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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white. There can be a concept of “BLM” that is obviously right and important to support, while there is also a well organized radical contingent taking cover within BLM that is wreaking havoc on the streets and will bully or beat up anyone who stands up to them (police or bystander alike). That they call themselves anti-fascists while taking a truly fascist approach to spreading their ideology is a rhetorical pattern I’m seeing a lot lately; accusing your opponent of exactly what you are doing.

Portland just “celebrated” their 100th day of rioting. There was video from last night where they set a fellow rioter on fire while trying to throw Molotov cocktails at police.

The PR / social media contingent that supports the riots is frankly impressive. The article mentions Google sheets listing approved journalists and ways to help fund them. The level of organization belies a depth to the organization that I think most people assume is more organic and rag-tag than it really is.

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Obviously this is to control the narrative. Why would they shoo and have "minders" ala repressive regimes?

Is it because "fake news" (that'd be a tough sell coming from the left who question that assertion). Is it because they don't want people to see the underbelly of the movement or at least the bad elements in their movement?

What we do know is that if you are an organization looking for change, if you're not very careful, your well intended movement will be usurped by those who have ulterior motives --they will use your movement as "useful idiots" and you may ultimately loose control of your movement to demagogues.

There is a difference between people who are honestly looking to make things better and those riding such wave to enhance their own power.

I was on the edge of the Tea Party protests a decade back.

The Deep State crushed that effort via the IRS leaning on the leadership.

Social Media has us on the cusp of genuine, organic local leadership of society.

But there is a continuous tension to resolve between the Young Turks and the Ancien Regime.

> What we do know is that if you are an organization looking for change, if you're not very careful, your well intended movement will be usurped by those who have ulterior motives

It seems to me, as an outsider, that this has already happened given what started as good intentions from occupy Wall Street down to whatever we have now. I can’t imagine the goal was actually burning buildings, but is a subversion of the goal.

It is on-record at this point that US federal and local agents infiltrate these organizations and run a divide-and-conquer playbook. When you fight against the monetized weight of these efforts, they write articles like this one, attempting to invoke the imaginary leftist authoritarian boogey-man. The best part of this article is that it linked the demands of the protestors, which I fully, 100% across-the-board support: https://www.tenforjustice.com/demands.

I think some of these demands are valuable for society and I support #2-6,9-10.

But I don’t think they should be a condition for allowing an individual or journalist to record or cover protests.

I’m not sure what you mean as “on-record,” but I think it’s naive to assume that all this violence is a result of US federal and local agents. In fact, I’d be surprised if any is as I don’t think agents aren’t allowed to commit crimes as part of their enforcement operations.

I also don’t think a law enforcement conspiracy could be conducted at such a large scale with such efficiency and without leaving tons of evidence that would be the best story of the year. In a year of great stories for the press.

If this is the case, then we need more reporting, not less. If every furniture that is burned down is the result of agent provocateur, then let’s get some investigative journalists on it.

>Is it because "fake news" (that'd be a tough sell coming from the left who question that assertion).

What does this mean?

I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. It’s all our team or their team based on whatever news channel they subscribe to. No one takes time to dig below the surface and think for themselves.

And in reality, we’re really more alike than we realize. It’s just the political parties and media have financalized everything.

American politics is more just crony wealth transfers to vying corporate factions. We’re all victims to an undefined enemy but we’re fighting ourselves.

The parties are fairly weak to be honest. Otherwise, Trump wouldn't have been nominated in the first place and Sanders wouldn't have had two strong runs at the presidency. The voters are self-incentivized to break off into factions.

I think what has been slowly changing and coming to a head is that the checks and balances in the American system have been eroded and calcified. When everything is all or nothing and mechanisms for compromise stop being used (i.e. legislation, policy diversity across states), then everything is a Big Deal.

I think this is a natural, human tendency. Us vs. them. Tribalism. That sort of thing.

Certainly. I even catch myself doing it too. I’ve had to develop a kind of framework for considering political issues to avoid it:

What’s best for me? What’s best for my family? What’s best for my community? What’s best for my country? What’s best for the planet?

Often these questions have contradicting answers. However once I think through them, I can at least begin to structure an opinion.

I find it more concerning how quickly people forget the past. In 2016 BLM was responsible for a mass shooting in Dallas and most people I know already forgot this fact.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_poli...

Your phrasing is misleading. BLM isn't responsible. A veteran sympathetic to the cause went on a shooting spree granted, but I don't know how you get from that to "BLM was responsible"

You cannot on one hand claim that BLM is an organic, grass roots, and completely headless organization while at the same time disclaiming someone as a member of the supposed unorganized organization composed entirely of people who self identify as BLM members.

There's a similar vein of argumentation that occurs with Antifa: everyone understands that there isn't a formal organization, but anyone who points out grassroots affiliation is dishonestly accused of claiming there is a formal organization, and can therefore be credibly debunked. It's highly dishonest stuff.

That logic isn't correct. Take for counter example Christians, a group of largely self identifying "members of an organisation". It doesn't logically follow that if a self-identifying Christian shoots a lot of people that "Christianity is responsible" either. That lacks nuance, of course groups of individuals that self-identify as part of a group can act as individuals and as a group, and it's often unclear externally which actions are attributable to a group and which are attributable to individuals or sub-groups.

It's simply impossible to be definitive with incomplete information, reductionist and I can't see the merit in basing a position in the presumption that all actions are of the whole.

If you want to draw a parallel to Christianity in this way then we can focus on what the organization does post-crisis.

A self identifying Christian who kills people in the name of Christianity is vocally condemned by other self identifying Christians and many would rush to say that they were mentally ill.

If BLM wants to not be lumped in with extremists then supporters of Black Lives Matter need to vocally and unequivocally condemn extremist and their acts that do not align with a supporter’s views of the group’s objectives. I have never seen a BLM supporter credibly call Micah Xavier Johnson mentally ill or an extremist. Extremist actions by BLM supporters are never condemned but rather excused by pointing to police brutality or institutional racism as being the root cause of the bad actor’s actions. While external forces may shape an extremist, it is the extremist who pulls the trigger. Personal responsibility means something and if the group won’t cast out the extremist then the group condones the actions.

Additionally, there is a key problem with your analogy: Christianity does not purport to be an organic, grass roots, and headless organization. Christianity flows from the church and it has a defined organization. It has spokespeople. It has explicit leadership.

I'm pretty sure lots of BLM supporters condemned Xavier Johnson... It's true that some activists tolerate and accept violence within their cause but that is not universally held, and while issues with police violence do complicate things, I agree with you that violent acts deserve condemnation.

The key problem you highlight with my analogy is not quite correct (although most if not all analogies have some flaws). There are various attempts at organisation and leadership in the Church, but there are also thousands of splits, sub-groups and even violence that has not always been universally condemned (such as in Northern Ireland where I'm from), as well as sanctioned in the Crusades.

An organisation that can have condemned violence while having encouraged crusades, and have members like the IRA does certainly seem like the kind of varied decentralised (or at least multi-centred) organisation that can have internally conflicting beliefs yet frequently be considered as a single entity externally. That was more my point. If you think BLM isn't a broad church, my guess is you don't know that many BLM supporters? My experience has been that a wide range of people support BLM, and most of them do not support murderous rampages, even if they can comprehend why the anger that manifested might have existed in the first place.

