than treason, perhaps because treason is a word right wing types like to use?
Is sedition illegal? Should it be? When did the consensus arise, if it did? The historical laws against sedition are not generally presented in a good light, in school, from what I can tell.
I'm not questioning whether the attack on the Capitol was problematic, but why sedition is the go-to term. I feel like there's an echo of the awkward term "collusion" that eventually allowed people to say there was nobody charged with collusion.
Here is the law against seditious conspiracy https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384
> If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
All my life, "sedition" has meant, as far as I knew, criticism of the government, possibly false criticism. Nor did I know of laws against it since around a hundred years ago or more.
Here is something saying sedition is:
"The federal crime of advocating insurrection against the government through speeches and publications."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/sedition
Here is a part of the law that sounds like it's outlawing sedition even though it doesn't actually include the word: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385
The significance, ultimately, is I'm suspicious that someone is pushing this term because they want to turn around and outlaw criticizing the government and say Democrats asked for it. Or, even if nobody has that plan yet, that using the term carelessly could invite it.
How are we defining sedition though? Rebelling against society is one thing. I'm an old punk rocker. Did I break laws I didn't agree with? Yes, repeatedly. But I also accepted that, right or wrong, it was my personal choice, I made those decisions myself and if I faced consequences for it they were my consequences to face, not someone else's. There's a difference between sending a message and killing the messenger. I get the over all point you're making but damn what do we call it? This is way past protesting or rebelling against the government and society. We poked the bear but we didn't burn down the entire forest just to spite the bear.
Lies and fraud implies bad faith, riots and coup being end goal.
The intent is different, so it is false equivalence.
Sure, if it were real.
I mean, if the Presidency was indeed stolen by election fraud, protests and rioting would be justified. But unlike the BLM protests, they were based on lies. Those lies did real damage, and they haven't stopped, so publishers are cutting ties with them to avoid further crime and terrorism.
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/17/393646640/hands-up-dont-shoot...
Police response to violence in both cases is justified
[0] https://youtu.be/lJ84xM8YPpw?t=271
[1] https://i.imgur.com/ceAwn59_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=gr...
Explaining everything by race is also a dead end.
I am sympathetic to those who have been impacted economically. But, many of those who are despairing do end up blaming "outsiders" for their problems.
They are angry because they lost and they are being told that they didn't lose. If you can be told that anything you don't like is the case then you will always be "unheard."
MLK didn't make this statement so that anyone who was unhappy could justify violence.
You can't just live in unreality and pretend you're a victim. Either you can't see it for some reason or you do see it and you're pretending you don't.
The anger is what got Trump elected in the first place.
> MLK didn't make this statement so that anyone who was unhappy could justify violence.
No, but it's a reflection of a common symptom, not a justification. Silencing begets violence _because_ it's all that's left.
The pen is mightier than the sword, but when you take the pen away, what are they left with?
Jobs. Opioid deaths. Suicides. Life expectancy. Standards of living. Manufacturing erosion. Lack of a future. Lack of wealth creation. Rural and middle class erosion. Education costs. Healthcare costs. Endless war. Shitty rotting infrastructure. Mismanagement of the US fiscal house by worthless political elites obsessed with their own petty bubbles in DC. A mediocre social safety net despite enormous government spending. Corporate-government-lobby coordination to endlessly pillage the people (eg per capita healthcare costs in the US being 2x what they should be). Being lied to for generations by the elite political class while things haven't gotten better for half the country for 50 years.
Everyone is starting to look around and ask good questions. Like, why do US taxpayers & citizens fork over $8.2 trillion (directly or through debt/inflation) every year, equal to ~40% of the economy, and have so little to show for it? Why is there no money in Social Security? What did they do with what should be the world's largest sovereign wealth fund? Why does nobody call them out on the lie that is the non-existent Social Security lockbox? Why do we keep burning trillions of dollars in the Middle East? Insert 487 other lies from the political class.
Trump got their attention because he brought up some of these lies - including the endless war aspect - and was one of the first leading candidates to ever do so. It's a similar reason why Bernie Sanders came so close to the Presidency twice, a large group of people on both sides are very angry and have had enough of the same old status quo (which the elites in power have an interest in perpetuating forever). Those trillions of dollars wasted in the Middle East should have been in a Social Security wealth fund, and some of it should have been put toward infrastructure.
Tens of millions of white people - those core Trump voters - are getting increasingly angry about all of it. Most of them probably have no idea what to do, so they're flailing for something different (if you're not an experienced fighter and you get hit in the face, your only capable reaction may be to flail). Those voters are not supposed to be upset about anything (so goes the fantasy social theory), because of their privilege. How is their privilege looking compared to a white person in Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Britain, France, the Netherlands or Sweden? I'd say many of them are increasingly worse off and they know it when they look around. Those standards are what white people in the US look at to compare their well-being, and that's where they start to get increasingly upset.
