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I don’t know if you were paying attention last week, but the mob literally came for the members of Congress.

There are wrong opinions, and then there is “six million Jews were not enough” and “hang the Vice President”, and a violent mob attacking the Capitol. No one is under any obligation to tolerate such actions in a civil society.

If I advocate for your murder, am I just expressing an opinion that should be consequence free if someone kills you? Does that change if enough people agree with me that you should be killed?

chrissnell 1985 days ago

The mob has been coming for law enforcement and federal buildings in many major cities in America for nine months now. This mob actively organized on Twitter and other social media. Where was the outrage in June? Most of the organizations that organized this destruction still have their Twitter accounts.

rvz 1985 days ago

> Where was the outrage in June?

Good question.

Like with all the mainstream media that 'reported' in front of the federal buildings and businesses that got looted and burned down, the shootings in the CHAZ/CHOP areas and the continuous riots and chaos all over the summer last year as seen on Twitter, they told me that there was 'nothing to see here' and it was a 'mostly peaceful protest' which everyone knows is absolute BS.

Both the GOP and Democrats instantly condemned the Capitol riots, but as for the summer riots, but not a single condemnation from the media of those events or even the Democrats disavowing the summer riots in June that are still continuing to this day.

The outrage did not fit their narrative. Neither did it fit their definition of what they think a 'mob' is, since the main culprits behind it were BLM and Antifa, as usual.

DaiPlusPlus 1985 days ago

> The mob has been coming for law enforcement and federal buildings in many major cities in America for nine months now

They're "coming for" police reform and transparency.

Please don't misrepresent or generalise very disparate groups of demonstrators.

So the ends justify the means? Only certain ideas are allowed for mobs to be okay?

koolba 1985 days ago

Many governors said as much this past year when they allowed, and in many cases took part in, BLM protests but banned anti-lockdown ones.

Yes, incredibly frustrating. Lots of the media played along with it as well.

hackmiester 1984 days ago

That is correct. It is okay to rally against police brutality; it is not okay to hold a Nazi rally.

Tokkemon 1985 days ago

The mobs were not comparable.

Does it matter? Isn't a mob a mob?

skoopie 1985 days ago

I love it when people try to gaslight us like we haven't seen the shit that happened last year. The capitol building "coup" was like watching a kids bop version of BLM/antifa.

ashayh 1985 days ago

Attacking people protesting for racial justice is nothing new. https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574/p...

Same accusations were made against peaceful many time in history.

There is also evidence of police instigating violence: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-p...

HeyZuess 1985 days ago

I think you would find that the majority of people do not support the riots that were happening (and still are) prior, either. So if we say, those accounts should be banned also, will that make everything ok, as both sides would/could be seen as equal?

At the end of the day, we must also recognize that corporations are still run by humans. Those humans make decisions within the context of their own biases and interests. Those interests are also legal requirements in some cases.

It's a tough situation, but even companies which do not have a legal requirement to do so, should be able to express their own views, and be accountable for them. I believe that actions (or threats) by Trump towards twitter earlier on expresses how the Government at the time thought that social platforms should have some accountability.

> "We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can't let a more sophisticated version of that.... happen again." ..... Trump

Setting aside for a moment the multiple orders of magnitude difference in lethality per participant, the key distinction for me is this: what happened in the Capitol is about usurping the monopoly on violence possessed by the government. BLM is not about overthrowing the government, and has never posed a credible threat to it. Even if BLM overthrew the government, no one has been talking about mass executions. By contrast, 6MWNE was on full display at the Capitol attack, as were calls to execute legally appointed representatives. I have been half expecting Trump to declare on Twitter that anyone who kills a democrat gets a pardon.

With the current state of the right wing in the US, there is a clear and present danger of us losing our democracy. When you look at the statements about the election from last _June_, or the purges at the Defense Department last fall, it is clear that this nonsense (and it is nonsense, 59 court cases and counting) about election fraud was premeditated, and so was this coup attempt. This is the Beer Hall Putsch, and it’s a mistake to see how lucky we got and say there is an equivalence to protests against police violence.

Assuming you’re arguing in good faith, what you’re missing is that the outrage from this event isn’t about the five dead people, tragic though that is. It’s about the fact that armed protesters just walked into the Capitol Building while Congress was in session. We are very, very lucky we don’t have dead congresspeople. What do you think the mob that beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher in the Capitol building would have done to AOC if they’d gotten to her?

