The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings.
The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white. There can be a concept of “BLM” that is obviously right and important to support, while there is also a well organized radical contingent taking cover within BLM that is wreaking havoc on the streets and will bully or beat up anyone who stands up to them (police or bystander alike). That they call themselves anti-fascists while taking a truly fascist approach to spreading their ideology is a rhetorical pattern I’m seeing a lot lately; accusing your opponent of exactly what you are doing.
Portland just “celebrated” their 100th day of rioting. There was video from last night where they set a fellow rioter on fire while trying to throw Molotov cocktails at police.
The PR / social media contingent that supports the riots is frankly impressive. The article mentions Google sheets listing approved journalists and ways to help fund them. The level of organization belies a depth to the organization that I think most people assume is more organic and rag-tag than it really is.
Obviously this is to control the narrative. Why would they shoo and have "minders" ala repressive regimes?
Is it because "fake news" (that'd be a tough sell coming from the left who question that assertion). Is it because they don't want people to see the underbelly of the movement or at least the bad elements in their movement?
What we do know is that if you are an organization looking for change, if you're not very careful, your well intended movement will be usurped by those who have ulterior motives --they will use your movement as "useful idiots" and you may ultimately loose control of your movement to demagogues.
There is a difference between people who are honestly looking to make things better and those riding such wave to enhance their own power.
> What we do know is that if you are an organization looking for change, if you're not very careful, your well intended movement will be usurped by those who have ulterior motives
It seems to me, as an outsider, that this has already happened given what started as good intentions from occupy Wall Street down to whatever we have now. I can’t imagine the goal was actually burning buildings, but is a subversion of the goal.
It is on-record at this point that US federal and local agents infiltrate these organizations and run a divide-and-conquer playbook. When you fight against the monetized weight of these efforts, they write articles like this one, attempting to invoke the imaginary leftist authoritarian boogey-man. The best part of this article is that it linked the demands of the protestors, which I fully, 100% across-the-board support: https://www.tenforjustice.com/demands.
I think some of these demands are valuable for society and I support #2-6,9-10.
But I don’t think they should be a condition for allowing an individual or journalist to record or cover protests.
I’m not sure what you mean as “on-record,” but I think it’s naive to assume that all this violence is a result of US federal and local agents. In fact, I’d be surprised if any is as I don’t think agents aren’t allowed to commit crimes as part of their enforcement operations.
I also don’t think a law enforcement conspiracy could be conducted at such a large scale with such efficiency and without leaving tons of evidence that would be the best story of the year. In a year of great stories for the press.
If this is the case, then we need more reporting, not less. If every furniture that is burned down is the result of agent provocateur, then let’s get some investigative journalists on it.
I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. It’s all our team or their team based on whatever news channel they subscribe to. No one takes time to dig below the surface and think for themselves.
If someone suggests that they think in morally gray manner, doesn't it signal to everyone around them that they're morally suspicious?
>"Do you think it's alright that police are getting killed?"
> "Well, let's think about the details, as the situation can be complex or even gray..."
You might say this is a stupid and sparse example, but well, let's think about it... for many people instinctual morality is their primary way of relating to the world. If you suggest you have an intellectual and distinctive approach to morality, what does that mean? Does that moral distinction mean moral superiority, arrogance, or moral alienation?
Heh. This was a brilliant comment. The others who have responded to your comment have unconsciously proven the truth of what you're suggesting.
They are 'well-actually'-ing your question, which proves that they don't have don't have an instinctive 'of course it is wrong that police are being killed' reaction, which now eliminates credibility with the group they're hoping to influence.
I think MLK would have said "of course it's not alright that police are getting killed." He would have followed up with a salient point about police brutality, of course.
People don't like complexity. They want heroes and villains. If the heroes are also nearby (like their local police station) and villains are far away (like Portland), it's far more comfortable.
People generally don't want to go into the conflict. But when they are cornered they begin so seek cover within their flock.
So when an average Joe is told that silence is violence and he is guilty beyond any repair just because he's drinking beer in his backyard instead of fighting for the good cause, the Joe becomes defensive. And since he's not a master of rhetorics, he just takes the "fuck you all" attitude and goes back to his beer - now all wound up and grumpy.
I find it more concerning how quickly people forget the past. In 2016 BLM was responsible for a mass shooting in Dallas and most people I know already forgot this fact.
But if BLM is not responsible, then it does poke holes in the ACAB and maybe even "Defund the Police" positions. If protestors can dissociate from rogue actors, can police? If not, what's the clear difference beyond political tribalism?
The trouble is the behaviors in the police seem to be fairly widespread, the perpetrators are protected, and reform is actively resisted. At that point it isn't a rouge actor.
There has always been police violence, but what cell phones have done is reveal how widespread it may have always been, rejecting the rouge actor narrative.
I would expect the police to investigate and remove own bad actors. The police have the power to fire cops, to charge cops and imprison bad cops. I think that when police does that, the police should absolutely be able dissociate from those cops actions. On the other hand, if bad cops are not removed or are promoted, then police can not dissociate.
I would expect some similar test to be applied to BLM. Is the person who shoot up people talked about positively and promoted as role model to BLM fans? Is that person instead pushed away?
Imo, it is actions of leadership and generally of culture of the organization that determines whether dissociation from bad member is real or an not real. E.g. whether member is rogue or standard.
Your phrasing is misleading. BLM isn't responsible. A veteran sympathetic to the cause went on a shooting spree granted, but I don't know how you get from that to "BLM was responsible"
You cannot on one hand claim that BLM is an organic, grass roots, and completely headless organization while at the same time disclaiming someone as a member of the supposed unorganized organization composed entirely of people who self identify as BLM members.
A couple of data points to look at – and I would argue these are the things at the heart of the conflict – are whether the organization officially supports an particular action, and then whether it’s mainstream members casually support it. I think you’d have a hard time finding a supporter of Black Lives Matter who would go on record as supporting the shootings in Dallas, however it's fairly easy to find support for extrajudicial killings of black Americans.
As numerous people have stated, it's not clear-cut. I support Black Lives Matter and protests supporting them; I also condemn rioting and property destruction, as I think it hurts the cause and innocent bystanders (like small business owners). I'm in favor of having a police department, however I think policing in America is fundamentally unjust and needs serious reform.
There will always be murder, unfortunately, just as there will always be dingalings from all points of the political spectrum running around telling people in public spaces “You can't film here!” We have to condemn those actions regardless of whether it's coming from someone whose political ideology we agree with.
That logic isn't correct. Take for counter example Christians, a group of largely self identifying "members of an organisation". It doesn't logically follow that if a self-identifying Christian shoots a lot of people that "Christianity is responsible" either.
That lacks nuance, of course groups of individuals that self-identify as part of a group can act as individuals and as a group, and it's often unclear externally which actions are attributable to a group and which are attributable to individuals or sub-groups.
It's simply impossible to be definitive with incomplete information, reductionist and I can't see the merit in basing a position in the presumption that all actions are of the whole.
If you want to draw a parallel to Christianity in this way then we can focus on what the organization does post-crisis.
A self identifying Christian who kills people in the name of Christianity is vocally condemned by other self identifying Christians and many would rush to say that they were mentally ill.
If BLM wants to not be lumped in with extremists then supporters of Black Lives Matter need to vocally and unequivocally condemn extremist and their acts that do not align with a supporter’s views of the group’s objectives. I have never seen a BLM supporter credibly call Micah Xavier Johnson mentally ill or an extremist. Extremist actions by BLM supporters are never condemned but rather excused by pointing to police brutality or institutional racism as being the root cause of the bad actor’s actions. While external forces may shape an extremist, it is the extremist who pulls the trigger. Personal responsibility means something and if the group won’t cast out the extremist then the group condones the actions.
Additionally, there is a key problem with your analogy: Christianity does not purport to be an organic, grass roots, and headless organization. Christianity flows from the church and it has a defined organization. It has spokespeople. It has explicit leadership.
I'm pretty sure lots of BLM supporters condemned Xavier Johnson... It's true that some activists tolerate and accept violence within their cause but that is not universally held, and while issues with police violence do complicate things, I agree with you that violent acts deserve condemnation.
The key problem you highlight with my analogy is not quite correct (although most if not all analogies have some flaws). There are various attempts at organisation and leadership in the Church, but there are also thousands of splits, sub-groups and even violence that has not always been universally condemned (such as in Northern Ireland where I'm from), as well as sanctioned in the Crusades.
An organisation that can have condemned violence while having encouraged crusades, and have members like the IRA does certainly seem like the kind of varied decentralised (or at least multi-centred) organisation that can have internally conflicting beliefs yet frequently be considered as a single entity externally. That was more my point. If you think BLM isn't a broad church, my guess is you don't know that many BLM supporters? My experience has been that a wide range of people support BLM, and most of them do not support murderous rampages, even if they can comprehend why the anger that manifested might have existed in the first place.
My experience in Northern Ireland also makes me extremely cautious about the mistake of retaliatory violence, but anyway. I'm still unconvinced that you could call BLM a singular organisations with all actions done by association attributable directly to it.
We are talking past each other. You are convinced your viewpoint is correct while I am convinced mine is correct. The reality is that we are engaging in an exercise of line drawing. You draw the line for "actions undertaken by an individual attributable to the group" at a different place than I do. I also doubt that your mind can be changed on where the line should be drawn, judging by your retreat to a "you must not know many BLM supporters" argument.
I do know many Black Lives Matter supporters. I also know that many of them no longer support BLM (note that I put BLM, not Black Lives Matter) because the movement has been co-opted by extremists. The second group includes me. While your experience may be distinct and real to you, I urge you to consider the impact that extremists have on the overall movement and how continuing to try to split hairs about who is and who is not a member of BLM while not vocally condemning and ostracizing extremists from what you view as the movement galvanizes not just BLM opponents but also neutral parties who agree with Black Lives Matter. Actions have consequences.
Well, I can see where you were coming from. As you point out, it is frustratingly ambiguous that BLM the phrase and the organisation are the same acronym.
I'm certainly not sure everyone who has funded BLM the organisation fully agrees or understands the difference either!
Here's a video of BLM/Antifa protestors in Portland 1 week ago celebrating after one of their security detail apparently murdered a right-wing protester in cold-blood:
> "I am not sad that a fucking fascist died tonight" crowd cheers
There is a scary level of support / apathy to violence. Don't get me wrong. I am never going to support violence and murder, and I too will judge those that do. I am simply seeking to avoid generalisation.
I'm not naïve to movements being co-opted. I have witnessed that first hand numerous times.
I don’t think you can fairly argue that “extremist actions by BLM supporters are never condemned.” I mean, I believe that black lives matter, yet I condemn taking of innocent lives.
I worry you are letting your philosophy shape your reality. It happens to us all. No judgement. I would just urge you to reconsider whether you have factual data to support your argument.