Michael Moore was right about what he said about Trump voters prior to the 2016 election, why they were seeking to elect him. Those voters wanted to throw a molotov cocktail at the system. And they were not thinking particularly rationally, angry people rarely do.
People tend to vote for radical options when they're desperate. One can think less of them for voting for Trump, say they chose wrong, shit all over them, call them stupid, mock them, call for their arrest or purging, call for them to be blacklisted, try to suppress their speech and so on. One can shake one's head and proclaim that if they only voted Democrat they could have all of those things they want (which also begs the question on how the Democrats screwed up so badly that they lost the poor and lower class white voter that they used to have). Those voters feel attention-abandoned by the Democrats - which is an ongoing mistake by the Dems - and Trump scooped them up by paying attention to them. They're angry regardless of anyone's thoughts about them, they're increasingly lost regardless, and they're going to get more so as time goes on and as things fail to improve, as their lot in life fails to improve. They're angry because their point of comparison isn't what some people think it should be, it's what they think it should be. White lower & middle class people are never going to bounce around happy because they're better off than a poor black person in the US (which is what the premise of throwing white privilege statements at them is meant to accomplish), that is never going to be their point of comparison no matter what anybody says to them; their point of comparison is going to be other affluent white people around the world (that is not a politically correct thing to say, of course, it's the actual truth of their perspective and what's really going on).
Telling people that they shouldn't be angry does not work, particularly when they've been dealing with decades of standard of living erosion and have little hope for the future being better. The elites have been conspiring against their interests forever at this point, it's little wonder they're staggering around in a daze with little clue as to what direction to go. It's a mistake for the Democrats to obsess over blaming and castigating those people, instead of focusing on convincing them, swaying them, educating them, peeling away voters and ultimately delivering real life improvements (the big part of that) if they truly believe they have a better path to offer for their future. The Democrats have power again (narrowly), and they need to deliver a lot better than they did in 2009-2010 with their mostly squandered super majority.
> It's a mistake for the Democrats to obsess over blaming and castigating those people, instead of focusing on convincing them, swaying them, educating them, peeling away voters and ultimately delivering real life improvements (the big part of that) if they truly believe they have a better path to offer for their future.
What if there simply isn't a better path? Between automation and foreign competition, it might simply not be possible to return to an economy like the one we had post-WWII.
This is where everyone comes along to tell me about UBI, but I think this is not addressing the problem. A lot of people don't want to be handed free money, they want opportunities to work and improve their lives. A slower treadmill is still a treadmill. I wonder if it is simply impossible to provide that, and maybe the current reality is close to the best this is going to get.
I think maybe the best possible future is one where many (and eventually most) people live out their lives hooked up to an opiate IV and a VR headset.
We also simply are too efficient to have multiple of a field any more too. We end up having one department store chain instead of four or five in an area; every market seems to solidify into 2 or 3 companies. Many jobs are virtualized to where those companies hire a fraction of humanity and have weak supply chains.
I think what will happen is just over time we will have less people. People will stop reproducing in sort of an equilibrium until we reach a point where we balance out to the economy's needs. I don't think it will be top down, but people simply cannot afford to have kids in a part time gig economy.
I'm all for tariffs when there is some other goal that makes sense (for example I think tariffs should bake in the cost of environmental or other regulatory compliance we have that the foreign trading partner does not).
China’s not free trade anyways (not in terms of tariffs, but in terms of foreign businesses operating locally, and in terms of manipulating currency) so there’s only so much they can retaliate...
The Trump supporters who I am talking about have spent the last 4 years alienating their friends and family, bragging about their success, and making fun of those who are less fortunate than themselves. The Trump supporters who I am talking about have spent the last 4 years running people over with their cars, pointing guns(and shooting) at people that disagree with them, and now attempted to overthrow a democratic election.
Whatever filter bubble you think I am in is not as tiny as you might think. I have lived all over the country. I am from rural Michigan. I personally know conservatives and have close family that I deeply care about that are fully absorbed into the Trump cult. These are people who were upper middle class by the time the Bush and Obama administrations had come to pass; these are people that have destroyed lifelong relationships to maintain their allegiance with Trump.
I know the hardship is out there, and that I can agree with you on. However, the Trump supporters I know have more property and wealth than I could dream of.
And he did take a few steps to fix issues, including on criminal justice reform and eg his executive order on healthcare pricing (how was something like that not in the ACA?). A pittance for sure. However if you're drowning and grasping at straws, those will do. The way the system attacked Trump for four years also makes them believe even more so that he represents the anti-establishment, that he would tear down the existing system.
