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Comment by bigcorp-slave | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know if you were paying attention last week, but the mob literally came for the members of Congress.

There are wrong opinions, and then there is “six million Jews were not enough” and “hang the Vice President”, and a violent mob attacking the Capitol. No one is under any obligation to tolerate such actions in a civil society.

If I advocate for your murder, am I just expressing an opinion that should be consequence free if someone kills you? Does that change if enough people agree with me that you should be killed?

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The mob has been coming for law enforcement and federal buildings in many major cities in America for nine months now. This mob actively organized on Twitter and other social media. Where was the outrage in June? Most of the organizations that organized this destruction still have their Twitter accounts.

> The mob has been coming for law enforcement and federal buildings in many major cities in America for nine months now

They're "coming for" police reform and transparency.

Please don't misrepresent or generalise very disparate groups of demonstrators.

So the ends justify the means? Only certain ideas are allowed for mobs to be okay?

The mobs were not comparable.

Does it matter? Isn't a mob a mob?

Many governors said as much this past year when they allowed, and in many cases took part in, BLM protests but banned anti-lockdown ones.

Yes, incredibly frustrating. Lots of the media played along with it as well.

That is correct. It is okay to rally against police brutality; it is not okay to hold a Nazi rally.

I love it when people try to gaslight us like we haven't seen the shit that happened last year. The capitol building "coup" was like watching a kids bop version of BLM/antifa.

When you say "coming for law enforcement", do you mean actively advocating for violence toward, or just, like, advocating for additional regulation?

Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and many other US cities saw mobs attempting (and in some cases, succeeding) in burning down police precincts and courthouses this summer.

You've subtly avoided answering the question I asked. As far as I know, there was one (abandoned) police precinct burned. Was the burning of an abandoned building avocation for violence against police officers?

You've gotten a distorted version of the story. The Minneapolis Third Precinct was abandoned at the time of burning only because police could no longer defend it against the rioters who were trying to break in and hurt them.

It is honestly frightening to me the level to which so many of us are all living in different realities.

> against the rioters who were trying to break in and hurt them.

This is, we'll go with dubious. Probably true at this point, but the protests had been going, relatively peacefully for close a day, and then less peacefully, with police having repeatedly tear gassed and fired rubber bullets at protestors who weren't doing anything violent, and didn't appear to have any violent intentions. Reports obviously differ, but many concluded that the actions of the police, in attacking the protestors, are what escalated the situation to violence. Compare from [1], and I think this "who is escalating" question becomes clear and relevant.

Which is to say that while the protest ended violently, I think you'll be hard pressed to find widespread intent that it be violent from the start.[2]

So again I'll ask: do you believe that the protesting in Minneapolis was formed with the intention of committing violence against police officers?

On the other hand, do you believe the insurrection at the capitol, which had participants openly advocating for violence for days, was formed, with the intention of committing violence against elected officials?

I find the attempt to draw a parallel between a situation where it took 3 days of getting teargassed for protestors to become violent and one where it took...a speech from the President.

[1]: https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1347873482550468609

[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/police-response-black-live...

[3]: https://www.apmreports.org/story/2020/06/30/what-happened-at... is my source for the timeline, which appears to be a fairly evenhanded account, noting that some city council members had already proposed abandoning the precinct for more than a day before it ultimately was.

I believe both of those things. I'm confused by the contrast you're drawing here, because the reason I believe them is the same in both cases: many participants made angry, public declarations that violence was needed and they'd like to see it happen. Questions of how many nonviolent people were involved, how long the violence took to kick off, or who made the first escalation don't strike me as very relevant.

> public declarations that violence was needed

Can you source these in the case of BLM? That's what I'm missing. Preferably equivalently specific plans, which amount to "our intent is to physically harm police officers and destroy a police precinct" at a minimum.

> how long the violence took to kick off, or who made the first escalation don't strike me as very relevant.

I think they're highly relevant to discussing the goal of the protests. If a group of protestors shows up and demonstrates peacefully, but is eventually goaded into violence by the group they're protesting[0], that's very different from a group that essentially immediately attacks the people they're protesting.