>If BLM wants to not be lumped in with extremists then supporters of Black Lives Matter need to vocally and unequivocally condemn extremist and their acts that do not align with a supporter’s views of the group’s objectives. I have never seen a BLM supporter credibly call Micah Xavier Johnson mentally ill or an extremist.
There's a similar vein of argumentation that occurs with Antifa: everyone understands that there isn't a formal organization, but anyone who points out grassroots affiliation is dishonestly accused of claiming there is a formal organization, and can therefore be credibly debunked. It's highly dishonest stuff.
@Fellshard makes a good point that decentralisation is often a tool, used both by people who wish to disassociate a group with its actions.
Also this is true in reverse with people seeking to group people who are not actually acting as groups.
That kind of deliberate distortion only makes it harder to comprehend what is really happening often, but there's still a burden of proof.
Obviously organised criminals have been attempting to hide coordinated activity for the longest time too, I understand that bad actors exist who seek to pretend actions are not coordinated. But again, there are times when members of such organisations commit crimes off their own backs, which were not part of any conspiracy.
What does this have to do with either formercoder’s comment or with filming at protests? I’m failing to understand what point you’re trying to make here.
If your point is that people on both the right and the left are capable of immoral behavior and that we should condemn, I agree with you! I think I missed the point you were trying to make because it appeared that you were only highlighting and correlating heinous acts from one person who supported a position that you disagree with.
My point is actually beyond politics. If this thread was about my therapist, I might talk about a particular family member and their tribe. And how I had to cut contact with that tribe because of abuse and the tribe conveniently forgetting the abuse.
But this is a thread about BLM, so I'm bringing up an issue related to that.
For a personal take, I avoid any tribe where I see this forgetfullness and will point it out. This behaviour is gaslighting and can be a traumatic experience
This thread is about Black Lives Matter, which is a movement focused on the injustice of police brutality and criminal justice reform. Your point - which I take to be that that tribalism is bad - is less potent because you pointed out “forgetfulness” of people who support black lives matter but not in people who support the status quo of police use of power, which seems to be a demonstration of tribalism rather than a repudiation if it.
It's unsettling. It seems like there is an increasing number of people who simply adopt the narrative for their team, and assume all others do the same. Anyone who disagrees with that narrative must be a member of the opposite team. If presented with evidence that goes against their narrative, the response is usually that it doesn't matter. If they completely flip to the opposite position on an issue, the response is often that both their earlier position was correct and that their new position is also correct.
> If they completely flip to the opposite position on an issue, the response is often that both their earlier position was correct and that their new position is also correct.
A wonderful thing about nuance is that this is often ok.
Sometimes, their actual earlier position and new position are consistent. But will anyone listen if they try to explain why? Usually not.
>> I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray.
My own speculation on that. Shades of gray take effort to understand, and may not have clean simple answers. People may be too lazy, or not confident in dealing with complexity, or not smart enough, or something else so they refuse to engage with it. What I find odd is that so many who avoid the subtlety and complexity are really eager to tout their lame one-sided opinions, even as the world is falling apart and demands better than that... or maybe because its falling apart?
I think a lot of it has to do with how we look at history and how we remember and tell stories, fictional and non-fictional.
Most people remember the winners and losers of history, but many don’t dig into the nuance of it for various reasons. It’s easier for those who support the winners to ignore the finer details because said winners aren’t perfect.
Abraham Lincoln is a perfect example of this. While he was instrumental in freeing the slaves, he also believed that they were not as intellectually capable as whites and made that pretty clear in some of his speeches. One could argue that his position was the more progressive of his time, but still falls very, very short of what we consider to be acceptable thinking today.
There’s always shades of gray in history. Every good president did things that many would find appalling. Most movies depict very clear good and evil, and we enjoy them because they’re easy to consume.
To have more or less objective judgement one has to be well unaffected by the topic's outcome. Try to argue about future of some random company and then buy or short it's stock and argue again.
The problem is, marxism progresses extremely well in shades of gray, where everything they claim sounds logical (“Are you NOT against police violence?”). But when you wake up it’s too late, and they are shooting Trump supporters at point blank on the street without trial (I’m not projecting, it happened this week), which is all but shades of gray.
That’s why some people say “it’s all gray” and right wingers try to pull it into “there is crime and innocence with a clear line in between, there is male and female, there is good and bad.” Right wing also tries to show the end-game, which passes as complete nutcrack conspiracy theory (remember the supposed “grand remplacement” in Europe), until one day: “We (Muslims) are more numerous than Christians, leave the country if you don’t like it” (again, not fantasizing here, it’s a real speech from this week in Lyon) or more clearly: “Whites, this dirty race” (chapter president of a student union, Lille, France).
I tend to view ideologies as evolutionary: Those that survived today win by either being extremely complex and good at being insidious, others win by being simple and blunt. But what we’d all like is, no ideology. Which is difficult when 1/3 of the world would happily fund billions to destroy America.
And in reality, we’re really more alike than we realize. It’s just the political parties and media have financalized everything.
American politics is more just crony wealth transfers to vying corporate factions. We’re all victims to an undefined enemy but we’re fighting ourselves.
The parties are fairly weak to be honest. Otherwise, Trump wouldn't have been nominated in the first place and Sanders wouldn't have had two strong runs at the presidency. The voters are self-incentivized to break off into factions.
I think what has been slowly changing and coming to a head is that the checks and balances in the American system have been eroded and calcified. When everything is all or nothing and mechanisms for compromise stop being used (i.e. legislation, policy diversity across states), then everything is a Big Deal.
> The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings.
It’s a little bit cliche, but also true: to judge a protest by its most violent elements but to decline to do the same of the police is the language of the oppressor.
Everyone I saw celebrating 100 days was celebrating 100 days of sustained protesting—not violence. Those same people have bemoaned the escalation of violence that happens against the protests each night by police.
The fact that some of the protestors have turned violent is, to me, entirely reasonable considering the sustained months of police violence that have been inflicted upon them illegally. If the state wants people to respect the laws and remain peaceful, it needs to clean its own house of violent criminals first.
Ironically, that’s why the protests happened in the first place. Let’s not forget cause and effect.
> If the state wants people to respect the laws and remain peaceful, it needs to clean its own house of violent criminals first.
No, the people demand that everyone respect the laws and remain peaceful.
To that end, the people fund and enact a police force to protect life and property, and to apprehend suspected criminals.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “some of the protestors have turned violent.” There is a contingent which is using violence as a specific strategy, against property and against police as well as bystanders who may not agree with them.
Can I get some details? Who makes up the contingent? Are they protestors, counter protestors or what? What motivates them, and how do you know this information?
> If the state wants people to respect the laws and remain peaceful, it needs to clean its own house of violent criminals first.
Or “peaceful protesting wasn’t working so what else are protestors supposed to do?” Which I see all over Reddit.
Personally, I hear friends who dislike the violence but have an attitude of “well we’re so privileged, who are we to judge?” It’s not PC to disavow it because our voices aren’t the ones that need to be heard right now (unless we agree, in which case we’re being allies and have a moral duty to speak up and lend our privilege).
This quote comes up a lot in that context (MLK, Letter from the Birmingham Jail):
> First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”
That said, I don’t know anyone who supports violent protest, and my friends are as left as they come.
And when the people think the police is endangering their safety, does the job badly and abuses power given to them or breaks the law, what are people supposed to do?
What freedom you have in mind? Afaik the exchange was 1.) about whether police can be blanket assumed to be the "good guys" due to that being presumed original intent. 2.) Whether and how ir is legitimate to protest if they are not "good" in practice.
I am not asking for any special freedom. I do find second question interesting and complicated. I do have own answer to question one (namely that blanket trust is super naive of course low paid force with few weak checks will end up having bad actors in it and it is then question of pruning them out or not).
> No, the people demand that everyone respect the laws and remain peaceful.
I don't think that's true in practice in America, at all. It's certainly the cover story, though.
Demonstrably, the people (as a collective group) have only ever demanded that from non-police. Police have a long, long history of deploying illegal violence against anyone even suspected of breaking the law, prior to trial, up to and frequently including executing them.
Historically, "the people" (again, as a group) do not seem bothered by this at all, simply because that's the way it's always been. It's expected and accepted that the police will deploy a significant amount of (not legally permitted) violence against anyone even suspected of breaking the law, hence the common shout of "STOP RESISTING" (usually deployed against those who aren't resisting at all) during police-initiated violence. It's a farce; the police are de facto exempt from the laws regarding battery by American social consensus. This is obvious to anyone paying attention. No effort is made to conceal this fact because there is no significant outrage or pressure to change anything about the situation. Violent police in the US are the widely-accepted and expected norm, and there isn't usually even a debate about it.
Seriously, think about it: the police have no special legal exception from the laws for beating or otherwise battering people when dispersing riots, giving chase to a suspect, or effecting an arrest. Most people seem to have entirely lost track of that fact in the "police vs baddies" battle narrative, and assume that anyone suspected or accused by police must be deserving of at least a few whacks with a nightstick, or possibly even execution if the officer, at their sole discretion, deems it appropriate. That's about as far from "due process" or "presumption of innocence" as you can possibly get. The set of laws that applies to police is simply not the same set of laws that applies to you and I, and that gap is entirely a social contract one, not a legally-codified one.
It's reflected in the intense indignation of police and police unions when they are (very) occasionally charged with crimes of violence whilst doing their jobs. To them, they're doing what's expected of them: deploying expected (yet illegal) violence against suspected criminals.
> To that end, the people fund and enact a police force to protect life and property, and to apprehend suspected criminals.
The police in the US have only ever been really diligent about protecting the life and property of a small subset of the population, primarily large landowners. Meanwhile, they pose a significant danger to the life and property of a much larger segment, and always have. The reason the police were first created in America was to capture escaped slaves and to keep the poor from looting and torching the mansions of the white landowning class.
The tradition continues to date. You can see this gap in the amount of case-solving effort the police in the US put into crimes against the police force themselves or large buildings/retail, and the amount of case-solving effort they put into crimes against the property of non-HNWI individuals, or the amount of case-solving effort they put into violence against women. Their priorities are extremely clear, and to hold up police behavior as "law and order" is simply the motte in this argument, as their behavior is anything but a reasonable or fair application of the law. The police, for example, basically never enforce any laws against other police (or their families), even when violations are entirely obvious, and this is extremely well-documented.
It extends to the prosecutorial apparatus that supports the police, too. This is one of the primary reasons that minorities and poor people are incarcerated at an extremely out-of-proportion rate to the rest of the population.
Those calling for the abolition or defunding of the police would, funnily enough, actually be thrilled with more thoroughly consistent application of actual "law and order" and not the two-tiered system of police-initiated violence and authoritarian choke-holding and skull-cracking that passes for same by tradition in the US.
