Recent Political Violence in America

[Darth Wedgius]

Please forgive my ignorance, but what Berkely event are you referring to, and who are the people on your side you specify?

February 1st, Antifa and "By Any Means Necessary" attacked a group that turned up to listen to Milo Yiannopoulos. The forces of tolerance attacked, and then campus police canceled the event. Because why not blame the guy there to speak? So the protestors went elsewhere, broke more stuff, and attacked other people. "My side" here would be conservatives who believe in free speech, I suppose.

Clearly accidental? Where the flip do you get that? When somebody gasps out "I can't breath" you loosen up your grip on their neck.

First, no, because if he can talk then the arm is not blocking his airway, and it could be a trick. Second, no, because the officers arm wasn't on his neck at that point.

"But clearly scared out of his wits." So? That's supposed to make things better? If you panic when you see an unarmed black man, you should have never been given a badge and a gun in the first place.

First, no, because the black man was armed. Second, no, because the black man was armed.

...white nationalists disavowed...who gives a flip? They want to MURDER EVERY NON-WHITE PERSON IN THE COUNTRY. What they disavow is pretty meaningless when their explicit agenda involves genocide.

Some of them do. Some of them don't. Most have not said that they want to. But you go ahead and hear what you want to hear to justify what you want to do. You're just as bad as they are.

I really think you are right. Y'all will go out of your way to justify homocidal cops and to condemn people who fight back against actual, dyed-in-the-wool neo nazis, because NO MATTER the circumstances, no matter the agenda, anyone who stops singing kumbiyah and puts down their votive candle to fight white supremacists is just as bad.

Based, no doubt, on your clear grasp of the facts.

Go to the crows.

A very sophisticated way of telling me to go to hell. I had to look it up. Well, your insistence on using violence to silence those who disagree with you will pretty much lead all of us to hell, so I suppose we'll be able to keep each other company when we get there. And all indications are that we will get there.

[The Romulan Republic]

No, I'm not saying that the two are equivalent, and if I gave that impression, I apologize.

But I'm talking about public perception here. It is very important that the Left not come to be seen as aggressors, or equally guilty, by the mainstream of America.

Its not about winning over the Nazis, Rocketboy1313. Its about the majority who are neither Nazis or Antifa.

And I do recognize that sometimes force is necessary (though not nearly as often as its advocates tend to claim). But I would prefer, whenever possible, that that force be strictly defensive, or at least in the hands of trained professionals, rather than in the hands of militias and vigilantes. For reasons both moral and pragmatic.

And, for reasons both moral and pragmatic, it can't just be left in the hands of trained professionals, because the trained professionals who use force in this country are largely content to defend the status quo.
Sometimes they will attack peaceful protestors who want social progress. Sometimes they will defend Nazis. Sometimes they just stand back and let it all happen.

I would suggest that we need to focus on reforming our law enforcement, not trying to substitute partisan vigilantes for functional law enforcement. Because once you rely on partisan militias to defend you, and legitimize that as part of mainstream politics, its only a matter of time before all political disputes are resolved with bullets in the street, and democracy and the rule of law give way to political purges and civil war.

The lesson of history is that, when fascism rises in power, you can't trust the police to have your back.

Fascism does not yet control the government (Trump's power is continually eroding).

And history has certainly shown that partisan militias are a poor substitute for a functioning justice system.

[Arkle]

I read this thing today, and it sums it up far better than I have been so far about this problem re: free speech absolutism and Nazis.

"The thing that gets me about the debate concerning neo-Nazis and protected speech is that a big chunk of it seems to be taking place in a world other than our own.

I mean, yes, the argument can be made that it doesn’t matter what neo-Nazis deserve; they ought to receive the benefit of protected speech for the same reason that, say, child rapists ought to receive fair trials - i.e., because the alternative amounts to proposing that the State can be trusted to pick and choose which particular people should receive the benefit of law, and the State clearly cannot be trusted to do this. That’s a reasonable position to take.

However, that argument is being framed as though we’re starting from a position where neo-Nazis are already receiving equal treatment from agents of the State, and we’re talking about taking that equal treatment away, when the fact of the matter is that neo-Nazis are presently receiving hugely preferential treatment from agents of the State.

Straight up, the shit these people are pulling would be considered incitement and terrorism if literally anyone else was doing it. There’d be no question. Substantively equal treatment under the law would result in more Nazis getting their teeth kicked in, not fewer.

Like, I’m not going to advocate State-sponsored brutality here, but let’s be realistic about the situation we’re dealing with. If your conversation on equal protection under the law starts with defending the interests of the very people who most benefit from present inequalities, either you’ve fundamentally misunderstood what’s going on, or you’re lying through your teeth."

Source: http://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/164443 ... concerning

Keep in mind, even while people are shedding tears over Nazis getting punched, Black Lives Matter (even before Dallas) was being called a "terrorist group" for their extreme position of "Hey, cops, maybe don't kill unarmed Black people for no good reason." But here we have people throwing salutes, chanting slogans, and wearing iconography of a group whose actual positions have included ethnic cleansing for OVER 80 FUCKING YEARS! If Nazis were some new group that formed in the past few years the argument of "the government shouldn't shut down groups for their opinions" would carry weight. But when a group has been around long enough that they were a well known around the world entity at a time when my oldest grandfather was a teenager...

