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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> Eventually one side will have to win out and then things will get very interesting.

Well things are pretty violent already, with the deadly class war the police is fighting against the population (~1k in 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...) plus the countless arrests, macing, tasering and other violent actions of police against peaceful demonstrators, plus all the violence committed by Nazis (e.g. the Heather Heyer murder and the other actions counted as right-wing domestic terrorism). Add in the huge number of weapons circulating in the US... when the poor people (or the armed rednecks) finally feel desperate enough that will be quite a bloodbath.

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Police fighting a class war? The vast majority of those 1000 deaths are unambiguously from the justified use of force, in self-defense and the defense of others. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of violent and bad people out there.

There are countless youtube videos of police arresting violent individuals in Europe where they would just be gunned down in the US.

If you want another comparaison, look up dog shooting in the US and in Europe, unless you really believe dogs are somewhat more dangerous in the US, the inescapable conclusion is that American cops enjoy the power trip of gunning down living creatures...

And why shouldn't they, it's almost risk free for them, which is the root of the issue.

Or taking Hanlon's razor, Americian cops have been institutionalised to use force, almost as if they're operating in a country with more guns than citizens (unlike anywhere in Europe, or the world for that matter).

>>The vast majority of those 1000 deaths are unambiguously from the justified use of force

There's two problems with this.

1) if you define "justified use of force" like Americans do, then yeah, of course it's justified, a guy pulling up his pants while being dragged on the ground is now "reaching for a weapon" so an officer is fully justified to shoot him dead. He was practically asking for it, and it shows up as such in all official statistics.

2) It doesn't explain how is it that other countries can get through the entire year without police murdering a single person, despite having the same or worse crime rates as US.

A significant difference is, that American police are arresting Americans. They are likely armed, while in other countries that may not be the case.

They are not likely armed. Fewer than half of all households have even a single gun. Most of those aren't households where the gun owners carry in public: they're the kind of household where the "responsible gun owner" leaves his kit where the two year old can get it and accidentally shoot his 6 month old sister to death.

> They are not likely armed.

But definitely way, way more likely than in any other civilized country in the world, and that's the problem.

It's a problem, agreed. It's not "the" problem. Police in other countries don't have the same problem with individuals they apprehend that are armed. So I'd argue the prevalence of firearms is problematic, but the militarization of our police forces is much more so.

Could we not exaggerate? It doesn't help the discussion.

plus all the violence committed by Nazis (e.g. the Heather Heyer murder and the other actions counted as right-wing domestic terrorism)

"all of the violence", you listed one death. One death is a tragedy, but it's not a massively systematic problem unless we act like it is and turn it into one. You also act like there isn't such a thing as left-wing domestic terrorism. That terrorism killed more people in a single event, 7/7/16, than that nutjob running someone over did. What about the mob of nazis and anti-facists getting into fights in Berkeley? If you're not committed to one of those groups, it's just as bad. It's mob violence either way.

Nazis suck, but please try to be objective. When you frame the argument as you are, you are setting up flamebait. Some nazi will use your exaggerations against you.

> One death is a tragedy, but it's not a massively systematic problem unless we act like it is and turn it into one.

It is a systematic problem. 150 incidents between 1993 and 2017, an average of 6 terrorist incidents a year or once every two months. 255 people died, 603 people were injured. Source: https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constan...

Note: this is just the violence that got counted as terrorist violence, not your ordinary Nazi running around and slapping PoC.

It is a problem, but not the way you are exaggerating it to be. You act as if there is a nazi army ready to march on the nation, but that's not happening. We do have pockets of bigots and racists and god knows what else, but they don't have huge bases of support unless we act like they do. Nazis want to feel important, they want people to get riled up and fight them. That's what the actual nazis did.

ordinary Nazi running around and slapping PoC

There are a lot of bigots and racists doing thaT, but unless we're being really loose with the term nazi, we don't actually have that many nazis running around.

Their worst acts were in the mid 1990s (OKC). Hell, in 1999 in Jasper, some racists lynched a man. 1999! Those people have always been around, they always will be around. There's always going to be some number of incidents. That does not mean they have real power nor should people act like they do.

This is a decent read:

https://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/533255619/fact-check-is-left-...

Basically, from what I can tell, nazi is anyone with an opposing viewpoint.

I would also posit the majority of recent political violence is from the Antifa folks who believe they can shutdown their opponents through pure and simple violence.

In fact there was one act of violence attributed to all the "tea party" protests during the Obama era and that was instigated by an anti-tea party person.

For two generations political protests were virtually 100% violence-free until the current crop of kids took to the streets with their anti- trump activities.

Makes me sad really...

There is a sort of folly that makes one overestimate the value they place on something. Imagine a knight who wants to be brave and courageous, whose pursuit of valor takes him to a place where he heard many evil creatures are gathered. So he goes into a starving mongrel's den and attempts to slay the wild beasts. He kills one, strikes another, and the rest get away. He drags the dead one back to the city square where his minstrels sing his praises. He killed one wild animal, that may or may not have hurt anyone, and achieves a great deal of valor, all at very little risk to himself in his shiny armor.

Meanwhile the next town over is being raped and pillaged by bears, lions, pirates and wildfires.

> For two generations political protests were virtually 100% violence-free

Two generations? So 60 years? Political protests were virtually 100% violence free? [1][2][3]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Conve...

Well, two of those weren't political and one was literally two generations ago...

The second was definitely political, as he was one of the main organizers of the black panther party. The third occurred less than 60 years ago, or less than two generations.

Well, my mom was in high school in '68 and I'm old enough to be the father of the kids rioting in the streets so we can call that two generations methinks.

You're still exaggerating and conflating here. The majority of those deaths (168/250) came from a single incident--the OKC bombing--where neither perpetrator was a Nazi/racial extremist.

Hell, even trying to call the OKC bombing "right wing" might be a stretch. They were anti govt separatists!

Considering the U.S. government was just shutdown over a purge of immigrants I'm not sure what more proof you need.

That being anti-illegal immigration is being a nazi? That's evidence of exaggerated rhetoric, which distorts the discussion.

> That's evidence of exaggerated rhetoric, which distorts the discussion.

Simply apply this old quote whenever you hear an "alt-righter", a "white nationalist" or a "teabagger" talking, and replace "duck" with "nazi": "When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."

It's not exaggerated rhetoric when you call out that the core ideals of these groups equate those of Nazism (or fascism, but the distinction is really nitpicking). It's simply new words for old hate. These groups and their friends and supporters are as dangerous as Hitler was before rising to power!

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