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Comment by generalk | Hacker News Reader

  > I suggest we all stop comparing these things.

Agreed, they are comparable only in superficial ways which remove context vital to the understanding of both events.

One group of people were protesting/rioting because police continue to suffer little consequence for murdering Black folks, despite years of effort at reform.

The other group protested/rioted by breaking into the Capitol and threatening to murder politicians because the current POTUS has claimed, repeatedly and without any evidence, that the election he recently lost was somehow rigged against him. Again, for context, this has come from the side of American politics that has for the past four years claimed that "elections have consequences."

To compare these two events on a "look who did more violence" level is reductive at best and at worst a bad faith argument in support of the folks who stormed the capitol.

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One group of people were protesting/rioting because police continue to suffer little consequence for murdering Black folks, despite years of effort at reform.

If "protesting/rioting" includes gunning down unarmed black kids in the street (third link above), count me out.

This is a highly flammable topic and we seem unlikely to agree, so I'd prefer we pause here.

A shooting happening in a protest area is not the same as armed protesters attacking the seat of the federal government chanting their intention to murder politicians.

Please don't use the passive voice [0] to intentionally obscure a crime's perpetrator.

Antonio Mays Jr. was not killed near a protest by a random passerby. He was murdered by armed "anti-fascist" protestors. They shot him in the face with a rifle. It's on camera. The killers audibly confessed to the murder. See this link [1] for the clips, if you must. The footage is disturbing.

[0] https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/george-floyd-pro...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K0tXOBPMHA&t=1m25s

That doesn't change the fact that is was an isolated shooting that happened to happen in a protest area. That is not the same as mob formed and mobilized for the explicit and exclusive purpose of murder.

  > He was murdered by armed "anti-fascist" protestors.

It appears that that link has not been confirmed, as of an August 2020 WaPo article[0], which points out that many of the deaths at the protests can not be conclusively linked to the demonstrators.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/26/almost-no...

Here is the scene right after the CHOP shooting, with several BLM/antifa protestors again confessing to their involvement. One says, “We drew down and gave him service.” Another, “I ran out of bullets!” and then laughter. The reporter asks twice, “So the defense people shot this person?” and multiple protestors answer yes. They brag about “ex-military” security, and avoid saying whether the victims were armed (they were not). They repeat false rumors about an earlier drive-by, which turned out to be gunfire from other “defense people.”

If you can stomach it, watch the whole video. It is graphic:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0cUYLQkhGmU&t=2m

Another clip with the killer(s) and other protestors repeating, “I didn’t see sh*t!”, the mantra of those who don’t talk to police:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=kDmNJ6tO2Lg

Unsurprisingly, Seattle police have made no arrests in the case. Per official statement, the crime scene was destroyed and witnesses aren’t cooperating.

This happened in a residential neighborhood. An unarmed black kid died at the hands of political vigilantes. Rifle bullets entered people’s homes. It barely made national news. Joe Biden felt no need to tweet. Compare that to later coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse. To some, this disparity represents a double standard.

That double standard is the essence of my comparison between this summer’s violence and the storming of the capitol. Both are reckless, deadly, and reprehensible. Both must be condemned. Perpetuating the double standard just perpetuates one group’s grievance, fueling more violence.

The video you posted from June 2020 does not seem to contradict WaPo's August 2020 article that says there's no definitive link between this murder and the BLM protests. A comparison: armed vigilantes overran the capitol and bludgeoned a police officer to death as part of their riot. These two events do not appear similar in that way.

You say you're concerned about the violence on both sides and there being a double standard which you find distasteful, and yet all of your posts are attempting to paint the BLM protests with the same violent core as the folks who overran the capitol, which given any kind of context or detail isn't true at all.

To my original point: the context around these events make it clear that they are different and should be judged differently -- context which you've continually ignored to push this narrative.

If there exists a double standard, it isn't that "violence on the left" is suppressed, it's that if the capitol were stormed by BLM protestors who've finally had enough of police violence and systematic racism, they wouldn't have gotten into the building, and they for damn sure wouldn't have walked out under their own power.

I'd challenge the assertion you're making here -- again, it is reductive to reduce the entirety of the nationwide protests against police murders to a handful of cherry-picked instances of violence. You're doing that and then dismissing the entire issue because of it, which is intellectually dishonest, which you already know.

You aren't giving the same treatment to the the other side here -- you're not saying "if keeping people safe means the police should be allowed to murder folks / bludgeoning a police officer to death when storming the capitol" so I find it difficult to believe you're merely concerned about the use of violence.

You did, several comments up, state "the assault on the capitol was an unprecedented attack on democracy," which it was, but that's after posting multiple links where you're posting links and evidence trying to discredit the nationwide BLM protests by painting them as violent, so again, your bias is evident.

trying to discredit the nationwide BLM protests by painting them as violent

I’m only trying to discredit the violence, as I made clear in my original comment.

If you’ll casually assign me false motives and claim I’m “intellectually dishonest,” I see no reason to continue our discussion.

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