On the other we have hooligans organized for the express purpose of overturning the results of a democratic election.
In the case of BLM, the crimes don't reflect on the movement's overall purpose. Nobody expects property damage to be a vehicle for police reform -- it's an argument for more police presence, if anything. In the case of the capitol riots, not only are the crimes worse (storming the capitol >> property damage), but the criminal acts absolutely do reflect on the movement's agenda. Intimidating congress is a plausible vehicle for obtaining the votes they needed that day to overturn the election. Trump's pre-riot speech emphasized that this was the goal. These factors increase the culpability of platforms and leadership in the capitol riots as compared to BLM.
I, for one, believe that taking over a city block and declaring it an autonomous zone is significantly less concerning than attempting to stop the presidential election -- arguably the single most important piece of our democracy -- from happening, calling for the death of the vice president while building gallows, and potentially looking for other politicians to kill.
Yeah, CHAZ was wrong and stupid. Yeah, the people who did it should get some kind of punishment. So should the people who destroyed private property during the riots, that's not cool.
But it seems pretty clear to me that the storming of the capital is so much worse than that as it is a clear attempt to undermine our democracy. I believe the response should reflect that.
Vandalism, trespassing, arson, assault, and so on can and should be prosecuted because they are crimes. Full stop. The ideological motivation of the perpetrators should be irrelevant with respect to prosecuting the crimes.
I do realize that the impact and repercussions of the events is certainly a point for debate, but that seems orthogonal to the immediate and critical goal of keeping the peace.
> Vandalism, trespassing, arson, assault
, which BLM and the Capitol Riots had in common, to distract from the attempt to overturn the election of the President of the United States of America, which they did not have in common.
All of it should be prosecuted. Both the parts they had in common and the parts they did not.
Having a convicted terrorist as a director of their beloved BLM movement means nothing. Lofty ideals matter.
Invading a city block means nothing. Lofty ideals matter.
If you don’t think the people who did CHOP and Capitol are equally dangerous to society, you’re wilfully turning a blind eye.
Except it hasn't been. You just don't want to listen to what people are actually saying because it's easier to argue against a strawman.
FWIW lots of people on the left do the same thing. So I guess you're in good company?
It's okay to criticize both things here. CHOP/CHAZ was clearly wrong, as is throwing a molotov at a police officer. No question about that. The capitol was wrong as well.
We want to pretend that this is all Trump’s fault- but we’re unable to recognize that it’s Trump who is a symptom of a systemic failure of logic and reason.
It wasn't "clearly" wrong initially; just weird and novel. It was a nice break from SPD's regular violence against protesters.
Why didn't the city's electeds attempt to move back in sooner? Because something about gassing their own citizens was politically unpopular for some reason. Note that this was summer, most Seattlites don't have air conditioning, and teargas spreads in the air. People I knew on Cap hill were coughing despite having all their windows closed (and sweltering).
In comparison, the BLM unrest seemed like it would predictably peter out fairly quickly without much in the way of concrete changes, and that's exactly what happened. At no point did I expected some radical uncertainty in the future as a result.
... who were trying to get an election overturned at the behest of POTUS. Motive matters, even if they were too disorganized to stand a chance.
CHAZ: An occupation. They weren't killing anyone. They weren't trying to kill people. They literally setup a community garden.
Capitol Hill attack: An insurrection. It was clearly a violent rebellion against the government of the US, with people actively working to kill the VPOTUS and members of the government.
I can easily see the differences. So can many others.
> What childish madness.
It's childish madness to treat the two as the same.
Context matters. One group had specific goals, none of which involved killing. The other group specifically was calling out to kill someone.
CHOP started as a bunch of protestors who saw the police make the terrible strategic decision to withdraw from their own precinct building and said "hey, let's declare that this area is self-governing to make a political statement about how police presence isn't improving things." And it initially really was peaceful enough to walk your kids through to look at all the hippie positivity. The chaos and violence came about after the "autonomy" went on way too long and opportunists (anarchists and wannabe vigilantes) moved in.
Everything would have worked out a lot better if the CHOP folks yelled "you're retreating? This is our neighborhood now! Rah, rah, rah!" and then a day or two later the cops said "very funny, you made your point, but we are coming back and you better get the fuck out of the way or get your heads beaten in" and that was the end of it.
Look, I'll agree that everyone involved with both CHAZ and the Capitol Riots needs to go to jail. That includes Donald Trump, though. He was the one trying an end-run around the US electoral process in order to hold on to power for four more years.
You are, in your post upthread.
