The FBI seems to clearly state that the entity referred to by the term “Juggalos” is, itself, in whole, a “hybrid gang.” It mentions the individual incidents, not by way of saying only those individual guys are in a gang, but by way of establishing that the Juggalos, in general, are a gang.
A while. I have a few more in reserve. Right now I’m waiting for someone to start a thread complaining about the increasing number of lesbian bars in his area.
Yes but it must be proved that you are part of a criminal enterprise. Not the member of a club or gang or whatever you call it. Otherwise it would be possible to arrest someone just for flying their Hells Angels colors. Or having a MS13 tattoo. It’s not. It is not illegal to be a member. It is illegal if you are part of their criminal enterprises.
Nobody agrees. You’ve failed to support this assertion in any way. Try the fbi.gov link you posted: what, if anything, in that article do you take as evidence that anyone’s right to free expression is being “declared null and void”?
It seems the bar for our Recreational Outrage is getting lower. We used to get upset about actual bad things that happened to actual people.
This ain’t it.
From the OP’s link to the FBI report:
So, rather than the FBI claiming that fans of ICP are gang members, the FBI is reporting that in a limited number of states, a limited number of Juggalos have begun associating as and behaving as gangs.
Similarly, the Village Voice article–once one gets past the tabloid employment of histrionic exclamations–does not say that the FBU labeled anyone a gang member. It said that a particular individual was associated with a gang. Now, it might be that the police have overreacted to his musical tastes, having read too much literature with too little attention to detail, emanating from New Mexico. OR, it might be that this individual in question is, indeed, a member of one of the subset of Juggalos who have drifted into criminal activities and legitimately deserves to be identified as a gang member.
In neither case is there any claim by the FBI that all fans of ICP, (or even all people who identify as Juggalos), are gang members.
He may be a gang member, but there is no Juggalo gang. Not as a “loosely-organized hybrid” or any other kind of gang. Again, that’s why the band and it’s fan’s are upset about this. They are being labeled a gang because of associative links, even tho any criminal activity has nothing to do with the band or being a fan of the band.
Why should we believe your assertion?
It seems pretty similar to the situation with skinheads.
Early on there was a loose subculture of disaffected kids who adopted various manners of dress and ornamentation simply to demonstrate that they were neither part of society nor “hippies.” Once there were enough of them to be recognizable as a movement, different factions began organizing, some as political movements, some as criminal gangs. While it would always have been unfair to look at a kid with a bald head and piercings and harrass him as a racist thug, (particularly since a few skinhead groups were specifically anti-racist), it would have been both naive and irresponsible to pretend that there were not racist thugs with criminal elements who banded together under a banner of “skinhead.”
I am perfectly willing to believe that the various local police have gotten it wrong in the manner of various police getting caught up in the pretty much non-existent “satanist” hysteria of the early 1980s, but given that they sometimes get it right, (e.g., the skinheads), I want to see some specific evidence that the police are wrong.
In any event, nothing in the FBI report–the one cited in the OP as an “attack” on civil rights–appears to support the charge leveled in the OP that the FBI is actually attacking anyone’s civil rights.
They don’t have fans who follow them around on tour, right? Like Deadheads and Phish fans? Because I would so not want to be where they were going next…
My understanding of the entire passage is governed by how the passage is begun–with the phrase “The Juggalos, a loosely organized hybrid gang…”
The passage starts out by identifying Juggalos, in general, as a loosely organized hybrid gang. The rest of the passage mentions only particular juggalos, but this is by way of providing documentation that “the juggalos,” i.e., Juggalos in general, are a gang.
There was never a gang called Skinheads. There were (are) gangs of people with similar beliefs and goals who maintain a certain appearance, but they were not ever part of one gang called Skinheads. Again, that’s the problem with the FBI LEO designation of Juggalos as a gang. It doesn’t exist any more than there was ever one gang called Skinheads.
The report and LEOs are painting with too broad a brush, and (again I’ll say it) replacing association with guilt by terming Juggalos a gang. They can’t even describe any pattern of activity, or location, or anything other than seeing or hearing that the individual criminals like the same band. That hardly constitutes any kind of organized criminal endeavor, when you have to say “Most crimes committed by Juggalos are sporadic, disorganized, individualistic”. By that measure, NBA fans are a gang. NWA fans are a gang.
I’m not saying that no ICP fan anywhere has never broken the law. And I wouldn’t venture to say that no 2 or 3 or 4 or more fans have never gotten together to buy & sell weed or anything else. But to implicate all people who call themselves Juggalos as a gang is not and cannot be supported by the evidence at hand. Association alone is not causation.
ISTM that this is pretty much a classic case of profiling.
There absolutely were gangs that were identified as skinheads, many of which had no other name besides their general association with the subculture.
You are taking the fact that the report uses the name of the subculture to identify various discrete gangs and acting as though the FBI has claimed that everyone in the subculture is a member of some enormous gang in direct contradiction of the actual words of the report.
And with all this moaning about whether the Juggalos name should be used, no one has yet provided a single instance in which any person’s civil rights have been violated (or “attacked”) in regards to the FBI report.
Then it’s a good thing such implications haven’t been made.
True. But, as I said, there was never a gang called Skinheads.
