I'm curious why so many Democrats were allowed to encourage the BLM riots (more than 25 dead, $2 billion in property damage) without so much as a peep from Google, Twitter, Facebook or any other tech giant. Kamala Harris said "they should not stop" and helped with a bail fund for the people who were involved with them.
I think protest is a fundamental requirement of democracy, and as Chris Cuomo himself reminded us: protest aren't always peaceful [1]. It seems like a lot of Democrats are conveniently forgetting that all of a sudden.
It's all pretty complicated, but one obvious mitigating factor is the ends being pursued by each movement. Rioting aside, BLM is ultimately pushing for justice and equality. There's also a question of blame - many would argue that most of the BLM rioting was provoked by a disproportionate police response.
This movement, on the other hand, is quite transparently rooted in white supremacy, and had an explicit goal of trying to undermine democracy itself, and people showed up quite obviously looking for a fight. I mean, the news over the past few days have been plastered with images of a guy in a weird Davy Crockett the Viking hat, with enormous white supremacist symbols tattooed across his torso, brandishing a frickin' spear.
I don’t think you need to put moral or political judgments on this. As I understand (and I have not really done my homework here), there are two reasonably objective distinctions here:
1. The BLM protests were planned, in public at least, as peaceful protests. Things went wrong and they didn’t all end up peaceful and law-abiding, but I did not see any reports of people using major internet platforms to plan to start riots or cause property damage. The reports of planning of the DC riots on Parler, in contrast, seem to have been quite explicit about the intent.
2. (In my mind rather less clear cut.) The BLM protests were not based on objective lies. The DC riots were. Ignore all the people saying there was no proof of widespread voter fraud — that’s like people saying that there is no strong evidence that MSG causes headaches. In fact, there isn’t even a reason to suspect widespread voter fraud. The proponents of the fraud theory have, when they’ve presented evidence at all, presented comically weak evidence. The theory is obvious BS.
The BLM protests were based on objective lies. Have you watched the whole bodycam video of George Floyd's death? Or is that main stream media told you it's true that the police knee on his neck because he is black?
Can you finish watching it and tell me which part of it is racist? It's unfortunately now people pick the lies they want to believe and claim it's the truth.
BLM was a badly organized movement. I support the cause, not the way they're sending the message.
Study Gandhi, MLK, John Lewis, Mandela - I understand BLM is a decentralized movement, but that's the problem. There is no leader and leadership. It has no coherency. It's dividing the society even more instead of pulling the entire populace behind it.
Social movement has a singular goal - to change the minds of people that oppose their views. BLM has managed to just bring out people who were already supporting them, it hasn't quite changed the hearts of people that were previously racists.
This is not how you make progress in the society. It is "pull", not "push".
For you to say this says that you haven’t studied MLK, John Lewis, or Mandela.
Mandela was arrested and detained on Robben Island, in part, because he was part of a group that violently opposed the white supremacists of apartheid South Africa.
MLK never said that there wasn’t a place for violent resistance to white supremacy. In fact, he called out that if the white supremacists of his time weren’t careful, violent resistance would be all that was left (MLK and Malcolm X were more aligned than most people believe; MLK believed that the time for violent resistance to white supremacist violence had not yet arrived).
BLM is, in fact, a very _well_ organized movement and their leadership is consistently calling for protest that is vocal and meaningful, but not violent. Almost every single BLM protest last year that turned violent did so either because of (a) police rioting against the idea of being held accountable for their violence against BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities and persons or (b) white supremacists who thought it would be a lark to start some violence and blame it on the victimized.
BLM isn’t out to change open racists minds—they are correctly considered beyond redemption (and sometimes even beyond shame, like DJT and his coupistas)—and they don’t really care about changing the moderate person’s mind, either. They simply want the indiscriminate state violence against their community to stop. They want to stop the freedom with which the police murder their children.
They want there to be no more Rodney Kings, no more Amadou Diallous, no more Philando Castiles, no more Tamir Rices, no more George Floyds, no more Brianna Taylors, no more Jacob Blakes, no more Mike Browns. I could go on, but these are the ones that I can remember right now. Even _if_ some of them were committing crimes, the police are NEVER supposed to be judge, jury, and executioner…and most of the crimes with which those were accused had no chance of a death penalty. That the police have been able to not only murder BIPOC, but to do so with impunity AS A MATTER OF POLICY, is truly disgusting.
