I did a module on that at university. One of the most interesting courses I took. As I recall, we focused on the Australian bushrangers, Indian dacoits (including the Thuggee, who appear to have been in large part the figments of the fevered imagination of a British Orientalist), and a group whose name I can’t remember in South Africa.
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True. But despite that expectation, it is essential to point out that the reaction was in general not violent at all.
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Define “significant”. How many acts of violence have BLM protesters perpetrated, compared to say, how many acts of violence enacted by riot cops in that same time span?
From my perspective as both a viewer and participant of the protests in Portland, examples like the guy dragged out of his truck are few and far between (and massively overreported), whereas police brutality (AS A RESPONSE TO PROTESTS AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY) is happening multiple times daily.
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Actually, it most likely WAS in the road, as part of a common corking/blockade strategy involving bicyclists, motorcyclists and car drivers protecting marchers and protesters from exactly this type of threat.
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The number of people who are going to die from direct or indirect Covid exposure during the three months of protest is probably going to exceed the number killed on the occasions when those protests turned violent, by a factor of 20x-30x.
Mister Covid, he doesn’t come out to play at the right wing rallies and then go back inside to hide during the left wing rallies,
Someone needs to come out on behalf of the black bloc crowd and explain “Our revolutionary struggle consists of tagging walls and breaking windows of unoccupied buildings, and setting dumpsters and unoccupied cars on fire. We don’t actually plan to injure anyone!”
“Anarchy” is such a loaded term, I basically stop listening any time a person wielding power over me says it. Especially in this epoch of neoliberalism.
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No, but at every BLM related march, rally and vigil I’ve attended the crowds have been quite vigilant about social distancing and wearing masks and, you know, generally caring about the health and well being of their fellow man.
You know, as opposed to the folks who are literally protesting AGAINST science and social welfare?
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Eight years for me 
Many on this thread have asked me for examples of violence at Antifa protests and I’ve provided many. I won’t provide more because a) I refuse to spam this discussion b) I keep getting “no true Scotsman” type arguments and c) people want to get into all kinds of discussions of the details of these incidents, which the only detail that really matters is someone got beat up or worse. Like in the case of the guy dragged out of his truck and beaten, whether he was driving erratically before or not… the fact is, he was out of the truck, sitting down, complying, not fighting, not resisting, and was viciously kicked in the head from behind. That’s violence. Maybe he deserved it, but violence well deserved is still violence. You can’t say, “there’s no violence going on, but if there is, it’s justified!” And that seems to be the argument.
We’ve all seen the pictures of dozens of buildings burning in Minneapolis. That’s not violence?
But don’t take it from me, Fabio. Take it from the extremely progressive mayor of Chicago, who has asked the police to ban demonstrations on her block, because of… wait for it… wait for it… she’s worried about violence against her and her family. Obviously she perceives that there is violence going on. FB perceives the same thing and is banning FB groups that are promoting violence. They have to do that, or they have to specify which violence is ok and which is not.
I also hear arguments that the majority of the violence is from police or right-wing instigators or CI types. First, the police are not doing looting or arson, obviously. Second, like it or not, our system gives the police a legal monopoly on initiating force and they do have a duty to protect people and property. Third, yes there have been a few right wing instigators caught, and I’m sure there were some CIs involved in all this, but it’s obvious from looking at the people getting caught that most of them are genuinely associated with the movement. Is Tabitha Poppins or Keese Love a cop? An FBI agent? A Proud Boy? Come on, that’s absurd.
BTW, my opinion of what a non-violent progressive event looks like is the Women’s March events. Huge, progressive, lawful, with permits. No looting, no arson, no assaults, no arrests. All the Women’s March events also had counter-protesters who were right wing, and the police kept the two groups separated, everyone had permits, and everything was peaceful.
You could make a logical argument that violence is justified for some groups and some reasons but you can’t say that violence isn’t happening at Antifa protests. Again, take a look at that video from Provo, Utah, where two Antifa protesters open fire on a truck passing by. How is that not violence? How is that not Antifa? Go ahead and justify it if you want to, but don’t say that shooting into a vehicle that isn’t attacking anyone is somehow not violence. How is that not extremely different from the Women’s March events where things like that didn’t happen, period?
Well, that’s just not true.
The third precinct fire was absolutely justified, and was itself the precipitating event to get the entire movement taken seriously. Other fires there have been specifically tied back to right wing, pro-police actors.
Another case where declaring “obviously” degrades what little credibility you have left. Police have been video taped raiding a local pro-BLM state representative’ s office for snacks. They’ve been caught breaking car windows and slashing tires. They aren’t protecting people and property, they are harming people, damaging property, and protecting their own power and privilege.
You must have watched a different video, then, because that truck wasn’t “passing by.” It was being blocked by protesters and the shooting by the protester there came after the truck started forcing it’s way through the crowd. I’d say the shooter made it worse, because they made the driver floor it right through the crowd, but you really need to cut out the gaslighting if you’d like to be taken seriously.
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We should start giving out chips…
Your entire argument is kind of empty. What you are saying is there are violent people who came to protests who aren’t police. I am not sure how that would be a surprise to anyone.
If you are saying that there is inherent violence in a particular political perspective, you haven’t made that argument either. I haven’t read manifestos from the people you have cited. We don’t know if they have political leanings or just showed up to be violent, when they’d have been violent at any other gathering they attended.
What we do know is a great many people are killed by authorities without due process, and whose murders are glorified by the authorities themselves. We know there is no transparency to the process of investigating them, and the system is built to protect them, and not the victims. People are angry.
So you can spend hours vomiting bullshit to vilify a movement, or you can get behind the effort oppose the real, obvious problem and end the protests in a way that shows you have some humanity. If your only motive for expressing compassion toward those abused and murdered by police is to excuse your opposition to those protesting the police, maybe it isn’t a discussion you belong in.
Maybe you should ask yourself why the opposition to evil is what you seem to be most angry about, instead of being outraged by the evil itself.
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Ok cool, so it was violence, and justified. That’s an honest assessment of it. As for the other fires… actually yes, it’s clear that instigators did happen at least some. Google “umbrella man Minneapolis” and there’s a clear example of a right-wing guy being an instigator, and for every one that was caught there must be others who were not caught. But so many other examples were not that. We’ve all seen videos of shops being looted in a dozen different cities by individuals who were clearly not right-wing instigators. Again, I’m not going to spam this thread when Google provides nearly unlimited videos of such things.
Yes some idiot police were invited to protect that office and they stole snacks! That’s petty theft, not looting and it’s not arson and it certainly wasn’t widespread. Average Americans like me are not worried about the police taking our snacks. We’re worried about our shops being burned down and we don’t see police doing that.
As for protecting their own power and privilege, yes, of course they were doing that! And you can have arguments back and forth about that. But it doesn’t change the situation - the protests had plenty of violence, most of it not perpetrated by cops, instigators, or CIs.
This is the exact video I’m referring to, an incident in Provo, Utah. It appears he may have been forcing his way through the crowd but perhaps after a gun was pointed at him. There were actually two shooters, one as he was driving away. Sorry for the Fox link but that’s the best video I could find. I won’t keep spamming this thread anymore, it’s too many videos. This is the kind of situation many normal American voters like me are worried about: my car get surrounded at a protest. What do I do? Comply and hope they like me? Drive through? What if a gun is pointed at me or they try to disable my car? I have no good answers, except I wish such situations didn’t happen, or if they must happen, I need an explanation of how they are going to make society better. I don’t need someone telling me these situations are not happening, or that they are in fact peaceful when I can see a crowd around the vehicle and then two people shooting into it. I can easily imagine that happening to me or to other normal people driving around and going about our normal lives.
I think many people have the same perception as I do: there was a lot of violence at these protests, only a very small amount of that was caused by instigators and CIs. And the Democrats need to quickly address people like me with that perception, and explain either what should be done to stop this violence, or explain why it’s justified / necessary / beneficial / reasonable and what actions people like me should take to not become victims of this violence. Because the way I’m parsing this situation is how a lot of voters are going to parse it and are going to wonder about it.
Going back to the original topic here, FB banned groups that promote violence and most of the commenters here respond by saying how non-violent the Antifa and anarchist groups are, and I’m just saying, this doesn’t comport with all the videos and real life things I’ve seen around this country over the past couple of months, and someone should give a more clear explanation of this. If that explanation is, “we’re fighting against injustice and to make an omelette you’ve got to break some eggs, and if that happens to be you, then think of the greater good”, then fine, but make that explicit please, and realize that many people will have a tough time accepting hat.
The suggestion that the only legitimate form of mass protest is one which is sanctioned with government-issued permits and results in no arrests is… problematic.
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I’m absolutely not suggesting that at all! Hey the Boston Tea Party was, absolutely, violent and illegal. I would never call it a peaceful protest. I would never make ridiculous claims that the people doing it were instigators sent by King George, or some non sequitor claim that it wasn’t violent because King George’s men were also violent! They were exactly who they claimed to be: people violently resisting government authority. And I think their action was right although there could be others who disagree.
As for the original topic of this whole thing: FB can’t provide a platform for violent groups. They’re not going to provide an exemption for the good illegal groups. Groups that want to promote violence and illegal actions, sorry, FB isn’t the place for you. How can anyone here think that a publicly traded social media platform is going to give a pass to ANY groups, no matter how wonderful their objectives, that promote violence and illegality?
You say toh-may-toh, I say tomato.
Most? How do we really know? Where’s your evidence?
How about not driving in the vacinity of a protest? It seems to me anyone who’s driving into a protest has ulterior motives.
You wrote this twice. You seem to excuse the actions of public officials very easily when they should be held to a higher standard. One incident is too much and breaks the trust between the police and the public.
Exactly. The idea that you secure a government stamp of approval before protesting is antithetical to a democracy. It’s actually what people do in an AUTHORITARIAN dictatorship.
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If you don’t see a massive gap between petty theft and looting, there’s a big gap between your perception of things and average American perception of things. That’s ok but don’t expect many people around the US or Europe to see things the way you do on that or to even understand your views. Like nearly everyone else, I’ve been the victim of petty theft when some small items were stolen from my garage. No big deal, didn’t really bother me. Looting and arson have a whole different emotional impact and perception. Again, maybe you don’t see any difference, which is cool, but most people do, and our legal system does too, with petty theft being a misdemeanor which rarely results in jail, while arson and sometimes looting are investigated seriously and often result in felony charges and prison.
I actually agree with that, except… during the peak of the protests they were moving so fast that, depending on where you live and where you’re going, you could easily end up in one unexpectedly. But yes you’re right, any normal person would want to avoid that.
But then… why are you advising people to not drive in the vicinity of protests if these protests really are peaceful and not dangerous??? I see a huge contradiction there.
I recognize that these are violent and dangerous protests and I stay as far away as possible and would advise my friends to do the same.
And how do you think civilians would have been treated by the law if they’d gone around slashing the tires of police cars instead of the other way around?
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It appears that you think this is a small issue when if fact, as I wrote above, the police should be held to a HIGHER standard. They have sworn to uphold the law and if they think it’s okay to pilfer from an elected official that’s a major problem.
This is just as bad as turning their heads when CIs and off duty cops instigate violent acts or damage public property, or turn their heads when their colleagues place their knees on a suspect’s neck for nine minutes.
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