My experience in Northern Ireland also makes me extremely cautious about the mistake of retaliatory violence, but anyway. I'm still unconvinced that you could call BLM a singular organisations with all actions done by association attributable directly to it.

We are talking past each other. You are convinced your viewpoint is correct while I am convinced mine is correct. The reality is that we are engaging in an exercise of line drawing. You draw the line for "actions undertaken by an individual attributable to the group" at a different place than I do. I also doubt that your mind can be changed on where the line should be drawn, judging by your retreat to a "you must not know many BLM supporters" argument.

I do know many Black Lives Matter supporters. I also know that many of them no longer support BLM (note that I put BLM, not Black Lives Matter) because the movement has been co-opted by extremists. The second group includes me. While your experience may be distinct and real to you, I urge you to consider the impact that extremists have on the overall movement and how continuing to try to split hairs about who is and who is not a member of BLM while not vocally condemning and ostracizing extremists from what you view as the movement galvanizes not just BLM opponents but also neutral parties who agree with Black Lives Matter. Actions have consequences.

Well, I can see where you were coming from. As you point out, it is frustratingly ambiguous that BLM the phrase and the organisation are the same acronym.

I'm certainly not sure everyone who has funded BLM the organisation fully agrees or understands the difference either!

Thanks for clarifying what you mean.

Here's a video of BLM/Antifa protestors in Portland 1 week ago celebrating after one of their security detail apparently murdered a right-wing protester in cold-blood:

> "I am not sad that a fucking fascist died tonight" crowd cheers

https://clips.twitch.tv/TiredFunnySmoothieTwitchRPG

There is a scary level of support / apathy to violence. Don't get me wrong. I am never going to support violence and murder, and I too will judge those that do. I am simply seeking to avoid generalisation.

I'm not naïve to movements being co-opted. I have witnessed that first hand numerous times.

>If BLM wants to not be lumped in with extremists then supporters of Black Lives Matter need to vocally and unequivocally condemn extremist and their acts that do not align with a supporter’s views of the group’s objectives. I have never seen a BLM supporter credibly call Micah Xavier Johnson mentally ill or an extremist.

I mean, isn't this literally because you didn't do a Google search? https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/dall...

I don’t think you can fairly argue that “extremist actions by BLM supporters are never condemned.” I mean, I believe that black lives matter, yet I condemn taking of innocent lives.

I worry you are letting your philosophy shape your reality. It happens to us all. No judgement. I would just urge you to reconsider whether you have factual data to support your argument.

@Fellshard makes a good point that decentralisation is often a tool, used both by people who wish to disassociate a group with its actions.

Also this is true in reverse with people seeking to group people who are not actually acting as groups.

That kind of deliberate distortion only makes it harder to comprehend what is really happening often, but there's still a burden of proof.

Obviously organised criminals have been attempting to hide coordinated activity for the longest time too, I understand that bad actors exist who seek to pretend actions are not coordinated. But again, there are times when members of such organisations commit crimes off their own backs, which were not part of any conspiracy.

A couple of data points to look at – and I would argue these are the things at the heart of the conflict – are whether the organization officially supports an particular action, and then whether it’s mainstream members casually support it. I think you’d have a hard time finding a supporter of Black Lives Matter who would go on record as supporting the shootings in Dallas, however it's fairly easy to find support for extrajudicial killings of black Americans.

As numerous people have stated, it's not clear-cut. I support Black Lives Matter and protests supporting them; I also condemn rioting and property destruction, as I think it hurts the cause and innocent bystanders (like small business owners). I'm in favor of having a police department, however I think policing in America is fundamentally unjust and needs serious reform.

There will always be murder, unfortunately, just as there will always be dingalings from all points of the political spectrum running around telling people in public spaces “You can't film here!” We have to condemn those actions regardless of whether it's coming from someone whose political ideology we agree with.

I think "responsible" might be overstating it.

But if BLM is not responsible, then it does poke holes in the ACAB and maybe even "Defund the Police" positions. If protestors can dissociate from rogue actors, can police? If not, what's the clear difference beyond political tribalism?

The trouble is the behaviors in the police seem to be fairly widespread, the perpetrators are protected, and reform is actively resisted. At that point it isn't a rouge actor.

There has always been police violence, but what cell phones have done is reveal how widespread it may have always been, rejecting the rouge actor narrative.

And how is the rogue actor narrative intact vis a vis the riots?

Leaders associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, including organizers of the protest rally, condemned the shooting -- Wikipedia

Have we seen anything in particular that strongly suggests the Dallas shooting was not a rogue agent?

I specifically asked about the arson and other violence that has been going on all summer.

I would expect the police to investigate and remove own bad actors. The police have the power to fire cops, to charge cops and imprison bad cops. I think that when police does that, the police should absolutely be able dissociate from those cops actions. On the other hand, if bad cops are not removed or are promoted, then police can not dissociate.

I would expect some similar test to be applied to BLM. Is the person who shoot up people talked about positively and promoted as role model to BLM fans? Is that person instead pushed away?

Imo, it is actions of leadership and generally of culture of the organization that determines whether dissociation from bad member is real or an not real. E.g. whether member is rogue or standard.

What does this have to do with either formercoder’s comment or with filming at protests? I’m failing to understand what point you’re trying to make here.

The previous two comments where about tribalism. I think tribalism has a lot to do with this forgetfulness of inconvenient facts

If your point is that people on both the right and the left are capable of immoral behavior and that we should condemn, I agree with you! I think I missed the point you were trying to make because it appeared that you were only highlighting and correlating heinous acts from one person who supported a position that you disagree with.

My point is actually beyond politics. If this thread was about my therapist, I might talk about a particular family member and their tribe. And how I had to cut contact with that tribe because of abuse and the tribe conveniently forgetting the abuse.

But this is a thread about BLM, so I'm bringing up an issue related to that.

For a personal take, I avoid any tribe where I see this forgetfullness and will point it out. This behaviour is gaslighting and can be a traumatic experience

This thread is about Black Lives Matter, which is a movement focused on the injustice of police brutality and criminal justice reform. Your point - which I take to be that that tribalism is bad - is less potent because you pointed out “forgetfulness” of people who support black lives matter but not in people who support the status quo of police use of power, which seems to be a demonstration of tribalism rather than a repudiation if it.

It's a natural tendency for dangerous world.

People generally don't want to go into the conflict. But when they are cornered they begin so seek cover within their flock.

So when an average Joe is told that silence is violence and he is guilty beyond any repair just because he's drinking beer in his backyard instead of fighting for the good cause, the Joe becomes defensive. And since he's not a master of rhetorics, he just takes the "fuck you all" attitude and goes back to his beer - now all wound up and grumpy.

EDIT: punctuation fixes

>> I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray.

My own speculation on that. Shades of gray take effort to understand, and may not have clean simple answers. People may be too lazy, or not confident in dealing with complexity, or not smart enough, or something else so they refuse to engage with it. What I find odd is that so many who avoid the subtlety and complexity are really eager to tout their lame one-sided opinions, even as the world is falling apart and demands better than that... or maybe because its falling apart?

I think a lot of it has to do with how we look at history and how we remember and tell stories, fictional and non-fictional.

Most people remember the winners and losers of history, but many don’t dig into the nuance of it for various reasons. It’s easier for those who support the winners to ignore the finer details because said winners aren’t perfect.