We as a society are lucky beyond belief that we _aren’t_ facing the violent revolution we deserve for our treatment of BIPOC communities and persons. Instead, we’re facing continued white supremacist violence.
Your argument boils down to "I agree with one cause and reject a caricature of the other, so the first should be allowed". Not agreeing with something is not a reason to ban it.
Every movement claims it's advocating for justice and every class considers itself oppressed and they can all cherry pick the instances where they are.
You're allowing the BLM supporters to characterise their motivations, and the Trump opponents to characterise the motivations of this protest. That isn't fair.
Someone who turns up in a Viking hat, tattoos and a spear isn't looking for a fight. A person looking for a fight wears a mask, armour, carries a gun and probably camouflage.
When someone's prominently displaying white supremacist imagery on their torso, it's hardly putting words into their mouth to characterize them as a white supremacist.
When people wear imagery and slogans to any demonstration, I afford them the courtesy of understanding that what they're displaying on their bodies is part of the message they want to communicate.
Mr. Viking hat probably isn't an entire protest, even if his horns are intimidating. And even as a group the people storming the capitol probably don't represent most of the protestors, typically the bulk of protests are law abiding and peaceful and there are just a few bad eggs looking to cause trouble.
The core of the protest is electoral integrity and calls for the politically marginalised to have a voice, not racial supremacy.
The stated purpose of the protest was to "take our country back" from the democratic majority.
That's not a few bad eggs. That's an enormous crowd of people all deciding, tacitly or not, consciously or not, that democracy isn't for them anymore. And phrases like "take our country back" aren't even subtle; anyone who's been paying attention recognizes them as dog whistles. The obvious indication is that this crowd believes the votes of the democratic majority are not legitimate because they came from people who aren't entitled to run the country. And, while we can certainly spend an entertaining afternoon sealioning about particular examples, it would be easier to just take a look at some of the wide angle shots of the crowd. The crowd is clearly communicating exactly who they think isn't entitled to have a voice in how the country is run, either explicitly by holding flags and banners, or implicitly by consenting to be represented by the people holding the flags and banners.
Wherein 100 people spilling over a barrier into a government building (and one of them getting shot to death) is somehow worse than the aforementioned billions in property damage and assaults on cops, smashed police cars, passersby attacked, stores looted, fires set... in 12 different cities around the nation?
For some historical perspective, the last time the Capitol was stormed, British soldiers burned it to the ground. This was 200 years ago.
There have been multiple riots over multiple police-involved killings in multiple locations in the last decade.
So yes, what they did was far worse. They claimed to be defending the constitution while in fact they were using force to stop a constitutionally-mandated process: certifying the electoral vote. They were incited to do this by the President of the United States. None of this has ever happened before in America.
Over the summer, 8 men were arrested for plotting to kidnap the Governor of Michigan. There were multiple people with zip tie handcuffs in their possession in the Capitol. What do you think their aims were?
Open your eyes and see how truly insane Wednesday was, please.
Tone it back a bit. We have lost multiple presidents and other countless politicians to actual assassinations. Breaching the capitol is certainly new but that speaks to the incompetence of the police, not the gravity of the protesters’ intents.
> There were multiple people with zip tie handcuffs in their possession in the Capitol.
Maybe to tie some people up? Guess what the intent is of the people that have bombs and guns.
As Senator Graham pointed out in his speech, the security failure was so catastrophic that it could have been the death of the entire house, the senate, and the Vice President (lots of people with large backpacks inside that could have been loaded with explosives).
If there was any serious attempt at an actual overthrow it would have been a much worse day.
>100 people spilling over a barrier into a government building
This isn't a fair representation of what happened and it reveals your bias. For one example, it appears a police officer was murdered with a fire extinguisher. We don't even have to get to what might have happened if the politicians weren't able to get out in time.
You are correct; a police officer was reportedly struck over the head with a fire extinguisher, and he later died of the injury. I really, really want them to find who did that.
I also think the guy who shot that unarmed woman has no business wearing a uniform and carrying a weapon.
And if it wasn't 100 people spilling over a barrier (actually, the police pulled the barriers away and literally waved them in - explain that one to me) and entering a government building and disrupting an important session... then what was it?
>I also think the guy who shot that unarmed woman has no business wearing a uniform and carrying a weapon.
I don't know what you are basing this on. He was apparently the last line of defense between the mob and some of the politicians the mob was trying to attack. Who knows what would have happened if they got through that door and he didn't act. There could have easily been a serious hostage situation.