Yet hundreds of cities are in the process of reevaluating how they allocate police and social service resources.
In light of that it'll be interesting to see what comes out of the capital mess.
- The BLM movement, while the source of many large large scale protests (several of which turned into riots and outstayed their welcome) never, at any point, even pretended to stage a coup or murder a member of the Capitol Police.
David Dorn was a retired black police officer killed.
Shay Mikalonis was shot in the head, but survived. He is paralyzed from below the neck.
And to add. The rhetoric has likely been causing the increase in cop killings this year. As of July it was up 28%. https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-officers-killed-surge-28-ye...
> Officials said they had found no evidence that the gunman, Micah Johnson, 25, had direct ties to any protest or political group
You don't have to be part of BLM to be black and angry at cops.
Except it happened at a BLM protest. And in this day and age, evidently having someone commit some violent act at an event is enough to blame scores (and more) of other people at that event, and organizations associated with it. And then de-platform them, and de-monetize them, .... and generally de-humanize them. (Like the protest at the Capitol)
Also, he was a member of the New Black Panther Party:
> NBPP head Quanell X said after the shooting that Johnson had been a member of the NBPP's Houston chapter for about six months, several years before.
> Following the shooting, a national NBPP leader distanced the group from Johnson, saying that he "was not a member of" the party.
But of course, any organization with ties to him would want to cut those ties and disavow him, making themselves look clean. Do you think BLM or other organizations would want ties to such people exposed?
Citation?
and to your 2nd point, I don't think it was ppl saying ACAB that raised the temperature and hatred towards cops. It was the cops killing innocent black people.
Just because one event raises the temperature doesn't mean another event also doesn't. Saying ACAB and defund the police seems like it would also raise the temperature.
That you can speak this untruth so casually is discomforting. You appear to believe the lies that are being spouted by someone who is attempting to defame Jacob Blake, without ever having evaluated the original video. If you had seen the video, you never would have made the claim that "he came at the cops with a knife." Who was this person that lied to you in this way? It would be useful to name and shame this individual or group.
Please watch the video, reassess your claim, and cast your doubts upon these people who told you this untruthful story.
Shortly after that he went into the car where there was another knife. He already showed he was willing to do violence towards cops with a knife prior to the video so when he went for a second one they shot him.
I never meant to imply he was shot when he was coming at the cops with a knife. It is not clear based on the video if he was coming towards the cops right when he is shot. He was moving around in the car and may have made moves towards the cops, but I cannot tell based on the video.
To suggest there was no imminent danger is non-sense. Jacob Blake just struggled with cops while holding a knife.
Of course if you look at more than just a couple second video you would know this.
Obviously every "unjustified" death, especially deaths by the police (who are trained and held to higher expectations given their position) is a tragedy. The riots and protests led to far more deaths, far more injuries, and far more damage (including causing the second wave as cases were decreasing) than seems at all justified even considering these tragic police shootings.
In other words, while police brutality is a genuine problem, the response was completely disproportionate, misinformed, and morally wrong.
So, the original idea there is police in the United States are killing black people for stupid reasons, which is true. There are no statistics to worry about for that one and there don't need to be: just look at a handful of publicized cases and be angry.
But of course, people do like statistics. You can't be angry without statistics. (Truly, you shouldn't. It's unhealthy). Also, that framework makes a terrible export. (Which is unfortunate because Canada loves importing protests from the States instead of making its own).
So, various other progressive movements globbed on to the name, as they do, but fortunately it's a more visceral thing than, say, Occupy Wall Street, so they are at least mostly on topic. I think the real problem, which is the source of most of the recent anger (see the equally badly named and easily co-opted slogan "Defund the police"), is that police are killing a lot of people for stupid reasons.
It is still important to emphasize that black lives matter, because they do, and it's infuriating that that makes people uncomfortable. But the root cause is the United States has an unreasonable approach to policing in general, which creates as many problems as it solves. And I think if you talk to most BLM supporters, they aren't going to tell you about racial sensitivity training or hiring more black cops: they're going to tell you how the police in a developed country shouldn't act as if they're expecting a war.
Is it though? Seems to me you're advocating feelings matter more than facts. I believe it would be more accurate to say "police in the United States are killing people for stupid reasons, which is true." while keeping in mind that those incidents are the exception, not the norm. The police shot 28 unarmed people in 2019. On a population of 320 million.
>This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_anal...
>We create a comprehensive database of officers involved in fatal shootings during 2015 and predict victim race from civilian, officer, and county characteristics. We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race. This suggests that increasing diversity among officers by itself is unlikely to reduce racial disparity in police shootings.