Abraham Lincoln is a perfect example of this. While he was instrumental in freeing the slaves, he also believed that they were not as intellectually capable as whites and made that pretty clear in some of his speeches. One could argue that his position was the more progressive of his time, but still falls very, very short of what we consider to be acceptable thinking today.

There’s always shades of gray in history. Every good president did things that many would find appalling. Most movies depict very clear good and evil, and we enjoy them because they’re easy to consume.

To have more or less objective judgement one has to be well unaffected by the topic's outcome. Try to argue about future of some random company and then buy or short it's stock and argue again.

It's unsettling. It seems like there is an increasing number of people who simply adopt the narrative for their team, and assume all others do the same. Anyone who disagrees with that narrative must be a member of the opposite team. If presented with evidence that goes against their narrative, the response is usually that it doesn't matter. If they completely flip to the opposite position on an issue, the response is often that both their earlier position was correct and that their new position is also correct.

> If they completely flip to the opposite position on an issue, the response is often that both their earlier position was correct and that their new position is also correct.

A wonderful thing about nuance is that this is often ok.

Sometimes, their actual earlier position and new position are consistent. But will anyone listen if they try to explain why? Usually not.

The problem is, marxism progresses extremely well in shades of gray, where everything they claim sounds logical (“Are you NOT against police violence?”). But when you wake up it’s too late, and they are shooting Trump supporters at point blank on the street without trial (I’m not projecting, it happened this week), which is all but shades of gray.

That’s why some people say “it’s all gray” and right wingers try to pull it into “there is crime and innocence with a clear line in between, there is male and female, there is good and bad.” Right wing also tries to show the end-game, which passes as complete nutcrack conspiracy theory (remember the supposed “grand remplacement” in Europe), until one day: “We (Muslims) are more numerous than Christians, leave the country if you don’t like it” (again, not fantasizing here, it’s a real speech from this week in Lyon) or more clearly: “Whites, this dirty race” (chapter president of a student union, Lille, France).

I tend to view ideologies as evolutionary: Those that survived today win by either being extremely complex and good at being insidious, others win by being simple and blunt. But what we’d all like is, no ideology. Which is difficult when 1/3 of the world would happily fund billions to destroy America.

If someone suggests that they think in morally gray manner, doesn't it signal to everyone around them that they're morally suspicious?

>"Do you think it's alright that police are getting killed?"

> "Well, let's think about the details, as the situation can be complex or even gray..."

You might say this is a stupid and sparse example, but well, let's think about it... for many people instinctual morality is their primary way of relating to the world. If you suggest you have an intellectual and distinctive approach to morality, what does that mean? Does that moral distinction mean moral superiority, arrogance, or moral alienation?

Sure. Let's think about it:

- could it have been prevented? At what cost?

- what are the other options? I wish, but often the alternative to people suffering is even more people suffering

- once the shit happened, how do we mitigate the situation?

I’m talking more about making moral judgements without adequate information or analysis. I’m not saying that morality is not absolute.

Heh. This was a brilliant comment. The others who have responded to your comment have unconsciously proven the truth of what you're suggesting.

They are 'well-actually'-ing your question, which proves that they don't have don't have an instinctive 'of course it is wrong that police are being killed' reaction, which now eliminates credibility with the group they're hoping to influence.

I think MLK would have said "of course it's not alright that police are getting killed." He would have followed up with a salient point about police brutality, of course.

People don't like complexity. They want heroes and villains. If the heroes are also nearby (like their local police station) and villains are far away (like Portland), it's far more comfortable.

> The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings.

It’s a little bit cliche, but also true: to judge a protest by its most violent elements but to decline to do the same of the police is the language of the oppressor.

Everyone I saw celebrating 100 days was celebrating 100 days of sustained protesting—not violence. Those same people have bemoaned the escalation of violence that happens against the protests each night by police.

The fact that some of the protestors have turned violent is, to me, entirely reasonable considering the sustained months of police violence that have been inflicted upon them illegally. If the state wants people to respect the laws and remain peaceful, it needs to clean its own house of violent criminals first.

Ironically, that’s why the protests happened in the first place. Let’s not forget cause and effect.

> It’s a little bit cliche, but also true: to judge a protest by its most violent elements but to decline to do the same of the police is the language of the oppressor.

Then lucky us to have the news correct our judgement by withholding key facts.

Edit: When replying to my extremely short comment, I would be grateful if you took the time to first read it. The single sentence I wrote neither claims the attempts at censorship were perfect, nor that the police were perfect little angels, nor does it equate anything (such as violence by one side) with anything else.

I’ve seen no shortage of pearl-clutching over breathlessly reported videos of almost all of the violence so far.

Some buildings and vehicles have burned.

On the other hand, children have been shot in the face with projectiles and suffered TBIs. Police have permanently blinded people and shattered bones.

I think it is a mistake to even begin to equate the amount of police violence that has been inflicted with the violence that has resulted from rioting. The police have been inflicting permanent injuries indiscriminately on anyone present.

There is no comparison or remotely corresponding events in terms of violence from the protests, with the exception perhaps of the people who attacked Rittenhouse.

> Some buildings and vehicles have burned.

And some people have been murdered: https://apnews.com/864cb5c14ba08b4411a16577042d0773

At least one of the deaths mentioned in that URL... was shot by police.

Recall also that these protests began because the police in the US have murdered thousands in the last few centuries.

Anti-police-violence protests would have to sustain dozens of related deaths every single night for months to even approach the level of depravity exercised by police for years.

> At least one of the deaths mentioned in that URL... was shot by police.

The URL clearly refutes the parent comment that the only damage done by the protestors are vehicles and buildings getting set on fire.

> Recall also that these protests began because the police in the US have murdered thousands in the last few centuries.

> Anti-police-violence protests would have to sustain dozens of related deaths every single night for months to even approach the level of depravity exercised by police for years.

If we're going to police violence in the last few centuries, surely we should also include riots in the last few centuries? I'm pretty certain that more people were murdered by rioters then the police during that time.

> The URL clearly refutes the parent comment that the only damage done by the protestors are vehicles and buildings getting set on fire.

You seem to assert that the murders itemized in that URL were committed by protesters.

It's not reasonable to assume that any murders that happen at or near protests were caused by protestors and not opportunistic criminals that aren't invested in the protest one way or another, just as it's not reasonable to assume that police are justified in shooting anyone whose hands they can't see.

The violence imposed by police is documented, because police are in uniform uniform, and zero non-cops are wearing those uniforms. There is no plain way to distinguish between opportunistic-criminals-present-at-a-protest and protesters.

Indeed, during all of this, it has been documented that sometimes police have engaged in violence whilst wearing all black and not identified as police.

It's not as if these elements don't exist on the side of the police either. Check out the article "Teargassed, beaten up, arrested: what freedom of the press looks like in the US right now", for example. For either side, the actions are in my opinion completely unwarranted by either side, and just wrong, but it didn't start with the protesters.

The “language of the oppressor” is the language of protestors forcing people to not film.

Do the protesters control two branches of the federal government? Or indeed, any government at all? Do the protesters control the economic system by monopolizing most property and wealth? Do the protesters have access to a vast war-making apparatus?

> If the state wants people to respect the laws and remain peaceful, it needs to clean its own house of violent criminals first.

No, the people demand that everyone respect the laws and remain peaceful.