>And if it wasn't 100 people spilling over a barrier (actually, the police pulled the barriers away and literally waved them in - explain that one to me) and entering a government building and disrupting an important session... then what was it?
Cops aren't apolitical. I guarantee there were plenty of people involved in security that sided with the insurrectionists. And that is exactly what it was, insurrection. They were trying to and were temporarily able to disrupt the function of the government recognizing the rightful next president.
So, totally different from people in Portland barricading a Federal building, then trying to set it ablaze with people inside?
Did this crowd of "insurrectionists" actually threaten anyone? There are reports someone set a couple of pipe bombs, but not in the building, and the FBI is investigating it and has offered a $50K reward, but inside the building, it was kooks and protesters who were pretty quickly rounded up and arrested. I don't condone what they did at all, but comparing it to burning down buildings like in Portland and Atlanta... the mind boggles at this moral equivalency. True mob violence did not occur on January 6, and thank God for that.
The protestors in Portland saw the courthouse as a symbol. They were not trying to take control of the government or harm people.
Wednesday's insurrectionists were trying to stop the recognition of the next president and take control by force. You can look through this Twitter thread for examples[1]. People entered the House Chamber armed with some sort of weapon and carrying flex cuffs. These aren't "people spilling over a barrier". They are insurrectionists that attempted to literally take our government hostage. The intent here was drastically more serious than any of the BLM protests.
Yes, context is important. The building is The Capital of a government and their aim was overthrowing that government by disrupting the democratic transfer of power. You can pretend that computers weren't stolen from congressional offices and that bombs weren't planted in the building, but playing dumb is a weak defense.
Still waiting on Trump's legal team and GOP supporters to show any strong evidence whatsoever to a court of law that would prove that there was sufficient electoral fraud to swing the election.
And no, before you copy/paste random twitter accounts, youtube conspiracy theorists, and "sworn" affidavits without corroborating material evidence: such "evidence" is not sufficient.
If it did then we'd have to believe that aliens are real, that lizard people are controlling the world, the earth is hollow, the moon is a space station, Nibiru is coming, and the pope worships satan.
That's the sort of theories your belief shares evidentiary quality with.
Overthrowing the government by force, to infiltrate a congressional electoral process, planning to murder/hold-hostage dissendents and lawmakers, to help the sitting president seize power after a lawful and fair election.
Sure, that's the same as people angry when theyre throwing stones at cops after killing them in sleep. I don't support BLM violence, just that your view is showing some bias towards a particular narrative - I think you should see the storming of the US Capitol as massively symbolic thing that has shaken the world.
If creating an "autonomous zone" in the middle of the United States isn't sedition, then I don't know what is. If you want to forgive it because it was a bunch of deluded incompetents, then you should probably forgive the Capitol seditionists for the same reason.
> an "autonomous zone" in the middle of the United States
Well, in the middle of Seattle. It's not clear whether chaz intended to secede from the US or merely Seattle policing; their demands were certainly very local so I suspect they really had no intention of leaving the US itself.
The riots[1] this past year were actual rebellion too. They certainly challenged government authority and burned down police stations.
Some of the Lafayette Square protestors would have breached the white house if they could have too. 60 secret service agents were injured. The only difference, really, is that the Capitol Police did a worse job.
[1]I don't like using the term BLM riots since I have have no idea to what extent they are responsible as a movement (if at all).
Hahah, "sedition." A big made-for-TV LARP that lasted a matter of hours where almost nobody was armed and nothing was at stake -- hardly any desks were even overturned. There wasn't even a millisecond where it looked like Wednesday's events would affect how power is wielded or who wields it in the U.S.
nothing was at stake, except the police officer who was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, also the lives of the people targeted by the pipe bombs.
In 1954 Puerto Rican nationalists shot five Representatives on the floor of the House. It did not change U.S. policy one iota, and neither would those pipe bombs had they gone off, which they did not.
I don’t think Kamala Harris said “don’t stop rioting”, I think she meant “don’t stop protesting”. And the bail fund is ostensibly for people who were unfairly arrested, which happened quite a lot.
I don’t think Democrats should paint all Republicans with the same brush, and vice versa.
If you don't understand the difference between a people that have faced subjugation, systemic racism, and generational poverty for two hundred years protesting - and yes, at times, rioting - upon continued police brutality and a bunch of people promoting sedition and talking about being a part of a revolution as they invade the Capitol building because their favorite person lost a free and fair election, I don't really know what to tell you.