And, of course, all of this entirely assumes that both groups have equally valid concerns, which is just plainly not true and important to realize. If you're going to take a stance that violence is absolutely never valid, that's an interesting opinion that I don't believe I share. But if you're of the opinion that violence may be an acceptable response to injustice, well, there's a whole lot more reason to believe that BLM protestors have justification for their claim of injustice than stop-the-steal protestors.

[0]: I'll reiterate the importance of this, in general, especially with police tactics that escalate and force violence, such as kettling. While I don't think that specific tactic was present at the 3rd precinct events, tactics that escalate violence are often used against BLM protestors, to predictable results. The fact that violence was reached quickly and without any of those tactics at the capitol speaks to, I think, a different mindset.

> Preferably equivalently specific plans, which amount to "our intent is to physically harm police officers and destroy a police precinct" at a minimum.

I'll take a crack at this. I could just site your own post where you say the following:

" If you're going to take a stance that violence is absolutely never valid, that's an interesting opinion that I don't believe I share".

It kinda seems like you are at least implying that you support the violence that happened during those riots. So your post right here would be one example of people endorsing violence.

The context we're in is advocation for violence prior to the events. Are you looking for cheap rhetorical points, or are you actually trying to engage thoughtfully (as the person I'm responding to is)?

> people endorsing violence.

Note how you've shifted from "advocating for" to "endorsing" and what I asked for was 'specific plans, which amount to "our intent is to physically harm police officers and destroy a police precinct"'.

So can you explain how my statement that, hypothetically, violence may be acceptable in some situations, is a specific plan to harm police officers? With the added assumption that such people should then, you know, show up and do a violence. All of those things were present with Parler. Unless you're claiming that

1. I made statements specifically advocating for violence against in advance of the 3rd precinct protests

2. I then showed up to those protests and committed acts of violence (or, alternatively, I have a large enough following that my followers did the same)

You haven't done what I asked.

If even you yourself are at the very least implying that you might support the violence, then really it should not be surprising or an out there claim that other people at the riots also supported the violence, is the point.

Feels like a weird thing to push back on. You kinda admit that you personally might support the violence. If even you admit this, then really you should not be pushing back hard on this assumption that other people also supported it.

It should not be an out there claim, that other people supported the violence, when you are kinda implying that you support it yourself.

I just don't think that you should act flabergasted, or surprised, or indignant, or demand large amounts of specific evidence, at someone making a claim that other people supported or wanted violence to happen, given that you kinda are saying that you support it yourself.

> The context we're in is advocation for violence prior to the events

"Nobody advocated for violence before it happened, but now that it did happen I definitely think that the violence is justified!" feels like a pretty poor argument to me.

If you are going to imply that the violence was justified, then really you should not push back on this idea that other people thought it was justified to, and endorsed it prior to the event.

I'm not asking for examples of people saying what the protestors did was okay. I agree that there's lots of that. I'm asking for examples of the violence being planned or premeditated. Those are two different things. The "line" appears to be in between those two things, and people (like you!) appear to be equivocating between them when they aren't the same.

> support it yourself.

My (hypothetical!) lack of objection to generic violence is not the same as active planning and encouragement of specific violence. And I find your repeated attempts to equivocate between the two rather confused.

I'm asking for examples of the second, the active specific planning and incitement of violence. You're avoiding engaging with that request, likely because, as I believe, you can't find examples of that kind of behavior.

> My (hypothetical!) lack of objection to generic violence is not the same as active planning and encouragement of specific violence.

Yes there are varying levels of support. But frankly if you are going to take a position that is kinda moderately in favor of violence, then you really should not be pushing back so hard at the possibility that there are other people who were a bit more supportive of the violence than you are.

That is what I am pointing out. I'd put you at a 5/10, on the "is this person trying to justify the violence that happen". So if an average/random person such as yourself are going to moderately support the violence, then you really should not be so flabergasted at the suggestion that there were other people that were closer to an 8/10 on the "do they support violence" scale.