We cannot afford to make the mistake Weimar Germany did. We cannot assume that because this failed the problem is gone. We cannot appease these people, we cannot treat them as benign. They must all be identified and prosecuted, and their enablers in Congress must be expelled from our governing bodies.

cltby 1985 days ago

> Setting aside for a moment the multiple orders of magnitude difference in lethality per participant

Is this really true? I’m tempted to charge the entirety of the post-summer urban bloodbath to the BLM movement. This represents an increase of 3-4000 deaths over the prior year.

> BLM is not about overthrowing the government, and has never posed a credible threat to it. Even if BLM overthrew the government, no one has been talking about mass executions.

This is sidestepping your point somewhat, but Antifa (who figured prominently in the protests) do explicitly avow both these things.

Millions (the estimate I saw was 15-26 million) of people were involved in the BLM protests, which lasted many months. 25 people are known to have been killed. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assign 3-4k deaths to it. By contrast, this was a single event with a few thousand people in which 5 people died. That’s what I mean by orders of magnitude.

I agree that there is a destroy-the-government black bloc present in some of the BLM protests. It’s a fair thing to point out, but I’ll say this: they’ve never had a chance or a credible threat. It’s really a false equivalence to compare a terrorist attack on the Capitol incited by the ruling party in an attempt to overturn a democratic election with seven months of mass protests against police violence.

[1] http://ibgvr.org/philadelphia-shooting-victims-dashboard/

cltby 1985 days ago

The BLM protests themselves killed 20-30 people. The murder spree that immediately followed killed thousands more. The Gun Violence Archive has the whole story, but this chart for Philadelphia is indicative[1]. Note the structural break in the series in May 2020. I contend this was ex-ante predictable and should therefore be laid at BLM’s feet.

> they’ve never had a chance or a credible threat

Agreed. But neither did the Trump rioters.

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-capitol-po...

syshum 1985 days ago

That is very much in dispute, the reports [1] have been revised [2] and it appears that the officer may have had a medical issue and was not attached by anyone

[2] https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/us-capitol-police-a...

The officer being discussed in [2] is a different police officer than in [1].

maxerickson 1985 days ago

It's not in dispute at all, there's video of the mob beating him!

grahamburger 1985 days ago

Where was the "we love you, we know how you feel, please go home peacefully" rhetoric in June? Imagine the inroads that could have been made if Trump actually cared about injustice against Americans! Instead he stoked the fire, and saved his adoration for his cronies to throw them under the bus when they failed to secure him his position as unelected president.

joshuamorton 1985 days ago

When you say "coming for law enforcement", do you mean actively advocating for violence toward, or just, like, advocating for additional regulation?

ingsoc79 1985 days ago

Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and many other US cities saw mobs attempting (and in some cases, succeeding) in burning down police precincts and courthouses this summer.

joshuamorton 1985 days ago

You've subtly avoided answering the question I asked. As far as I know, there was one (abandoned) police precinct burned. Was the burning of an abandoned building avocation for violence against police officers?

ingsoc79 1985 days ago

If you need me to explain to you how mobs attempting to burn down police and court buildings is indicative of advocating violence towards police officers, then you've got bigger problems then your misreading of my response.

SpicyLemonZest 1985 days ago

You've gotten a distorted version of the story. The Minneapolis Third Precinct was abandoned at the time of burning only because police could no longer defend it against the rioters who were trying to break in and hurt them.

thepasswordis 1985 days ago

Would you consider throwing IEDs at cops while hundreds of people chant "pigs in a blanket fry em' like bacon" and try to set fire to the building the police are in violent?

Or howabout permanently blinding some of the cops with lasers? Is that violent, or is that just asking for a funding change in the police department?

joshuamorton 1985 days ago

Those statements, one from William Barr and one from trump, turned out to be false.

The pigs in blankets quote is from a peaceful 2015 protest. Trump lied about it in a Presidential debate.

The officers sight returned.

Edit: in response to this, you provided a video that doesn't include

> throwing IEDs at cops while hundreds of people chant "pigs in a blanket fry em' like bacon" and try to set fire to the building the police are in violent?

As far as I can tell, it's someone throwing a firework at the side of a stone building, which while not a great idea isn't endangering anyone. And "fry em like bacon" no where to be found.