I wouldn't give much of a damn if these people had burned down a Target or Quick Stop, either. But they ran into the capitol while many of them were actively talking about it being a revolution. With people talking about grabbing Congresspeople and having military tribunals. People went in with zipcuffs and firearms. Multiple bombs were planted.
This was an attempted coup. A poorly thought out one, a poorly executed one, and sure, not everyone that ran in had such grand aspirations. But plenty did, and plenty were open about it.
Go check out ParlerWatch on Reddit. Look at what's actually being posted on there. People calling for the violent overthrow of the government. People talking about murdering lawmakers. People cheering on those that invaded the capitol and calling for more.
> ...93 percent of the protests associated with BLM were entirely peaceful...
Yet our government treats left-wing protests and right-wing protests quite differently.
> Between May 1 and November 28, 2020, authorities were more than twice as likely to attempt to break up and disperse a left-wing protest than a right-wing one. And in those situations when law enforcement chose to intervene, they were more likely to use force — 34 percent of the time with right-wing protests compared with 51 percent of the time for the left.
I think some of the questions posed in this thread are quite difficult and strike to the core of human psychology. This is a difficult moment for everybody. If we observe a somewhat tribal response, we should not be surprised.
The protests were to hold those bad police accountable.
Do not compare people asking for the rule of law to be applied fairly and justly, to a President directing his rally to violently attack Congress and overthrow a democratic election.
One difference is that nonviolent protestors were being gassed and arrested. I see nothing strange in an American politician saying that nonviolent civil rights protests should not stop.
More often than not the police was told to stand down.
Does no one wonder why Trump got 9 million votes more than 2016 and doubled his minority vote? The democrats encouraging and downplaying the riots is why.
- BLM was not trying to replace our government with a new one. (aka a protest is not a sedition)
- Many BLM protesters were arrested. Some were charged with crimes. Similarly, any seditionists should be charged. This is probably true whether you agree with the final verdict or not
- Those at the capitol essentially held hundreds of lawmakers hostage, using guns and at least one pipe bomb, while Trump said nothing for approximately 2 hours
These people are a little crazy and this is now a declaration of war by big tech. I really hope they're ready because this is a stupid move in my opinion.
Wednesday's riots were not a threat to anything either. They knew it was coming days in advance and allowed it to proceed so it could be used as a pretext for the ongoing crackdown and consolidation of political and cultural dominance (as well as splitting U.S. populist factions onto multiple platforms where they will no longer see each other).
Sorry for the delay but I've been swamped since this conflagration.
Your recent posts have been using HN primarily for political battle. Please don't do that—it's against the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and it's the line across which we start banning accounts (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), regardless of which politics they're battling for. The reason is that it basically destroys what HN is supposed to exist for, which is curious conversation on a wide range of topics.
Rejection of federal assistance, Capitol contractors told to stay home days in advance, numerous security barriers left wide open in the buildings, Pelosi is in charge of Capitol Police but left a laptop lying around so that could become a big HN headline ....
No coup. And quite a few employees from those companies were in those protests. And there are different arguments for merit between those protests. And the vast majority of the BLM protests we're peaceful. This one (sample size 1) was quite the opposite. Pipe bombs, small arms, etc.
It's amazing a person can make such a nonsensical comparison without thought, between a movement for non abusive policing and racial justice to an attempted coup
They were absolutely more aggressive. Whether that's because they were more prepared in the BLM protests or less professional than in D.C., or whether because they were busy trying to evacuate the inside of the Capitol, or whether the BLM police were responding to the looting, or whether protesters frequently stayed out past curfew, or whether a core tenet of the protest was ACAB and a (justified, imo) loathing of the police, or maybe even because the cops didn't have the precedent of the BLM protests that they might not want to repeat is all conjecture.
Please provide a source for your claim that Democrats encouraged riots. To the best of my recollection, no one encouraged riots, except for extremist groups like the “boogaloo boys.” Certainly no mainstream political party encouraged violence this summer.
I’d you want, I will provide a source that Republicans encouraged violence this year.
1. Given BLM was protesting mistreatment and institutionalised racism (especially in the police), do you not think it’s at all plausible that the police response would be racially-charged in how they respond to the protests?
2. The headline it’s literally says “one authors controversial view...”: it is entirely reasonable to entertain an idea for the purposes of analysing it without actually advocating it.