>In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population. The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
>This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities.
Out of curiosity, I understand that you're simply citing statistics from a source but I'd like to know if you think this reflects reality? If so, what reason would you suggest creates this?
Be very wary of someone who thinks their intuition is stronger than our best pursuits of data. And, based on what, Reddit r/videos and Twitter?
I agree that statistics are an incredibly powerful tool to understand the world but I disagree that they’re the “only lens on reality” since in some cases, ideologues are able to summon numbers that fit a preconceived notion.
Edit: oops, forgot the link (1) https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
I think the cause to first order is economics. Second and third order terms with much less but still contributing importance are political (decades of policy failures like the War on Drugs and welfare expansion, for-profit prisons, etc), and cultural (there is far too much celebration of crime culture, gang culture, and respect culture that normalizes the state of things in the black community).
Which gives me a bit of whiplash when I see many of those people outraged that the Capitol Police didn’t just start shooting indiscriminately into the crowd on 1/6.
What I've seen is mostly people pointing to that response as proving police know how to respond nonviolently to mass, even violent, protests, and therefore that the reason they choose a different stance and response when, e.g., BLM is involved is racial bias, not neutral procedure.
I noticed that that the BLM protests happened a few months before the 2016 election and then vanished. Then the same thing happened before the 2020 election.
To make this quantitative, here's a Google Trends link: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
Protests are not necessarily “newsworthy”; however, that search interest would track media stirring up news before elections seems likely.
Further, (and I say this as a Minneapolitan) the significant protests of this summer were very clearly and obviously precipitated by real world events, not astroturfed protest crowds.
I would surmise that a lot of the protests this summer were, emotionally, a consequence of the stress, economic uncertainty, and way-too-online cabin fever of the early stages of the COVID epidemic.
You are actually on CIA website marked as terrorist. \s
When you make a claim put some effort into it, instead of hearsay. And made up statements to support your point of view
So, Trump was behind it, so he could run on a law and order platform? Because he certainly did take advantage of it.
I'm afraid the boring truth was that ordinary people got angry during a time of high unemployment, with protests and rioting being a predictable result. It's not as though large protests over police shootings are new.
> Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years' imprisonment on the weapons and explosives charges. She spent 16 years in prison, during which she became a poet, author, and AIDS activist. Her sentence was commuted to time served by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001,[5] his final day in office.[6][7]
She was charged, served some of her time (16 years of 58 years is 27.586%), and then a president pardoned her.
Blessing? The blessing was for peaceful protests, the rioters were universally condemned.
>Susan Rosenberg literally bombed the Capitol in 1983 and now serves as vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand Currents, a "non-profit foundation that sponsors the fundraising and does administrative work for the Black Lives Matter global network, among other clients."
And served 15 years in prison for it with a 58 YEAR sentence. Clinton faced plenty of criticism for the pardon too. That being said, are you suggesting someone who has served their time should... permanently be ostracized by society? Prison is meant to punish not reform?
If you're suggesting she's still supporting violence, provide the evidence. Her book seems to indicate she has a different world view after spending time in prison. Literally the outcome we SHOULD want from people being arrested and imprisoned.
I know many people who defended the BLM rioters on social media. The actual rioters - not just the protesters.
No, they were not.
There was hand-wringing about “the language of the unheard”, bail funds being raised for arrested rioters, the author of a book titled “In Defense of Looting” being interviewed uncritically on NPR, Chris Cuomo on CNN rhetorically asking why protesters need to be peaceful, and many other such examples.
By who, this is supposedly coming from mainstream media, so cite your source.
>bail funds being raised for arrested rioters
By which major corporation or media group? Again, citation please.
>the author of a book titled “In Defense of Looting” being interviewed uncritically on NPR
That's what NPR does, they attempt to give a platform without injecting their own opinions into the interview. Regardless, I'd again say: citation, I even took the liberty this time for you:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...
>Chris Cuomo on CNN rhetorically asking why protesters need to be peaceful
It's great to take a part of a clip out of context. If you listen to the FULL clip - he's referring to protestors yelling and being angry and not following curfew (which he says they'll justifiably arrested for). In the very same clip he literally says
"Looting, arson, violence, now that’s something else. Don’t confuse that with protest or the people doing it with protesters"
So yes, taken out of context you can pretend that Cuomo was supporting violence.
Citation? Did I say that yet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1z0ekwqQX4&feature=emb_titl...
slightly off-topic but I don't think a 58-year sentence will reform anyone more than a 10-year sentence would. The entire American prison system is built around punishing our prisoners.