I wrote about one facet of this bizarre police-to-American-public apparently undocumented social contract in June:
Do the protesters control two branches of the federal government? Or indeed, any government at all? Do the protesters control the economic system by monopolizing most property and wealth? Do the protesters have access to a vast war-making apparatus?
Frankly I'm impressed things haven't descended into far worse than what has happened so far. Most of the demonstrators are showing an incredible level of restraint.
I think the police are, too; I expected to have seen some Kent State-style attacks by now given how insanely violent and trigger-happy they've been. This is not to minimize the tremendous blunt-force and chemical injuries they've incurred in any way, but I'm still surprised the police haven't caused more of their usual style of shooting deaths.
> It’s a little bit cliche, but also true: to judge a protest by its most violent elements but to decline to do the same of the police is the language of the oppressor.
Then lucky us to have the news correct our judgement by withholding key facts.
Edit: When replying to my extremely short comment, I would be grateful if you took the time to first read it. The single sentence I wrote neither claims the attempts at censorship were perfect, nor that the police were perfect little angels, nor does it equate anything (such as violence by one side) with anything else.
It's not as if these elements don't exist on the side of the police either. Check out the article "Teargassed, beaten up, arrested: what freedom of the press looks like in the US right now", for example. For either side, the actions are in my opinion completely unwarranted by either side, and just wrong, but it didn't start with the protesters.
I’ve seen no shortage of pearl-clutching over breathlessly reported videos of almost all of the violence so far.
Some buildings and vehicles have burned.
On the other hand, children have been shot in the face with projectiles and suffered TBIs. Police have permanently blinded people and shattered bones.
I think it is a mistake to even begin to equate the amount of police violence that has been inflicted with the violence that has resulted from rioting. The police have been inflicting permanent injuries indiscriminately on anyone present.
There is no comparison or remotely corresponding events in terms of violence from the protests, with the exception perhaps of the people who attacked Rittenhouse.
At least one of the deaths mentioned in that URL... was shot by police.
Recall also that these protests began because the police in the US have murdered thousands in the last few centuries.
Anti-police-violence protests would have to sustain dozens of related deaths every single night for months to even approach the level of depravity exercised by police for years.
> At least one of the deaths mentioned in that URL... was shot by police.
The URL clearly refutes the parent comment that the only damage done by the protestors are vehicles and buildings getting set on fire.
> Recall also that these protests began because the police in the US have murdered thousands in the last few centuries.
> Anti-police-violence protests would have to sustain dozens of related deaths every single night for months to even approach the level of depravity exercised by police for years.
If we're going to police violence in the last few centuries, surely we should also include riots in the last few centuries? I'm pretty certain that more people were murdered by rioters then the police during that time.
> The URL clearly refutes the parent comment that the only damage done by the protestors are vehicles and buildings getting set on fire.
You seem to assert that the murders itemized in that URL were committed by protesters.
It's not reasonable to assume that any murders that happen at or near protests were caused by protestors and not opportunistic criminals that aren't invested in the protest one way or another, just as it's not reasonable to assume that police are justified in shooting anyone whose hands they can't see.
The violence imposed by police is documented, because police are in uniform uniform, and zero non-cops are wearing those uniforms. There is no plain way to distinguish between opportunistic-criminals-present-at-a-protest and protesters.
Indeed, during all of this, it has been documented that sometimes police have engaged in violence whilst wearing all black and not identified as police.
People.com had "Bill Murray’s son, Caleb, was arrested at a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest after allegedly throwing a rock through the window of a pickup truck."
So, it is simultaneously peaceful and you have someone chucking rocks through windows (as well as other things, as the article continues).
"these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white."
This is one of the main phenomenon of an issue becoming "political," or what Orwell called "nationalism" in a clunky-but-brilliant essay. It's a "with us or against us" dynamic. Every fact, opinion or take can only be an argument for or against a position.
When it's at peak (like now in the states), you get completely warped pictures. It's either peaceful protests vs brutal police and pro-trump militias or anarchist riots vs embattled police and law abiding patriots.
I think part of the problem here is that everyone is a belligerent. The media, the police, the protestors and (obviously) the government are all objects of protest, which makes them participants. The CNN siege in NY was a sharp example.
Another part of the issue is the typical modern leaderlessness of populist politics. Spokespersons usually moderate a position, establishing boundaries to consensus. This can take some of the edge off the "my side, your side" dynamic that more extreme actors benefit from.
Honestly, the media is way off about the Portland protests. Take it from people on the ground: the picture painted by the media is largely wrong and mostly inadequate.
This is only one data point but I was in Portland this week trying to get away from smoke and it was all peaceful. The protestors I saw looked like kids and older folks out in for a rally. Some were wearing bright vests for visibility, probably from cars.
All in all it didn’t seem too wild to me and I’m sure I didn’t see all the protests, again this is just one guy walking down the street. I never felt unsafe for what it’s worth.
The bigger point is that once side of a partisan divide represents the vast majority of media resources, and the last several years have pulled back the curtain on their partisan behavior.
Wait, what? The largest newspaper (Telegraaf) is definitely right wing. The second largest newspaper (AD) is also anything but left wing.
I agree with public broadcasting, but that’s in part because the right wing has changed. Traditionally, the right-wing stronghold was the conservative christian block. Which had their political party and broadcasting associations. But these broadcasters have changed their direction after Christianity pretty much collapsed and became a minority religion in The Netherlands. However in recent years WNL and PowNed have been added as right-wing broadcasters.
De Telegraaf and het AD alone have lost about 800k subscriptions in the last two decades.
The curves for the other newspapers are far less profound and some of them do really well in digital subscriptions (NRC, Volkskrant, FD). Would be interesting to know what is going on here. Are people interested in right-wing media less inclined to pay for content, are they less in a position to pay for content, or are the traditional right-wing news papers being replaced by other media (if so, which ones?).
At any rate, I stand by my point, which is: there have traditionally been large right-wing media in The Netherlands, but their audience seems to be leaving them. I also agree that there was a void for some time in public broadcasting, which is filled by some contenders, like PowNed and WNL. However, these broadcasting associations do not seem to do well, because they have very few members (25,000 and 50,000 respectively). Even a broadcaster like HUMAN, of which I have absolutely no clue what their profile is, has more members (68,000).
In the Netherlands, just like in Sweden and many other European countries you more or less need to balance the left-leaning main stream media opinion with some of the alternative channels - Geenstijl in the Netherlands and Nyheter Idag in Sweden to name a few - to get something which resembles the truth. I generally find you can get a good grasp of the political balance of main stream media in a country by looking at whether that country has a thriving alternative news scene. If it does, the media tends to be tilted in one direction, if it doesn't the media is either more balanced or the country oppresses alternative media sources. In that case those alternative sources tend to sprout outside of the country, e.g. Epoch Times vs the PRC.
I also suspect the term 'alternative news sources' is ripe for overhaul, especially in those countries where these sources play a large role - e.g. Sweden. This is already happening in a way there, the division goes more towards whether a news organisation underwrites the ethical guidelines for news reporting ('pressetiska regler' in Swedish) or not. Another rather important division in Sweden is that between organisations which get monetary support from the state and those which do not, either because they do not want to be encumbered (e.g. "Nyheter Idag") or because they do not follow the ethical guidelines (many others).
Which buildings have been burned, exactly? Local reporting covered the Molotov cocktails last night [0] but did not indicate that any buildings were being burned down or even caught on fire.
Portlanders continue to note that most of the city is unaffected by protests. Life goes on as normal. Only a couple specific blocks downtown are contested, and only because the police have chosen to make those blocks into a battleground.
Edit: Downvoters, which buildings have been burned? Bootlicking isn't cute, it's servile. If you cannot back up your claims about Portland, maybe stop making them.
Police are making it a battleground? Not the people throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks, and bricks. No, it is the police who have made it a battleground.
Both sides need to be present to escalate the situation. If you look at the videos from a couple weeks ago of the police just herding protests with tear gas and dragging people into vans, they're not exactly a deescalating presence.
the police have been making it worse. Using questionable tactics, using disproportionate force, lieing, inciting/supporting one side over the other, using beyond questionable reasoning for declaring a riot, using agent provocateur ...i could go on. Check out Blue Leaks as well. The fact is the majority of the media covering Portland are not showing the whole story.
Citizens have constitutional rights to peaceably assemble. The language is right there in the bill of rights. Police don’t show up and corral peaceful protesters who applied for, and were granted, permits for demonstrations.
When an assembly becomes not peaceful it ceases to be lawful. If unlawful protesters do not disperse police must use what you call “questionable” tactics to remove them.
So one person throwing a bottle is a reason to declare a riot? This has happened. Who decides when an assembly ought to be declared a riot? Currently its police and they have shown time and again they cannot be relied on to make a sound judgement in that regard. The majority of time there has been little reason to declare a riot and instead of relieving the tension, government forces have stoked it. What about using agent provocateurs? Surely this is not what you consider to be upholding the rule of law. And for that matter Portland police have shown bias in their application of the law in regards to counter protestors. I support the rule of law wholeheartedly but it must be applied evenly across all fronts for the rule of law to be maintained. On its face alone, I agree with your statement but digging any deeper reveals
that unfortunately your black and white maximalist/ reductionist viewpoint doesn't fit the reality in the ground. Its shades of grey. The media and the radicals on any side are forcing you into this viewpoint. Btw you are leaving out so much in your assessment to in order to make a black and white argument.
It’s simple. We have rules and regulations on how to assemble in public. They differ from city to city and state to state but the information isn’t hard to find. Typically you need a permit if your assembly is more than 20 people but that’s not universal. And an assembly in the middle of the night is almost certainly not peaceful or allowed.
People are trying to make it grey to apologize for what is happening.
So do you think that such a simple approach would work to create change? What about free speech zones? Do those kinds of assemblies mean anything to those in power? Is a protest that doesn't have a permit still unlawful to you even if it were 100pc idealistically peaceful? Do you believe had there been meaningful change in the first 30 days, people wouldn't still be put protesting? What about the upcoming Proud Boy gathering, this does not have a permit. Are they not allowed either? There are plenty of instances where a demonstration doesn't need a permit like if you aren't blocking traffic or the demonstration is under a certain amount. These are genuine questions.
>Police don’t show up and corral peaceful protesters who applied for, and were granted, permits for demonstrations
1. Is it a right if you need to ask permission from the very people you're protesting against?
2. The entire nation watched police tear gas peaceful protestors in DC so the President could have a photo of. We also saw Portland police break the hand of Christopher David, a 53 year old veteran when he approached police, unarmed, with his hands raised.
Well cops left in Seattle and let Marxist larpers have a go. Couple dead people later that had to be ended. Well that and looting with a good doze of racketeering(protection money) and assaults on whoever did not look like they fit
Watch the video where they executed one kid, the other who was shot lived because I guess he looked dead so they did not give him coup de grace
Google it, it was all over the Reddit and even some “news” media bothered to report it. 2 kids white suv, roadblock.. 16 year old finished off with a round to the dome, younger one lived but was severely wounded. There is a video of the evidence destruction(them collecting casings) but it is harder to find.