To that end, the people fund and enact a police force to protect life and property, and to apprehend suspected criminals.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “some of the protestors have turned violent.” There is a contingent which is using violence as a specific strategy, against property and against police as well as bystanders who may not agree with them.

And when the people think the police is endangering their safety, does the job badly and abuses power given to them or breaks the law, what are people supposed to do?

At least one thing that you do is allow others the freedom you want for yourself.

What freedom you have in mind? Afaik the exchange was 1.) about whether police can be blanket assumed to be the "good guys" due to that being presumed original intent. 2.) Whether and how ir is legitimate to protest if they are not "good" in practice.

I am not asking for any special freedom. I do find second question interesting and complicated. I do have own answer to question one (namely that blanket trust is super naive of course low paid force with few weak checks will end up having bad actors in it and it is then question of pruning them out or not).

The freedom I have in mind is the freedom to film in public.

Can I get some details? Who makes up the contingent? Are they protestors, counter protestors or what? What motivates them, and how do you know this information?

Presumably the same sort who says

> If the state wants people to respect the laws and remain peaceful, it needs to clean its own house of violent criminals first.

Or “peaceful protesting wasn’t working so what else are protestors supposed to do?” Which I see all over Reddit.

Personally, I hear friends who dislike the violence but have an attitude of “well we’re so privileged, who are we to judge?” It’s not PC to disavow it because our voices aren’t the ones that need to be heard right now (unless we agree, in which case we’re being allies and have a moral duty to speak up and lend our privilege).

This quote comes up a lot in that context (MLK, Letter from the Birmingham Jail):

> First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”

That said, I don’t know anyone who supports violent protest, and my friends are as left as they come.

> No, the people demand that everyone respect the laws and remain peaceful.

I don't think that's true in practice in America, at all. It's certainly the cover story, though.

Demonstrably, the people (as a collective group) have only ever demanded that from non-police. Police have a long, long history of deploying illegal violence against anyone even suspected of breaking the law, prior to trial, up to and frequently including executing them.

Historically, "the people" (again, as a group) do not seem bothered by this at all, simply because that's the way it's always been. It's expected and accepted that the police will deploy a significant amount of (not legally permitted) violence against anyone even suspected of breaking the law, hence the common shout of "STOP RESISTING" (usually deployed against those who aren't resisting at all) during police-initiated violence. It's a farce; the police are de facto exempt from the laws regarding battery by American social consensus. This is obvious to anyone paying attention. No effort is made to conceal this fact because there is no significant outrage or pressure to change anything about the situation. Violent police in the US are the widely-accepted and expected norm, and there isn't usually even a debate about it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incident

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

Seriously, think about it: the police have no special legal exception from the laws for beating or otherwise battering people when dispersing riots, giving chase to a suspect, or effecting an arrest. Most people seem to have entirely lost track of that fact in the "police vs baddies" battle narrative, and assume that anyone suspected or accused by police must be deserving of at least a few whacks with a nightstick, or possibly even execution if the officer, at their sole discretion, deems it appropriate. That's about as far from "due process" or "presumption of innocence" as you can possibly get. The set of laws that applies to police is simply not the same set of laws that applies to you and I, and that gap is entirely a social contract one, not a legally-codified one.

It's reflected in the intense indignation of police and police unions when they are (very) occasionally charged with crimes of violence whilst doing their jobs. To them, they're doing what's expected of them: deploying expected (yet illegal) violence against suspected criminals.

https://news.wttw.com/2020/06/08/having-talk-how-families-pr...

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000003575589/a-conv...

> To that end, the people fund and enact a police force to protect life and property, and to apprehend suspected criminals.

The police in the US have only ever been really diligent about protecting the life and property of a small subset of the population, primarily large landowners. Meanwhile, they pose a significant danger to the life and property of a much larger segment, and always have. The reason the police were first created in America was to capture escaped slaves and to keep the poor from looting and torching the mansions of the white landowning class.

The tradition continues to date. You can see this gap in the amount of case-solving effort the police in the US put into crimes against the police force themselves or large buildings/retail, and the amount of case-solving effort they put into crimes against the property of non-HNWI individuals, or the amount of case-solving effort they put into violence against women. Their priorities are extremely clear, and to hold up police behavior as "law and order" is simply the motte in this argument, as their behavior is anything but a reasonable or fair application of the law. The police, for example, basically never enforce any laws against other police (or their families), even when violations are entirely obvious, and this is extremely well-documented.

It extends to the prosecutorial apparatus that supports the police, too. This is one of the primary reasons that minorities and poor people are incarcerated at an extremely out-of-proportion rate to the rest of the population.

Those calling for the abolition or defunding of the police would, funnily enough, actually be thrilled with more thoroughly consistent application of actual "law and order" and not the two-tiered system of police-initiated violence and authoritarian choke-holding and skull-cracking that passes for same by tradition in the US.

I wrote about one facet of this bizarre police-to-American-public apparently undocumented social contract in June:

https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-ame...

> considering the sustained months of police violence that have been inflicted upon them illegally

What part about the police stopping a violent riot which has been going on for months to end is illegal?

I realize it depends on who you ask these days, but to me it sounds like they are doing their job, to ensure law and order.

I mean, the protests did not stopped and generally got worst. The situation was not calming down over time.

And not just that, people died due to conflicting groups comming in and cops failed to stop them but before and after killing.

If someone was ensuring law and order, that someone completely failed.

> to judge a protest by its most violent elements but to decline to do the same of the police is the language of the oppressor.

Reason has had a running police brutality tracker for decades. You're mad at the wrong magazine.

Frankly I'm impressed things haven't descended into far worse than what has happened so far. Most of the demonstrators are showing an incredible level of restraint.

I agree.

I think the police are, too; I expected to have seen some Kent State-style attacks by now given how insanely violent and trigger-happy they've been. This is not to minimize the tremendous blunt-force and chemical injuries they've incurred in any way, but I'm still surprised the police haven't caused more of their usual style of shooting deaths.

People.com had "Bill Murray’s son, Caleb, was arrested at a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest after allegedly throwing a rock through the window of a pickup truck."

So, it is simultaneously peaceful and you have someone chucking rocks through windows (as well as other things, as the article continues).

"these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white."

This is one of the main phenomenon of an issue becoming "political," or what Orwell called "nationalism" in a clunky-but-brilliant essay. It's a "with us or against us" dynamic. Every fact, opinion or take can only be an argument for or against a position.

When it's at peak (like now in the states), you get completely warped pictures. It's either peaceful protests vs brutal police and pro-trump militias or anarchist riots vs embattled police and law abiding patriots.

I think part of the problem here is that everyone is a belligerent. The media, the police, the protestors and (obviously) the government are all objects of protest, which makes them participants. The CNN siege in NY was a sharp example.

Another part of the issue is the typical modern leaderlessness of populist politics. Spokespersons usually moderate a position, establishing boundaries to consensus. This can take some of the edge off the "my side, your side" dynamic that more extreme actors benefit from.

> The CNN siege in NY

I believe that was in Atlanta.

my mistake.

Is this the essay you were referring to?

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

yep

Honestly, the media is way off about the Portland protests. Take it from people on the ground: the picture painted by the media is largely wrong and mostly inadequate.

So what's the accurate picture from people on the ground?

This is only one data point but I was in Portland this week trying to get away from smoke and it was all peaceful. The protestors I saw looked like kids and older folks out in for a rally. Some were wearing bright vests for visibility, probably from cars.