I really think the entire prison system needs to be rethought from the ground up though. It doesn't make sense that excons carry this weight with them throughout their life, failing background checks. If someone's been released from prison, they should be done with their punishment. Period.
You can add on non-prison sentencing if you must but I very much don’t like wasting people’s lives by holding them in a box.
And again, if you can make a case that the hypothetical murderer will immediately do it again if let out you can hold them longer.
In other cases, most violent criminals seem to be young men, so there’s some value in running out the clock so they aren’t young men anymore by the time they’re released.
Prison is not the only option by a long shot.
I don't think it invalidates all of the points of the platform of BLM, but it does make me question the sanity and legitimacy of the organization's leadership.
By far the scariest facet of the modern moment to me is all the people sneering at Trumpists detachment from reality while happily wallowing in their own post-truth bubble. The average person has always been horribly un- and misinformed, but the shift in the last couple of years in my white-collar, coastal social group legitimately terrifies me.
[1] Though I'm well-aware that getting attention and support is probably the most important part of driving social change, and they've obviously done very well there.
BLM 2015 didn't quite meet this tradeoff, and was in some cases explicitly against race-blind solutions to police violence and in favor of pseudoscience like IATs (at which point their detachment from reality points them in the opposite direction from managing to do good). BLM 2020 is pretty different in character, and while it still has its stupidities, I reckon that it's a decent enough direction that it may lead to some positive change.
I don't think it's about individually high-quality sources as much as it is about how you take in information. Don't consider yourself to understand an issue until you've heard a compelling argument on both sides, or have thoroughly convinced yourself that you've adequately searched through diverse enough fora. Don't read anything, from Alex Jones's Facebook page to the frontpage of the NYT, without spot-checking sources, reading studies, etc. There's no filter that ensures that journalists are the best humanity has to offer: just like all humans, plenty of them are incompetent or dishonest, and beyond that groupthink exists in cultures that get as insular and self-aggrandizing as journalism's. Correctly combine a variety of low-quality signals and you can get a really high-quality signal.
That being said, some general recommendations for individual sources are (in ascending order of obscurity) The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Marginal Revolution (economist Tyler Cowen's blog). I find they do a better job than most of:
1) representing different opinions intellectually honestly
2) being thorough in their reasoning and analysis
and/or
3) being fairly high-quality
For example, take the comment that you originally replied to, which asserted "Susan Rosenberg literally bombed the Capitol in 1983 and now serves as vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand Currents, a "non-profit foundation that sponsors the fundraising and does administrative work for the Black Lives Matter global network, among other clients.""
That is obviously a great soundbite that seems tailor made for the "the left ignores the terrorism on their side" argument. But on the Wikipedia page for Susan Rosenberg, you can see what her level of involvement was, see how she was punished (she served 16 years), see what she's been doing since she was released from prison, and follow lots of links to original sources, like the tax return for Thousand Currents.
Snopes is also a great source for stuff like this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/. Again, you don't have to agree with the simple "true/false/mixture" checkbox Snopes puts on their stories. Just read the article, which always has tons of well-researched factual info, and make up your mind for yourself.
My main point is that whenever you see some soundbite or statistic on Twitter, Facebook or HN, it was often taken out of context in order to make an argument. It's usually pretty easy to use Wikipedia as a starting point to find out more about that context.
And to be clear, while I obviously have a point of view, my main point is that you shouldn't take anyone's opinions at face value - the Internet actually makes it pretty easy to find original sources.
This is a fair point, but most people are happy to go along with the narrative rather than think critically about these issues. If you aren’t wallowing in a post-truth groupthink bubble, the world of today is really uncomfortable and lonely sometimes.
I dunno... For the most part, my close friends are too intelligent to have this tendency (likely not a coincidence, but implicit assortative matching), but I have a couple close friends and many less-close friends who aren't. It seems to bring them a lot of emotional pain and frustration.
If your worldview is effectively religious, the heretics who blaspheme against the One True Flawless Way by disagreeing with you are reduced to actively-evil monsters. If you happen to live in a modern, pluralistic society instead of Reconquista Spain, this is a recipe for constant frothing fury at the tens of millions of people who don't share any given viewpoint you may hold. To my eyes, this is wayyy more uncomfortable than always being the person disagreeing,even if minorly, with the groupthink session.
Regarding loneliness, the part of my brain that enjoys the seduction of blind, rabid group membership seems to be missing (eg I've never been a pro sports fan either, despite being a fairly avid sportsman in the past). I can understand how this would be lonely for many, but... I dunno, being a bad person is fun, I don't think that's much of an excuse for doing it.