[LittleRaven]

Keep in mind, even while people are shedding tears over Nazis getting punched, Black Lives Matter (even before Dallas) was being called a "terrorist group" for their extreme position of "Hey, cops, maybe don't kill unarmed Black people for no good reason."

Not by the state they weren't. Nobody is being prosecuted for being a member of BLM.

Free Speech only protects you from the government. It doesn't mean you can't fired, or shunned, or called a terrorist by someone who doesn't like what you're doing.

As to the argument that Law Enforcement is being deliberately soft on Nazis, well, maybe. There certainly seemed to be some of that in play at Charlotesville. On the flip side, cops at Berkeley seem content to let Antifa run amok. So that may be more of a local preference, or it may just be that cops do not like confrontation in general. But either way, I fail to see how that plays into the Free Speech issue.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Don't police count as The State, though?

Given that the man found guilty of recording the murder of Eric Garner was imprisoned, doesn't that suggest state retribution for even witnessing the violence of the state?

[LittleRaven]

Don't police count as The State, though?

They absolutely do. And for what it's worth, I think you'll find precious few people who are entirely satisfied with how American police are doing lately. The mass proliferation of cameras across our population has revealed that our police are more badly behaved then virtually anyone in power suspected, and there's a huge (and growing!) body of evidence that suggests that police treat minorities, and especially blacks, much differently than they treat white people. Fixing these problems is going to take huge amount of money and time. Frankly, nobody is even sure where to start yet - but body cameras are definitely the forerunner at the moment. (they're not a magic bullet by any means...but they do at least give us more data)

However, this is a problem that is largely independent of recent political violence, and not really related to freedom of speech, either. Our police have almost certainly been doing bad things for a very long time. And while the police do indeed treat minorities differently, BLM is not really being cracked down on in any particular fashion. They've asked for permits to hold marches in dozens of cities across the nation, and as far as I know, they've been granted permission and the marches have gone forward as planned. Even when they get overly excited, the cops have been pretty hands off. It's not a crime to be a member of BLM, any more than its a crime to be a Nazi.

As to the case of Ramsey Orta, well, he wasn't targeted because of his involvement with BLM. He doesn't really have any involvement with them at all....he just happened to shoot a video that the movement picked up. He was targeted because he made a cop look bad on national TV. And the state isn't locking him up because of his social justice work - he doesn't do any. He's being prosecuted for allegedly dealing drugs and handing out firearms. Is he being singled out for attention by the NYPD? Oh, almost certainly. But not because of his political views....it's simple payback.

Maybe we can solve this issue once we get robot cops on the street. Shouldn't be too long now.

[Arkle]

So, I don't know if it was in this thread or one of the other ones, but you k now that Right Wing talking point of late about the "poor man stabbed after being mistaken for a Nazi?"

Yeah, about that...

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/08/28/s ... eak-shake/

Though I fully expect Righties to still peddle this one. I mean, these people have the gall to blame the botched Hurricane Katrina response on Obama, who wasn't President at the time.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Don't police count as The State, though?

They absolutely do. And for what it's worth, I think you'll find precious few people who are entirely satisfied with how American police are doing lately. The mass proliferation of cameras across our population has revealed that our police are more badly behaved then virtually anyone in power suspected,

Wrong. Lots of people already knew, we just weren't listening to them.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

However, this is a problem that is largely independent of recent political violence, and not really related to freedom of speech, either. Our police have almost certainly been doing bad things for a very long time. And while the police do indeed treat minorities differently, BLM is not really being cracked down on in any particular fashion. They've asked for permits to hold marches in dozens of cities across the nation, and as far as I know, they've been granted permission and the marches have gone forward as planned. Even when they get overly excited, the cops have been pretty hands off. It's not a crime to be a member of BLM, any more than its a crime to be a Nazi.

As to the case of Ramsey Orta, well, he wasn't targeted because of his involvement with BLM. He doesn't really have any involvement with them at all....he just happened to shoot a video that the movement picked up. He was targeted because he made a cop look bad on national TV. And the state isn't locking him up because of his social justice work - he doesn't do any. He's being prosecuted for allegedly dealing drugs and handing out firearms. Is he being singled out for attention by the NYPD? Oh, almost certainly. But not because of his political views....it's simple payback.

Okay, this is where my sense of cognitive dissonance kicks in.

In this country, exposing police brutality IS political. Payback IS political. Being singled out by NYC's larged gang, the NYPD, IS political.

The police operate, intentionally or not, as political agency, with a political agenda, and those in power choose to let them get away with it, because it's convenient to have violent defenders of the status quo.

My issue is with your whole perspective. When AntiFa punches a Nazi that the police are shielding, it's political, but when the police crack skulls of black men for selling loosies you think it has nothing to do with politics?

As for Black Lives Matter being allowed to protest...are you paying attention? When Nazis or KKK march, the police protect them. When BLM marches, the police menace them.

[Arkle]

As for Black Lives Matter being allowed to protest...are you paying attention? When Nazis or KKK march, the police protect them. When BLM marches, the police menace them.

Exactly. When Black Lives Matter first started marching, carrying no weapons, just signs, the police brought up fucking TANKS. Hence that executive order from President Obama that Valencia Voldemort just overtturned barring local police from having military gear.

Meanwhile, Nazis show up with torches and rifles and cops are like. "Ho hum, just another day," and literally do NOTHING when Black people get beaten and shot at.