I think nobody been arrested or charged. Yeah nobody gives a shit about that either
the police union needs to call for a 60 day strike. just take away the policing function of the local government for two months. that will lay bare the real motives of the protesters, either peaceful demonstration or violence and looting.
It sounds like you believe that protestors are some sort of cohesive whole. If 90% of protestors are peaceful, and 10% are effectively anarchist provocateurs (or just unlawful types taking advantage of unrest to mask illegal/antisocial behaviour) then the police abandoning things is clearly going to make things turn bad IMO.
Can USA police really not restrain from violently attacking the peaceful elements amongst protestors and just seek to keep the peace against those provably causing violence? They'll actually need to act like grown-ups, be brave, and not arrest people for calling them names and such.
I have also seen little reporting on what I suspect (admittedly, merely judging from photos) has driven a lot of the more confrontational protesting in Portland: youthful energy and enthusiasm that doesn’t actually think that much about theory or aims. Press coverage and the attacks of ideological opponents depict these protestors as a focused political force that knows exactly what it seeks and why it is doing the specific things it is doing, but I don't believe that is actually the case.
You would think that after May '68, people would be aware of this. Back then the French Communist Party, the Maoists, and the Situationists who developed elaborate theory and carefully pursued their goals, were seen as boring windbags by the actual masses of young people in the streets. Most of those young people were not coming out with clear policy aims and strategy, but rather they were motivated by a more vague feeling of discontent at the authorities, by the pleasure of rebelling, and by the satisfaction of being part of a community with fellow protestors.
There are well articulated lists of demands from leaders of the movements. Not everyone in the gatherings needs to be super well-versed in the policy details to support them. Here are some examples:
You can probably find more local information from your local BLM or other social justice organizations. Here is a specific example from where I live, the Twin Cities: https://www.reclaimtheblock.org/home
"Not everyone in the gatherings needs to be super well-versed in the policy details to support them."
It's not that they don't know the finer policy details, it's that many of the on-the-ground protestors probably aren't even aware of every one of these demands. When young people are driven to attend protests because of the general outrage about black victims of police violence, how many of them really know, for example, that payment of reparations is part of a list of demands that has been published somewhere?
Some of these sound reasonable, some of them are completely ridiculous. It's probably for the better of the movement that these demands aren't the subject of (sympathetic) news coverage, because they're way outside the overton window of the general population. In fact, republicans/conservatives could hardly get any better support for their claim that BLM supporters are radical marxists.
Sure. You don't start a negotiation from the middle. Also, most of the actual policy changes would be local. The support of the general population matters much less than the support of those who are impacted. The politicians and leaders need to work out the details and compromises. The point of these protests is that one side has not been listened to, and it is getting people killed, and we're sick of it.
I agree, but you also shouldn't completely discredit yourself before negotiation has started. What do you even bring to the table? The end of protests? Protests are only being tolerated because of presumed public support, which has been dwindling due to some ugly scenes.
> The politicians and leaders need to work out the details and compromises.
The politicians only need to care about votes. In many areas, the majority already voted in Democrats with the intention of having them fix things, which they didn't.
I would argue that Democrats are generally less principled than Republicans, they're only following what they believe the majority to believe. See the Dixiecrats or their position on gay marriage.
So, without the majority vote you don't have Democrats and without the Democrats, who do you have to support? Republicans? Greens?
> The point of these protests is that one side has not been listened to, and it is getting people killed, and we're sick of it.
I noticed as much, but that doesn't magically bring you into a good bargaining position. MLK was successful because he stayed within the overton window. Malcom X wasn't, because he didn't.
MLK was massively vilified during his lifetime. E.g. [1]:
> According to an early 1968 Harris Poll, the man whose half-century of martyrdom we celebrate this week died with a public disapproval rating of nearly 75 percent, a figure shocking in its own day and still striking even in today’s highly polarized political climate
And [2]
> Back in the 1960s, when King was actually leading protests, just 36 percent of white Americans thought he was helping “the Negro cause of civil rights,” according to historical polling data compiled by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. In a 1966 Gallup poll, more than 60 percent of the public rated King more negatively than positively.
> After King was assassinated, two-thirds of Americans said their strongest reaction to his death had been sadness, anger, shame or fear, another survey found. Another 31 percent, however, said they “felt he brought it on himself.”
This idea that MLK was the respectable, acceptable face of the civil rights struggle is a modern fiction, and worth considering before denouncing those currently seen as going too far:
MLK was seen as going too far. He was hated.
The turning point was his death, and even then millions thought he had it coming. It took many years of reappraisals after his death for him to become the popular icon he is today.
Worth considering when considering what future generations will think about those demonstrating now.
Any discussion of public disapproval of King post-1965 has to mention that he had begun to speak on class issues and economic empowerment for all Americans, he was no longer limiting his efforts to civil rights for African-Americans. Class struggle in the 1960s was definitely outside the USA’s Overton window.
> What do you even bring to the table? The end of protests? Protests are only being tolerated because of presumed public support, which has been dwindling due to some ugly scenes.
The end of protests and a society that works better for everybody, yes. I'd love to have a public safety force that I felt I could rely on. Currently, I don't.
> In many areas, the majority already voted in Democrats with the intention of having them fix things, which they didn't.
Well, sort of. Here in the Twin Cities, the elected Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to change the city charter to no longer require the Minneapolis Police Department. The charter change would require a vote to approve, which would have let us actually see how locals felt about it. But, it required review by an un-elected Charter Commission, which doesn't reflect the demographics of the city, and chose to use a procedural delay tactic to prevent the question from being put on the ballot this year. So it's not fair to say that they "didn't fix things," but rather weren't allowed to by state law, which requires the charter commission. Republicans control the state Senate.
> So, without the majority vote you don't have Democrats and without the Democrats, who do you have to support?
Progressive candidates, like members of the DSA and politicians they endorse. One thing that has come out of these protests is a rise in progressive candidates, both running at all, and actually winning some primaries. The progressive candidate who won the primary for my state House seat over the long-time Dem incumbent chose to run after the Floyd murder.
The protests themselves have moved the overton window. A single recent example is how public support for protesting athletes has changed. Consider in particular the NFL apology from earlier this year https://abcnews.go.com/US/nfl-apologizes-listening-players-r... . It's a long road, and mistakes will be made, but on the whole I think the protests have had a huge positive impact on the problem.
> The end of protests and a society that works better for everybody, yes.
You don't actually bring that society to the table. That's outside of your power. If anything, you promise that this society will somehow come about if only your demands are met. Kind of like the politicians that might promise almost anything, if only you elected them.
> Progressive candidates, like members of the DSA and politicians they endorse. One thing that has come out of these protests is a rise in progressive candidates, both running at all, and actually winning some primaries. The progressive candidate who won the primary for my state House seat over the long-time Dem incumbent chose to run after the Floyd murder.
Sure, but that only happened because these progressives were compatible with voter behavior. Show me the successful progressive Democrat who also supports completely abolishing all prisons. Well, maybe in Portland.
> The protests themselves have moved the overton window.
Have they really? In the public perception, these protests were against police brutality, which virtually everyone is sympathetic with. If the protests had been perceived as being in favor of dismantling the criminal justice system, virtually nobody would've supported that.
> A single recent example is how public support for protesting athletes has changed.
Supporting or not supporting someone's right to protest has been inside the overton window all along. What hasn't been within the overton window would be a position like "protesting athletes should be imprisoned" or "athletes should all be forced to attend a protest".
Similarly, defunding the police is within the overton window, but abolishing policing outright is not.
I'm confused, how did we get from "here are a few examples of specific demands" to "the only demand is dismantling the criminal justice system"? There are many demands; not meeting all of them this year is not the same as failure.
FWIW the ballot amendment to eliminate the Minneapolis Police Department had about 61% support, vs 32% opposed, among Minneapolis residents. https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/survey-suggests-su... . These proposals are not as outlandish as you might think, especially among the people who are impacted by them.
> I'm confused, how did we get from "here are a few examples of specific demands" to "the only demand is dismantling the criminal justice system"?
I didn't say it was the only demand, it just cancels out all the other more reasonable demands. Suppose a political party promises to "strengthen national unity", "eliminate unemployment", "provide economic stimulus" and "start a war for more territory culminating in an unprecedented genocide". It then doesn't really matter that I think 75% of these goals sound alright.
> These proposals are not as outlandish as you might think, especially among the people who are impacted by them.
I think it really depends on how the question is phrased. Dismantling a particularly unpopular police force is one thing, ending all policing and imprisonment is another, and it's also not just a "local" thing.
> In fact, republicans/conservatives could hardly get any better support for their claim that BLM supporters are radical marxists.
I've read a lot of lists of demands, and most of them seem reasonable to me, and I suspect more would seem reasonable to the general population than you think. I have yet to encounter the demand that private property be abolished in favor of collective ownership, or much else that conforms to actual Marxist ideology.
They're only "Marxist" in the sense that a certain American demographics calls anyone and anything they disagree with "Marxist."
FFS they've called Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama radical Marxists. Greta Thunberg is a Marxist. Literally any leftist, liberal, Democrat and progressive with any visibility is a Marxist. The entirety of mainstream media and social media is Marxists. Fox News criticized the President? Marxists. It doesn't mean anything anymore, it's just a scare tactic.
What she didn't do is describe BLM as Marxist, or its purpose as advancing Marxism. I listened to the entire rest of that video and the only thing that was mentioned in regards to BLM was advocacy for black issues, not Marxism.
So no, BLM still isn't Marxist even if its founders are.
"BLM still isn't Marxist even if its founders are."
That doesn’t compute. An organization is ultimately inseparable from the real ideological positions and goals of its leadership. The entire 20th century is replete with examples of front groups, secretly working for the extreme positions held by their founders while using rhetoric that the public would view as more middle-of-the-road, and enlisting supporters and low-level employees that remained apart from the founders’ thought. (Marxist, capitalist, whatever – such front groups existed on both ends of the ideological spectrum of the Cold War era.) Why should we believe that a contemporary organization like BLM cannot be the same?
You can certainly argue that the ordinary people protesting in a general BLM-inspired movement are not necessarily to be identified ideologically with the founders of the BLM organization. But the criticisms of the BLM organization remain valid. And participants in the general movement who attend protests led by the BLM organization can be accused of unwittingly lending support to extreme positions, of neglecting their duty to look into who exactly has planned and organized a particular event beforehand.
Those of us who protested the Iraq War in certain street protests that turned out to have been organized by Communist parties for their own shady purposes, have been burnt and we don’t want antiracism protestors to be exploited in the same way.
>That doesn’t compute. An organization is ultimately inseparable from the real ideological positions and goals of its leadership.