It's a lot more bleak when you realize there are virtually no good guys, and a lot of the people who might seem like good guys at first are either grifting or gazed too deeply into the abyss.
It's more to grapple with philosophically, but it's much easier day to day. Having a model of the world that makes sense instead of expecting people to be more intelligent or decent than they are just makes everything go more smoothly. At least, that's my experience.
And it's not as misanthropic or nihilistic as it sounds. I have friends whom I wouldn't consider particularly intelligent, and the ability to accept that about them makes for much smoother interactions and over time has led to deeper connections over other parts of our respective characters/personalities.
Explain? I have not seen any conspiracy theories on the left that are remotely close to the Qanon/plandemic/stop-the-steal clusterfuck of recent years.
The point I'm trying to make with this winding comment is that you can still consume an unhealthy amount of biased media without delving into the levels of Qanon- expand your horizons and try other sources!
I personally even make it a point to read FOX and r/conservative once in a while through a critical lens to see what exactly the right is consuming.
This is incendiary and false.
https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next/2020/06/protests-blm-mo... - "Violence Has Been An Important Tool For Protests"
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/06/riots-ar... - "The Double Standard of the American Riot"
https://time.com/5849679/history-protest-debate/ - "History Shows the Problem With Focusing on Whether a Protest Is Nonviolent"
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/blm-looting-prote... - "In Defense of Destroying Property"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/30/if-vio... - "If Violence Isn't the Way To End Racism In America, Then What Is?"
https://qz.com/1863651/violence-and-extreme-actions-shouldnt... - "Why Extreme Actions Shouldn’t Delegitimize A Protest"
Here's the now VP-elect fundraising for the rioters' bail fund: https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1267555018128965643
The people who attacked the Capitol were fighting to end democracy and keep an unelected would-be dictator in power.
Do you see the difference?
And there was a great deal of push back against BLM related protests. Near me in Oakland, California the discount grocery store that serves a mostly black and largely poor neighborhood was ransacked and this caused a huge uproar and major social upheaval. There was considerable resistance against the rioting at that time.
But all we heard from the right was a wretched flow of lies. Democrats do nothing to stop violence they said, even when police were hurting from attempts to bring peace. And then the same lovers of political theater cheered on an attack on the capitol.
What happens when you take over multiple city blocks for a few weeks and don't allow any government agencies to do their jobs? That should also have reprecussions...but it didn't.
Contrasting this to the reaction to capitol hill does not bode well to me.
If you don't see a categorical difference between the two events, I'd recommend checking your biases.
One was met with celebration, I recall reddit threads on the top of all celebrating trumps weakness retreating to the bunker. Conversely, looking at msm rw response, they're not too happy with the capitol riots, with the wsj condemming then.
There are many things I dislike from the rw over the left. Their response to rioting isn't one of them.
Take political sides out of the equation...and none of the events like this that have transpired in the last year are acceptable.
Which is why our intelligence and security infrastructure are moving heaven and earth right now to locate and intercept the many foreign agents who attacked the capitol alongside their american collaborators. With luck, they will be intercepted before anything can happen that might be deleterious to the safety of all these lives we're all claiming are we care about so deeply.
It's good to see so many loyal and patriotic americans keeping eyes forward in this common endeavor. And not being sidetracked by matters like, say, street crime, that can be reliably left to the capable handling of municipal authorities.
The debate ultimately hinges on sympathies. For someone who wholeheartedly supports BLM, the riots might be regarded as something that was regrettable, but also understandable. In the words of Martin Luther King, "A riot is the language of the unheard." The observation also works in the direction of the Capitol insurrection. The rioters were there because they believed that their opinion on the election was not being heard.
Deciding which group had more grounds to be angry is left as an exercise for the reader.
I'm not justifying any particular actions that anyone has taken in specific, just objecting to the categorization that it is always bad. (For example, someone suffering from domestic violence might strike back in an effort to escape.)
Ariel Atkins - Chicago BLM leader:
"That is reparations,” Ariel Atkins, an organizer, told NBC Chicago. “Anything they wanted to take, they can take it"
She said that about a riot in which 13 police officers were injured, and at least one rioter fired at police.
This is just one example of many where BLM leaders justified (or glorified) violence.
peaceful:
1. free from disturbance; tranquil.
2. not involving war or violence.
Alas our moral non cognizance in a post modern perspective.
edit: to the below, really, no. There's no hyperbole. If your group features nazis, and your group is not making every effort to expel associations with said nazis, your group is, at best, nazi adjacent. Nazis are the hyperbolic euphemism of peak historical immorality. It is preposterous that anyone feels they're making a good faith argument throwing whatabout comparisons when the starting point is nazis.