Please don't spread lies.

thepasswordis 1985 days ago

What are you talking about? There are videos of this:

IED: https://youtu.be/dm_lZxmPxUU

As for that chants: go to any of the videos of the various occupations from the summer. If that really does come from a 2015 march instead of 2020, fine, but go to any video and find the same activity (arson, assault, IEDs, lasers) and chants like "no justice no peace".

Shouldn't people be held accountable for their own actions at some point? Everyone should know that murder is illegal, even if <insert popular figure> says to kills someone, you should know not to.

sacks2k 1985 days ago

"I don’t know if you were paying attention last week, but the mob literally came for the members of Congress."

A couple of hundred people attacked the capitol in a crowd of 500,000+. Do you remember the phrase 'mostly peaceful protesters'? We've been hearing it for 8+ months after violent riots in major cities which resulted in 30+deaths, hundreds of innocent people attacked, and 1 billion+ in property damage.

"There are wrong opinions, and then there is “six million Jews were not enough” and “hang the Vice President”, and a violent mob attacking the Capitol. No one is under any obligation to tolerate such actions in a civil society."

Antifa and BLM have taken over multiple state and federal buildings over the past 8 months. In June, for instance, multiple fires were set all over DC. A church was nearly burnt to the ground and the President had to go to an underground bunker as a result of the threats outside the white house.

Unlike the protests in January 6th (which was an unorganized mess of random people), BLM and Antifa are professional rioters/criminals. They wear masks to protect themselves and have corporate backing from large left-leaning organizations.

Instead of concern, local leaders painted BLM and named a major street after them.

I'm not sure why you only seem to care when it's Trump supporters. Political violence is wrong on both sides, but only one political not only supported it, but paid the bail of rioters and continue to deny that it even exists. The real criminals are about to get into office.

"If I advocate for your murder, am I just expressing an opinion that should be consequence free if someone kills you? Does that change if enough people agree with me that you should be killed?"

You do realize Trump never said any of this, right? Him and his entire campaign have denounced the violence repeatedly. If you listened to the speech before the capitol was attacked, it was not full of any sort of energy. He basically said that it was all in Pence's hands. Supporters were actually angry because he sounded so defeated. This doesn't sound like the actions of someone trying to storm the Capitol.

The media+tech companies+incoming administration are censoring and destroying their political opponents for things they themselves have been supporting and instigating for 4 years.

If it wasn't so scary, I would call it pathetic actions from limp-dick journalists.

There is a difference between eight months of protests in which 15-26 million people participated across the entire country resulting in significant property damage and some loss of life (~25 people), and what happened last week.

Let’s call what happened last week what it was: a terrorist attack against the seat of government perpetrated by the ruling party in an attempt to overturn a democratic election.

You need to take a serious look in the mirror and ask if you’re the bad guy. As arch-conservative a figure as Mitch McConnell describes this as a failed insurrection and you make excuses for it.

ashtonkem 1985 days ago

Spare us your outrage. A literal mob just overran the Capitol. Attempting to talk about “the mob” in opposition to the actual mobs that are continuing to take over Capitol buildings is frankly so tone deaf it’s almost insulting to our intelligence.

greatgirl 1985 days ago

I'm tired of people who have only read one book in their entire lives (1984) trying to explain to me how banning Trump is going to lead to an angry leftist mob throwing me in jail (because leftists have power right?) for speaking.

ashtonkem 1985 days ago

Poor Orwell must be rolling in his grave. Maybe we should wrap him in copper for free power?

For the record, Orwell was a leftist. Yes, 1984 was a warning about the USSR, which he hated, but the idea that he was warning about creeping leftism in general turning into authoritarianism is to really misunderstand him.

For the record, he hated the authoritarian right just as hard as he hated the authoritarian left, possibly more so. He participated in the Spanish civil war, following his own advice that everyone pick up a rifle and shoot a fascist. He was wounded in action by a sniper bullet to the throat.

By the terms of his place and time, he considered himself a libertarian (that word later came to be a right wing phenomenon in America, self consciously co-opted from the left). We’d typically call him a democratic socialist; someone who wanted the government to help solve the “social problem” (where the term “socialism” partially comes from) of poverty and what not, but he was also wary about giving too much power of the government to control people.

He was a complex guy with even more complex political opinions. Sadly our Cold War fueled reading of 1984 has flattened out a lot of his nuance from him.

