Citing "violence," Facebook officially has banned anarchist and anti-fascist content, alongside QAnon

boing
125

No, a lot of the answers to you are “property damage isn’t violence on par with assaulting people.” “Par” is a term of equivalency, and Facebook is making a false equivalency.

Obviously you’re not a member of a poor minority group, because they deal with the prospects of the cops stealing from them and their cars being surrounded by aggressive cops (not to mention white supremacists without badges) every bloody day. If no-one counter-protests fascists or police misconduct, eventually that’s going to affect your life as well. That’s why antifa and BLM are acting so aggressively now, and why even someone as ridiculously privileged as myself understands that when actual right-wing populists (and their natural allies in the police) are marching in American streets and killing people it’s time to pick a side.**

What I’m seeing in your responses, though, is a lot of complacency and privilege-blindness – similar to Zuckerberg’s but without the billions of dollars and all the options for avoiding problems that buys. In my experience, it’s difficult for a lot of people to break through that mindset. That doesn’t happen through BBS debates but rather through self-reflection and hard life-lessons, so I’ll leave things there.

[* I know, I know: you don’t think so. Tens of millions of solid middle- and working-class people throughout history have lived through fascist and authoritarian regimes by keeping their heads down and being “good Germans”. But the thing about such regimes is their capriciousness in choosing whom to go after, and the equally capricious revenge taken by those who overthrow the fascists.]

[** no, this doesn’t mean blindly endorsing the violent or other destructive behaviour of the side you choose, at least if you’re opposing fascism or white supremacy. In contrast, those supporting or enabling fascism or white supremacy are implicitly endorsing those things, due to violence being implicit in those ideologies]

8 Likes
126

Allies or Agitators? How Partisan Identity Shapes Public Opinion about Violent or Nonviolent Protests

ABSTRACT

In recent years, scholars have argued that protests that employ nonviolent tactics attract greater support and are therefore more likely to succeed than those that use violence. We argue that how protest tactics are perceived is not a purely objective determination, but can be influenced in part by observer characteristics – in particular, by partisan identity. We conducted a survey experiment on two independent samples through the MTurk platform, randomly assigning protester group identity and tactics. Results show that when controlling for assigned tactics, self-identified Republicans but not Democrats perceive higher levels of violence when a disliked group is protesting. The effect is strongest in regard to tactics that are nominally the least disruptive. The findings have implications for theories of nonviolent protest, the legitimacy of repression, and the prospects for marginal groups to influence policy in polarized societies.

I can’t read the paper, but it looks interesting. Maybe I’ll ask the authors for a copy if I feel strong enough to read it.

9 Likes
127

They’ll buy tik tok. They bought a generation down with Instagram so it’s time for them to buy the next generation.

128

It’s as if Republicans carry their own little reality distortion device.

8 Likes
130

You’ve mistaken data for the plural form of anecdote.

You ignored me before, but I’ll ask again - what do YOU think the ratio of interpersonal violence perpetrated by BLM supporters compared to violent acts committed by riot cops is?

Because, if you want to talk about “nearly unlimited” video evidence, boy is there a plethora of it, but it shows the violence almost exclusively being instigated and perpetrated BY THE POLICE.

If you are genuinely afraid of having your car surrounded and attacked by BLM protesters, then you are the kind of person who would attempt to bully your way through a blockade instead of going the fuck around. Otherwise this “fear” is hyperbolic to the max.

9 Likes
131

I have to address this, because it IS something people do believe, however wrongly. I’m going to speak from personal experience.

Your fear is irrational, and it has been fed by a poisoned narrative in the media you are consuming.

The folks who are putting their bodies and their lives on the line every single day to support the Black Lives Matter movement by blocking/corking roads and working to divert traffic are working very hard to avoid these types of confrontations, for an obviously wide range of reasons, both as a matter of safety and as a matter of optics. Escalation of these conflicts is virtually ALWAYS at the hands of the driver, and if you work in good faith (you know, exactly unlike how you’re arguing here?) with the folks working these blockades, I guarantee you that you will not find yourself in such a situation.

They are absolutely not looking to escalate these conflicts in the fashion you have been led to believe by the riot porn you’ve been consuming, and in fact work VERY hard to deescalate at every opportunity.

