Maybe it’s just me, but I think that protesting for equal rights (as are guaranteed under the law, but often not practiced) is not quite in the same league as trying to overthrow the Government of the United States.
Black people being pissed off because they are killed and generally brutalized by police is apparently “the left”. Or possibly it’s because the only white people who sympathize are lefties. But totally not comprable to the so-called president stirring up the easily fooled to attack the Capitol and a democratic process.
Not even close. Oh and by the way, Democrats in charge urged those involved in violence to stop. Trump? Not.
What specific acts of left wing violence are you referring to? Just curious.
Not just “not in the same league” but not even playing the same game. The people who stormed the Capitol Building in the name of White Entitlement want all the rights, or barring that, want to make sure that nobody else has any rights.
It is telling that at least a few prominent Republicans like Mitch McConnell agreed that Trump spurred on the insurrection but voted to acquit on the “technicality” that a former elected official cannot be impeached (a legal opinion with no basis in fact), and of course McConnell could have initiated a Senate trial well before the January 20 inauguration but chose not to do so under the risible justification that there was insufficient time to conduct a trial, as if a) there was really any question about Trump’s culpability, b) there was some need this time around to present witnesses and evidence when none was permitted in the previous trial, and c) anything beyond a reading of the single impeachment charge and a straightforward vote of a quorum of attending senators was required. And of course, the Louisiana GOP has already voted to censure Bill Cassidy for not conforming to the party dicta because like all authoritarians they have no patience for independent belief or thought.
Calling them “lying hypocritical insurrection supporting obstructionist shit weasels,” is far too kind.
Stranger
Why? What does passing laws by Congressional majority vote that have the support of large majorities of the electorate have to do with Nazism?
Do we really believe that left wing ‘antifa’ violence is either Democrat led or Democrat deniability?
Violence either side is not acceptable, sure there are lots of justifications - the antifa style events are largely a response to right wing impositions, it may well even be that had the GOP not gerrymandered so much and had not exempted egrgious racist behaviour by law enforcement that not only would there have been no reaction - but it might have even led to less insterest in voter registration by Democrat voting discontents and a far closer Presidential election.
The Capitoll Hill event was way more than a riot, it was so much more, it was a naked attempt to seize political power and end US democracy.
I do not excuse violent protests, but surely its obvious that one thing is nothing like the other - sorry but whataboutism does not work in this comparison.
As a matter of symbolism the attack on the Capitol is pretty serious. In terms of damage to life and property the riots of the summer were objectively worse.
With regards to the danger to the democratic process the riots were worse because the political will to appropriately apprehend and prosecute the criminals is entirely lacking. At least the fools who bum rushed Congress are being arrested and charged. We didn’t have a 100 nights of mayhem and anarchy in D.C. before the FBI got involved.
No, you pretend that there were two sides engaged in it. That’s the part that’s imaginary.
There was a violent mob that attacked the capital in an attempt to overturn the election and seize power of (and at the direction of) Donald Trump. That was political violence.
There were also protests (mostly peaceful except for the violence directed towards them) against police officers killing people without justification. That is not political violence. It’s not even a political cause unless you want to go on record saying that there’s one party that’s against police officers killing people without justification and one party that’s in favor of police officers killing people without justification. And you might want to check with headquarters before doing that.
100s of millions of dollars of burned and looted businesses, dozens of assaults on innocent people (including fatalities) during the riots and subsequent occupations, encouragement by national, local, and state dem politicians say otherwise.
I can’t believe the ‘mostly peaceful’ euphemism is being used non-ironically.
Name some.
@octopus I’m confused. See, the people who stormed the capitol wanted violence. That was their basis of their little movement.
Now BLM was certainly not based on violence, but awareness. If some people at marches looted and burned stores, they weren’t representing their movement at all. Especially if they were violent towards others.
See the difference?
I disagree. There was huge faction of those who were protesting who wanted violence, free stuff, and anarchy. What’s the point of denying what millions of people saw? Over a hundred million dollars of damage and multiple fatalities is not some fantasy. Riot denialism is quite bizarre and I’d be surprised if I hadn’t participated in multiple debates in multiple sub forums on this site where analogous behavior occurs regularly.
Look, it’s easy for an objective person to point at the Capitol riot as an act of political violence. An objective person can condemn that as being unacceptable in a functional democracy. Yet, the left constantly gaslights with regards to the ‘summer of love’ and ‘peaceful protests’ because they know that a realistic assessment of the events of the summer undermines their so-called moral outrage.
It’s just incredibly disingenuous to equate the violence over the summer, which was regrettable — with the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
For the most part, the participants in the racial justice protests were not Joe Biden supporters. I’m willing to bet that a whole lot of them didn’t vote for Biden, and if they did it was a hate vote against Trump.