You're assuming the "real" ideological position of a black Marxist starting a black advocacy movement protesting police violence against black people is actually Marxism, whereas the actual evidence from her own mouth is that the "real" ideological position is the black advocacy.
>Why should we believe that a contemporary organization like BLM cannot be the same?
Occam's Razor. It seems far more likely given the context in which the organization arose that it is what it claims to be, rather than that being a front for something else.
>Those of us who protested the Iraq War in certain street protests that turned out to have been organized by Communist parties for their own shady purposes, have been burnt and we don’t want antiracism protestors to be exploited in the same way.
It's entirely possible that a movement like BLM can be co-opted by another agenda, and that's something people who support the movement need to watch out for. But all that's being presented here as evidence of the actual purpose behind BLM being the advancement of Marxism is speculation and extrapolation.
> You're assuming the "real" ideological position of a black Marxist starting a black advocacy movement protesting police violence against black people is actually Marxism, whereas the actual evidence from her own mouth is that the "real" ideological position is the black advocacy.
Actually, I’m suspecting that the “real” ideological position of the BLM organization is both an end to police-on-black violence and certain extreme economic-socio-political goals, except that its leadership tries to keep the latter aims covert. After all, even in its overt public platform the BLM organization makes certain demands (like for empowering trans people) that go beyond the matter of police violence against black people. So, you cannot claim that the BLM organization is tightly focused just on antiracism.
>Actually, I’m suspecting that the “real” ideological position of the BLM organization is both an end to police-on-black violence and certain extreme economic-socio-political goals, except that its leadership tries to keep the latter aims quiet.
You're talking about a hypothetical, as-yet unrealized (and possibly unfounded) form of BLM in the future. As mentioned earlier, BLM supporters protesting on the ground likely didn't join for a Marxist agenda and aren't supporting it, and if it's the case that "extreme economic-socio-political goals" are being kept quiet (IE, not part of the common dialogue,) then it isn't correct to consider BLM currently Marxist, and labeling it as such is only useful to distract people from its legitimate grievances.
>After all, even in its overt public platform the BLM organization makes certain demands (like for trans issues) that go beyond the matter of police violence against black people which has drawn the public to BLM-led events.
Support for trans rights, LGBT issues, feminism and the like isn't that radical and it isn't Marxist per se. Reading their "what we believe" page[0], posted elsewhere in this thread, it's clear that they're trying to include other marginalized groups in the movement, but also trying to stay on message, doing so in the explicit context of the black community. That's just good PR, and apart from the overt language not much different than progressive mission statements put out by many organizations.
>So, you cannot claim that the BLM organization is tightly focused just on antiracism.
Ok. I still don't see the radical Marxist agenda. When they stop talking about racism and start talking about seizing the means of production I'll believe it.
"We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."
If you don't like the Marxist label, we can call it Soviet. The exact type of anti-family ideology isn't worth arguing over.
Encouragement of fatherless homes isn't going to make life better. You can see it even in the word choice when they say "mothers, parents" instead of "mothers, fathers". They can't even bring themselves to say the word!
I generally agree on that point, but that doesn't necessarily matter to public perception. The general public isn't particularly educated on how exactly Marxism might be defined in a textbook.
Rather, in terms of public perception, Marxism is probably best defined as "a bunch of loony leftist ideas". Some of these demands fit that bill perfectly.
Secondly, many BLM protestors are clearly brandishing symbols that are associated with Marxist/Communist ideology, many self-identify as "Marxist", and even officially they refer to each other as "comrades":
>Rather, in terms of public perception, Marxism is probably best defined as "a bunch of loony leftist ideas". Some of these demands fit that bill perfectly.
The public has been effectively propagandized and made to turn against one another rather than a corrupt system. If you accept the thesis that endemic racism and corruption in the American justice system exists, that the reason for the anger behind these riots and protests is legitimate, then your personal ideological polarity shouldn't matter.
Unfortunately, it's easy to get people to dismiss the movement wholesale by associating it with the specter of Marxists and Angry Black Men.
And that still leaves reasonable demands being ignored. If you don't support completely defunding and disbanding the police, you could agree that de-escalation training and shifting of funding priorities might be effective. That doesn't need to be slotted into a left-wing political agenda.
>Secondly, many BLM protestors are clearly brandishing symbols that are associated with Marxist/Communist ideology, many self-identify as "Marxist", and even officially they refer to each other as "comrades":
And a lot of BLM protestors, likely a large majority, aren't and don't. There's a difference between some Marxists supporting the movement and the movement itself being Marxist or having a Marxist intent. Black Lives Matter is clearly not about Marxism.
Well, what can I say? Branding matters. Associations matter. If you don't agree that the US should be a white anglosaxon ethnostate, can't you at least agree with the Nazis that there should be immigration reform?
There are Marxist extremists associated with BLM, and while "disbanding the police" may not be textbook Marxism, it is a "loony leftist idea" and therefore interchangeable with Marxism in the public discourse.
Similarly, very few of the people arguing for making the US a white ethnostate are literally "National Socialists". Yet, we call them Nazis.
Thhey did the same type of reporting during the Hong Kong protests.
Completely brushed over the rioting, the destruction of public property, and even attacks on bystanders speaking Mandarin (there were incidents of Japanese and Taiwanese reporters being attacked by protesters who thought they were Mainland Chinese).
There were also Molotov cocktails thrown at police, and some protesters were shooting arrows.
That’s what sells, so it makes sense they would have that narrative.
Egregious contradictions that enrage a significant segment of the population (especially those outside your normal readership) get your story shared approximately a gazillion times. E.g. the stories you saw were the ones that were egregious. A given story might be propaganda but a lot of this stuff is just a marketing strategy.
If the content is the marketing then it ceases to be journalism. Yes, this is probably stating the obvious.
In this case then, we’ve lost something important. What we got to replace it seems to me like it’s actively hostile to a peaceful republic.
I’s like to think that just as much as part of our brain turns on for the click bait, another part equally yearns for a source of truth, or as close to it as our meager egos can allow for.
All "mainstream news" from all countries of the world that are in Portland, BBC, al-Jazeera, CBC, le Monde, PBS, CTV, Reuters, AP and so on? (I don't know all the names of news orgs from memory)
Does someone have a list of verifiable comparisons between coverage and (evidence of) events that you respect? This comment and article are "raising concerns", but not contributing to a more realistic public record.
I don’t live in Portland so obviously none of this worries me all that much. My city has had bad riots but they passed and actually things are much better now. I expect even a lot of people in Portland are upset by it, but aren’t in immediate near-term danger. I don’t believe that these riots are going to spread nationwide and result in a breakdown of society, even if sensationalist news stories tell you that’s going to happen.
However what is new this time is that for the first time, the President of the most powerful national government on the planet is threatening to use Federal police powers against not only Portland, but cities all over the US that he sees as politically opposing him. And there’s a very decent chance that he will get away with this, even if it’s technically illegal. That scares the crap out of me.
The fact that commenters on HN are taking predictable sides in a “political debate” in the face of such massive stakes doesn’t surprise me. But I wish those people could think two moves ahead and see how vastly disproportional the two sets of problems are. We’re in a very dangerous place as a nation and you’re worrying about some idiots on a street in Oregon.
> There can be a concept of “BLM” that is obviously right and important to support, while there is also a well organized radical contingent taking cover within BLM that is wreaking havoc on the streets and will bully or beat up anyone who stands up to them (police or bystander alike).
For starters I'd suggest not putting black lives matter in capitals since that acronym covers both the tautological expression as well as the Marxist organisation which has taken this moniker. Yes, lives matter no matter the colour of the skin, why do you ask? No, I will not support the organisation which has co-opted the name since they only use the name to further their political agenda.
Yes, on the face it's tautological. In reality it isn't, because black lives clearly do not matter as much as white ones, particularly to the police, but also to many other institutions public and private alike. That's what the struggle is for, and behind it is an unorganized popular movement, not any "Marxist" organization.
I agree with what you’re saying. The fact you get downvoted speaks of the success they’ve had masquerading themselves as a good or “peaceful” movement.
People, I know you mean well but remember that bad things that look good can cause much more harm than things that look outright bad. Be skeptical.
I don't know why this comment got downvoted so heavily. I think what you're saying is insightful. This kind of culture puts the US at high risk of falling deep into the kind of corrupt, low trust world seen e.g. in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When manipulative behaviors are normalized and rewarded, manipulative, corrupt people take power. And when the regime's power collapses and the pie starts to shrink, the fighting gets nasty.
The small acts of violence are either a brilliant strategy move of RNC, or a lapse of strategy on the far left. Small bouts of violence are completely de-lever the strategic impact of the intended gatherings from an optics perspective.
Someone smart realized that if violence dominoes a bit, along with some press leverage, it creates families afraid of 'defunded police and personal safety issues'. The allowance in Chicago, Portland, Seattle literally played to Trump's hand - which I suspect is the opposite of what organizers believe.
Edit: This is my independent view as a libertarian.
> The small acts of violence are either a brilliant strategy move of RNC, or a lapse of strategy on the far left.
There's another option: it's neither of these because neither political party actually has control over the solution. They're both reacting to the actions of individuals they cannot control. If Nancy Pelosi and Trump both got together for a heartwarming bipartisan plea for both 'sides' in Portland to settle down, I don't think it would change anything because neither the RNC nor the DNC are actually calling the shots.
This thread is obviously going to get very political but I feel like before people get too anti fascists vs nonviolence should check some of the history they were taught in school for cracks. A few threads worth reading -
This isn't just limited to Portland but is becoming a general aspect of these protests now, e.g. here[1] was DC last night where a Washington Post reporter was hounded out of the protest and then followed by "minders" to prevent his return.
Protesters are now blocking media from filming their demonstration, shining lights into a reporter’s face, blocking shots with fans umbrellas and following like “minders” ... “We have our press we know and trust,” this young woman says
Some of them do (and are registered with the FAA to fly them). However there are a number of no fly zones, some which have recently been added, in addition to not flying them over peoples houses.
“ Not that I want to legitimize this @reason piece, but I have filmed copious moments of ppl throwing things at police/vandalizing bldgs/etc & have never been told I’m not allowed to film. I have never heard of the so-called “IPC.” The lack of sourcing in this story shows.”
He was considered left-wing until he dared to report what he saw, refusing to censor it for the benefit of Antifa. That sounds like a reputable journalist to me.
No there isn’t. There is documented video of this happening. It may not happen to every single journalist but that doesn’t mean it is not happening. Antifa is very organized and they specifically look for journalists they do not like.
Maybe in some places, there may be some groups that seem so. But given the evidence I've seen near me, 'organized' would be too strong a word. They're more 'middle-class white kids looking to get their faces punched', at least around here.
