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And don't get me wrong, I spend plenty of time on 4chan watching this shit, I know there are some truly hateful and dangerous people out there. But It doesn't seem like they're as organized as the narrative would have us believe. Hell, Patriot Front seems like one of the meaner orgs and it didn't take long for them to be revealed as probably being an FBI honeypot.
On one hand I'm spooked by letter agencies. On the other, it seems like they're doing a pretty good job infiltrating and undermining domestic hate organizations, perhaps to the point that they're outright running them, albeit into the ground.
what evidence or even personal narrative do you have to back this assertion?
>But It doesn't seem like they're as organized as the narrative would have us believe
phew-boy, I don't have any inside knowledge of this because I have other things that keep my attention, but I'm quite sure that there MIGHT be a bit of a infosec/skill gap between the chuds posting on /b/ and the folks actually rolling out with assault rifles, knowledge, and intent to knock (a) power substation(s) offline.
There's all this incredulity in this thread but really, some dudes are gonna go knock out an entire power substation to rob a cash register? If I were one for Occam's Razer...
Frankly I really, really don't get this incredulity. We have numerous, fairly recent historical (in multiple senses of the word!) incidents that clearly point to both organized and unorganized groups of people who seem to fit a certain psychological profile of being motivated by fear and disgust and a very on-going, observable ability to be whipped into a violent frenzy when told its justified.
Why? Point a gun at big obvious target doesn't take intelligence and only minimum skill.
They don't need to have any knowledge, just shoot the big squarey boxes till the lights go down. Or hell [1] ask the internet what will happen
> There's all this incredulity in this thread but really, some dudes are gonna go knock out an entire power substation to rob a cash register? If I were one for Occam's Razer...
Actually, random terrorist act would probably be great way to keep local police busy for some time if you wanted a distraction for something else criminal to happen...
"Crazy rednecks doing stupid shit" is more simplistic explanation, but not that much more.
* [1] https://www.quora.com/What-happens-when-a-person-with-an-ass...
If they're not robbing a cash register, they're white supremacists? Surely that's a leap itself...
Across the country, attacks on critical infrastructure are increasing. Attacks that are described and taught in literature that we KNOW FOR A FACT is circulated among certain types of violent-leaning groups. That's what I said, and meant. I am not making a claim that it's white supremacists.
It's starting to smell like projection. /shrug
"OMG Racists!" is the new "Think of the children!".
Now if you’re Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, or any other religion, or your skin is dark, or you’re a woman, or you’re gay or trans —- and therefore have legitimate safety concerns… well then that’s just more identity politics, isn’t it?
Further, I don’t recall passing by a church and not seeing a rainbow flag; I cannot say the same for other religious houses of worship except for synagogues which also tend to fly the flag.
I also don't see the connection between your personal anecdotal experience of churches (presumably you live in a major metropolitan area) and white christian nationalists. Are you trying to imply that white christian nationalists are LGBT-friendly? Are you familiar with their beliefs?
I'm not.
Well, at least you got one out of three.
People like you are annoying people like me, especially when you pretend that you are talking on behalf of me.
But I'm not talking on behalf of you, I'm talking on behalf of myself, because I am a member of one of these many groups which are targeted.
This may be hard for you to understand, but what you fear is a marginal threat, at best.
> There have been many mass shootings targeted at them already.
How many is "many"? If you're going to argue that even 1 is 1 too many, then we may as well give up on this argument - you're never going to get down to a zero level of any demographic or group.
OTOH, the main causes of violence against minorities still appears to be purely crime-driven. If you were honest with yourself, you'd make up a top-10 list of the causes of deaths/injury of minorities and realise that "Killedx by a white supremecist" isn't even in the list.
> But I'm not talking on behalf of you, I'm talking on behalf of myself, because I am a member of one of these many groups which are targeted.
But you didn't talk about yourself, did you? No, you referred to entire groups on the assumption that they agree with your assessment of the risk to themselves.
Now you know that the groups you mentioned are not unanimously in agreement with you.
They much more frequently intimidate, threaten, harass, and abuse those minoritized groups than outright murder them. Maybe that doesn't bother you, either. But making factual statements doesn't require anyone to agree with me. Those violent acts are occurring, nonetheless.