Where are all these “nazis” you say that word a lot. “My group” I didnt know I was in a group. You certainly seem to assume a lot and form knee jerk conclusions. Actually proving my point quite well.
The fact that this is something you’re in a state of active denial about is a ‘you’ problem, not a ‘me’ problem.
Remember, the OG antifa were on the beaches at Normandy.
But if you want to paint the viewpoints of the entire 70-million with that kind of hatred, that's on you, not me.
70 million people cast a vote based on political affiliations. And their side lost, and they accepted that. The commonality with the seditionists ends there.
Did they, now?
"A CNN poll, released on Sunday and conducted by SSRS between January 9 and 14, shows that 75 percent of Republicans do not think that Biden won the election legitimately, compared to 1 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of independents."[0]
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-joe-biden-won-election-...
How about this guy, self identifying neo nazi, who live streamed himself going into the capitol?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
I use "your" in the general sense. I don't know who you are.
But here's the thing, you can be a conservative and not align with the opinions of nazis. But if you look at the nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups attacking the capitol; and say "I think they're working for a good cause", I'm going to make some assumptions.
If you stop and find yourself arguing similar talking points as nazi groups... I don't know what you expect to happen. This isn't hyperbole. These are literal nazi groups. We are so far removed from what should be a societally tolerable difference of opinion. It's not "conservatism" at play here.
This was the most bothersome part to me. Trump talked about wanting to punch protestors, but tip-toed around actual Nazi's supporting him and coming to events. He would eventually denounce violence or hate after being prodded, but never seemed to be able to state plainly if someone is a Nazi, then GTFO.
Personally, if I'm in a group and literal Nazi's are also allowed in the group, that's not a group I'm going to remain a part of.
> Trump, Aug. 14, 2017: As I said on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America. And as I have said many times before: No matter the color of our skin... we must love each other, show affection for each other, and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry, and violence... Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/trump-has-condemned-white-...
Donald Trump has many qualities worth criticizing. You should do some basic research to make sure you're repeating real ones and not just nonsense from an echo chamber.
From the summer: https://www.snopes.com/ap/2020/06/28/trump-tweets-video-with...
And this: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/18/880377872/facebook-removes-tr...
And then stuff like this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-condemn-white-suprem...
When asked to condemn “white supremacists and right-wing militia groups,” Trump verbally articulated a willingness to do so (“Sure, I’m willing to do that”), but also prevaricated, delayed, and bristled at the request, for example asking “Who do you want me to condemn?” when the terms of the request had already been made clear, and saying “Give me a name, go ahead.” He also swiftly shifted focus from white supremacists (the subject of the moderator’s question to him) to a condemnation of “the left wing.”
While it can be argued that Trump did not unequivocally refuse to condemn white supremacists, he undoubtedly demonstrated a reluctance to do so, one that will be very worrying to many voters. When Trump ultimately got around to issuing his version of the condemnation requested by Wallace and Biden, it was shrouded in ambiguity (“Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by”) and followed by another rapid shift in focus to “antifa and the Left.” Whatever Trump did say, he did not condemn white supremacists.
Unfortunately, because of the pandemic I’ve probably watched, read, and listened to more Trump than his supporters. The only echo chamber I’m in is his own material. His hesitancy around the white supremacist topic has always been alarming.
"We love you" "You are patriots" "They love their country"
Sure, he did say that quote in 2017. That is clearly not the messaging that was consistently conveyed. Hell, you can just ask the hate groups themselves what they think trump thought of them.
"Things are justified because I support them or unjustified because I don't support them".
This is how children and narcissists think. Reality is that a lot of arguments are really this with a layer or two of post-hoc justification though.
I can't tell if this post was meant as a joke, but if it wasn't it's either impressively self-aware or completely and utterly lacking self-awareness.
Computing has long been an interplay of curious, light-hearted hacker types and business/military types. e.g. Woz/Yannes/Stoll/Stallman and Jobs/DARPA/Musk/Thiel.
I don't think the values of skill, sacrifice, daring, and greed (sorry if that offends anyone) that roughly underlie HN are effective filters to remove Trump values. In fact, they move the needle toward the business/military side. HN appreciates the fun hacks, but, by design, amplifies the business side.
There is nothing more disgusting than a person who applies ideals and values selectively like this, who doesn't commit to the ideals themselves (gleaned from a related comment which I love [1]):
"I was part of a news and current events Facebook group a few years ago, when WikiLeaks was primarily known for leaking evidence of the US Military's abuses in the middle East.