All in all it didn’t seem too wild to me and I’m sure I didn’t see all the protests, again this is just one guy walking down the street. I never felt unsafe for what it’s worth.

And what happens once night falls?

A small minority get violent and the cops prematurely declare a riot? Portland is not the war zone the media claims it is.

Is this before or after rioters set someone on fire with a molotov?

Likely before?

In my experience from the Dutch press, they are all very left leaning. Especially our public broadcasters.

There is hardly any right leaning press in The Netherlands.

The US is the same way, most reporters are democrats. See:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bub...

https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Do_97_percent_of_journali...

1. Forget reporters, our media is run mostly by mega-corporations.

2. Democrat != liberal, Republican != conservative, especially when comparing between countries

The bigger point is that once side of a partisan divide represents the vast majority of media resources, and the last several years have pulled back the curtain on their partisan behavior.

In the Netherlands, just like in Sweden and many other European countries you more or less need to balance the left-leaning main stream media opinion with some of the alternative channels - Geenstijl in the Netherlands and Nyheter Idag in Sweden to name a few - to get something which resembles the truth. I generally find you can get a good grasp of the political balance of main stream media in a country by looking at whether that country has a thriving alternative news scene. If it does, the media tends to be tilted in one direction, if it doesn't the media is either more balanced or the country oppresses alternative media sources. In that case those alternative sources tend to sprout outside of the country, e.g. Epoch Times vs the PRC.

I also suspect the term 'alternative news sources' is ripe for overhaul, especially in those countries where these sources play a large role - e.g. Sweden. This is already happening in a way there, the division goes more towards whether a news organisation underwrites the ethical guidelines for news reporting ('pressetiska regler' in Swedish) or not. Another rather important division in Sweden is that between organisations which get monetary support from the state and those which do not, either because they do not want to be encumbered (e.g. "Nyheter Idag") or because they do not follow the ethical guidelines (many others).

Wait, what? The largest newspaper (Telegraaf) is definitely right wing. The second largest newspaper (AD) is also anything but left wing.

I agree with public broadcasting, but that’s in part because the right wing has changed. Traditionally, the right-wing stronghold was the conservative christian block. Which had their political party and broadcasting associations. But these broadcasters have changed their direction after Christianity pretty much collapsed and became a minority religion in The Netherlands. However in recent years WNL and PowNed have been added as right-wing broadcasters.

The relevance of newspapers has been greatly diminished. And I am not even a millenial.

Digital subscriptions of Dutch newspapers have grown steadily:

https://www.svdj.nl/de-stand-van-de-nieuwsmedia/digitale-opl...

(For non-native speakers, scroll to the first graph.)

You can't compare digital subscriptions with print-subscriptions, your own link even says so.

De Telegraaf and het AD alone have lost about 800k subscriptions in the last two decades. And the trend sharpens.

https://www.svdj.nl/de-stand-van-de-nieuwsmedia/papier/oplag...

De Telegraaf and het AD alone have lost about 800k subscriptions in the last two decades.

The curves for the other newspapers are far less profound and some of them do really well in digital subscriptions (NRC, Volkskrant, FD). Would be interesting to know what is going on here. Are people interested in right-wing media less inclined to pay for content, are they less in a position to pay for content, or are the traditional right-wing news papers being replaced by other media (if so, which ones?).

At any rate, I stand by my point, which is: there have traditionally been large right-wing media in The Netherlands, but their audience seems to be leaving them. I also agree that there was a void for some time in public broadcasting, which is filled by some contenders, like PowNed and WNL. However, these broadcasting associations do not seem to do well, because they have very few members (25,000 and 50,000 respectively). Even a broadcaster like HUMAN, of which I have absolutely no clue what their profile is, has more members (68,000).

Which buildings have been burned, exactly? Local reporting covered the Molotov cocktails last night [0] but did not indicate that any buildings were being burned down or even caught on fire.

Portlanders continue to note that most of the city is unaffected by protests. Life goes on as normal. Only a couple specific blocks downtown are contested, and only because the police have chosen to make those blocks into a battleground.

Edit: Downvoters, which buildings have been burned? Bootlicking isn't cute, it's servile. If you cannot back up your claims about Portland, maybe stop making them.

[0] https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09/portland-protest-dec...

Police are making it a battleground? Not the people throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks, and bricks. No, it is the police who have made it a battleground.

Both sides need to be present to escalate the situation. If you look at the videos from a couple weeks ago of the police just herding protests with tear gas and dragging people into vans, they're not exactly a deescalating presence.

the police have been making it worse. Using questionable tactics, using disproportionate force, lieing, inciting/supporting one side over the other, using beyond questionable reasoning for declaring a riot, using agent provocateur ...i could go on. Check out Blue Leaks as well. The fact is the majority of the media covering Portland are not showing the whole story.

Citizens have constitutional rights to peaceably assemble. The language is right there in the bill of rights. Police don’t show up and corral peaceful protesters who applied for, and were granted, permits for demonstrations.

When an assembly becomes not peaceful it ceases to be lawful. If unlawful protesters do not disperse police must use what you call “questionable” tactics to remove them.

The rule of law must be upheld.

So one person throwing a bottle is a reason to declare a riot? This has happened. Who decides when an assembly ought to be declared a riot? Currently its police and they have shown time and again they cannot be relied on to make a sound judgement in that regard. The majority of time there has been little reason to declare a riot and instead of relieving the tension, government forces have stoked it. What about using agent provocateurs? Surely this is not what you consider to be upholding the rule of law. And for that matter Portland police have shown bias in their application of the law in regards to counter protestors. I support the rule of law wholeheartedly but it must be applied evenly across all fronts for the rule of law to be maintained. On its face alone, I agree with your statement but digging any deeper reveals that unfortunately your black and white maximalist/ reductionist viewpoint doesn't fit the reality in the ground. Its shades of grey. The media and the radicals on any side are forcing you into this viewpoint. Btw you are leaving out so much in your assessment to in order to make a black and white argument.

It’s simple. We have rules and regulations on how to assemble in public. They differ from city to city and state to state but the information isn’t hard to find. Typically you need a permit if your assembly is more than 20 people but that’s not universal. And an assembly in the middle of the night is almost certainly not peaceful or allowed.

People are trying to make it grey to apologize for what is happening.

So do you think that such a simple approach would work to create change? What about free speech zones? Do those kinds of assemblies mean anything to those in power? Is a protest that doesn't have a permit still unlawful to you even if it were 100pc idealistically peaceful? Do you believe had there been meaningful change in the first 30 days, people wouldn't still be put protesting? What about the upcoming Proud Boy gathering, this does not have a permit. Are they not allowed either? There are plenty of instances where a demonstration doesn't need a permit like if you aren't blocking traffic or the demonstration is under a certain amount. These are genuine questions.

>Police don’t show up and corral peaceful protesters who applied for, and were granted, permits for demonstrations

1. Is it a right if you need to ask permission from the very people you're protesting against?

2. The entire nation watched police tear gas peaceful protestors in DC so the President could have a photo of. We also saw Portland police break the hand of Christopher David, a 53 year old veteran when he approached police, unarmed, with his hands raised.

>The rule of law must be upheld.

The police need to follow the law too.