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](http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/adl/skinhead-international/skins-united-states.html)
No, I’m pointing out that the wording of the report gives the impression that every Juggalo is a gang member, because it does: nowhere in the report does it say that not all Juggalos are gang members. In fact, it specifically says that "The Juggalos, a loosely-organized hybrid gang, are rapidly expanding into many US communities. " No qualifiers, no explanation that this is a term that fans of a band use to describe themselves. Substitute the word “Deadhead” for “Juggalo” and the report would be as factually accurate. Or “NBA fans” or “former child actors” or “bankers”.
At no point in the report do I see any language about “discrete gangs”; they are all referred to as “Juggalos subsets” and “Juggalos gangs”.
If the same report were issued saying that Straight Dope Message Board members (aka “Dopers”) were a gang, based on the fact that 4 people who posted here had committed crimes together, you’d think that was an accurate label?
Snarking Is Not A Crime !
True but have you seen some of the puns?
So what? First, you go to Nizkor, (a nice outfit, but not the FBI), only to find them describing Skinheads in pretty much the same way that the FBI report describes Juggalos: It uses an all-encompassing word that does not come close to describing the the totality of the subculture. However, unlike the FBI report, Nizkor remarks on only the portion of the subculture that it finds threatening. There are and always have been Skinhead groups that have been anti-racist, yet your Nizkor essay only addresses the racist ones.
The FBI report at least goes to the trouble of noting that Juggalos have only been identified as gangs by four specific states and further notes that “subsets” have been identified as engaging in criminal behavior in 21 states. You, following the Nizkor report, do what you are accusing the FBI of doing. So, because you and Nizkor are sloppy and use the the overall word to discuss subsets of a group without clarifying your points, you are assuming that the FBI–that does take the time to point out that they are only discsussing some portion of the group–has made the same error that you are pursuing.
The FBI has a list of groups that include criminal activity. In order to create the list, they employ names for the groups on the list. Within the list, they point out specifics–specifics that demonstrate to anyone reading the actual text that the accusation of “gangs” does not apply to all people identified by the name Juggalos.
Really? You have a list of incidents where Deadheads and bankers have engaged in anti-civil behavior as Deadheads and bankers, (and not by simply engaging in unethical business practices)? I’d like to see that.
And, of course, you still have provided no evidence that anyone’s civil rights have been violated.
As for an “unprecedented attack,” you clearly have no grasp of U.S. history. The violations of civil rights by the FBI that have been launched against various groups over the decades is pretty long and includes far more egregious behavior than putting a name on a list and then describing actual anti-civil behavior reported by local police agencies.
As I first noted, this is Recreational Outrage–and a pretty weak grade of it at that.
Guys, the passage not only implies that all Juggalos are gang members, it’s actually designed to persuade you of that fact. The whole point of the passage is to give the evidence upon which they base their judgment that each Juggalo is a gang member by virtue of being a Juggalo.
It starts out with an unqualified characterization of “the Juggalos” as a “loosely organized hybrid gang.” Not some Juggalos. “The” juggalos. All of them.
People have cited the “although only four states…” sentence as evidence that it’s not saying they’re all gang members. But that sentence does exactly the opposite. That word “although” is there to show that what follows (only four states recognize them as a gang) is in contrast to what the passage itself is trying to argue. Only four states recognize them, which might raise some doubt as to whether they’re really a gang or not. But, says the passage, they really are a gang, and we’re going to tell you why.
Some have cited the fact that it only talks about certain Juggalos engaging in criminal activities. But notice how it refers to them. It doesn’t refer to these criminal Juggalos as themselves comprising the entirety of the gang–it refers to them, instead, as “Juggalo subsets”–carefully referring us back to the beginning of the passage, where it was stated that “The Juggalos” are a gang. How do we know they are a gang? Because “subsets” of them engage in organized criminal activity.
The logical structure of the passage is clear. It is arguing that the Juggalos–all of them–are gang members. Each of the things you guys have brought up as supposed evidence against this reading is clear evidence for the reading if you pay careful attention to the actual words of the passage. (“Although,” “Subset,” etc.)
You guys are doing something I see a lot–you’re rejecting a potential reading of the passage based on the fact that it’s ludicrous to think anyone would believe what that reading says is true. That actually is fine in many contexts–when a passage is ambiguous, you want to give it the most plausible reading, for example. But this passage is not ambiguous. It very clearly sets out to show that all Juggalos are members of a gang called “The Juggalos.” However ludicrous that may seem, it is what the passage says.
I am not pretending to read the FBI’s mind. I do not know for certain that they really think the Juggalos are a gang. But whatever they really think, what they have written is not ambiguous on the matter. What they have written says the Juggalos–all of them–are a gang.
I am sure that it makes you feel all terrified to believe this.
You have failed to persuade me that there is any substance to your belief.
Not me. I think it’s silly.
That’s not a particularly productive or informative thing for you to say.
On the contrary. It lays out my position on the “debate” rather clearly: I have made my points; you and Snowboarder have made your points; your points have failed to persuade me of your position; reading your comments, I doubt that I have persuaded you. Unless you have some clear new evidence that might persuade me of your position, I see no point in continuing the discussion.
What is uninformative about that?