The video I saw was on a live stream. A cursory searched turned up this thread from a WaPo reporter though that includes photos and videos of this happening in DC:
That's pretty expected though: if you're on somebody's side, they're usually not treating you as an enemy (not getting on any lists!), won't try to stop you from filming and generally treat you nicely.
This is the environment in which the journalism originally flourished: obtaining and reporting information that is not readily accessible otherwise, often against the wishes of the powers on the ground; and frequently being in danger while obtaining it. I am not glorifying this setup, it is horrible; but the information it provides is very valuable.
Unfortunately, nowadays the journalist working on such project will not enjoy the backing at home: gone are the newspapers that would support independent investigations and publish important reports even when they do not line up with the editor's personal preferences. So the journalist reporting an unconventional view has to working with the other side of the political spectrum, which leads to being boxed all the same, just in a different box.
I think there is a real need for independent reporting, including (especially) on hot button topics. I even think that many people would gladly pay for such news if we can figure out the right model that ensures independence: it is perfectly OK to publish a partisan report, as long as publishing an opposing view is also acceptable. My 2c.
What’s weird is that the script is flipped here, if this article is to be believed: it is the alleged “underdog” that is attempting to suppress journalistic freedom (through intimidation) to control the news narrative.
The script was always shaky. If there are lines of mayors, governors, millionaires, corporations, and celebrities lining up to support you, you are not an underdog. There are not similar lines to make sure a given periodical has room and support to safely provide agenda-free reporting.
> if this article is to be believed: it is the alleged “underdog” that is attempting to suppress journalistic freedom (through intimidation) to control the news narrative.
Could unions and professional associations fill that gap? Why aren't they now? Where are groups like the ACLU?
It's worth noting that journalism as a profession has a problem with letting itself become political. Seems like for a journalism association to be effective in these cases, it must insist on the impartiality that most institutions seem to be finding too difficult lately.
I think professional associations are pretty toothless; they are primarily for economic benefit, not for fighting or even providing support in an adversity.
Unions might not be a very good fit either. They do have fists and I would expect a good union to put a fight for any member that got laid off, even if the union leadership finds that defending the person is a burden. But the union probably would not care about impartiality of reporting or help publish a particular view.
But this does look like an almost perfect case for the freedom of speech defenders. I do not know why are they not helping. My only guess is that they are used to fighting the government or megacorps and have no idea how to help in this setup. But this is just a random guess.
To me this is a mix of the media no longer being trusted, the protestors wanting to control the narrative that is spread from their actions, and them trying to protect themselves from being filmed and then arrested.
Ignoring the 60-day escalation of protests on Portland is pretty dishonest. Police started using more rubber bullets, harming protestors: they started bringing homemade shields, etc.
I am surprised to see this on the front page of Hacker News. The article makes claims which are completely unsubstantiated. There is no audio/video evidence, and there is no other source (that I could find) corroborating the story, or even mentioning these phrases. From another comment here: https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1302284883625046016?s=21
IPC does not exist either.
In a similar way that there are claims that 'Antifa does not exist; it's just an idea.'
Lack of formal organization does not imply lack of existence. Self-identification with a group creates grassroots organizations, with different characteristics than a top-down group, but equally existent.
Isn't that exactly the train something from regular news would be on HN; you know that upvoted stories are ones people want others to be aware of, it doesn't indicate support nor that anyone is vouching for its verity.
This is vital to understand for anyone who thinks they know what's going on at Portland, and - on a broader scale - most current events. There is a massive polarization of who consumes which facts, and this is simply an encoding of that: a drip-feed of exactly what one group of people wish to see.
I was just looking at the zoom of the Nikon p1000 and from over 3 miles away you can easily zoom in and read a piece of paper. Even if these people don’t want someone recording them on the ground, a camera could literally be so far away they would not even see it recording them. It just seems ignorant. I pretty much assume I am being recorded at all times and act as such. Too many hidden cameras, security cameras and cameras so good I would not even see them in action.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=LhQlwKX3LQA
This is my about half of my (modest) charitable giving goes to media organizations like Propublica and NPR that try to maintain journalistic ethics. Without them, we are lost.
The mainstream reporting was so bad I just started looking on Twitter. I found both pro- and anti-"protest" accounts with video. Even the pro-protest account videos debunk the narrative that these are peaceful African-American protestors. Whenever one lets the mask slip or shows her hands or hair, it's a young white person. These are night time riots, plain and simple. Surveillance footage released by law enforcement shows that Mike Reinoehl loaded and cocked his weapon lying in wait before he murdered Aaron Danielson. Even the people generally sympathetic to the antiprotest viewpoint are able to publish their narratives using videos from the pro-"protest" side! Even the Kenosha story, the one we cant tell on Facebook, is largely misreported.[1]
At this point, these Antifa people (who "don't exist," yet all show up at the same time and place in a uniform and are even aware enough to know who is and isn't allowed to film), the mainstream reporting, the Democrats and Leftist activists seem to want me to believe their words over my lying eyes. I don't anymore. The illusion is shattered.
I'm a bit embarrassed that people who profess to be hackers in our industry are actively allowing themselves to be cannibalized by a narrative that is controlled by those with power over information. Ever since I was a kid, wresting access to information from a powerful, ruthless elite is what motivated me to be a programmer and hacker. I couldn't put it into those terms, but it's the same sentiment from my first exposure at age 12. When a billionaire self-described hacker uses his authority as the creator of the largest online social network on earth to censor any evidence that goes against a certain narrative, even to the point of blacklisting, he has ceased to be a hacker, as have any employees who continue to be accomplices in this increasingly absurd information warfare operation.
I have no doubt that many of these people believe they are doing the right thing, but they themselves have been cracked and don't even know it or are too fragile to resist. Anytime anyone says "you can't say <X> and you can't look at the evidence we don't endorse," I'm suspicious. Yet that is what we see right now.
The largest social networking site in the world will ban posts and even accounts for saying a certain narrative. The largest video platform in the world boosts the "reliable sources" mentioned in the article, and only puts less curated information after it. And the bird application uses trumped up bans, shadowbans and selective enforcement of policies.
> Hacker culture isn't the entire field of programming.
>
> Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are some of the largest businesses in the world and they are also free services.
>
> I would bet that the majority of people who code or design software find hacker culture, to be silly.
I get what you're saying. And yet Facebook HQ's physical address is 1 Hacker Way. Not 1 Big Business Way, nor 1 Status Quo Way, nor 1 Software Engineer Way. Hacker Way. Google used to speak about allowing the whole world to access information with ease, including projects like making libraries accessible.
Clearly Facebook and Google at least identify themselves with hacker culture. I'm not sure if Twitter ever professed any sort of noble goals, though it's a dwarf compared to the other two.
> With the President and many politicians supporting the killing in in Kenosha, clearly a portion of those in power support it.
I'm not sure I'd say anyone supports the killing. I personally think it was a big mistake for that kid to go there, regardless of whether he has the right to. It was a bad decision, and led to a tragic situation where there were no winners. That said, he's not a murderer; if anything, the mob was coming after him (guns firing in multiple cases) to kill him.
I also question the de facto power that the president has when the press really is able to control when and how he says what he says. And the press's lies seem to be getting more absurd and brazen. (The personality of the current president does him no favors. It's a negative, in fact.) He holds de jure power, but given his inability to pull 2000 troops from Syria or drop charges against his former National Security Adviser, his legal authority seems like the Queen's royal prerogatives++. The press and entertainment industries, the universities and the bureaucracy seem to hold fragments of power both legally and in the culture, which makes the de jure power a bit weak.
> There are alternative news sites, forums and even social media. Nobody is locked to these sites, except for an entitlement to an audience.
Twitter and Facebook have strong network effects, which effectively does lock people in. YouTube's are much weaker, which is why I suspect decentralized video will be the first decentralized service if they can get some legal kinks worked out. (There's also a legal argument about monopoly common carriers, even at common law, and how they shouldn't terminate service unless the law is violated.) However, even if we accepted that these were competitive, this kind of competition can only exist when we at least have some level of order and security. The reason.com article seems to indicate how we do not have that kind of basic stability.
Lots of people support the killing. When you look into the background of the 3 people shot, the reasons become obvious. The first person shot had attacked boys aged 9 to 11, raping 2 and molesting 3 others. The second person shot had a history of abusive relationships, including strangulation. The third person shot (surviving) was a burglar. That's 3 out of 3 being horrible people. Hitting a criminal in that crowd is like hitting a tree in a forest.
Remember that many people feel that a pedophile rapist should get the death penalty. They are offended by the fact that he was out on the streets of Kenosha chasing a boy. Some people, probably fewer, feel the same about the woman abuser. It is a common viewpoint that justice was served.
I've heard people argue about their identity and level of organisation, but "don't exist"? If this narrative is out there at all, it must be extremely fringe.
Rep. Nadler called Antifa "imaginary" on the floor of the House of Representatives.[1] I haven't been able to find the full quote with context, so take that as you will. The Daily Beast (not exactly representative of mainstream journalism, I concede) published an article saying ""Antifa" doesn't exist the way Trump pretends it does."[2] Whether those are extremely fringe is left to the reader.
DuckDuckGo admittedly returned more results from right-leaning sources clutching pearls that Democrats and media outlets would dare say such things than results from left-leaning sources saying it explicitly. Such is the nature of the polarized times, I suppose. But I have a few left-wing friends who have said similar things.
"At this point, these Antifa people (who "don't exist," yet all show up at the same time and place in a uniform"
What uniform is that?
Wearing black and a mask? That could be anyone, including police provocateurs and right-wingers looking to pin the blame on protestors on the left.
It's ironic that so many people who weren't there, don't know anyone there -- least of all any of the people "in uniform" -- fancy themselves to knew best of all what's really going on on the ground.
Just for the record, I strongly condemn violence both on the right and on the left. I do this on ethical grounds, because I believe violence is wrong. But even on merely practical grounds, it's clear that those who encourage and engage in violence are playing right in to the hands of those who have the most guns, who think they have the support of the military and the police, and who are itching for violence to break out to use as an excuse to crack down hard or foment a civil war (which, of course, they think they'll win).
> Wearing black and a mask? That could be anyone, including police provocateurs and right-wingers looking to pin the blame on protestors on the left.
It could be, and yet they chant "death to America," "down with fascism," etc. There have been scores arrested at this point. The facts tend to support Antifa with zero/few right-wing groups even nearby.
> Just for the record, I strongly condemn violence both on the right and on the left. I do this on ethical grounds, because I believe violence is wrong. But even on merely practical grounds, it's clear that those who encourage and engage in violence are playing right in to the hands of those who have the most guns, who think they have the support of the military and the police, and who are itching for violence to break out to use as an excuse to crack down hard or foment a civil war (which, of course, they think they'll win).
I 100% endorse this. I think the number of people on the right who want a civil war is extremely low (seems mostly confined to the actual Nazis who everyone hates). There are plenty who believe a civil war would be easy to win against Antifa-at-scale, but they don't realize the difficulty in organizing and coordinating actual operations when they'd be denied communications.