Well cops left in Seattle and let Marxist larpers have a go. Couple dead people later that had to be ended. Well that and looting with a good doze of racketeering(protection money) and assaults on whoever did not look like they fit

Watch the video where they executed one kid, the other who was shot lived because I guess he looked dead so they did not give him coup de grace

Please provide sources.

Google it, it was all over the Reddit and even some “news” media bothered to report it. 2 kids white suv, roadblock.. 16 year old finished off with a round to the dome, younger one lived but was severely wounded. There is a video of the evidence destruction(them collecting casings) but it is harder to find.

I think nobody been arrested or charged. Yeah nobody gives a shit about that either

Ill have to look it up and report back i guess.

the police union needs to call for a 60 day strike. just take away the policing function of the local government for two months. that will lay bare the real motives of the protesters, either peaceful demonstration or violence and looting.

It sounds like you believe that protestors are some sort of cohesive whole. If 90% of protestors are peaceful, and 10% are effectively anarchist provocateurs (or just unlawful types taking advantage of unrest to mask illegal/antisocial behaviour) then the police abandoning things is clearly going to make things turn bad IMO.

Can USA police really not restrain from violently attacking the peaceful elements amongst protestors and just seek to keep the peace against those provably causing violence? They'll actually need to act like grown-ups, be brave, and not arrest people for calling them names and such.

I have also seen little reporting on what I suspect (admittedly, merely judging from photos) has driven a lot of the more confrontational protesting in Portland: youthful energy and enthusiasm that doesn’t actually think that much about theory or aims. Press coverage and the attacks of ideological opponents depict these protestors as a focused political force that knows exactly what it seeks and why it is doing the specific things it is doing, but I don't believe that is actually the case.

You would think that after May '68, people would be aware of this. Back then the French Communist Party, the Maoists, and the Situationists who developed elaborate theory and carefully pursued their goals, were seen as boring windbags by the actual masses of young people in the streets. Most of those young people were not coming out with clear policy aims and strategy, but rather they were motivated by a more vague feeling of discontent at the authorities, by the pleasure of rebelling, and by the satisfaction of being part of a community with fellow protestors.

There are well articulated lists of demands from leaders of the movements. Not everyone in the gatherings needs to be super well-versed in the policy details to support them. Here are some examples:

More modest: https://8cantwait.org/

Larger scale: https://www.tenforjustice.com/demands

You can probably find more local information from your local BLM or other social justice organizations. Here is a specific example from where I live, the Twin Cities: https://www.reclaimtheblock.org/home

"Not everyone in the gatherings needs to be super well-versed in the policy details to support them."

It's not that they don't know the finer policy details, it's that many of the on-the-ground protestors probably aren't even aware of every one of these demands. When young people are driven to attend protests because of the general outrage about black victims of police violence, how many of them really know, for example, that payment of reparations is part of a list of demands that has been published somewhere?

Some of these sound reasonable, some of them are completely ridiculous. It's probably for the better of the movement that these demands aren't the subject of (sympathetic) news coverage, because they're way outside the overton window of the general population. In fact, republicans/conservatives could hardly get any better support for their claim that BLM supporters are radical marxists.

Sure. You don't start a negotiation from the middle. Also, most of the actual policy changes would be local. The support of the general population matters much less than the support of those who are impacted. The politicians and leaders need to work out the details and compromises. The point of these protests is that one side has not been listened to, and it is getting people killed, and we're sick of it.

> You don't start a negotiation from the middle.

I agree, but you also shouldn't completely discredit yourself before negotiation has started. What do you even bring to the table? The end of protests? Protests are only being tolerated because of presumed public support, which has been dwindling due to some ugly scenes.

> The politicians and leaders need to work out the details and compromises.

The politicians only need to care about votes. In many areas, the majority already voted in Democrats with the intention of having them fix things, which they didn't.

I would argue that Democrats are generally less principled than Republicans, they're only following what they believe the majority to believe. See the Dixiecrats or their position on gay marriage.

So, without the majority vote you don't have Democrats and without the Democrats, who do you have to support? Republicans? Greens?

> The point of these protests is that one side has not been listened to, and it is getting people killed, and we're sick of it.

I noticed as much, but that doesn't magically bring you into a good bargaining position. MLK was successful because he stayed within the overton window. Malcom X wasn't, because he didn't.

> What do you even bring to the table? The end of protests? Protests are only being tolerated because of presumed public support, which has been dwindling due to some ugly scenes.

The end of protests and a society that works better for everybody, yes. I'd love to have a public safety force that I felt I could rely on. Currently, I don't.

> In many areas, the majority already voted in Democrats with the intention of having them fix things, which they didn't.

Well, sort of. Here in the Twin Cities, the elected Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to change the city charter to no longer require the Minneapolis Police Department. The charter change would require a vote to approve, which would have let us actually see how locals felt about it. But, it required review by an un-elected Charter Commission, which doesn't reflect the demographics of the city, and chose to use a procedural delay tactic to prevent the question from being put on the ballot this year. So it's not fair to say that they "didn't fix things," but rather weren't allowed to by state law, which requires the charter commission. Republicans control the state Senate.

> So, without the majority vote you don't have Democrats and without the Democrats, who do you have to support?

Progressive candidates, like members of the DSA and politicians they endorse. One thing that has come out of these protests is a rise in progressive candidates, both running at all, and actually winning some primaries. The progressive candidate who won the primary for my state House seat over the long-time Dem incumbent chose to run after the Floyd murder.

The protests themselves have moved the overton window. A single recent example is how public support for protesting athletes has changed. Consider in particular the NFL apology from earlier this year https://abcnews.go.com/US/nfl-apologizes-listening-players-r... . It's a long road, and mistakes will be made, but on the whole I think the protests have had a huge positive impact on the problem.

> The end of protests and a society that works better for everybody, yes.

You don't actually bring that society to the table. That's outside of your power. If anything, you promise that this society will somehow come about if only your demands are met. Kind of like the politicians that might promise almost anything, if only you elected them.

> Progressive candidates, like members of the DSA and politicians they endorse. One thing that has come out of these protests is a rise in progressive candidates, both running at all, and actually winning some primaries. The progressive candidate who won the primary for my state House seat over the long-time Dem incumbent chose to run after the Floyd murder.

Sure, but that only happened because these progressives were compatible with voter behavior. Show me the successful progressive Democrat who also supports completely abolishing all prisons. Well, maybe in Portland.

> The protests themselves have moved the overton window.

Have they really? In the public perception, these protests were against police brutality, which virtually everyone is sympathetic with. If the protests had been perceived as being in favor of dismantling the criminal justice system, virtually nobody would've supported that.

> A single recent example is how public support for protesting athletes has changed.

Supporting or not supporting someone's right to protest has been inside the overton window all along. What hasn't been within the overton window would be a position like "protesting athletes should be imprisoned" or "athletes should all be forced to attend a protest".

Similarly, defunding the police is within the overton window, but abolishing policing outright is not.

I'm confused, how did we get from "here are a few examples of specific demands" to "the only demand is dismantling the criminal justice system"? There are many demands; not meeting all of them this year is not the same as failure.

FWIW the ballot amendment to eliminate the Minneapolis Police Department had about 61% support, vs 32% opposed, among Minneapolis residents. https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/survey-suggests-su... . These proposals are not as outlandish as you might think, especially among the people who are impacted by them.

