[chrissnell]

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]

> 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]

> 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.

[kuzimoto]

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

[koolba]

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.

[kuzimoto]

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

[hackmiester]

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

[Tokkemon]

The mobs were not comparable.

[kuzimoto]

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

[skoopie]

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]

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]

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

[bigcorp-slave]

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]

> 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.

[bigcorp-slave]

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.

[cltby]

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

[bigcorp-slave]

This is new information for me - thank you for providing it. What I’d like to understand next is - is there a causal link? This is a pretty unusual year in a lot of ways, including a record number of unemployed people and many people experiencing serious financial pressure. I did a little preliminary googling and it suggested that this is related to a large increase in gun sales in March and April, prior to the George Floyd incident. The other factor that I would think could be relevant is the increase in domestic violence during coronavirus restrictions, as people are trapped with their abusers.

I don’t agree the folks involved in the terrorist attack last week were not a credible threat. If they had succeeding in kidnapping and executing congresspeople, which was both possible and clearly the intent of at least some people who made it into the Capitol, things could have turned out very differently. Something like a third of Congress still thinks we shouldn’t do anything about this - the conditions are ripe for a coup; just because it failed doesn’t mean it didn’t have a chance.

[syshum]

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

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

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

[bigcorp-slave]

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

[maxerickson]

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

[grahamburger]

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]

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

[ingsoc79]

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]

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]

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]

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]

It is honestly frightening to me the level to which so many of us are all living in different realities.

[joshuamorton]

> against the rioters who were trying to break in and hurt them.

This is, we'll go with dubious. Probably true at this point, but the protests had been going, relatively peacefully for close a day, and then less peacefully, with police having repeatedly tear gassed and fired rubber bullets at protestors who weren't doing anything violent, and didn't appear to have any violent intentions. Reports obviously differ, but many concluded that the actions of the police, in attacking the protestors, are what escalated the situation to violence. Compare from [1], and I think this "who is escalating" question becomes clear and relevant.

Which is to say that while the protest ended violently, I think you'll be hard pressed to find widespread intent that it be violent from the start.[2]

So again I'll ask: do you believe that the protesting in Minneapolis was formed with the intention of committing violence against police officers?

On the other hand, do you believe the insurrection at the capitol, which had participants openly advocating for violence for days, was formed, with the intention of committing violence against elected officials?

I find the attempt to draw a parallel between a situation where it took 3 days of getting teargassed for protestors to become violent and one where it took...a speech from the President.

[1]: https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1347873482550468609

[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/police-response-black-live...

[3]: https://www.apmreports.org/story/2020/06/30/what-happened-at... is my source for the timeline, which appears to be a fairly evenhanded account, noting that some city council members had already proposed abandoning the precinct for more than a day before it ultimately was.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I believe both of those things. I'm confused by the contrast you're drawing here, because the reason I believe them is the same in both cases: many participants made angry, public declarations that violence was needed and they'd like to see it happen. Questions of how many nonviolent people were involved, how long the violence took to kick off, or who made the first escalation don't strike me as very relevant.

[thepasswordis]

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]

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]

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".