_pius 1985 days ago

The people cheering this on will not be protected when the mob comes for you.

The facile sophistry of comments like yours is becoming obnoxious. An actual fascist mob already came for us last week and we were not protected, get it?

There can be interesting intellectual arguments about whether this was the right move but breathlessly calling ToS enforcement by private companies a “mob” while ignoring an actual mob with lead pipes, guns, and bombs ain’t it.

betterunix2 1985 days ago

Get back to me when they do it to someone who did not just tell a crowd of terrorists to go over to the Capitol and "save" the country from its own democratic process.

mattsears 1985 days ago

There's a big difference in wrong opinion and inciting violence. This isn't the government doing this. This is private companies taking action against the spread hate and lies. These are companies I want to do business with.

ookblah 1985 days ago

gab got de-platformed and the mob didn't come for anybody else...the world moved on. not everything is a slippery slope. tons of people criticizing it on twitter/fb and they aren't being censored.

iaHN 1985 days ago

There is a difference between having unpopular opinions and advocating for violently overthrowing our government.

moomin 1985 days ago

You should probably look up what the hallmarks of fascism are sometime. It might surprise you.

xtracto 1985 days ago

Replying to Chrissnell comment which seems to be flagged.

I agree with your sentiment, and I was there on slashdot in those times. Even though I have nothing for or against the political events happening in the USA. I fear that all these companies are using what happened as a pretext to stop giving service to people with different ideas.

Twitter censoring trump is OK. Reddit censoring some channels is OK. But blocking a chat app from apple/google store? AWS? Stripe? This is exactly what a lot of us fought for ed2k, BitTorrent DeCSS and other technologies: the technology is not bad. And even if we dont like the content, we should allow people with different ideas to talk a out it.

Sure, some of the people at the capitol committed a crime. But it's the same as if companies have banned cryptography because of DeCSS.

ketamine__ 1985 days ago

Does anyone know why AWS hasn't kicked off Parler yet? Is this a hard decision for Bezos?

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...

grzm 1985 days ago

AWS laid out the timeline in their letter to Parler:

> "Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST."

According to my watch, it's a few minutes past 17:30 PST.

ketamine__ 1985 days ago

Any idea who is hosting them now?

moomin 1984 days ago

At the time of writing, absolutely no-one.

renewiltord 1985 days ago

The funny thing about the mob is that it does not remember whether you cheered it on or not.

And the funny thing when there are two mobs fighting each other is that neither will exercise restraint if the other backs down.

So the smart thing to do is to be either so powerful the mob can't touch you or to be so invisible the mobs can't see you.

There is always the Kolmogorov option.

vincentmarle 1985 days ago

> wrong opinion

The wrong opinion being the fascist attempted coup of a democratic government

gameswithgo 1985 days ago

please quit equating terrorism with “differing opinion”

trump caused his followers to believe the election was a lie, and when they came to protest he egged them on to the capital building where they beat a police officer to death with an american flag while singing the anthem.

they beat him to death with an american flag and trump called them patriots after.

beat him to death sir, these patriots, our president said. wearing nazi tshirts, sir.

differing opinions? maybe you can find a better way to communicate your idea here

AYBABTME 1985 days ago

There's a gradation of things, it's not black or white. The gray zone in the middle is where conditions for society to prosper are.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch [1] https://images.app.goo.gl/BxMXjGz7Zjsa1G6Q8 [2] https://twitter.com/59dallas/status/1346963199778828290?s=21

hsgssh72525 1985 days ago

I see where you are coming from, but I do not agree that they are being punished just for “having the wrong opinion”.

The Trump campaign just attempted a coup. As in they attempted to seize control of the government by stopping the lawful transition of power. That it failed does not make it any less serious. Should we let them continue to try until the are successful? Let’s not repeat the mistakes of 1920s Germany.[0]

I do not think it is hyperbole to say that Trump and his ilk are fascists, not unlike the Nazis.[1] They are the mob that is coming for you.[2] Do not make the mistake of failing to believe these people when they tell you who they are and what they are about.

christiansakai 1985 days ago

What mob? The one what wants to hang Mike Pence? I'm not a Trump supporter but as a Christian I admire Mike Pence as a person, even before he supported Trump.

claudiug 1985 days ago

Wrong opinions? They ban nazi lovers

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/giuliani-rally-speech/

alphabettsy 1985 days ago

Banks accounts? All internet presence? Neither of those things is happening. They still have websites, not to mention a press secretary with the world’s press at their feet.