I'd even go so far as to say that these militia groups need to leave, even if they have a right to be where they are. The people like the Kenosha kid need to leave and not attend, even if asked. Yes, buildings will be destroyed, people will get hurt and lose their livelihoods and even their lives. That should rest on the consciences (or lack thereof) of the rioters and the political leaders who enable them. But if the right wing groups stayed the hell away, sooner or later, the leftist groups would burn everything down and go after one another. I still think that's a tragedy of meaninglessness, but at least most of the survivors would just go home back to mommy's basement and we could have peace. And then maybe we could actually get some real reform?
For moral, political, practical, and a host of others, everyone should stay the hell away from these things. It doesn't work out at all. But I think a lot of these people are basically very dedicated LARPers, on both sides. I haven't seen too many Army or Marine infantry with beer bellies hanging over their belts, but quite a few militia guys seem to. I've also never seen a successful revolution carried out by people who seem about as clueless about any sort of tactics beyond being an angry mob as the Antifa people. Angry mobs and beer belly dudes with guns can make some damage, but are no match for actual organized and trained military force.
Wow I kinda thought the article would go into police departments and unions paying social media management firms to send bad-faith takedown notices for YouTube videos that cast them in a bad light, but uhh yeah some protesters are kinda trying to do the same thing with far less resources.
Journalism is a key element of our collective civic sensemaking. Kent Bye worked on a model for collaborative journalism he called "The Echo Chamber Project" see https://archive.org/details/KentByeEchoChamberProjectVlogEpi... His goal was that documentary film makers could post all of the material they collected. This would allow viewers to judge what was excluded and to remix it from other points of view.
It's upsetting that this article is flagged. Is there no room for discussion of alternative views? Censorship is not the answer.
Funnily enough, it may actually harm the BLM movement. If there is no push back on protesters, they can keep escalating without fearing any consequences.
Ultimately, protests will get so big it will be impossible to censor them into a positive narrative.
In a couple months, say by Nov. 3rd, the protests could be so out of control as to tip the election. You're making your own bed.
Do you believe there is any validity to the idea that increased political polarization is synchronous with an increase in systems that perform better when their data sets are distinctly opposed? Can there be a middle when our analysis systems perform more poorly in those conditions?
"They only go to jail if they are judged to have committed crimes in court."
Not true. Plenty of people in jail have not been found guilty of anything and are there waiting their day in court.
That could go on for months or even years.
That's not to mention people dying in police custody, and the fact that some people's lives and reputation could be ruined by the mere accusation of a crime.
Fair enough - the system isn’t perfect; however there is no perfect system this side of heaven. I’m open to many kinds of reforms of the criminal justice system. The important thing to realize is that there are only trade-offs, no perfect answers.
Still, defendants still have rights and get due process in court. It is not reasonable to jettison all of that because sometimes we don’t like the outcomes.
The libertarian non-profit Reason Foundation and it’s associated magazine (linked article) have become much more prominent and linked as a respected news source since the beginning of the year. They do fantastic reporting with a logical (although biased towards freedom and individual rights) and informative style, which has simply disappeared from mainstream sources like the NYT and WaPo. I trust Reason much more than other sources.
I will +1 it as well. I have read Reason for about 10 years, and I like that they wear they have a clear ideology and have consistently stood up against US Republican and Democratic positions that don't make sense. (e.g. their work on pointless licencing for things is great).
Busting a union could literally fix the policing problem in this country. Concentrated power is a problem whether it’s a union, a corporation, or a government. It’s not black and white.
It makes me sad that an institution I used to like and respect, reason.com, seems more and more often to subscribe to the standard (and, taken uncritically, untrue) set pieces of the standard American culture war.
This one, in particular, that “antifa is a violent mob that is super hypocritical”, and also aliasing “antifa” and “blm” as coterminous.
The truth is very different, but I fear that many in their libertarian audience have shifted a lot more authoritarian in recent years, so it’s a logical evolution. It’s just super disappointing to see them regurgitating the off-the-shelf battle lines instead of digging for real.
> his one, in particular, that “antifa is a violent mob that is super hypocritical”
For having met many of them during the Gilets Jaunes demonstration in Paris, it’s not only true but an understatement. In addition everyone of them I talked to was of an abysmal intelligence and seemed to come only to destroy. I completely understand police brutality has I have been gassed, beaten and shot with rubber bullets while totally cooperative and non violent. However the behaviour of antifas is unacceptable.
I highly suspect that the government used them to destroy any sympathy towards the protests. It might be also the case in the US.
"I highly suspect that the government used them to destroy any sympathy towards the protests."
There have been documented cases of police infiltrating protest groups and encouraging violence, and probably many more that happened but have remained secret (because that's not really what the police ever want to talk about).
This history of provocateurs is mostly unknown to the general public, and certainly underappreciated.
Another factor is that pretty much anyone can dress in black and claim to be antifa (or whomever), or just commit violence without any political affiliation or purpose. Yet it's this anonymous non-organization that will get blamed regardless.
Very few of the people pointing fingers will bother to (or even have the capacity to) look beneath the surface to figure out who the violent ones really are. Much simpler to just slap a label on them and take it at face value.
I know for a fact that the police in Chicago used plainclothes officers to drag into the street many of their old/junked/rusted/decommissioned police cars; I'd be surprised if many of the vehicles so moved even functioned.
I presume they either set them alight themselves, or made them extremely easy targets for the protests, specifically to bolster their "but they're burning police vehicles!" narrative. The reporting on the matter won't point out that it's a 30 year old police car with a blown engine that was rusting in the ass end of a police storage lot for 10 years prior to being burned.
There are also lots of reports of police dressed in all black and not identified as cops (but wearing earpieces and cop-standard footwear) smashing things, and lots of pallets of bricks suddenly appearing in protest zones.
The whole story is not being, and likely won't ever be, told.
Your assessment was thoughtful, reasonable - and hammered with downvotes. I'm sensing a pattern where it's the well-expressed concerns with authoritarianism that are getting dogpiled.
The culture war in the US has pretty much devolved into generic sports-teamism at this point, calling for blood and demanding cancellation of anyone who doesn't agree with a narrow set of viewpoints.
This may seem like I'm pointing a finger in a particular direction with use of the term "cancellation", but it really applies to almost everyone civically involved in the US presently. It's become really boring and difficult to discuss any nuance in the situations.
I like to focus on the fact that the vast majority of people, everywhere in the world, regardless of "sports team" are decent and nonviolent. It's easy to get caught up in these things, war-of-the-worlds-style, when the media is both spewing fuel onto the culture war fire, and also increasingly custom-tailoring all of their output to one of two such teams.
Already, pretty obvious plain facts are being disregarded by a lot of prominent people simply because they don't fit the expected and normal us/them narrative that so many are now invested into.
I agree with all of that and even though one team is currently (way) more overt, this is an old arms-race dynamic. It subsists by one side always fueling the other.
I think this article bolsters his point that Reason is trending toward authoritarian efforts.
A quick look-up of the article's author shows her media appearances tend to be on authoritarian media outlets. She also has some history of trying to raise hostility against reform movements (eg: MeNeither's support of sex predators).
Trending towards authoritarianism? It seems like the article is reasonably accurate about an under-reported aspect of the protests. Namely the intimidation tactics against reporters by “protesters.”
And it’s written by a reporter that lived in Portland.
Edit: since I can’t respond below - I’m questioning the accuracy cause it seems like people are quick to label things “authoritarian/fascist” when they don’t really resemble that at all. Having watched Nancy Rommelman in interviews, podcasts, etc. I get the sense she’s not that at all. Generally very libertarian, i.e. advocating strong protection of individual rights against violence, etc. That’s how libertarians arrive at criticism of police/rioters. They’re both violating fundamental protections of individuals from violence.
How is antifa intimidating and attacking political dissenters not closer to a truer authoritarian accusation? I’m not sure where the “antifa is not violent” gaslighting is stemming from, but there’s a tremendous amount of YouTube footage that anyone can objectively discern from what a violent group of people looks like. The violence is not just them, it’s also right wing agitators such as patriot prayer and the proud boys. All groups involved are the foot soldiers for the ideology they represent.
You can argue antifa isn’t a mob and are just a small agitator involved in an overwhelming complex culture war, but that doesn’t negate their actions that have been documented.
The first problem is when people try to treat antifa as an organization rather than as a loose ideology that is supported by groups across a wide spectrum, and then tries to use that to assign guilt by correlation.
E.g. the original antifa was set up by the KPD (pre-war German communist party), but many modern antifa groups use logos that incorporates symbols that were used by the SPD to explicitly attack the KPD and Hitler (and Papen; who eventually demonstrated how dangerous he was by being the person who brought Hitler to power) who they saw as just as authoritarian as Hitler (with good reason - KPD were Stalinists). E.g. you might recognise the 3 arrows from this poster [1].
You'll find antifa groups coming out of groups with political ideologies that are close to mortal enemies. The only things they have in common is opposition to fascism and some general symbolism.
For me, the problem with contemporary Antifa movements is that either "fascism" is left undefined, or perhaps worse yet, it is defined in a way that actually excludes a lot of the earlier Leftist activism from which Antifa ultimately derives. For example, many of the intellectuals of May '68 (who did, after all, believe that they were anti-fascist and seeking to rid the world of vestiges of Nazism etc.) would actually be considered fascist by probably most self-identified Antifa today, because their framework was pre-feminism and pre-trans-activism.
I've yet to see any antifa groups push views of the type you're suggesting, though I don't doubt that they do exist, as the point I was making is that the labelling has been full of contradictions from the start:
KPD who formed the original Antifaschistische Aktion, was just as authoritarian as the fascists themselves, as as I pointed out, common modern symbols of antifa were symbols used against the KPD as well as the nazis.
When the term was resurrected again in modern use, it was resurrected by anarcho-syndicalists (hence why you often find antifa logos mixing black and red or entirely black) who rejected all forms of authoritarianism.
As such trying to treat them as anything resembling a single grouping, or even a single coherent ideology is meaningless, and does not in any way reflect reality.
They share a handful of ideas, and different groups place those ideas in entirely different frameworks and comingle them with entirely different other sets of ideas.
If you wanted to start a club, and you called this club the Ku Klux Klan, people would assume you were a bunch of racists, even if you insisted you totally weren't. Even if, in reality, you actually weren't.
"Antifa" is a bad name to choose if you don't want people to assume you're a bunch of communists, just like "Ku Klux Klan" is a bad name to choose if you don't want people to assume you're a bunch of racists.
Antifa has been far more diverse than that for decades before most people had heard about them.
There's now a massive amount of attempts to pretend they're a unified organisation with a single ideology that is almost exclusively coming from people wanting to discredit anti-fascism in general, who don't care at all that the image of antifa they're trying to push has very little to do with reality.
