[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/air-force-surveillance-p... [2] https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-protest-flight-res...
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/air-force-surveillance-p... [2] https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-protest-flight-res...
There were no multi-month riots this summer. Multi-month protests, yes. But not riots. The riots were much smaller in number and generally only lasted a few days at any one location prior to order being restored (here in NYC we had a few nights of looting that could be described as a riot). Even the infamous 1992 LA riots only lasted a week. Multi-month riots would be downfall-of-society level.
I haven't seen any videos where a BLM protestor beats a fallen cop with an American flag, or kills a cop. Both of which happened during the violent far-right insurrection on January 6. I have seen many more credible stories about data and studies showing that violence from far-right extremism is a much more dangerous current problem than far-left extremism.
I will continue to call last year's protests what they were, remarkably peaceful world-wide protests against police brutality and for police reform. And I will call the Jan 6 event what it was, a deliberately stoked violent insurrection against the US government in an attempt to overturn the results of a democratic election, on the basis of nothing but lies and grievance. We should strive to accurately describe things as they are.
Molotov cocktail(fire bombs) thrown at officers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86W82Bgpq4
Molotov cocktails thrown at court building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0
Man hits a federal officer with a hammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs
Protestor knifes a black trump supporter https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/man-knifed-in-back-...
You didn't look for data about how much violence there was relative to other protests, or injury statistics, and you certainly didn't look at comparisons between right wing and left wing violence. You started with the conclusion you needed. You need the protests to be violent to confirm your world view, so you went looking for some instances to try and support your conclusion.
However, nothing in your paltry few examples refutes anything I said. Given the vast numbers of people participating in the protests, and the length of them, they were remarkably peaceful.
On the other hand, a tiny fraction of that number of right-wing violent lunatics concentrated in DC on Jan 6 and in one day committed more violence and slaughtered more law enforcement officers than at all the BLM protests combined. BLM protestors want police officers to stop killing people, the Jan 6 insurrectionists came looking to violently overturn the results of the election, and are feeling emboldened to commit more violence in the next week.
I hope this helps you stop and think.
There is alot of odd cognitive dissonance in your comment which I appreciate proves your own point, you were presented with evidence that goes against your own world view, but instead of "stopping and thinking" you just decided to outright dismiss it instead of acknowledging it.
You stated you didn't see any evidence of violent assaults on police officers in portland, yet I gave you an example of a protestor assaulting a police officer with a hammer and instead of addressing it, you resorted to projecting a false narrative of ad-hominem and assumptions of my world view which are actually incorrect.
The funny thing about human biases is they actually effect us all, including you, and thank you so much for proving this. Its made my argument here easy.
Hopefully you take some time to "stop and reflect" how cognitive dissonance can corrupt your own world view when your presented with evidence that goes against it.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/07/20/what-you...
There was definitely some vandalism involved (and e.g. people shooting fireworks at the wall of a fortified building), but federal authorities were incredibly disingenuous in their descriptions of events and justifications of escalation.
Most of the dangerous violence was police-on-protestor.
Molotov cocktail(fire bombs) thrown at officers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86W82Bgpq4
Molotov cocktails(fire bombs) thrown at court building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0
Man hits a federal officer with a hammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs
Protestor knifes a black trump supporter https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/man-knifed-in-back-...
Fox News: "Overall, we rate Fox News strongly Right-Biased due to editorial positions and story selection that favors the right. We also rate them Mixed factually and borderline Questionable based on poor sourcing and the spreading of conspiracy theories that later must be retracted after being widely shared."
Bellingcat: "we rate Bellingcat Left-Center biased based on story selection and positions that moderately favor the left. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record."
These are vastly, vastly different forms and scales of "bias." They are nearly incomparable.
Fox News has entertainment departments, fought in court to have Tucker Carlson lie to his followers with impunity. They republished incitement to ramming attacks.
Bellingcat.. They just do investigations.
If you want to try to break things down into black and white left vs right, at least try to do it with comparable organizations. Or even better, try to refute the substance of the article instead of going to a media bias site to see how you feel they land on the political spectrum.
Even the site you linked has them listed as "left-center" with "high factual reporting." How is this grounds to outright dismiss them? The slightest degree of "leftness" makes you want to exclude sources? Do you have any factual reason to be doing this, or is this your personal bias towards right wing content forcing you to seek means to exclude information you don't like the looks of?
I mean, how violent could they have been.
My personal experience (not as a participant, but rather someone who observed a few protests from a distance) was that they were peaceful until the cops would engage with the protestors to impose the curfews that many cities had established.
And then the violence was largely 1 sided.
I did some quick fact checking, just for my own peace of mind. I view the George Floyd protests as overall peaceful, but it's good to question one's understanding. So for what it's worth Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Portl...) lists one casualty. I'm guessing that was the August 29th event, which wasn't a police officer.
So yeah, seems you're right, and that's an important fact to keep in mind. 7 months of protests with only one dead, in an area people keep arguing is the worst of the BLM protests.
Mortars? Are you sure about that? What kind?
Edit: Oh "fireworks mortars". Ffs. Just say fireworks.
Not protest-related, mind you. Just idiocy-related.
“Mortars” and “fireworks” are overlapping categories.
There was at least one molotov cocktail captured on camera in September landing in the street between a group of protestors and a line of cops, though it is not clear whether anyone was injured by it.
I…disagree.
If I heard “small arms and mortars”, I’d think of the military weapon. (Or “rockets and mortars”, without other context.)
If I hear “molotov cocktails and mortars”, though, I’d think of either the fireworks or some improvised device, but not miltary hardware unless there was some other contextual indication favoring the latter. While its obviously not impossible for a group to both be using Molotov cocktails and have access to military heavy weapons, that’s not really, to me, the normal association.
Well, some mortars are. Other mortars are consumer fireworks.
This is probably the most popular example, but there's plenty of YouTube videos showing people popping up at places to tear down window barricades, smash them and run. They aren't there to protest. They're there to stir shit up and exploit human psychology.
The push to change how the city responds to violence came after dozens of people vandalized businesses on New Year’s Eve, spray-painting buildings and breaking windows. At least three people were arrested and police declared the event a riot.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/01/mayor-ted-wheele...
Wheeler was five minutes into a dinner at Cafe Nell with a friend when a small crowd began yelling obscenities at him and soon pushed their way into the outdoor tented area where he was seated, according to Jim Middaugh, the mayor’s communications director, who was briefed by the mayor on the incident.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/01/mayor-ted-wheele...
Through the summer it was possible to watch C172's on ADSB squawking as IDAHO33 and IDAHO44, circling at 3000ft. They haven't been visible on ADSB in months. I have a great view of the areas they often circle over. They're still active, they're just not squawking. As recently as yesterday afternoon, in fact.