Hacker News Reader

Don't think that just because you're your own editor you can't be deceived by editing. You're feeding yourself with the material that you're seeking out.

edit: just spend a day only looking up the millions peacefully marching, rather than the 10s of right-wing livestreams. (Also, give me some information about the people you've seen attacking and burning private residences, because I don't know of a single example of this.)

After the day you can go back to watching what you normally watch, but if you can't find all of these boring people walking through the streets with signs, I don't know what to tell you. If the millions protesting actually had the aim of burning middle-class people out of their homes, middle-class people would have been burned out of their homes.

If there's any problem imo, it's that the protests are generally unfocused street wandering. If there were a specific focus or target, they would be effective at accomplishing that target. But when the target becomes anything other than generalized racism, the ad-hoc coalitions fall apart.

Yes, the protests are 'mostly peaceful' and any violence is due to reactionaries.

I don't think anyone is claiming the protests are 100% peaceful. The question, then, is how much violence occurs relative to total protest activity?

If fewer than 50% of protestors engage in violence, wouldn't it then be accurate to describe the protest as 'mostly peaceful'?

It gives a false impression. If even a few percent of 10s of thousands of protesters is looting and rioting that can do enormous damage.

So the ‘few bad apples’ argument is valid for police force that they’re protesting, but not for the protestors?

What about those that try to escalate things and aren't affiliated with the protests?

> I don't think anyone is claiming the protests are 100% peaceful.

Some people certainly are, I've heard a few people who attended the riots in Seattle claim the police were the only ones rioting. They're very adamant about that 'only' and any evidence to the contrary is met with "well he's a cop in disguise." It's a case of No True Protestor.

It's very tiresome when people demand you believe their transparent bullshit.

I think your comment here perfectly illustrates exactly the problem I'm talking about.

>rather than the 10s of right-wing livestreams.

These aren't "right wing livestreams". It's people, at the protests, with cameras. Some of the bigger ones are people like Unicorn Riot, who has been active in Minneapolis for quite some time, and Regg Ikagnedo.

In some cases, the "press" end up being protestors themselves and end up fighting with the police. I really struggle to understand why you would cast any of this as right wing.

Indeed. And the fact that large scale peaceful protests are happening is irrelevant to the point here. The fact is that some violent protests are happening, but some of the media is flatly denying there is any violence happening whatsoever.

Exactly - but they do it because "the other side" is trying to show protests as exclusively violent because it serves the narrative that "normal" and "peaceful" people don't have reasons to protest, only violent criminals. So it's a vicious cycle where objectivity is nowhere near the top of priorities, which is naive to expect even outside of it, given how mainstream media functions and is funded today.

> rather than the 10s of right-wing livestreams

What? Are you seriously claiming that all of the livestreams that display riots are from right wind people? And even if they were, would it mean that they are fake or what?

Anyway, you can just go and see some of the aftermath images that the media publish.

If someone was peaceful all day and then commits murder, maybe the murder only takes 5 minutes, or 30 seconds ... would you proceed to characterize their day as mostly peaceful?

I mean, mathematically yes, but it points to how this word ‘mostly’ is what journalism teaches is a weasel-word. It renders the statement meaningless.

Well there is your problem - you are literally treating a large collection of very different people like a single person or hive mind.

Seriously pause and reflect since that usually comes up with very severe bigots and is pretty far down the dehumanization ladder.

Not at all, I am protesting an abuse of the language that makes for a nearly Orwellian level of nonsense in thinking and speech.

‘Most of the protestors were non-violent’ is an intelligible and probably accurate statement.

‘Mostly peaceful protests’ first of all intrinsically refers to the protest as a singular entity, not addressing the individuality. That’s not my doing, that’s in the phrase, making the protest the subject, as opposed to the people.

Secondly if you reread what I wrote, my main complaint is that the word ‘mostly’ is what journalistic editors refer to as a ‘weasel-world’. Weasel words make a statement that sounds descriptive but in fact could apply to almost anything.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

Moving past semantics, it is worth noting that the violent protestors would be completely ineffectual without masses of nonviolent protestors to hide among.

Anyway, I would love it if this writing falls on receptive eyes, I am concerned that the implication you made: that what I am writing is bigoted, could indicate you are not very interested in what I actually mean.

That does not match my experience at all with the many peaceful protests in SF lately. Your sources may be cherry-picking to push a certain political narrative.

I'm genuinely happy that SF is seeing peaceful protests, but I spent 2 weeks driving through National Guard checkpoints in my city due to violent unrest, and I'm aware of at least 5 other cities who were similarly affected. Minimizing the presence of violence on either side is wrong. The "few bad apples" narrative doesn't work for cops or protesters, or we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing.

The complete disregard for locality and generalizations over an entire continent-sized country don't help either. It's like if a report on the Belarus election situation was used to insist the entirety of the EU was collapsing, while at the same time a report over protests in, I dunno, Sweden was used to show that everything in Belarus is peaceful.

The police and the general population have very different flavors of bad apple.

The "good" protestors have no ability nor obligation to remove or control the "bad" ones. It's shameful that some see fit to dismiss the message of them all for the actions of a few. And anyway, the goodness or badness of violent or riotous protests through the lens of history is more than a little bit complicated.

The police do have such an ability and obligation. They are organized and they are in a position of power. It is shameful that some see fit to excuse the entire enterprise because not all cops are bad.

Neither is as simple as that.

Hilariously - the protests really are mostly peaceful and the police really are mostly good.

To be clear, it is not that bad, which is the point. Many cities protested without these issues. Most protesters are nonviolent. Most cops are not directly evil (murder, assault, intimidation).

Probably because what happens on a single city street or block isn't reflective of the thousands of other streets and blocks in the city and the dozens of people involved aren't reflective of the thousands upon thousands who are peaceful and justifiably angry about the current state of policing in the USA.

Maybe take a weekend and go to a protest yourself?

I think you would be pleasantly surprised.

It's really disheartening. Until recently I lived in Capitol Hill, Seattle, 4 or 5 blocks away from CHAZ/CHOP. I saw with my own eyes what was happening. I saw with my own eyes buildings get set on fire multiple times within a block of my apartment. I saw with my own eyes the riots, looting, violence, nightly political shows of force. Just two days ago they were molotov cocktailing a police precinct. There's even video evidence of all of this.

Yet all I read about on mainstream news is how it's actually mostly peaceful. I see Facebook friends who live 2000 miles away from Seattle re-posting news articles about how there's nothing really going on in Seattle. But I've seen with my own eyes what's going on.

It's really approaching a 1984 level of situation, where we're expected to just believe whatever we're told, even if we obviously see the problems. Where everybody is supposed to just accept what the media is telling us, rather than what we can see is happening. If they want something to disappear (like rioters throwing molotov cocktails) they just don't report on it, and it ceases to exist. But you can bet if a Republican starting throwing molotovs for their political beliefs it'd be front-page CNN for days on end. It's all so political and so manipulative.

It's not that I don't believe you, it's that I would love to see the videos of this happening and not just you promising me super hard that you saw it with my own eyes (which you somehow dropped 4 times in your post)

I've had people online tell me that I definitely could not have seen the numerous peaceful protests that have happened in Portland, and that I'm a lying shill for observing that the city I live in is in fact not a burnt-out hellhole patrolled by antifa death squads.

I would bet the press is talking about different people than the ones you are watching.

It’s not that hard to find examples. There are even left leaning reporters who are truly dumbfounded by the spin.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1300243540497166341?s=20

Which examples and which left-leaning reporters?