Trump voters also liked his economy until the pandemic crashed it. They think he was at least partially responsible for it. Wages for the bottom 2/3 were rising at the fastest pace in two decades. That wasn't courtesy of Trump (it was due to a very tight labor market, which would have happened in that term regardless), however as President he gets the credit for it, that's how it always works politically. Absent the pandemic, Trump would have easily sailed to a second term via the electoral college.
Why did Bernie Sanders voters come back and vote for him so voraciously again after he (maybe) lost last time vs Hillary Clinton? Because they reject the Hillary Clinton & Joe Biden status quo, the never-ending cycle of sticking to the types of candidates and policies of the recent past that have failed.
Imagine an alternative election without Trump as a Republican: vote for system status quo conservative candidate (Jeb Bush clones at best, maybe we'll get some more war out of it), or vote for Joe Biden, one of the guys that put us into Iraq & Afghanistan for two decades, represents everything wrong with the past 50 years of American politics (which he was an important part of), is a pure establishment candidate, represents the entrenched political elites, and sponsored the human rights smashing 1990s crime bill. One helluva choice Americans get. Death by this, or death by that. Besides, people largely vote by partisanship (which is how you get prominent Democrat Congresspersons that will say Biden is guilty of sexual assault, and they still support him for President; or how you get his VP calling him a racist one minute and then gleefully joining forces with him and pretending he's not a racist the next minute; that's the nature of being a partisan). The vast majority of voters on each side will stay on their Republican / Democrat side; so if you're a Republican, your choice is Trump or a likely return to something akin to Bush's various terrible policies (the Bush money machine likely would have handed Jeb the Republican nomination in 2016, absent Trump). So as I said, flail it is.
I'd gladly take Jeb Bush over Trump. Not that I'd actually vote for either one, but, at least Bush seemed competent.
These people have been told that their trouble is caused by brown people coming to take their jobs, by affirmative action. They are told that the government is the problem, when in reality so many poor people in the South rely on government assistance just to survive. They look for a cause for their troubles and the right wing media hands them a false narrative.
How did white privilege allow them access?
I assume you have noticed how the majority of the people in the 1/6 "protests" were white, didn't you?
This was supposed to be a group of people who "backed the blue" and stood for law and order. Perhaps their guard was let down because of this?
Perhaps it was because the police response to mass gatherings has changed and become more lenient since the beginning of the BLM protests.
Interesting that you posted this link with the image of national guard members on the Lincoln Memorial steps this summer. I had read the an official, maybe Mayor Bowser didn't want this exact scene pictured to happen again because it looked bad.
Anyway, here is the tweet from the Mayor Bowser officially declining additional federal law enforcement to help MPD and their partners.
I don't think that Mayor Bowser refused to get additional law enforcment because of white privilege.
Are you actually trying to make that claim or just arguing for the sake of arguing?
That's fine, obviously we don't have to agree.
I do ask that you be a bit more civil though in our discussion.
All I'm saying is that if you're going to disagree with Occam's Razor, given the history of racial relations in this country, including the fact that there's an entire protest movement about police violence against non-white people, you've gotta bring something besides "could it be," and "perhaps."
If you can't deal with that, I'd suggest you avoid internet discussions entirely.
"I assume you have noticed how the majority of the people in the 1/6 "protests" were white, didn't you? "
"You're gonna have to provide more than "could it be," and "perhaps," if you want me to swallow that line."
"Are you actually trying to make that claim or just arguing for the sake of arguing?"
"If you can't deal with that, I'd suggest you avoid internet discussions entirely."
So I don't think you're arguing in good faith.
I'm not certain the context of why she begins her statement "To be clear". I looked at her previous tweets from the day and day before and this matter wasn't specifically addressed. The only thing I could think of is that a federal law enforcement authority wanted to get involved and she didn't feel the need?
https://twitter.com/MayorBowser/status/1346530358674792466
"To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, MPD if such plans are underway."
I think she would have been a really decent president, even though I think she has an unpleasant media personality.
It couldn't be that the "tech cartel" is concerned about a specific subset of speech designed to insight violence.
What I’m saying is both actions didn’t end with a good look and they both should be condemned
Edit: I seemed to have touched a nerve. I was rewatching video from people storming the capitol. They were not armed and they were all milling about without a plan. Even the lady that was shot was unarmed
Edit2: I think we are being hoodwinked. We saw lots of angry people storming the capitol out of frustration, provoked by false information fed to them. I don’t think the disinformation campaign stopped at the rally, I think it is continuing now. Everyone is being led to believe that the folks who walked in were acting the same as the Michigan capitol protest earlier last year. It was not like that. It was a bunch of people thinking they were going to make a difference and ended up not having a clue of what they were going to do. The orderly exit of most leaving the capitol building is proof of this.