The reason it is important to associate these minoritized groups is that they are all being underserved by state and federal law enforcement agencies who permit such terroristic groups to organize with impunity. It is a steadily rising problem, and the longer it's ignored the worse it will get.
No, I specified "causes of deaths/injury of minorities"
> But making factual statements doesn't require anyone to agree with me.
Neither does making non-factual statements. What's your point?
(Here's a factual statement for you - the threat from white supremacists against minorities is so low it's barely a rounding error. You should post numbers displaying that this fact is wrong.)
> It is a steadily rising problem, and the longer it's ignored the worse it will get.
Look, maybe it is steadily rising, but you are unable to provide percentages here.
To us minorities, us experiencing deaths/injury from white supremacists are not even a rounding error.
Everyone has a line in the sand where something goes from "that's not a problem" to "we need to work on that".
You can't call people ignorant because their personal line in the sand is (for example) "needs to be more than 0.01% of threats against me".
Okay, you can (and have) called people ignorant for dismissing threats that are this low-level, but you can't then expect people to not dismiss you as a crackpot.
Yes, obviously by statistical cause of death, terrorism will always be a rounding error. However, the goal of terror is always psychological -- to create a culture of fear in which people are afraid to participate in society.
That, in combination with law enforcement insufficiently targeting white supremacist organizing, is primarily an issue of social and racial justice. Simply, it's unfair to expect demographic groups which collectively comprise half of the country to put up with this mess.
Maybe english is not your first language, but this quote of your literally means "ignorant of ..."
>>>>> Because you're choosing to ignore the growing threat of white supremacist violence to minorities all over the country,
That's where the word ignorant comes from.
> Yes, obviously by statistical cause of death, terrorism will always be a rounding error. However, the goal of terror is always psychological -- to create a culture of fear in which people are afraid to participate in society.
This is all way too subjective, and therefore not actionable. We cannot (and should not) exact punitive measures based on what other people feel.
We take legal action against perpetrators based on the crimes commit, not what crimes we think they may commit in the future.
All those harassment, abuse, whatever you said above, that's legally actionable and I urge anyone, no matter their skin color, on the receiving end of crimes to report the matter and legally pursue it.
> That, in combination with law enforcement insufficiently targeting white supremacist organizing, is primarily an issue of social and racial justice.
What do you want them arrested for? Being in a white supremacist group is not, last I checked, illegal in and of itself.
> Simply, it's unfair to expect demographic groups which collectively comprise half of the country to put up with this mess.
The "mess" is in your mind. You are in a minority amongst minorities.
Do you not also think that it is unfair to urge measures be taken against people who have committed no crime?
The US legal code includes many crimes of conspiracy, especially for terrorism. That is in fact how most terrorists are caught. Most white supremacist organizing falls under this category.
We don't allow ISIS recruiters to use social media, but white supremacists have their own dedicated social network servers (e.g., Gab). We don't allow terror training camps, but white supremacist militias gather openly to practice their technique. The FBI regularly sends undercover agents into the mosques of middle class middle eastern neighborhoods to make sure people there aren't being taught radical Islam, but it's virtually expected for rural christian churches to preach reactionary hate. You can see these ideas on mainstream television, even. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Hk-TLXKlubk
And no, especially after Jan 6th, I am most certainly not in the "minority of minorities" here.
There's absolutely a double standard applied and their continued recruitment and armament is a threat to democracy and a peaceful society.
If white supremacist terrorist attacks are actually happening (and they are), then it's not a fictional narrative that the public is being told. Furthermore, I'm curious how that is linked to the following point.
> increases in domestic surveillance/police state infrastructure I'd like to point out that given that police [1] have been infiltrated by white supremacists and three-letter agencies are doing nothing about it [2] this would seem to disproportionately affect people of color, to say nothing about surveillance that already occurs with open-source and private data.
It seems that your fears are misplaced/misinformed at best.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-suprem... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/20/fbi-white-su...
According to Statista[0] there were 660,288 officers in the US in 2021. Even one racist cop is too many, granted. But if we assume the maximum on 'hundreds', 999/660,288 = 0.0015.