Minimizing it to just wrong opinions? NAMBLA, look it up, is still around so stating this is about wrong opinions is ignorant.

I’m fairly certain that attempting to overthrow the government to get your desired election result is fascism. Saying we will have a trial by combat just before telling protestors to head to the Capitol sounds a lot like a call for violence.

bluesign 1985 days ago

"Rudy Giuliani, made a reference to the HBO drama “Game of Thrones” when he called for a “trial by combat” while talking about conspiracy theories alleging massive scale voter fraud."

Game of Thrones???

alphabettsy 1985 days ago

Maybe Game of Thrones or the Germanic tradition. Either way it means blood will be spilled.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

abernard1 1985 days ago

> I’m fairly certain that attempting to overthrow the government to get your desired election result is fascism.

I can't believe I'm actually going to go to this topic, but your argument has been made before with the Reichstag Fire [1]. Using threats of violence as a pretext for assuming more government control is a tactic as old as governments.

> The Nazi Party used the fire as a pretext to claim that communists were plotting against the German government, which made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

alphabettsy 1985 days ago

I’m well aware. Can you point to the government control please.

Private companies using their liberty to deny service to the leader of the United States government seems like freedom to me.

abernard1 1985 days ago

Fine, this particular action is not government control.

But the argument that taking away power from people because they're "fascists" isn't like fascism is not a strong one. These people are supposedly an existential threat to the fabric of America, and there absolutely is not a single group that hasn't simultaneously deplatformed them.

It suggests a question around who really holds the power here.

eganist 1985 days ago

> I can't believe I'm actually going to go to this topic, but your argument has been made before with the Reichstag Fire [1]. Using threats of violence as a pretext for assuming more government control is a tactic as old as governments.

There's a bit of false equivalence here. The fire was, on one hand, a false flag (from the very link you posted), and on the other hand, a stroke of luck.

Whereas here, it was an attempt at taking human hostages (reference: the many more recent videos of insurrectionists with human zip ties and small arms) and disrupting election certification with human shields in the form of a mob of conservative protesters. Which by every definition would be an attempted coup.

And don't get me wrong, I'm saying quite explicitly that there were legitimate, Trump-believing protesters in the crowd who either got swept up into the moment or genuinely fear for the state of the country but who were not in it to overthrow a legitimately elected government. However, within the crowd were people who came equipped to overthrow leadership followed by blending right back into the crowd, and they coordinated on platforms such as Parler with impunity, which is precisely why deplatforming the platforms is the appropriate next step.

It's not because of everyday conservatives who feel duped. It's because of the conservatives who came together to enact violence and disrupt the democratic process.

abernard1 1985 days ago

> It's not because of everyday conservatives who feel duped. It's because of the conservatives who came together to enact violence and disrupt the democratic process.

And those 75M voters are not able to receive communication from a person they voted for and want to hear speak. They can't buy things from stores that are selling ordinary, run of the mill political apparel. The servers and apps providing social media--protected under section 230 just like AWS, Apple, and Google--have been banned.

It is not the extremists who are receiving the brunt of this purge.

pmiller2 1985 days ago

Someone who is not going to be relevant in 10 days.

Spare me the "poor me" act.

nobody9999 1985 days ago

>It is not the extremists who are receiving the brunt of this purge.

And if the extremists hadn't stormed the capitol and been supported (Trump literally said "we love you.") by certain folks, those who are being inconvenienced (and yes, it's just an inconvenience) wouldn't be.

If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Edit: Fixed wording of old saw.

flowside 1985 days ago

You are free to create your own far-right payment bank and payment system. The fact that sites like 4chan and Stormfront continue to exist is a sign that no one's speech has been stifled, only inconvenienced.

nobody9999 1985 days ago

>You are free to create your own far-right payment bank and payment system.

Or just write a check to the Trump Campaign.

danhak 1985 days ago

“First they came for the violent insurrectionists, and I did not speak out”

Rapzid 1985 days ago

"Yes, that's them over there officer"

userbinator 1985 days ago

Also, I'm not advocating for any violence, but keep in mind that the US was certainly not created peacefully either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

danijelb 1985 days ago

That is true but from the perspective of the British it was illegal. I'm not sure that British companies would've provided services to revolutionaries while they literally try to overthrow the constitutional order of their country. Sure, they succeeded, got their independence, but when someone decides to literally fight against the country from the inside they shouldn't expect any company to be friendly to them or to offer them any services. As a matter of fact not even the government will be friendly, because they will do everything in their power to maintain order from their legal and constitutional perspective.