(source: I am one of those people, who has been repeatedly putting my white body on the line in conjunction with an autonomous collective of similarly minded folk to do just exactly this work)

11 Likes
132

You are saying “OMG, what if my car is surrounded by protestors!”, “What if someone breaks the window and steals things from my shop!”…

…when a large portion of America is saying “OMG, what if a racist police officer just decides to kill me for no reason. What if the police kick in my door and shoot my spouse dead?”

Don’t you feel the slightest bit ashamed? Don’t you think now might be the time to show some empathy, sit back comfortably in our collective privilege and just not be… what you are being?

This is what happens when people sit for hundreds of years letting evil things happen and only looking up when they are worried about themselves. Which is what you are continuing to do, right now…

8 Likes
133

An older, libertarian person in my life was telling me a story recently about black shirts and red shirts clashing in the UK in the inter-war period. Black shirts were fascists, red were communists. They had street brawls. But what struck me was the way the person told me the story. They said, for example, the fascists would go on a march through a Jewish neighbourhood, and the red shirts would show up and clash with them. To them, that sounded like a street brawl between two extremist political camps… To me that sounds like the red shirts showing up to making sure the fascists didn’t start murdering Jewish people.

Fascism is a virus that infects enlightenment values. If the fascists and the anti-fascists are fighting and you can’t tell who the good guys are, your values have been infected.

15 Likes
134

11th-doc-this|nullxnull

9 Likes
135

The evidence doesn’t seem to fit that. Coronavirus (COVID-19): Symptoms, Treatment & More We actually have good reasons for why that might be. 1) Almost everyone has been wearing masks, both for Covid and non-covid reasons. 2) Outdoor spread seems to not be a huge vector, particularly when people are obeying distancing guidelines. 3) One of the things that isn’t obvious from news footage, but is very clear if you spend any time on the ground is that there is a tremendous infrastructure distributing sanitizer and PPE at these events. I can’t speak for everywhere, but the local groups handling that distribution were in fact anarchists organizing on Facebook. There were hundred of little packets with masks, legal contacts and sanitizer handed out at every march locally and any left over stock was handed out to unhoused people.

I’m not generally the biggest fan of bloc tactics, but the common argument for them is that they bring issues directly into the public eye and as much as I have tactical concerns, it is hard to ignore that a burnt Target and police station has led to more police reform in a few months than years of marches and electoral organizing.

Did they work?

Oh good, if we can redefine it away, then the police weren’t looting. They entered an establishment and took stuff. It’s telling that cops on video committing theft isn’t looting in your eyes, but violence committed against protesters counts against them.

The Democrats have fuck all to do with this, either the topic or the protests. The groups under discussion for being banned were anarchists and the protests aren’t partisan. You might notice that the people being protested in Portland and Minneapolis are generally Democrats.

Because drivers have killed protesters using their cars. Hell, even if that history didn’t exist the simple traffic is reason enough to avoid taking your car near a protest.

Maybe some time I can tell you about carrying someone out of a protest with a broken foot because the driver decided to force their way into a crowd.

7 Likes
136

won’t somebody please think of the “normal people”

4 Likes
137

I’ll answer! There are nearly infinite videos of the police beating, tear gasing, shooting less-lethals (which can actually be very harmful, including causing death), pushing, etc etc people at these protests. Obviously! Come on, it doesn’t take much brain power these days to find infinite riot videos that include a whole bunch of violent actions from the police.
I don’t know what the ratio is but I’m not pretending I don’t see things that are obvious.
Within our society, it’s the job of the police to enforce the law, including laws against unlawful assemblies, and that’s going to involve violence sometimes. The police have a legal monopoly on initiating force so it’s no surprise that they use force in some situations. I would never deny seeing a lot of violence from the police in these videos.
I know many disagree with me, but I also consider some levels of property damage to be violence.
Just the other night there was a protest in Denver and they were setting things on fire in the street (no buildings, thankfully) and they smashed a Quiznos window. Seriously? How can I be ok with that? What did this Quiznos franchise ever do to merit having their window smashed and the store trashed?
As for blockades, the closest I came was when a street suddenly got shut down in front of me. I’m alert about things and was able to make a u-turn and get out, which is exactly what I did, but if I had been boxed in by cars behind me, I would have been stuck. I would have been on the phone with 911 demanding help ASAP. But fortunately it didn’t come to that.
I’m all for peaceful, legal protests but not for random drivers or Quiznos franchises getting attacked. But that’s just my opinion.

