Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Trasmatta 1993 days ago
You can't see the difference between a single lone wolf attack at a baseball game, and an entire mob instigated by the President of the United States, at the US Capitol? Taking place while Congress counted the votes of that President's political opponent?
1 comments
lliamander 1993 days ago
Most of the people at the Capitol were there for peaceful protest.

Trump did not tell them to kill politicians. His rhetoric was extreme, but arguably so is Bernie's.

link
Trasmatta 1993 days ago
> Most of the people at the Capitol were there for peaceful protest.

Okay, but there were many there that explicitly wanted violence, came prepared for it, and used the mob as cover.

> Trump did not tell them to kill politicians

Trump doesn't have to explicitly say "kill these politicians" to make the implication perfectly clear. He repeatedly told them he needed them to "fight" for him.

> His rhetoric was extreme, but arguably so is Bernie's

Bernie never incited a mob to storm the Capitol Building, while Congress ratified the votes for his political opponent.

link
lliamander 1992 days ago
> Bernie never incited a mob to storm the Capitol Building, while Congress ratified the votes for his political opponent.

His supporters most certainly include a fringe of people prepared for violence. I've even seen video evidence of such people working for his presidential election campaign.

Bernie Sanders also endorsed the (thankfully failed) Portland mayoral candidate who was an open Antifa supporter and worshiper of Stalin and Mao.

The question, for any political movement that has violent fringe, to what extent can the responsibility for that violent fringe be set at the feet of either the members of the movement or the politicians who lead it?

Bernie and his followers have never been broadly considered responsible for his radicals, despite his extreme rhetoric.

All summer long we had "mostly peaceful" BLM protests that included a significant minority of violent radicals (both BLM and Antifa) and yet no one took responsibility. In many cases people weren't even prosecuted.

Consider this: on election day, D.C. was boarded up, and it wasn't in preparation for rioting Trump supporters. These are people who generally speaking don't want to over through the existing order. They just want to see the existing order working.

link