I just ask before you rage downvote to pause and think is this the division they (those making the narrative of DC burning vs Capitol Siege) are trying to sow? Both actions are heinous and doesn’t look good for America regardless of how you try to spin it.
1) Bombs were left during the invasion. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-50k-reward-pipe-bombs-capit...
2) Weapons were recovered. https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/13-arrested-5-weapons-reco...
That’s weapons recovered. How many more were carrying?
Jake Angeli carried a spear. Several weapons recovered from Eric Munchel.
I honestly cannot tell if you are being sarcastic here.
Causation != correlation. I did not see any overt firearms or weapons on the people storming the capitol building. It will be hard, because it goes against your beliefs.. but I challenge you to find those armed people in the various live streams that captured the event.
Although they certainly did attack police officers. With flag poles, ladders, fire extinguishers, pepper spray.
I’ll leave it there.
Seems like the mob was pretty well armed.
Not only do I not have these opinions, I haven't seen those opinions expressed here.
This thread is about the youtube channel of one of the instigators of this insane action against your elected officials being banned. The BLM riots - which certainly had bad aspects - are off-topic and any attempt to drag them in here is simply whataboutism.
My point is the narrative. Take a step back and observe and claim the wrong done by both parties instead of saying one is right and one is wrong.
But all the people who invaded the capitol? They all invaded the capitol. Let’s be clear about that.
If there was somebody armed during this crime, they should all be held responsible for it
I am not a lawyer, but as I understand it, in some circumstances, a group of people that commit a felony during which someone dies, can all be charged with murder, even if none of them intended to kill and only one of them actually did.
This is kind of controversial and not the case in all jurisdictions.
https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1347011413101998080?s=1...
Further, staying inline with the thread.. This is how we define “mass armed people storming the capitol”? Contrast to the three blazes that were going on around dc in may. Did those controlled fires mean dc was burning down?
I am challenging the narrative. Dc was not burning in may just the same as a large mob of ARMED people didn’t storm the capitol...
> One.
One example is what you asked for. It's not commenting in good faith if you move goalposts like that.
Look, I am currently combing all of the video from the event for faces in a bid to help identify people who were in the capitol. That guy was NOT on any live stream. This the original claim of “saw it from being glued to the TVs and monitors” is a false one and I challenged op to find an example in the stream that he watched. Instead he provided a photo op from Twitter. You yourself even cut off the part where i set the goal posts.
Regardless when I release my project this week you will see that no one was “clearly armed” as they walked through those doors. This was a travesty, but it is IMHO just one big false narrative like DC burning in May (the original goal post I replied to)
The link you posted before is a selection of the protests away from the building. I skipped through it and could not find any view of storming the building at all.
Is this what you were looking for? Or are you specifically looking for people who had their weapons in the open and visible to cameras and staff before even getting in? Because I don't think they would be that stupid.
And no, I don't believe the majority had any serious weapons with them. There is a decent number of people with padded gloves though - not something you normally take with you.
Abraham Lincoln said that all controversies are about minorities and majorities, and that one of them must submit, or the government ceases. There is no alternative. And that if the losing states of the 1860 election were permitted to secede, it would be the end of self-rule, the end of democracy. And he decided that could not be permitted.
In the 2016 election, a majority of voters elected Clinton. They submitted to the minority because that is what the Constitution required. And they did it peacefully. Clinton conceded the day after the election.
Fast forward to 2020, Trump has gotten 2/3rds of the Republicans in the House to debase themselves. They are now a sedition caucus, selling these lies too. As well as several Republicans in the Senate. The lie that they are not the minority. And the lie that they do not have to submit. They can fight instead.
This is a non-insurable proposition, because the majority was never going to submit this time.
The message being broadcast for two months is: cease the government. That is why violence broke out in 1861, that's why it broke out last week, in the first violent transfer of power since then.
BLM riots vs capitol attack? Not at all the same thing. Not at all the same risk. And the whataboutism? Sounds like white nationalist nonsense to me.
These people are pissed off, simply because theyre being told to be pissed off. There is no nuance, culture is what we are told at scale. Its why everyones pissed off. Anger is the easiet engagement to bait and advertising based businesses at scale are powered by engagement.
You're seeing the fruits of 70+ years of conservatives telling their audience "Everything sucks now, and everything will suck more in the future, and those people over there are to blame for all of it".
This is the reason you're seeing so many educated, affluent people among those who stormed the Capitol - they're just really, REALLY pissed off.