What happened on the Capitol had elements that lead to a conclusion that the goal was to stop legal procedures in the country, perhaps even taking elected representatives as hostages. This is different from any other type of "ordinary" riot. Luckily the people there didn't seem to be particularly skillful so they didn't manage to achieve anything. But they shouldn't expect that everyone will forget what they tried just because it failed. There needs to be a serious investigation first to determine how was it organized and what were the goals. Until this is known for sure, everyone should be really careful and that includes the right of companies to ensure their tools are not used for a potential violent government overthrow. What would happen to the revolutionaries if the American Revolution had failed? I'm pretty sure that the British wouldn't just forget it and pretend it didn't happen, even if they managed to stop it quickly before it got serious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_rebellion

betterunix2 1985 days ago

...and after winning they promptly put down another attempted revolution, then passed laws against further violent revolution and working with foreign governments against the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_sedition_act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act

chopin24 1985 days ago

>If having the wrong opinion means you can get your bank accounts and all Internet presence removed from you, it's not any different than living under a fascist government.

Calling for the overthrow of the government through violent insurrection isn't an opinion.

chillwaves 1985 days ago

Should I be worried? Probably not since I am not advocating for the violent overthrow of democracy in America.

dang 1983 days ago

You've been posting tons of political flamewar comments to HN, some of which have been egregious. I'm replying here because it's your most recent comment, not because it's the worst of what you've been doing on this site.

We ban accounts that use HN primarily for political battle, regardless of which politics they're battling for. We have to, because otherwise this site won't survive for its intended purpose, which is intellectual curiosity.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop doing this, we'd appreciate it.

dantheman 1985 days ago

wikileaks was mainly attacked through denial of access to the financial system.

Would you be ok with Stripe stopping payment to the GOP?

JshWright 1985 days ago

The GOP is cool with bakers denying service to gay couples, so I assume they would be ok with that, right?

eganist 1985 days ago

> Would you be ok with Stripe stopping payment to the GOP?

Has the GOP, specifically the GOP, advocated for the violent overthrow of the United States Government?

jasonjayr 1985 days ago

They're getting there.

> My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. ~ Grover Norquest

danhak 1985 days ago

“Let’s have trial by combat!”

-Rudy Giuliani, 1/6/2021

benmmurphy 1985 days ago

This quote is deeply misleading. It's not completely clear but I think Rudy is talking about Biden, Trump and himself staking their reputations on the outcome of a fraud investigation.

The transcript and the speech is available here: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/rudy-giuliani-speech-tr...

Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat. I’m willing to stake my reputation, the President is willing to stake his reputation, on the fact that we’re going to find criminality there. Is Joe Biden willing to stake his reputation that there’s no crime there? No.

There is also a pause around the trial by combat comment that is not evident in the transcript so its probably worth listening to the speech to get the full context.

betterunix2 1985 days ago

The RNC declared Trump to be the leader of their party after he told a crowd of armed terrorists that they should go to the Capitol and "save" the country from the politicians who were busy certifying the results of an election. They did so after that same crowd stormed the Capitol building, replaced the American flag with a Trump flag, and proudly declared to the cameras that they were there for a "revolution."

Kind of hard to know where the line is drawn between "declaring as your leader the man who advocates for a violent overthrow" and "advocating for a violent overthow."

benmmurphy 1985 days ago

Trump never advocated for violent overthrow of the government.

ketamine__ 1985 days ago

Stripe hasn't been around that long. I'm sure they can find another payment processor.

And if they can't, well, we all know Republicans don't trust filling out documents (i.e. ballots) when it isn't done in person. So perhaps the best solution is for supporters to drive to their local GOP office and hand deliver the cash.

eganist 1985 days ago

> The people cheering this on will not be protected when the mob comes for you.

> We live in a digital age. If having the wrong opinion means you can get your bank accounts and all Internet presence removed from you, it's not any different than living under a fascist government.