138

No, actually, that doesn’t include using violent tactics against protesters. By saying they have a monopoly on violence and can act however they see fit, then you’re also saying that violence regularly deployed against Black citizens literally doing nothing wrong is also okay. Maybe you should rethink the role that police SHOULD play in society and stop justifying what they are actually doing in society.

The police are more often than not CAUSING these riots, which is why they are called police riots. They are working to get people to react, so they can justify getting them off the street.

10 Likes
139

As long as you don’t try to move your car (i.e., accelerate into a crowd), there is no reason to believe your life is in danger. Unfortunately, privileged people think that it’s too inconvenient for them to wait until the crowd disperses and they take actions into their own hands.

As an aside, I still don’t understand why anyone would drive in the general vicinity of a protest if they’re not participating. If you need to get somewhere on the other side of a protest, go far around.

7 Likes
140

As noted above, you don’t quite grasp the concept of the state’s monopoly on violence.

Now, mired in unexamined privilege as you are, I know it’s difficult for you (and the authoritarians for whom you’re an apologist) to conceive of the police enforcing the law without resorting to gratuitous physical violence (against others less privileged than you or I, to be sure), but it’s quite possible to do so.

Pronounced “/(h)wīt/ /ˈpēpəl/”.

7 Likes
141

So, how many infectees are we talking about here? A tiny faction? A faction large enough to hold the balance of power? Something in between? Are they incorrigible? Are they to be pitied, or scorned?

And is there a vaccine? Other than smug portraits of (flips coin) david tennet?

142

That really illustrates the problem, doesn’t it?

In a society where police acted the way they should there would be almost no videos of violence by police against unarmed citizens. For example, if you Google “police brutality Iceland” you get a handful of results, mostly years-old, and mostly stories about how Iceland has so little police brutality. I couldn’t find a single video of an out-of-control Icelandic cop, much less a group of them attacking civilians with batons and tear gas.

11 Likes
143

It’s been well documented that the default for police from day one was to declare peaceful protests illegal (violating protesters‘ 1A rights) and to initiate violence without provocation (except maybe verbal, which they are trained not to escalate in response to).

The “peaceful” alternative to graffiti, broken windows, and the rare fire would be a general strike. With 30+% unemployment, I’m not sure that’s very feasible, but even under the conditions of the COVID economy, the financial impact of a general strike with the level of participation of BLM has would be an order of magnitude or more higher than the damage caused by both protesters and the police response combined.

If you don’t remember the Quiznos taxidermied gerbil ad, be thankful. Quiznos knows what it did.

For peaceful protests to work, TPTB have to listen. And in the US, when it comes to police killing Black people, they haven’t.

The Occupy protests were peaceful (by the protesters, at least -the police were violent, of course), but as much as I agreed with those protesters and though the protests were brave, they didn’t accomplish anything. Neither did the take-a-knee protests (except to create a backlash). The lesson is, you have to make TPTB hurt to even get their attention. So either refuse to make things and hurt them in the wallet or break things and make them afraid. Those are the choices that we are left with for creating change.

There is an article in the local paper about an 18-year veteran of the city police, and how the current environment is the low point of his career. Boo fucking hoo. Any LEO with almost two decades of service; even if they’ve never beaten a suspect; even if they’ve never planted evidence; guaranteed they’ve witnessed it from their colleagues and never reported it. Because cops who snitch on other cops are either fired, beaten or killed by other cops.

The will be no peace while those who are charged with protecting the public harm the public.

There will be no peace while those whose job it is to enforce the law break it.

There will be no peace while those who swear to uphold the Constitution violate it.

8 Likes
144

Thread:

9 Likes
145

I’m just going to repeat what I said above instead of paraphrasing it again, because I made sure I was saying what I meant. Your pearl clutching about calling 911 is a dogwhistle.

I’m going to quote someone from upthread to you as a response to this, because their answer is just absolutely correct.

10 Likes