Neither Joe Biden or Kamala Harris spoke aggressively at a racial justice protest that turned violent, nor did they signal that they encouraged such violence. If they had, I do not think they’d be fit to hold high office.
Kamala Harris tweeted a link to a bail fund for protesters. This does not mean she condoned their actions or supported their behavior. People on bail still face justice and are held accountable for their misdeeds. Holding people that can’t make bail can constitute a disproportionate extralegal punishment…it can cause people to lose their job, then maybe lose their home and and car because of lost income. She tried to help them make bail because she is a kind and compassionate person that doesn’t revel in cruelty…ie: A Democrat.
The January 6th attack on Congress was a crime in a class by itself, an attempt to subvert the single most critical process in a Democracy, executing the results of a fair election. An election that in this case wasn’t even particularly close.
It was not just an assault on the Capitol building, on cops and congressmen and staffers. It was an assault on 81 million Americans, the culmination of a months long campaign to disenfranchise the overwhelming majority of voters who chose Joe Biden, and deprive them of one of their most basic civil rights.
There is absolutely no comparison.
Citations needed.
The closest equivalent to “Reich” in English is “realm”. It doesn’t mean empire, or kingdom, or nazi country. For example, the German name for Austria is “Österreich”, meaning “Eastern Realm”, as opposed to the western realms of Charlemagne’s successors in what is now western Germany and the Franks in the country still known as Frankreich.
The fact that Goebbels seized on it for propaganda purposes should not mean that it is forever tainted.
And the fact that someone is named Reich should not be held against them, in my opinion. Particularly since nothing that he is setting out in that post is undemocratic. Rather, he is advocating for strict majority rule, 50% + 1.
And as an adjective it just means rich as opposed to poor.
Robert Reich is Jewish, so the inference is particularly obnoxious IMO.
I just watched a video of Chris Wallace interviewing Lindsey Graham this morning. As evidenced in this thread, Man, those right wing talking points get pushed and pushed hard. And they’re shared! I thought right wingers didn’t like socialism?
I applaud your optimism even though I find it unlikely that you will get satisfaction from that source.
While we’re waiting, let’s look at some other citations:
PolitiFact: “No proof that Black Lives Matter killed 36 people, injured 1,000 police officers”
The Washington Post: " The false comparison between last summer’s protests and what happened at the Capitol"
Lawfare Institute: " The Flood of Online Misinformation Around the George Floyd Protests"
PolitiFact: “Quotes show Democrats supported riots “when BLM was BURNING down cities and killing people in the streets!””: MOSTLY FALSE (context)
The Washington Post: " We looked for antifa at the Capitol — we couldn’t find any"
It is true that costs of damage and looting during the protests were in the “100s of millions of dollars” (Axios: " Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history") but putting this into the context of a over century and a half of economic repression, pervasive denial of vocational and educational opportunities, the practice of “redlining”, and outright wage slavery in the form of the institution of peonage and the “Black Codes”, not to mention outright lynching and attacks like the terroristic bombing of “Black Wall Street” in the Tulsa Massacre, to the tune of real and opportunity cost losses that even conservatively are estimated in the trillions of dollars just over the last couple of decades (Citi Global Perspectives and Solutions: " Closing The Racial Inequality Gaps: The Economic Cost of Black Inequality in the U.S."), and damages from the protests is both a drop in the bucket of overall destruction of potential wealth and an inevitable consequence of failing to address systemic, institutional racism and inequality.
Despite all of that, according to the The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project:
In more than 93% of all demonstrations connected to the movement, demonstrators have not engaged in violence or destructive activity. Peaceful protests are reported in over 2,400 distinct locations around the country. Violent demonstrations,
4 meanwhile, have been limited to fewer than 220 locations — under 10% of the areas that experienced peaceful protests.
It is true that some civil institutions–specifically, police stations–were vandalized and in a few cases burned as an act of protest against the unequal and prejudicial treatment by police, examples of which were on display as police fired tear gas, pepper balls, and flash bangs against both peaceful protesters and journalists covering the events. (There are so many examples of this captured on video that I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to perform a cursory search.) Of course, it wasn’t just people affiliated with the protests doing so: CNN: “Suspected Boogaloo Bois member arrested and charged with rioting”.
In no case that I can find did any BLM member or affiliated person advocate for the violent overthrow of a legal election or removal of a sitting governor by threat or use of force; the same cannot be said for Trump supporters, white nationalists, and pandemic deniers who stormed the Capitol Building searching for legislators to capture, or “militia members” who surrounded the Michigan state capitol in an effort to threaten Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
I look forward to hearing more about how “both sides” are engaged in the same conduct, or how it is somehow “gaslighting” to point out both the differences in intent and outcome.
Stranger
No, Democratic/liberal leaders weren’t calling for or excusing violence in BLM protests. This is just desperate bothsidesing on your part to try to distract attention from the violence and criminality that the right is deliberately stoking.