If such a thing would be so unsurprising, you should have no problem finding and citing those examples. Your only justification so far seems to be a combination of "both sides are the same" and "well some people don't object to all violence".

My argument is that, well no, both sides aren't the same, as shown by the fact that only one set of protestors was openly advocating for and planning to attack people. The burden of proof is on you to show that they both sides are in fact the same. I obviously can't prove a negative, and so far you haven't provided anything concrete.

> "well some people don't object to all violence".

Actually, after rereading the original comment, I'd have to say not some people. Instead Id say you specifically. You specifically pretty much tried to said that the violence was justified.

Ex: you said this, which is a not so subtle attempt to justify the violence:

"of the opinion that violence may be an acceptable response to injustice, well, there's a whole lot more reason to believe that BLM protestors have justification for their claim of injustice ".

> well no, both sides aren't the same

Specifically you, kinda do seem at least to be pretty similar to the "other side" actually, after rereading your comment, in that you attempted to imply that the violence actually was justified, and that it therefore "may be acceptable".

Your comment was a pretty clear attempt to say that this violence could have a "justification" that would make it "acceptable".

Let me describe two situations:

1. Someone says "lets go attack the police" and then proceeds to go attack them.

2. Someone says "yes I can understand why someone got in a fight with the police after being attacked by the police"

Because I'm asking you to give examples of (1), and you're going on about (2).

> yes I can understand why someone got in a fight

No, not "understand". Instead you implied that it would be justified and also acceptable.

In this situation I really would not consider you much different than the other side if you are attempting to say that the violence was justified and acceptable.

If you are saying that it was justified and acceptable, which your comment pretty clearly seemed to imply, then I would consider the difference between you and "the other side" to be very small to the point where the difference doesn't matter that much.

That's pretty close to advocacy for violence to say that it was justified and acceptable.

I'm going to disengage because you've chosen to repeatedly ignore my comments, and instead respond to imagined things that I haven't said. I can only assume this is because you can't actually do what I've asked you to do seven times now, and find someone actually openly advocating for and requesting that people engage in violence against the police.

I want to be absolutely crystal clear about one thing: I have never, not in this comment thread, nor anywhere else, advocated for people to engage in violence against the police. It is frankly insulting for you to insinuate that I would do so, or to state that there is essentially no difference between me and people who planned and executed an attack on congress.

> I have never, not in this comment thread, nor anywhere else, advocated for people to engage in violence

What I pointed out is that you basically said the violence was "justified and acceptable".

Those were your words, when you used the words "justified" and "acceptable" in your original comment to generally describe that violence in general. I didn't make you say that.

If you need me to explain to you how mobs attempting to burn down police and court buildings is indicative of advocating violence towards police officers, then you've got bigger problems then your misreading of my response.

Would you consider throwing IEDs at cops while hundreds of people chant "pigs in a blanket fry em' like bacon" and try to set fire to the building the police are in violent?

Or howabout permanently blinding some of the cops with lasers? Is that violent, or is that just asking for a funding change in the police department?

Those statements, one from William Barr and one from trump, turned out to be false.

The pigs in blankets quote is from a peaceful 2015 protest. Trump lied about it in a Presidential debate.

The officers sight returned.

Edit: in response to this, you provided a video that doesn't include

> throwing IEDs at cops while hundreds of people chant "pigs in a blanket fry em' like bacon" and try to set fire to the building the police are in violent?

As far as I can tell, it's someone throwing a firework at the side of a stone building, which while not a great idea isn't endangering anyone. And "fry em like bacon" no where to be found.

Please don't spread lies.

What are you talking about? There are videos of this:

IED: https://youtu.be/dm_lZxmPxUU

As for that chants: go to any of the videos of the various occupations from the summer. If that really does come from a 2015 march instead of 2020, fine, but go to any video and find the same activity (arson, assault, IEDs, lasers) and chants like "no justice no peace".

> Where was the outrage in June?

Good question.

Like with all the mainstream media that 'reported' in front of the federal buildings and businesses that got looted and burned down, the shootings in the CHAZ/CHOP areas and the continuous riots and chaos all over the summer last year as seen on Twitter, they told me that there was 'nothing to see here' and it was a 'mostly peaceful protest' which everyone knows is absolute BS.