> I'm confused, how did we get from "here are a few examples of specific demands" to "the only demand is dismantling the criminal justice system"?

I didn't say it was the only demand, it just cancels out all the other more reasonable demands. Suppose a political party promises to "strengthen national unity", "eliminate unemployment", "provide economic stimulus" and "start a war for more territory culminating in an unprecedented genocide". It then doesn't really matter that I think 75% of these goals sound alright.

> These proposals are not as outlandish as you might think, especially among the people who are impacted by them.

I think it really depends on how the question is phrased. Dismantling a particularly unpopular police force is one thing, ending all policing and imprisonment is another, and it's also not just a "local" thing.

MLK was massively vilified during his lifetime. E.g. [1]:

> According to an early 1968 Harris Poll, the man whose half-century of martyrdom we celebrate this week died with a public disapproval rating of nearly 75 percent, a figure shocking in its own day and still striking even in today’s highly polarized political climate

And [2]

> Back in the 1960s, when King was actually leading protests, just 36 percent of white Americans thought he was helping “the Negro cause of civil rights,” according to historical polling data compiled by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. In a 1966 Gallup poll, more than 60 percent of the public rated King more negatively than positively.

> After King was assassinated, two-thirds of Americans said their strongest reaction to his death had been sadness, anger, shame or fear, another survey found. Another 31 percent, however, said they “felt he brought it on himself.”

This idea that MLK was the respectable, acceptable face of the civil rights struggle is a modern fiction, and worth considering before denouncing those currently seen as going too far:

MLK was seen as going too far. He was hated.

The turning point was his death, and even then millions thought he had it coming. It took many years of reappraisals after his death for him to become the popular icon he is today.

Worth considering when considering what future generations will think about those demonstrating now.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-kin...

[2] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/in-1968-nearly-a-thir...

Any discussion of public disapproval of King post-1965 has to mention that he had begun to speak on class issues and economic empowerment for all Americans, he was no longer limiting his efforts to civil rights for African-Americans. Class struggle in the 1960s was definitely outside the USA’s Overton window.

MLK absolutely did not stayed within overton window. He was hated.

> In fact, republicans/conservatives could hardly get any better support for their claim that BLM supporters are radical marxists.

I've read a lot of lists of demands, and most of them seem reasonable to me, and I suspect more would seem reasonable to the general population than you think. I have yet to encounter the demand that private property be abolished in favor of collective ownership, or much else that conforms to actual Marxist ideology.

They're only "Marxist" in the sense that a certain American demographics calls anyone and anything they disagree with "Marxist."

FFS they've called Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama radical Marxists. Greta Thunberg is a Marxist. Literally any leftist, liberal, Democrat and progressive with any visibility is a Marxist. The entirety of mainstream media and social media is Marxists. Fox News criticized the President? Marxists. It doesn't mean anything anymore, it's just a scare tactic.

I generally agree on that point, but that doesn't necessarily matter to public perception. The general public isn't particularly educated on how exactly Marxism might be defined in a textbook.

Rather, in terms of public perception, Marxism is probably best defined as "a bunch of loony leftist ideas". Some of these demands fit that bill perfectly.

Secondly, many BLM protestors are clearly brandishing symbols that are associated with Marxist/Communist ideology, many self-identify as "Marxist", and even officially they refer to each other as "comrades":

https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

>Rather, in terms of public perception, Marxism is probably best defined as "a bunch of loony leftist ideas". Some of these demands fit that bill perfectly.

The public has been effectively propagandized and made to turn against one another rather than a corrupt system. If you accept the thesis that endemic racism and corruption in the American justice system exists, that the reason for the anger behind these riots and protests is legitimate, then your personal ideological polarity shouldn't matter.

Unfortunately, it's easy to get people to dismiss the movement wholesale by associating it with the specter of Marxists and Angry Black Men.

And that still leaves reasonable demands being ignored. If you don't support completely defunding and disbanding the police, you could agree that de-escalation training and shifting of funding priorities might be effective. That doesn't need to be slotted into a left-wing political agenda.

>Secondly, many BLM protestors are clearly brandishing symbols that are associated with Marxist/Communist ideology, many self-identify as "Marxist", and even officially they refer to each other as "comrades":

And a lot of BLM protestors, likely a large majority, aren't and don't. There's a difference between some Marxists supporting the movement and the movement itself being Marxist or having a Marxist intent. Black Lives Matter is clearly not about Marxism.

Well, what can I say? Branding matters. Associations matter. If you don't agree that the US should be a white anglosaxon ethnostate, can't you at least agree with the Nazis that there should be immigration reform?

Except the only people branding BLM as Marxist extremists are their opponents, whereas the Nazis were actually Nazis.

I disagree with that.

There are Marxist extremists associated with BLM, and while "disbanding the police" may not be textbook Marxism, it is a "loony leftist idea" and therefore interchangeable with Marxism in the public discourse.

Similarly, very few of the people arguing for making the US a white ethnostate are literally "National Socialists". Yet, we call them Nazis.

> They're only "Marxist" in the sense that a certain American demographics calls anyone and anything they disagree with "Marxist."

Except for, y'know, the founders of BLM explicitly describing themselves as Marxists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCghDx5qN4s&feature=youtu.be...

OK, she describes herself as a "trained Marxist."

What she didn't do is describe BLM as Marxist, or its purpose as advancing Marxism. I listened to the entire rest of that video and the only thing that was mentioned in regards to BLM was advocacy for black issues, not Marxism.

So no, BLM still isn't Marxist even if its founders are.

"BLM still isn't Marxist even if its founders are."

That doesn’t compute. An organization is ultimately inseparable from the real ideological positions and goals of its leadership. The entire 20th century is replete with examples of front groups, secretly working for the extreme positions held by their founders while using rhetoric that the public would view as more middle-of-the-road, and enlisting supporters and low-level employees that remained apart from the founders’ thought. (Marxist, capitalist, whatever – such front groups existed on both ends of the ideological spectrum of the Cold War era.) Why should we believe that a contemporary organization like BLM cannot be the same?

You can certainly argue that the ordinary people protesting in a general BLM-inspired movement are not necessarily to be identified ideologically with the founders of the BLM organization. But the criticisms of the BLM organization remain valid. And participants in the general movement who attend protests led by the BLM organization can be accused of unwittingly lending support to extreme positions, of neglecting their duty to look into who exactly has planned and organized a particular event beforehand.

Those of us who protested the Iraq War in certain street protests that turned out to have been organized by Communist parties for their own shady purposes, have been burnt and we don’t want antiracism protestors to be exploited in the same way.

>That doesn’t compute. An organization is ultimately inseparable from the real ideological positions and goals of its leadership.

You're assuming the "real" ideological position of a black Marxist starting a black advocacy movement protesting police violence against black people is actually Marxism, whereas the actual evidence from her own mouth is that the "real" ideological position is the black advocacy.

>Why should we believe that a contemporary organization like BLM cannot be the same?

Occam's Razor. It seems far more likely given the context in which the organization arose that it is what it claims to be, rather than that being a front for something else.

>Those of us who protested the Iraq War in certain street protests that turned out to have been organized by Communist parties for their own shady purposes, have been burnt and we don’t want antiracism protestors to be exploited in the same way.

It's entirely possible that a movement like BLM can be co-opted by another agenda, and that's something people who support the movement need to watch out for. But all that's being presented here as evidence of the actual purpose behind BLM being the advancement of Marxism is speculation and extrapolation.

> You're assuming the "real" ideological position of a black Marxist starting a black advocacy movement protesting police violence against black people is actually Marxism, whereas the actual evidence from her own mouth is that the "real" ideological position is the black advocacy.

Actually, I’m suspecting that the “real” ideological position of the BLM organization is both an end to police-on-black violence and certain extreme economic-socio-political goals, except that its leadership tries to keep the latter aims covert. After all, even in its overt public platform the BLM organization makes certain demands (like for empowering trans people) that go beyond the matter of police violence against black people. So, you cannot claim that the BLM organization is tightly focused just on antiracism.

>Actually, I’m suspecting that the “real” ideological position of the BLM organization is both an end to police-on-black violence and certain extreme economic-socio-political goals, except that its leadership tries to keep the latter aims quiet.

You're talking about a hypothetical, as-yet unrealized (and possibly unfounded) form of BLM in the future. As mentioned earlier, BLM supporters protesting on the ground likely didn't join for a Marxist agenda and aren't supporting it, and if it's the case that "extreme economic-socio-political goals" are being kept quiet (IE, not part of the common dialogue,) then it isn't correct to consider BLM currently Marxist, and labeling it as such is only useful to distract people from its legitimate grievances.

>After all, even in its overt public platform the BLM organization makes certain demands (like for trans issues) that go beyond the matter of police violence against black people which has drawn the public to BLM-led events.

Support for trans rights, LGBT issues, feminism and the like isn't that radical and it isn't Marxist per se. Reading their "what we believe" page[0], posted elsewhere in this thread, it's clear that they're trying to include other marginalized groups in the movement, but also trying to stay on message, doing so in the explicit context of the black community. That's just good PR, and apart from the overt language not much different than progressive mission statements put out by many organizations.

>So, you cannot claim that the BLM organization is tightly focused just on antiracism.

Ok. I still don't see the radical Marxist agenda. When they stop talking about racism and start talking about seizing the means of production I'll believe it.

[0]https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

Right on that web page:

"We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."

If you don't like the Marxist label, we can call it Soviet. The exact type of anti-family ideology isn't worth arguing over.

Encouragement of fatherless homes isn't going to make life better. You can see it even in the word choice when they say "mothers, parents" instead of "mothers, fathers". They can't even bring themselves to say the word!

Thhey did the same type of reporting during the Hong Kong protests.

Completely brushed over the rioting, the destruction of public property, and even attacks on bystanders speaking Mandarin (there were incidents of Japanese and Taiwanese reporters being attacked by protesters who thought they were Mainland Chinese).

There were also Molotov cocktails thrown at police, and some protesters were shooting arrows.

That’s what sells, so it makes sense they would have that narrative.

Egregious contradictions that enrage a significant segment of the population (especially those outside your normal readership) get your story shared approximately a gazillion times. E.g. the stories you saw were the ones that were egregious. A given story might be propaganda but a lot of this stuff is just a marketing strategy.

If the content is the marketing then it ceases to be journalism. Yes, this is probably stating the obvious.

In this case then, we’ve lost something important. What we got to replace it seems to me like it’s actively hostile to a peaceful republic.

I’s like to think that just as much as part of our brain turns on for the click bait, another part equally yearns for a source of truth, or as close to it as our meager egos can allow for.

Almost all commercial journalism is marketing. Journalism as an industry doesn't exist to inform you, it exists to make money.

Journalism's duty (implied by the press' constitutional protections) is to hold the powerful accountable.

Maybe, but that's not what actually drives their behaviour.

> The mainstream news reporting...

That's an incredibly generalized statement.

All "mainstream news" from all countries of the world that are in Portland, BBC, al-Jazeera, CBC, le Monde, PBS, CTV, Reuters, AP and so on? (I don't know all the names of news orgs from memory)

Does someone have a list of verifiable comparisons between coverage and (evidence of) events that you respect? This comment and article are "raising concerns", but not contributing to a more realistic public record.

> The PR / social media contingent that supports the riots is frankly impressive.

Would you say they're organised "organically" or are they well organised and funded, as if there's big money backing these riots?

I don’t live in Portland so obviously none of this worries me all that much. My city has had bad riots but they passed and actually things are much better now. I expect even a lot of people in Portland are upset by it, but aren’t in immediate near-term danger. I don’t believe that these riots are going to spread nationwide and result in a breakdown of society, even if sensationalist news stories tell you that’s going to happen.

However what is new this time is that for the first time, the President of the most powerful national government on the planet is threatening to use Federal police powers against not only Portland, but cities all over the US that he sees as politically opposing him. And there’s a very decent chance that he will get away with this, even if it’s technically illegal. That scares the crap out of me.

The fact that commenters on HN are taking predictable sides in a “political debate” in the face of such massive stakes doesn’t surprise me. But I wish those people could think two moves ahead and see how vastly disproportional the two sets of problems are. We’re in a very dangerous place as a nation and you’re worrying about some idiots on a street in Oregon.

He even said he'd send armed personnel to watch the polls :(

Would you prefer he send the Black Panthers?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-panthers-georgia-pic...

> There can be a concept of “BLM” that is obviously right and important to support, while there is also a well organized radical contingent taking cover within BLM that is wreaking havoc on the streets and will bully or beat up anyone who stands up to them (police or bystander alike).

For starters I'd suggest not putting black lives matter in capitals since that acronym covers both the tautological expression as well as the Marxist organisation which has taken this moniker. Yes, lives matter no matter the colour of the skin, why do you ask? No, I will not support the organisation which has co-opted the name since they only use the name to further their political agenda.

I agree with what you’re saying. The fact you get downvoted speaks of the success they’ve had masquerading themselves as a good or “peaceful” movement.

People, I know you mean well but remember that bad things that look good can cause much more harm than things that look outright bad. Be skeptical.

Yes, on the face it's tautological. In reality it isn't, because black lives clearly do not matter as much as white ones, particularly to the police, but also to many other institutions public and private alike. That's what the struggle is for, and behind it is an unorganized popular movement, not any "Marxist" organization.

Why is a burning building is so much more traumatizing to americans than people dying violently and unnecessarily to police?

The small acts of violence are either a brilliant strategy move of RNC, or a lapse of strategy on the far left. Small bouts of violence are completely de-lever the strategic impact of the intended gatherings from an optics perspective.

Someone smart realized that if violence dominoes a bit, along with some press leverage, it creates families afraid of 'defunded police and personal safety issues'. The allowance in Chicago, Portland, Seattle literally played to Trump's hand - which I suspect is the opposite of what organizers believe.

Edit: This is my independent view as a libertarian.

> The small acts of violence are either a brilliant strategy move of RNC, or a lapse of strategy on the far left.

There's another option: it's neither of these because neither political party actually has control over the solution. They're both reacting to the actions of individuals they cannot control. If Nancy Pelosi and Trump both got together for a heartwarming bipartisan plea for both 'sides' in Portland to settle down, I don't think it would change anything because neither the RNC nor the DNC are actually calling the shots.

Oh of course, the local chapter in each city is where the leadership lack would have happened.

This thread is obviously going to get very political but I feel like before people get too anti fascists vs nonviolence should check some of the history they were taught in school for cracks. A few threads worth reading -

https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/127007628104079769...

https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/118646830240050790...

https://mobile.twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/12248810051...

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