The original antifa and that modern antifa have a lot in common. They share the name, symbols, violence, and ideology. The original antifa was so awful that it made people want Hitler. The modern antifa might achieve a similar accomplishment.
> The original antifa and that modern antifa have a lot in common. They share the name, symbols, violence, and ideology
And yet a whole lot of antifa, uses symbols that were inherently opposed to the founders of the original Antifa, such as the three diagnonal arrows. And their symbols go across a massive range of symbolism of which a substantial proportion has no connection to the original AFA either.
You're demonstrating exactly the kind of attempt to conflate a whole range of groups with almost nothing in common by making things up about them. When I looked into antifa symbols a while back, I found many dozens of symbols that had no connection to the original AFA at all, but had links to all kinds of other movements. Their ideologies are similarly varied.
Already the "original" of the modern antifa explicitly used symbolism, through incorporating black for anarchism, that stood in direct opposition to the views of the KPD who founded the original.
The only thing they have in common is opposition to fascism. Everything else varies along multiple axes, and suggesting they all "have a lot in common" comes across as flatly ignoring the evidence.
> The original antifa was so awful that it made people want Hitler.
> This one, in particular, that “antifa is a violent mob that is super hypocritical”, and also aliasing “antifa” and “blm” as coterminous.
The truth is very different, but I fear that many in their libertarian audience have shifted a lot more authoritarian in recent years, so it’s a logical evolution. It’s just super disappointing to see them regurgitating the off-the-shelf battle lines instead of digging for real.
You’d think it ironic that a publication titled “Reason” would succumb to ideology, but the truth is that libertarianism (which, in the US, is seen as unequivocally right-wing) has always been used as a trojan horse for ideology. So they’ll attack a movement they perceive as being driven by an ideology (pro-social-welfare, pro-economic equality) which they oppose.
Publications are generally not titled x-ism, where x is the ideology they represent. Libertarianism is not "a trojan horse for ideology" it is an ideology.
>Libertarianism is not "a trojan horse for ideology" it is an ideology.
It can be both, though for many proponents it's natural to blindly reject the notion of one's identity being polluted by people who are ostensibly on "your side". It's not something that's only happening in libertarianism, but I strongly agree that it is abused in the way the parent describes.
If you spend any time on the Portland subreddit, you'll see plenty of stories and comments about how the city is just fine, and only Trump fans with an agenda push a "rioting and burning narrative". It's amazing watching hypocritical narrative control in action. These are the same people pushing for police body cameras.
And is there not a selection bias at play in a subreddit? People who don't follow the majority opinions of those on a subreddit are routinely hounded down and mass downvoted until they leave, seeing it's futile to try and converse there.
Of course there is, except I'm sure a lot of the people on that subreddit are also heavily involved in "protesting". There certainly is a selection bias at play in the general population of Portland, too ;)
Edit: I also find it fascinating that the users of the Portland subreddit will shun or ban you if you are not actually in Portland, as I am sure that a lot of those folks strongly favour all immigration in general. As I said, it's a miniature picture of hypocritical narrative control in action.
>I also find it fascinating that the users of the Portland subreddit will shun or ban you if you are not actually in Portland, as I am sure that a lot of those folks strongly favour all immigration in general
What's wrong with that? You can be in favour of immigration but still want to have a subreddit for people actually in the town. You're free to move to Portland and join.
We favor legal immigration. Have your papers in order, be able to speak coherently and talk to people, and be useful to society. We aren't fond of random fascists coming in from across the Washington-Oregon border, let alone driving in from Idaho, just to have street fights and arguments.
From our perspective, you're just some hateful outsider who has no experience living in a society. If you want our respect, then you need to be a better person, or at a minimum you need to demonstrate that you're capable of being embedded within a societal context.
Do we? I also think that police officers must live in their precinct. No Portland cop should live in Vancouver.
I also think that legislators are obligated to do their job. No Oregon legislator should live in Idaho.
I also think that you, being a non-Portlander, should not have any voice whatsoever in disputes between Portland's people and its elected leadership. Our problems are between us, and our city council and mayor and cops; you're not a party to it.
Edit: Downvoters, use your words. Show us why you think these points are bogus; explain clearly why you think that you should have a vote in a society which you don't live in.
This is just a general observation but the reason I don't enjoy reddit is because it is imo the worst offender of a site that promotes a "mutual admiration society". So maybe that is at play here
Sounds a lot like "embedded journalism", i.e. a nicer term for propaganda. You write what they like, you document what is approved by their media operations, and you're silent on anything they do that makes them look bad.
Having done a fair share of media work on and in German protests myself: the biggest problem is that video evidence can and will be used by cops to go after activists - and that includes material from way outside a riot scene, given that police also look for such tiny details as shoes to (attempt to) identify people. The people at such events have something to lose: careers, families, friendships, years behind bars.
In contrast, in countries like Turkey, Belarus or other dictatorships, where the fear is getting killed regardless of protests, the situation is different - people on these protests want their faces to become public so that they cannot be "disappeared".
The police is almost never neutral when it comes to protests, not just in their tactics (just compare how easy the far-right gets away with even killing people at protests vs. how anything remotely left-wing is treated) but also in their press statements (e.g. see here for a police lie that activists had set a door knob under live electricity: https://taz.de/Polizei-Falschmeldung-ueber-Tuerknauf/!561005...) or at court.
The worst thing is many people do not realize this and treat police as "privileged sources", especially as many media outlets directly copy police press statements as facts instead of sending their own people to monitor and cross-check - because having "boots on the ground" costs money that too many outlets don't have any more.
>
The worst thing is many people do not realize this and treat police as "privileged sources", especially as many media outlets directly copy police press statements as facts instead of sending their own people to monitor and cross-check - because having "boots on the ground" costs money that too many outlets don't have any more.
There’s also the phenomenon of long-term crime-beat reporters taking on the perspective that the police are always correct, due to the implicit bias of reporting on “criminal behavior“. Moreover, such reporters need to maintain a working relationship with police in order to get the facts for their stories and often build friendships with police PR heads and prosecutors.
Protestors are people and unlike most places Portland is still active months later.
I would imagine there’s a core cadre of organizers who are no longer able to hide in the crowd, now that things are less spontaneous. Those folks are going to try to protect themselves.
video evidence can and will be used by cops to go after activists
only if there's something to use. If it's you just standing there with a sign, it's useless. If it's you throwing a molotov cocktail, or tailing someone to shoot them, yes, it will be rightfully used.
That makes it no less important to be aware of any bias in reporting. If only journalists that show the protests in a flattering light are allowed to film, then this should be mentioned every time footage from the protests is shown, and any "mostly peaceful" claims can and should be dismissed as unverifiable.
BLM as an organization has existed since 2013-2014. Before 2020, has there been any violence from anti-police-brutality protesting? The protests have been incredibly peaceful for years and years. What you're seeing now is a response to the lack of action boiling over. When voting and peacefully protesting doesn't stop the government executing American citizens in the streets, what do you do next? What's left? When you get thousands of angry people together, it's just going to result in some bad actions, unfortunately. If you want the violence to stop, then stop giving thousands of angry people reasons to gather.
It pops up during presidential election years. The donations are what is funding the DNC and the Biden campaign. It's an odd thing when you consider that Harris was a prosecutor who was unusually aggressive about putting black people in prison for minor offenses like pot, and that Biden was a senator who pushed to pass the strict sentencing.
I think the deal is that getting a person to donate to an uninspiring political campaign is difficult, but it is easy to add a more-palatable organization in the middle to pass along the funding. It's almost money laundering.
According to your link, "93% of demonstrations have involved no serious harm to people or property" out of a total of 7,750 demonstrations this year.
Which is one way to say that there have been approximately 542 protests this year involving serious harm to people or property. But sure, nothing to see here. (And by the way, what % of that 93% involved harm that the researchers didn't consider "serious"?)
Next time I see my grandad I'll tell him that there were only 71 bombing raids on London over 8 months of the Blitz, therefore his childhood in that city was "mostly peaceful."
What a fascinating report. It takes time to name the people wrongly killed by police, detail their deaths, but doesn't mention anyone killed by people who might be associated with BLM. It doesn't bother to so much as give a number of fatalities! Well we know there were at least some: https://apnews.com/864cb5c14ba08b4411a16577042d0773
The same approach is taken to other areas: Violence by police gets described in detail, violence by protesters gets a brief statistic such as "Post-deployment, the percentage of violent demonstrations has risen from under 17% to over 42%".
I must say I was shocked when the report managed to mention how many Rittenhouse shot, but omitted that he was shot at himself, and was on the floor, being hit in the head with a skateboard when he shot the 2nd and 3rd persons. Oh but it did mention Trump failed to condemn his actions - that part was important enough to include.
This HN news-story is all about the news we get about this “mostly peaceful” movement being extremely biased.
And you cite those very same news-stories as evidence of this article being wrong. Congratulations.
Also, that guy who only beats his wife when he gets drunk in the weekend is mostly non-violent, so I guess there’s no problem there either then? At least not by your logic?
The Daily Caller has been managed by Tucker Carlson, who attacks protesters on the air virtually every day. The Daily Caller is known for right-wing troll articles. There’s no chance in hell that this publication would ever portray protesters favorably.
Oh sure, the Daily Caller certainly has a right to complain. They just shouldn’t expect anyone to take them seriously about their intentions to report without bias.
Oh, I wasn’t talking about government interference.
I asked if you thought they should be allowed. And somewhat if protesters should allow members of the press they don’t approve of to record and report on them.
Yes, governance by the people trying to stop these reporters. The story talks about protesters governing the press by yelling, stealing, and smashing equipment.
Of course, I’m also against government governance of press, but I’m not asking about that. I’m asking whether you think this behavior is appropriate of protesters.
Agreed. This is illustrative of the point expressed in the article. Upthread there is a comment observing a similar incident that happened to a Washington Post reporter.
That's why they made it the lead of the article. They can't defend anything else about the response to the protests so they try and say the protestors are being illiberal. It's all BS dude. Wise up. 1st Amendment happening in PDX and they gotta not get killed by police and Proud Boys while they're at it.
The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white. There can be a concept of “BLM” that is obviously right and important to support, while there is also a well organized radical contingent taking cover within BLM that is wreaking havoc on the streets and will bully or beat up anyone who stands up to them (police or bystander alike). That they call themselves anti-fascists while taking a truly fascist approach to spreading their ideology is a rhetorical pattern I’m seeing a lot lately; accusing your opponent of exactly what you are doing.
Portland just “celebrated” their 100th day of rioting. There was video from last night where they set a fellow rioter on fire while trying to throw Molotov cocktails at police.
The PR / social media contingent that supports the riots is frankly impressive. The article mentions Google sheets listing approved journalists and ways to help fund them. The level of organization belies a depth to the organization that I think most people assume is more organic and rag-tag than it really is.