Both the GOP and Democrats instantly condemned the Capitol riots, but as for the summer riots, but not a single condemnation from the media of those events or even the Democrats disavowing the summer riots in June that are still continuing to this day.

The outrage did not fit their narrative. Neither did it fit their definition of what they think a 'mob' is, since the main culprits behind it were BLM and Antifa, as usual.

Setting aside for a moment the multiple orders of magnitude difference in lethality per participant, the key distinction for me is this: what happened in the Capitol is about usurping the monopoly on violence possessed by the government. BLM is not about overthrowing the government, and has never posed a credible threat to it. Even if BLM overthrew the government, no one has been talking about mass executions. By contrast, 6MWNE was on full display at the Capitol attack, as were calls to execute legally appointed representatives. I have been half expecting Trump to declare on Twitter that anyone who kills a democrat gets a pardon.

With the current state of the right wing in the US, there is a clear and present danger of us losing our democracy. When you look at the statements about the election from last _June_, or the purges at the Defense Department last fall, it is clear that this nonsense (and it is nonsense, 59 court cases and counting) about election fraud was premeditated, and so was this coup attempt. This is the Beer Hall Putsch, and it’s a mistake to see how lucky we got and say there is an equivalence to protests against police violence.

Assuming you’re arguing in good faith, what you’re missing is that the outrage from this event isn’t about the five dead people, tragic though that is. It’s about the fact that armed protesters just walked into the Capitol Building while Congress was in session. We are very, very lucky we don’t have dead congresspeople. What do you think the mob that beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher in the Capitol building would have done to AOC if they’d gotten to her?

We cannot afford to make the mistake Weimar Germany did. We cannot assume that because this failed the problem is gone. We cannot appease these people, we cannot treat them as benign. They must all be identified and prosecuted, and their enablers in Congress must be expelled from our governing bodies.

That is very much in dispute, the reports [1] have been revised [2] and it appears that the officer may have had a medical issue and was not attached by anyone

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-capitol-po...

[2] https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/us-capitol-police-a...

The officer being discussed in [2] is a different police officer than in [1].

It's not in dispute at all, there's video of the mob beating him!

> Setting aside for a moment the multiple orders of magnitude difference in lethality per participant

Is this really true? I’m tempted to charge the entirety of the post-summer urban bloodbath to the BLM movement. This represents an increase of 3-4000 deaths over the prior year.

> BLM is not about overthrowing the government, and has never posed a credible threat to it. Even if BLM overthrew the government, no one has been talking about mass executions.

This is sidestepping your point somewhat, but Antifa (who figured prominently in the protests) do explicitly avow both these things.

Millions (the estimate I saw was 15-26 million) of people were involved in the BLM protests, which lasted many months. 25 people are known to have been killed. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assign 3-4k deaths to it. By contrast, this was a single event with a few thousand people in which 5 people died. That’s what I mean by orders of magnitude.

I agree that there is a destroy-the-government black bloc present in some of the BLM protests. It’s a fair thing to point out, but I’ll say this: they’ve never had a chance or a credible threat. It’s really a false equivalence to compare a terrorist attack on the Capitol incited by the ruling party in an attempt to overturn a democratic election with seven months of mass protests against police violence.

The BLM protests themselves killed 20-30 people. The murder spree that immediately followed killed thousands more. The Gun Violence Archive has the whole story, but this chart for Philadelphia is indicative[1]. Note the structural break in the series in May 2020. I contend this was ex-ante predictable and should therefore be laid at BLM’s feet.

> they’ve never had a chance or a credible threat

Agreed. But neither did the Trump rioters.

[1] http://ibgvr.org/philadelphia-shooting-victims-dashboard/

This is new information for me - thank you for providing it. What I’d like to understand next is - is there a causal link? This is a pretty unusual year in a lot of ways, including a record number of unemployed people and many people experiencing serious financial pressure. I did a little preliminary googling and it suggested that this is related to a large increase in gun sales in March and April, prior to the George Floyd incident. The other factor that I would think could be relevant is the increase in domestic violence during coronavirus restrictions, as people are trapped with their abusers.

