They don't realize their comment is terrible or radical. To them it seems perfectly rational to be this angry or to respond to "attacks" with violence of their own.
They think they are voices of reason in a world that's losing its mind.
If you're a brave hero in an unjust world, why not use your real name?
The hypothesis of real name policies was that people would be civil online if their real-world identities grounded them. In reality, the tail wagged the dog.
I've watched this process turn friends who had pretty mild political leanings to "burn it all down" radicals or transform into right wing talk radio hosts. It's not good.
I mean, it was a theory that was popular in the 00s, mostly because a ton of people at that time didn't have experience with Usenet.
But a lot of vile language was used in the clear, signed with the real names of many individuals. Anonymity doesn't seem to change much. Humans will be humans, whether or not they're anonymous.
At least most historical revolutionaries had the self awareness to understand that trying to overthrow the state is super illegal, and maybe a bit of clandestine-ness is in their own best interest.
Has anyone dug into this? What were the actual stories that caused that suspension of critical thinking? (Serious answers, please.)
It’s never possible to point to one or two stories that radicalize people like that; it’s not possible to do it that quickly. It takes a certain prior mental state (having a weak social net seems to make it worse), and continual exposure to increasingly radical stories. Like any cult, the rejection of non-members is heavily pushed, which leaves the victim more dependent on the cult and with fewer anchors to reality.
I think any good book about how cults work would be relevant for these people, given that I believe they’re in a cult. But if you’re looking for something more specific, Bellingcat has a great article[0] on the Ashli Babbitt, the Q supporter shot and killed by Capitol police as she breached the final barrier to where congress members were hiding.
0 - Content Warning: lethal violence is discussed and shown in this article. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/01/08/the-journey-of-as...
You only want one side to have to “own“ their crazies. That isn’t how it works. Neither side should be thought of or represented by their “crazies”, that isn’t anywhere near good faith.
When the crazies on the left do something crazy, we can talk about them. But in this context bringing up such a “both sides” argument smacks of whataboutism.
Thats only because you are choosing to talk about that exclusively. You aren’t taking into account the violence and destruction about BLM.
I mean, a known BLM voice/advocate went and murdered 5 cops, and not one bit of that blew back at BLM the Org, because no one forced them to own their crazies. None of the destruction, murder and lawlessness over the summer blew back on BLM, Dems, Antifa.
It’s not whataboutism when it’s similar events. A whataboutism would be if someone said “the left doesn’t need to own their crazies because Obama faced criticism for Benghazi”.
The difference is that on the right the inmates are currently running the asylum, and a significant portion of the right wing media / messaging apparatus has been pushing this stuff.
I've met a few Left-wing nut jobs here over the years. I once attended a Communist rally by accident (I had a crush on the math teacher's daughter, no one told me the overnight field trip was to a Commie rally until we were already on the freeway.) Even as a kid I could tell that they were just a pathetic "religion"-without-God, I would say the lot of them (American Communists) are card-carrying loonies.
But (and you can see it coming can't you?)
But they never stormed the capitol.
Two questions for you:
1) What were they trying to do? (If they are not weird cultists?)
2) Can you think of a group on the Left like Qanon on the Right?
I'm sincere, I'm not trying to troll you or talk shit. What do you think?
- - - -
From the article you posted there's a line that seems particularly telling to me as an older person who does not use a smart phone:
> As Babbitt lay dying on the floor, her fellow members of the crowd pulled out their phones and began to film
Even in this media-saturated era, that seems particularly cold-blooded or rather disassociated. They didn't help, nor leave, they started taking video.
The QAnon crowd unquestionably has a lot of members who genuinely believe this stuff. Generally LARPers don’t play act their way into hundreds of federal felonies, nor do LARPers vote along LARP lines.
Also, those guns and bombs are sure real.
That's all I meant by "escaped into reality". These folks (and it seems like most of them were pretty young) seem more like Pokemon GO players who think Pokemon are real than a out right cult.
It's one of the reasons why successful criminals always have a good community outreach program. Once you have the people on your side, it's very hard for the police to do much.
When gangs selling drugs in Colombia originally started, while they were quite violent, they did take care and look after the local community they were based in. And in return, they local community took care of them by alerting them when the military was closing in as an example.
If you're a young kid growing up in that environment, it's easy to see how you'd consider the military as the bad guys since all you see them do is come in and create chaos / hurt people etc. while the local drug dealer on your street is ensuring that you have food to eat.
If you’re in this bubble and the President tells you to do something, you figure how can it be wrong. The leader of our country is telling me to do this.
It can make it impossible to prosecute, because the President is the Chief Executive and ultimately the authority to which all federal law enforcement answers.
(1) Honest, even if mistaken, belief that action is taken in cooperation with the government defeats the mental state requirement for most crimes.
(2) The doctrine of “entrapment by estoppel” bars criminal conviction where a defendant reasonably relied on misrepresentation of law by an official in undertaking action that is prohibited.
(3) The more common doctrine of entrapment bars criminal conviction where a defendant was induced by a government agent to commit a crime and was not otherwise inclined to commit the crime.
Him pardoning the rioters is a nightmare scenario, both politically and for the long term survival of the republic. But the only real solution for this is impeachment and conviction, as generally the pardon power is not subject to judicial review.
0 - While I would argue that installing trump for a second term would constitute a revolution, it’s an interesting question whether or not the rioters saw themselves as revolutionary. Calling 1/6 the new 1776 certainly implies yes, but a lot of them seem to think that they were actually a pro-constitution group there to undo a coup done by “the deep state”. Long story short, it’s complicated.
Poe's Law is in effect, and with the death of irony can be a (intended or not) recruitment tactic.
hmm?
Though that of course has down sides. There used to be periodic news stories about people frivolously calling the cops on facebook posts. (Somehow I don't see a lot of that lately, but I haven't been looking either.)
The unexpected Trump era served to speed this up, which is probably one of the few silver linings it has. Remember the debates about whether future politicians could be blackmailed on account of what they posted online in their youth? A Boomer of all people just dove right in and bypassed that.
Although you are correct that a lot of people with a shaddy past succeeded to have it forgotten, thanks to a lot of pardons after the war.
The reductio ad nazium isn't a full stop to the discussion