0.15% is still a problem, but your article makes it sound like a pervasive problem, which it clearly isn't. That article also spends about half its length heavily implying that Kyle Rittenhouse was a far-right white nationalist militant hunting protestors. If you watched the trial, you would know that's certainly untrue despite the prosecutor & news' best efforts to paint him otherwise. This article is exactly an example of the false narrative I was talking about.
White nationalists are fucking scary. But outlets like The Guardian are making money fear mongering that they're lurking behind every corner, that your police and firemen and friends and neighbors are all cryptofascists.
Secondly, your argument that _only_ 0.15% of cops are racist is disingenuous. If you RTFA [1]:
> Obviously, only a tiny percentage of law enforcement officials are likely to be active members of white supremacist groups. But one doesn’t need access to secretive intelligence gathered in FBI terrorism investigations to find evidence of overt and explicit racism within law enforcement. Since 2000, law enforcement officials with alleged connections to white supremacist groups or far-right militant activities have been exposed in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and elsewhere.
> Research organizations have uncovered hundreds of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials participating in racist, nativist, and sexist social media activity, which demonstrates that overt bias is far too common.
> These officers’ racist activities are often known within their departments, but only result in disciplinary action or termination if they trigger public scandals.
> Few law enforcement agencies have policies that specifically prohibit affiliating with white supremacist groups. Instead, these officers typically face discipline, if at all, for more generally defined prohibitions against conduct detrimental to the department or for violations of anti-discrimination regulations or social media policies. Firings often lead to prolonged litigation, with dismissed officers claiming violations of their First Amendment speech and association rights. Most courts have upheld dismissals of police officers who have affiliated with racist or militant groups, following Supreme ? Court decisions limiting free speech rights for public employees to matters of public concern.
> Courts have given law enforcement agencies even greater latitude to restrict speech and association, citing their “heightened need for order, loyalty, morale and harmony.”
It's fine if you want to bury your head in the sand and pretend the infiltration of law enforcement and military by white supremacists isn't happening, but that won't make it true. Furthermore, your argument that it's all a media conspiracy to enable the government to spy on white people is... sketchy.
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidd...
My contention is that the government would like to spy on everyone/erode the bill of rights. I'm not worried about white people.
Wiktionary's definition of terrorism includes attacks against property: "The use of unlawful violence against people or property to achieve political objectives."
Often, governments, (not just the US but in general) use the term in order to enlist more sympathy from disinterested civilians in order to add support for government response and also to curb sympathy for the group or individuals. So protesters in Belarus or China, etc, they get labeled terrorists.
Political motive is a key part of that definition. Simple greed isn't a political motive, but if somebody started robbing banks because they had an axe to grind with the federal reserve, I think that would probably qualify as terrorism.
For example OWS was political and caused some property damage [as well as euro climate activists throwing substances at artworks], but I would be loath to classify either terrorism. I guess the action in ATL regarding a police raining facility is domestic terrorism.
> OWS was political and caused some property damage
Marginal example. I think most of the property damage was incidental to what they were doing; camping in city parks. Insofar as the property damage was deliberate vandalism, it seems like marginal terrorism. To pick an similar example that seems a lot more clear; if the KKK throws a brick through the window of a business owned by a black person, that's obviously terrorism right?
All in all I think wiktionary's definition is pretty good.
To elaborate, I don't like the weaseliness of "unlawful" as well as "violence". (to put it bluntly, in some contexts violence is anything form touching a shoulder to punching a nose and beyond --and who decides lawfulness and unlawfulness?) I'm _not_ saying they are undefinable but rather in some contexts their definitions are given great latitude.
Terrorism is so overused it has lost pretty much any meaning. Being called a terrorist just means you’ve annoyed someone in authority.
As they say, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
I'm sure some people cared but I don't think it strikes fear when people hear about it.
Damaging property if the motives and outcome align with what we consider terrorism is terrorism.
But the meaning of terrorism is rather vague, and broad.
If I blow up a substation and it causes blackouts and chaos, that can be terrorism.
You're absolutely right: blowing up substations can be terrorism. But you need someone claiming the attack and making demands.
> Terrorism Definitions
> International terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored).
> Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.