I don’t agree the folks involved in the terrorist attack last week were not a credible threat. If they had succeeding in kidnapping and executing congresspeople, which was both possible and clearly the intent of at least some people who made it into the Capitol, things could have turned out very differently. Something like a third of Congress still thinks we shouldn’t do anything about this - the conditions are ripe for a coup; just because it failed doesn’t mean it didn’t have a chance.

Where was the "we love you, we know how you feel, please go home peacefully" rhetoric in June? Imagine the inroads that could have been made if Trump actually cared about injustice against Americans! Instead he stoked the fire, and saved his adoration for his cronies to throw them under the bus when they failed to secure him his position as unelected president.

Attacking people protesting for racial justice is nothing new. https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574/p...

Same accusations were made against peaceful many time in history.

There is also evidence of police instigating violence: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-p...

I think you would find that the majority of people do not support the riots that were happening (and still are) prior, either. So if we say, those accounts should be banned also, will that make everything ok, as both sides would/could be seen as equal?

At the end of the day, we must also recognize that corporations are still run by humans. Those humans make decisions within the context of their own biases and interests. Those interests are also legal requirements in some cases.

It's a tough situation, but even companies which do not have a legal requirement to do so, should be able to express their own views, and be accountable for them. I believe that actions (or threats) by Trump towards twitter earlier on expresses how the Government at the time thought that social platforms should have some accountability.

> "We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can't let a more sophisticated version of that.... happen again." ..... Trump

Shouldn't people be held accountable for their own actions at some point? Everyone should know that murder is illegal, even if <insert popular figure> says to kills someone, you should know not to.

"I don’t know if you were paying attention last week, but the mob literally came for the members of Congress."

A couple of hundred people attacked the capitol in a crowd of 500,000+. Do you remember the phrase 'mostly peaceful protesters'? We've been hearing it for 8+ months after violent riots in major cities which resulted in 30+deaths, hundreds of innocent people attacked, and 1 billion+ in property damage.

"There are wrong opinions, and then there is “six million Jews were not enough” and “hang the Vice President”, and a violent mob attacking the Capitol. No one is under any obligation to tolerate such actions in a civil society."

Antifa and BLM have taken over multiple state and federal buildings over the past 8 months. In June, for instance, multiple fires were set all over DC. A church was nearly burnt to the ground and the President had to go to an underground bunker as a result of the threats outside the white house.

Unlike the protests in January 6th (which was an unorganized mess of random people), BLM and Antifa are professional rioters/criminals. They wear masks to protect themselves and have corporate backing from large left-leaning organizations.

Instead of concern, local leaders painted BLM and named a major street after them.

I'm not sure why you only seem to care when it's Trump supporters. Political violence is wrong on both sides, but only one political not only supported it, but paid the bail of rioters and continue to deny that it even exists. The real criminals are about to get into office.

"If I advocate for your murder, am I just expressing an opinion that should be consequence free if someone kills you? Does that change if enough people agree with me that you should be killed?"

You do realize Trump never said any of this, right? Him and his entire campaign have denounced the violence repeatedly. If you listened to the speech before the capitol was attacked, it was not full of any sort of energy. He basically said that it was all in Pence's hands. Supporters were actually angry because he sounded so defeated. This doesn't sound like the actions of someone trying to storm the Capitol.

The media+tech companies+incoming administration are censoring and destroying their political opponents for things they themselves have been supporting and instigating for 4 years.

If it wasn't so scary, I would call it pathetic actions from limp-dick journalists.

There is a difference between eight months of protests in which 15-26 million people participated across the entire country resulting in significant property damage and some loss of life (~25 people), and what happened last week.

Let’s call what happened last week what it was: a terrorist attack against the seat of government perpetrated by the ruling party in an attempt to overturn a democratic election.

You need to take a serious look in the mirror and ask if you’re the bad guy. As arch-conservative a figure as Mitch McConnell describes this as a failed insurrection and you make excuses for it.

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