Most of the people in this group were Democrats or otherwise on the Left. They cheered WikiLeaks and loved that it was exposing the abuses of a group they didn't like.
Fast forward to 2016, and WikiLeaks begins publishing damaging information related to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The same people who cheered WikiLeaks as it published very damaging information about the US Military now condemned it because it was targeting someone they actually supported.
This was a major moment of clarity and realization for me. It showed me that those who are quick to use ideals to defend their positions ("freedom of information is good, it exposes the US' crimes!") will just as quickly discard those ideals when they stop working in their own interest ("WikiLeaks should not be publishing damaging information about Clinton!").
I was disgusted, because these people were so quick to use a moralistic position built upon high ideals to attack the US but they were themselves absolutely bereft of a true commitment to ideals. Within a few weeks the group's attitude on WikiLeaks shifted from gratitude and respect to hatred.
When I pointed this out, I was kicked out of the group."
All political violence should be treated equally.
I also think that all races/genders/etc should be treated equally but even that has become taboo in progressive circles. Which is probably using the same sort of mental gymnastics that justifies some violence but not vilifies others.
Problem is, it's always been taboo in conservative circles as well. That is the great problem of our day. All these political ideologues espouse beliefs contrary to the good of large numbers of people in our society. They give speeches about how it's not "us" but the other side who are the bad guys, but then they all send their pet terrorists out to riot, loot, and in the case of the capitol attackers gather intel to hand over to our nation's adversaries.
These political extremists are simply bad people all the way around. No matter what way you look at it.
It's long been my opinion however, that they need to be dealt with. Just as the pet terrorists they control need to be dealt with. I have zero respect for them, and look forward to seeing a lot of these ideological extremist organizations dismantled over the next decade.
It's time to turn up the heat on these people so high that they won't know who to trust.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to get dismantling of extremists. Rather, I see the opposite, further partisanship where one's extremists are ignored and only the enemy should be criticised. The rapid crystallization of the Pro censorship movement on traditionally free speech supporting circles for their political opponents seems to support this.
It's obvious they did not all commit crimes, but they somewhat tacitly encouraged what brought it about. I generally don't feel the same way about BLM activists. There were situations in BLM events where the boundary was overstepped, and inexcusable mob behavior took over. Perhaps I give a big pass because I am sympathetic to the overall aims of the movement, and for the "Stop the Steal" event I see a lot of malice in the lies that caused people to deny (not just question) the outcome of the election.
Yet, you paint all of them with the same brush...
I see one alleged provacateur, John Sullivan, acting on his own volition because he's been rejected from groups for his violent behavior in Utah earlier this year. So far identified and charged participants don't support the early fabrications about the attack being an anti-fascist operation.
Nice way to detract from the point that people are directing violence towards politicians.
But yes a Target got looted and some fires were set because people are fucking angry about the institutional violence directed towards their communities.
Clearly the same thing, yeah?
This sentence fragment appears deliberately vague and it assumes the conclusion. Compare, for example, "The Capitol Attack" vs "Right Wing Violence in America". One references a specific event with specific actors, the other is a vague non-specific description of a phenomena that may or may not exist.
I'd encourage you to be more specific -- which instances of fires and looting do you feel were not adequately described as attacks? Who is failing to describe them, again, specifically.
Right now, this does not read like you are interested in discussing this in good faith.
-Armed protestors took over government buildings and city blocks
-Promoted/condoned/excused by government officials
-Lots of violence and murder
And keep in mind that the SPD did considerably more violence to a larger group over that time.
Isn't the east precinct a government building?
>And who were the armed protestors, what were they armed with?
Raz the Warlord of CHAZ giving out assault rifles:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/raz-simone-guns/
>And keep in mind that the SPD did considerably more violence to a larger group over that time.
How many people were shot within the protest zone by occupants of CHAZ versus police over that time? By my count, it seems 5:0
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone...
Yes, but your framing isn't genuine. Some protestors did wander into an abandoned building. I'm not sure whether any of them were armed. That's a far cry from "Armed protestors took over a government building."
> Raz the Warlord of CHAZ giving out assault rifles:
Again, your framing is clearly flamebait. I obviously don't deny that Raz was there, and that there appears to be a video of him giving a long gun to someone. (Singular.)
But calling Raz "the Warlord of CHAZ" is needlessly biased and inflammatory. Just say Raz Simone, or if you feel you need to clarify, add some factual clarification.
> How many people were shot within the protest zone by occupants of CHAZ versus police over that time?
Again, your framing lacks nuance.
The first shooting in the protests was by someone driving into a crowd who claimed to have a brother who worked in the east precinct.
The second shooting does not have a clear connection to the protest occupants. The Police chose not to help the shooting victim (and the reason for the shooting is unknown). This may have been protest related violence. It may have been non-protest related violence. It's unclear if the victim would have survived if the Police had made any effort.
The third shooting (which occurred outside of the zone) appears to be racially motivated, and according to the victim was allegedly at the hands of a white supremacist. It's unclear if this is related to the second shooting.
The fourth and fifth shooting (which occurred outside of the zone) have no details beyond someone getting shot in the arm.
The sixth and seventh shootings were of two teens who had reportedly driven an SUV through the crowds overnight, including through the park. Details are hazy, and it's not clear whether this was an act of self defense or something else.
So, on my counting there were seven shootings:
2 appear to be against protestors or racially motivated.
3 have no clear details that link them to the protest, and 2 of which did not take place in the zone
2 are allegedly in self defense, though the veracity of those claims is TBD.
>The first shooting in the protests was by someone driving into a crowd who claimed to have a brother who worked in the east precinct.
Wrong. The first shooting came after an argument between leftists escalated. No vehicle involved.
>The second shooting does not have a clear connection to the protest occupants. The Police chose not to help the shooting victim (and the reason for the shooting is unknown).
Wrong again, it is directly linked because it happened when the protest occupants were marching back from a protest around city hall. Protestors blocked the police and firefighters from entering the area, and once the police made headway, the victim was already moved.
>The third shooting (which occurred outside of the zone) appears to be racially motivated, and according to the victim was allegedly at the hands of a white supremacist. It's unclear if this is related to the second shooting.
Wrong, it was a Black leftist/anarchist that shot himself.
>The sixth and seventh shootings were of two teens who had reportedly driven an SUV through the crowds overnight, including through the park.
Driving a vehicle that was a different make and model, but similar color, and they were killed for it. Two Black teens died because CHOP security extra-judicially shot and killed them because they were misidentified.
Two teens, killed in a no-cop-zone, by "community security", during a protest that was started due to the extra-judicial killings of Blacks... May have been the most ironic moment of 2020.
So, on my counting there were seven shootings:
None of them were racially motivated.
All have direct links to the protest.
SPD is an arm of executive branch of the municipal government. Again, SPD was beating and gassing protesters (and the entire neighborhood — gas spreads) for a solid month. That is the city's clear policy on protests against police brutality — bash the protesters until they stop protesting. Outside of maybe Sawant, who is a weirdo, no city official promoted, condoned, or "excused" SPD leaving the east precinct.
Lots of violence and murder: your implication is that the handful of shootings in cap hill while SPD were out of the precinct were caused by CHOP/CHAZ, but correlation isn't causation. (And N is also pretty small.) Outside of the handful of shootings, there was only increased violence in Cap hill after the cops left if you don't count violence by cops.
I am using Wikipedia as a source, but I do not think this is true. Planned perhaps, but never carried out on account of law enforcement intervention.
It is somewhat dispiriting to see this comment at the top of HN and implies a false moral equivalence. Since you probably prefer right-wing news sources, see this editorial in the WSJ: "No Excuses for Trump and the Capitol Riot Yes, the left does bad things too. Conservatives are supposed to believe in objective moral truth." [1]
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-excuses-for-trump-and-the-ca...
[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/07/bomb-explodes-in-u...
Susan Rosenberg has paid for her crimes and no longer uses terrorism to further the cause. Pointing to her case is a sever form of whataboutism, and is never done in good faith.
Not sure how she has paid for her crimes, and why her case of known crimes and casualties should not be pointed?
If a cause was void because terrorists advocate for it, there would be no cause worth celebrating. And there is no evidence that left wing terrorism is given more leeway then right wing terrorism. Quite the contrary. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/13/us-police-us...
> She was pardoned by Clinton
Her sentence was commuted. She wasn't pardoned.
> Not sure how she has paid for her crimes
She served 16 years of a 58-year sentence. You can consider that at least partial payment.
Where was this rhetoric when Antifa and BLM burned and looted for months with the blessings of all corporations and the mainstream media? Surely the Capitol Hill has an insurance policy? Or does that moronic point only apply to the common folk?
Susan Rosenberg literally bombed the Capitol in 1983 and now serves as vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand Currents, a "non-profit foundation that sponsors the fundraising and does administrative work for the Black Lives Matter global network, among other clients."