that’s an interesting article because it points out the area has always had a large number of assults, police or no police, which is a good example of why people are so angry at the police.
we don’t need “broken windows” policing, racial profiling, and millions spent on swat and riot gear. we need unarmed response by people who are parts of the community they serve working to solve actual crimes
and yeah, mass shootings are down this year, while individual shootings seem to be up. like you say, it’s hard to say the cause. if people want to rein it in, gun control would help a lot
more on topic, anecdotally, my personal experience on facebook is hearing people on the right celebrate whenever protestors get hurt, often full of bravado - if i was there id bring my gun and show them who’s boss, kinds of stuff - and ( despite my flagging them ) facebook never takes those posts down. engaging personally, trying to deescalate and trying to have real conversation, only has aggravated them more
contrarywise, with the exception of richard spenser getting his face punched, i don’t see this on the left. absolutely nobody had said things like: id have shot that truck driver. everyone’s either like: he must have done something, or let’s wait and see. and nobody’s particularly happy about it.
really, the responses are night and day. it’s just my window on facebook granted.
There are absolutely individuals and some groups within any large movement who use participation in the movement as a thinly veiled excuse for bad actions that are in some cases in direct opposition to the movement’s objectives. Some are agents provocateur for opposition to the movement, some are just violent sociopaths. It behooves the movement to excise those bad actors and condemn their behavior, and sometimes movements fall short on that.
That, however, is not the same as movements themselves advocating bad actions. The litmus test for distinguishing the two is simple; is the behavior of bad actors consistent with the goals of the movement, or antithetical to the goals of the movement.
That’s some pretty weaselly wording. What does “associating with” mean? The linked news sources in that article keep listing the same 13 or so deaths (often with identical or near-identical text). Of those, it seems seven at most could possibly be attributed to BLM or Antifa protestors:
one man killed by looters
four people killed at, near or “during” protests
two more killed “in the aftermath” of protests, whatever that means
Of course, the looters could just be opportunistic criminals, and we don’t actually know who killed the people who died at/near/after protests: at least one of the dead seems herself to have been a protestor, and shootings or other attacks by counter-protestors are hardly unknown at BLM protests.
Of the remaining six, three were shot by police (including one killed when police fired into a crowd), and two by business owners. Two Boogaloo Boys have been charged with the murder of the sixth, a police officer killed in a drive-by shooting while guarding a courthouse.
Well, yes. But in the overwhelming majority of the videos I’ve seen, it’s violence by the police. Vicious, brutal, unprovoked violence: beatings, pepper-sprayings, tear-gassings and shootings of peaceful protestors, bystanders, and journalists (including, on several occasion, international TV crews). I’ve linked this thread several times in these forums: it’s now up to nearly 900 videoed or photographed incidents of police brutality since the start of the protests.
I mean, maybe there’s an equivalent thread somewhere documenting similar violence by the protestors, but if there is, I haven’t seen it yet. Perhaps you can point me at it?
Oh yes, your sources are magical and clearly differentiate actual antifa from agent provocateurs and opportunistic sociopaths. I hope you brought enough magic dust to share with everyone else.
In a time where right-wing “security forces” are being deployed on cities (and soon, on voting centres,), where the postal system has swiftly and systemically been dismantled, where state governments are forcing people to risk death by pandemic or starve (during the worst unemployment crisis since the depreasion), a time where the White House has made a deliberate policy of interning minorities in concentration camps and kidnapping children (losing, in one egregious case, 1502 kids in a single report issue), a time where government officials routinely allude to and display white supremacist and neo-nazi symbols, when a president openly calls for and celebrated violence against political opponents for their mere existence, atoms when paramilitary death squads have killed and circulated lists of enemies to kill…
… it takes a big man to stand up and say it is the woman holding a sign on the sidewalk that is wrong.
What is striking to me about all of this is that it’s not like the promotion of violence on facebook is new. It has probably been there since the beginning. Even QAnon has been around since what, 2016, in one form or another? They’ve had time to figure this out.
The problem with facebook’s current dragnet approach is that there isn’t really accountability. Much like breastfeeding mothers who got content moderated, anarchist/antifa pages that are not advocating violence will get shutdown due to images or mentions of violence that are coincidental to what they were posting about. People could demand that facebook be transparent and offer a redress process, but as someone above stated, they’re a private company and can do pretty much whatever the f*** they want.
That this even needs to be pointed out? Certain posters seem to be conflating facebook’s moderating of specific groups (that may or may not be promoting/organizing violence) with an entire movement.
Soon due to recently passed Copyright Directive, in Europe there will be no other social media site than Facebook and Twitter. Every site with user content that is not run by the biggest corporations will be illegal.
And that unfortunately is why some oligopolies such as Fecesbook would love for the public and the government to think of them as a de facto organ of government, to effectively outlaw competition.
So if we’re going to say it is obvious what is occurring at these protests, well then I see more people killed for attending them than I see even ambiguous cases of protesters being responsible.
We haven’t changed culturally all that much in 50-60 years. We’ve been passing the same prejudices down to our children for 500 years (Africans have been kidnapped and enslaved and taken to North America since the late 1400’s).
We can make laws to end systematic racism. That will help a lot. But changing the hearts and minds of people is very difficult. More pressure is needed, we’ve already given it plenty of time (IMO)
I was so busy going through the list that I left out the key point, even if you assume every one of those deaths was 100% the fault of protesters (which the list clearly says isn’t the case), it doesn’t say a damn thing about if the groups Facebook banned were in any way related to violence. You are engaging in one of the oldest techniques for dishonest arguments, by shifting the focus. This isn’t a question of no true scotsman, it is you pointing at Wales and declaring it Scotsman. Sure they might both be part of the UK and their might even be scotsmen present, but you haven’t established a pretty fundamental connection.
For the record, It’s Going Down is like, the good version of Salon (you know, the one without Glenn-fascist-enabler-Greenwald), while Crimethinc is a webzine that focuses on dual-power (community outreach, building food kitchens, establishing worker-owned businesses, building gardens).
Meanwhile actual fascist outlets that incite violence are left untouched on Facebook.
Like, Rebel Media – whose staff incited and inspired nearly a dozen mass shooters who all cited a staffer’s manifesto in their own manifestos – is still publishing on Facebook. Their more successful clone, Post Millenial is also on Facebook, despite employing jackasses who conspired to attack random bar patrons and who provide kill lists to notorious terrorist organization Atomwaffen.
It’s pretty clear that Facebook (and Zuckerberg) are fine with inciting violence, but not fine with those who protest violence.
Not much to add to what the others already said, just that in the wiki article you quoted, I found no mention about violence that came from BLM groups, and this about Antifa-related violence:
however, there is no evidence that Antifa-aligned individuals played a role in instigating the protests or violence, or that Antifa played a significant role in the protests,[146][147][148] and the Trump administration has provided no evidence for its claims.[148] The vast majority of protests were peaceful; among the 14,000 arrests made, most were for minor offenses such as alleged curfew violations or blocking a roadway.[
They have confirmed, however, that he downed most of a six pack prior to driving away from the convenience store, then had some close calls with running over pedestrians. Whether trying to run down protesters with his truck or drunk driving, the appearance, and the results, are virtually the same.
ETA: And, at least in Portland, there have been more documented cases of violence against protesters than violence by protesters, and that’s not even counting the police violence against protesters. One case, of someone tossing pipe bombs at groups of protesters, is serious enough to have the FBI involved.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone given the role of Peter Thiel, but Facebook would have been susceptible to this with just standard US media biases. The right has spent so long claiming false persecution that media outlets feel the need to create balance by attacking both sides equally, even when one side is clearly in the wrong. So we get a case of a string of right wing outlets using sock puppets to boost a conspiracy theory that has already led to attacks and we feel the need to take out some leftist content to balance it out.