3. “In defence of destroying property”: this is inherently ideological I think, I for one place human lives above that of mere materials, and if people need to smash some windows in order to make their voices heard that is ok: we can repair windows, we can bring unjustly-murdered people back from the dead. Maybe a better way of framing this particular one is in reverse: “why is a window shop-front more valuable/important than someone’s life and human rights?”
Edit: Twitter thread: conflating “we wish to overthrow the government and kill our opposition” with “please stop killing us; we will make these protests more uncomfortable until we are heard” is disingenuous at best, and a flat-out mischaracterisation at worst. Nelson Mandela spent time in prison as well: does that mean nothing he said has any value?
The only one of these links which focuses on Democrats is the first one. Assuming the highly-edited video fairly represents the speakers’ contexts, they are calling for street demonstrations. If the events on the 6th had remained in the streets, we would be in a very different place. None of your links has anyone, much less a democrat, calling for the forcible occupation and disruption of a major part of the government.
I do think some of the rhetoric from some Democrats was unwisely heated over the summer. This week was different.
> Please provide a source for your claim that Democrats encouraged riots.
That was the question I answered. I've showed that the left, which is most of the media and the democrats, encouraged the riots and set the precedent of using violence to achieve political goals.
(Local) democrats demonized the police as enemy of the people. Kamala Harris encouraged her millions of Twitter followers to donate to a Minnesota crowd-funding effort that paid bail for accused rioters. Both local and national media rigidly only referred to the far-left rioters as “protesters.” The Associated Press, which sets guidelines for journalists, amended its stylebook to discourage use of the word “riot,” given protesters’ “underlying grievances.” It took months before Biden condemned the riots and he only did it when he started to drop in the polls. In Portland BLM/Antifa rioted for months and they even tried to storm into a federal courthouse downtown several nights in a row. The respons of the mayor wasn't to condemn the riots but to tell Trump to take his “troops” and leave.
Those showing righteous indignation now only months or weeks ago argued that the riots were “mostly peaceful” and that vandalism and looting don’t count as violence.
And it seems people have forgotten it's not the first time government building have been occupied to prevent a vote.
> why so many Democrats were allowed to encourage the BLM riots
With regard to prominent Democratic politicians, this is factually untrue. They (and me) are good with peaceful protest, whether BLM or MAGA. There is absolutely no problem with peaceful pro-Trump protestors.
Surely you can do a better job of cherry picking things out of context. In the former link, she was talking about how certain terminology ("defund") made people uncomfortable. In the latter, she denounces a sitting President who incited an insurrection that placed her life personally in grave danger.
Forcing an evacuation of the VP, house and senate leadership and like 500 legislators while they are in session selecting the next president is a far, far cry from merely "not peaceful".
Literally the entire legislative branch of the federal government was attacked, along with the backup president!
And, but for a network of cold war escape facilities... they probably would have killed a few or taken hostages.
I don't think any Democratic politicians literally told BLM to "go forth and riot". That's the difference. If someone is sympathetic to a movement, it's hard to say they had a hand in events. If someone literally says "hey everyone, let's do this thing!" then it's very obvious.
You could also argue that Trump's previous tweets, the wink wink nod nod tweets to white supremacists, also fall under a similar category as the BLM tweet. Sympathy and possibly support but not actual incitement.
This time was different. Trump was literally inciting sedition. "Go to the capitol and stop the steal" was the message.
It might be easier to make the comparison if you chose a single “BLM riot” to discuss rather than reduce a months long series of nationwide and international peaceful protests, and related riots, to a single catchphrase.
Seriously. I actually think making a comparison like that would be interesting and constructive.
Because it’s difficult to compare the events of this summer (a spontaneous response to the murder of George Floyd,choked to death under the neck of a police officer for over three minutes, on video, I’ll remind you) to the armed mob that invaded the Capital, threatening to kill or take hostage the entire Congress and the Vice-President, killed a Capital police officer, and planted pipe bombs in the Capital.
I think it would be easier to compare that event, since it’s a singular event, to another singular event, rather than a long series of events as I said.
What do you think?
[EDIT: Oh yeah the mob was also attempting to stop the process of certifying the results of the Presidential election. So much wrongness to have to remember.]
I think protest is a fundamental requirement of democracy, and as Chris Cuomo himself reminded us: protest aren't always peaceful [1]. It seems like a lot of Democrats are conveniently forgetting that all of a sudden.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/202...