Just to rebaseline, in this case a mob infiltrated the dais in the Capitol, and this mob's opinions included speech not just disagreeable to public corporations but unprotected by the United States government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

sdwa 1985 days ago

If you can't ban a fascist for instigating violence and a coup attempt then your ToS are worthless and all moderation on every website must be made illegal.

sillypecan 1984 days ago

Correct. While silencing him may be satisfying, this road will lead us down a dark path. It is better to suffer a little evil than to loose everything good.

chrissnell 1985 days ago

There was a time when the tech community fought ferociously against corporations and government attempts to censor and silence ideas. In its early years, Slashdot was ardently libertarian, as were most of the engineers I worked with. Can you imagine 1997 Slashdot’s reaction to something like Apple removing Parler from the App Store? There would be protests, DDoSes, editorials from thought leaders, and more.

I feel very out of place with many of the younger folks working in tech today. The majority of them seem to support (or even demand) de-platforming of people and ideas that they disagree with.

This is not a good trend. As you said, the mob will eventually come for you, too.

bufferout 1984 days ago

"It's hard to reason with someone waving a confederate flag in your face"

shadowgovt 1985 days ago

The models that worked in the '80s and '90s proved ineffective as the number of people online continued towards 100%.

The early denizens of the 'net were very homogeneous relative to today.

Rapzid 1985 days ago

> it's not any different than living under a fascist government

We should be celebrating Stripe's ability to do this. Do you think a Chinese company could "deplatform" Winnie The Pooh?

It's fantastic that we can still disassociate ourselves and our businesses from someone like Trump!

greatgirl 1985 days ago

I have seen this exact phrase like 500 times in the past week. Do you guys all read the same books or something?

It's such a huge exaggeration to say that stripe's decision was motivated by a 'mob'... Wait, it was motivated by a mob, the mob of right wingers. And they DID come for me. That's why we ban them from our websites.

It's just pure fear mongering and outrage news to say that liberals are mobbing together to force companies (as if its not ultimately the choice of the company) to ban people, and that somehow this will lead to them turning on each other... and then i'll be sorry i banned Trump? I don't get it.

xirbeosbwo1234 1985 days ago

Other people have pointed out that Trump and much of the GOP just launched a coup, so I'll leave that aside.

Of course it's different from living under a fascist government. A totalitarian government would send you to a prison camp or kill you for saying the wrong thing. The Stasi would systematically and invisibly ruin all your relationships and your career. People who are banned from Twitter can go to another website or start their own. If they're banned from Stripe, they can use Visa or pay in cash. If they are banned from social media, they can hop on any of the numerous right-wing TV stations or write for any of the numerous right-wing newspapers.

Even if this were the government, it would be an exaggeration to say that these actions are totalitarian. There are countries today where you could get locked up for having the wrong opinion that are miles from being fascist. Germany springs to mind, since many people have been arrested for Holocaust denial. Many European countries tick along just fine despite the fact that they would instantly throw the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church in prison.

The American dedication to freedom of speech is admirable. However, it is also an aberration. Since the American approach to freedom of speech is not the norm, we should treat it as rare and precious but also recognize that things would be mostly fine with some restrictions. Cool it with the hyperbole.

phatfish 1985 days ago

The American dedication to free speech only functions when people -- especially those in power -- are acting in good faith.

Trump took the pseudonymous troll culture of the internet to the highest office of government, and this is the result. Trolls and Trump play by different rules, truth and facts are inconsequential -- all that matters is the reaction of their victims.

I have sympathy with Trump supporters that are not in on the "joke". It's not stupid to believe the president of the United States will be honest with them (at least on issues of national importance like "massive" election fraud), but he won't. If you were attracted by his other views (however distasteful), it is a bitter pill to swallow to admit he is a lier.

Americans are lucky their constitution was strong enough to ensure (at least) Trumps tactics to overturn a democratic vote failed.

xirbeosbwo1234 1985 days ago

>It's not stupid to believe the president of the United States will be honest with them

I think it's pretty stupid. The entire Iraq war was based on lies. Trump in particular is a terrible liar but has lied consistently for forty years.

Well said.

This sounds like a slippery slope argument[1], which can be genuine but also controversial when generalized.

Can we talk about individual instance, like those specific to the current situation with Trump or other situations, like "Operation Choke Point," separately or should something like this be only considered with generic rules that do not consider the nuisance and details of any specific circumstance?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope