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Blaming the boogy man of White Nationalists, Russia, or outside outside agitators is a way to shift blame by politicians and an easy scapegoat. Amusingly the g

• jevgeni 6y ago
  But the article itself is factual.
  • chrisco255 6y ago
    Yeah all those white supremacists in Portland. Definitely not Antifa: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Z6Jvy1Rf0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Z6Jvy1Rf0
    • sdkjfhskjfh 6y ago
      Looks like rioters to me. There's certainly not enough evidence in that video to prove any sort of group/political affiliation.
      • llcoolv 6y ago
        Are you blind?
        • sdkjfhskjfh 6y ago
          Maybe. Why don't you point out exactly what it is in that video that makes you confident enough to label them as "Antifa." I don't see anything that leads me to believe they're anything more than dumb teenagers in the middle of a riot.
          • gremlinsinc 6y ago
            Exactly. 200 million people don't vote. Many kids that age could care less what an 'antifa' or #MAGA is... they just want to destroy something or act out, and this is their chance to 'maybe' get away with it.
          • leereeves 6y ago
            Perhaps the other comments are referring to the anarchist symbol that appears a couple of times. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=anarchist+symbol&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=anarchist+symbol&iax=images...
            • sdkjfhskjfh 6y ago
              The anarchist symbol has been used by tons of groups, both left and right, throughout history. You can find it almost anywhere that has a substantial amount of graffiti and I'd bet more often than not it's just done by kids/teens that have no significant group or political affiliation. The video doesn't even show who sprayed it and basically everyone looks like your average teen. Labelling this as "Antifa" because someone spray painted an anarchist symbol and someone has green hair is a bit of a stretch.
              • leereeves 6y ago
                What group, other than anarchists, uses that symbol in 2020? It probably was sprayed by teenagers, but by spraying it, they're indicating their political affiliation.
            • mercer 6y ago
              In addition to what sdkjfhskjfh says, Antifa is not exclusively (or even primarily) anarchists. I've met quite a number of people who participate in Antifa counter-protests who are not anarchists at all.
              • soylentcola 6y ago
                It's like "libertarian" or "feminist". It's a label you can use to describe a stance or general association with an idea, but not much more. Being "anti-fascist" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but using the "antifa" label makes it sound scary or organized. It reminds me of media outlets talking about message board trolls and disruptors as "the shadowy group known as Anonymous".
    • junke 6y ago
      Whataboutism
    • stonogo 6y ago
      There are in fact a disproportionate number of white supremacists in Portland; Oregon itself was founded as a whites-only state, and it was illegal for black people to live there until 1926. The state's constitution on admission to the Union carried a black-exclusion clause. Portland itself outlawed black residents in the 1840s and that law stood for many decades. It's only very recently that Portland has developed the reputation for having a liberal populace; as recently as the 1990s it was essentially the white supremacy capital of the west coast.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• kevingadd 6y ago
  Something else I think you're indirectly hinting at is that revelations like the one in the original post - White Nationalists posing as Antifa - can be bent by bad actors as an excuse to claim that all anti-fascists are white nationalists, instead of being correctly observed as fascists trying to undermine anti-fascism. In effect, even after being exposed Evropa was successful.
• jim-jim-jim 6y ago
  If you're a spineless liberal governor/mayor who ultimately supports the cops, but you need to save face, then the outside agitators/white anarchists/Russia narrative is a godsend.
  • kevingadd 6y ago
    It's also a popular way to claim that your locality has no issues - nobody would be protesting or rioting if not for Those Agitators, nobody is actually upset, etc. "A riot is the language of the unheard".
• exclusiv 6y ago
  So true. It's just an attempt to control the storyline. PR 101. And when their political opposition has a peaceful protest or gathering with a few rogue individuals (or actual fraudulent hired "actors" in some cases) then they label the entire group bad. Now, I don't think the bulk of the looters are bad people. But to change the narrative to be anything other than a REALLY TERRIBLE PR move by young people being opportunistic is absurd. For the truck driver who was beaten, the MSM were calling the violent protestors brave. It comes down to this - are you helping the cause or hurting the cause? Only delusional, heavily-biased people / social justice warriors think looting is helping the cause and they're making every excuse under the sun. To think that humans, by and large, will look past it (for right or wrong) is out of touch with reality. And if you criticize the means in any way, you get attacked even if you support the same change. In my opinion, to suggest that young black people are so pliable and incapable of thinking that some posts by a rogue group would turn them into robotic looters is racist in itself. Young people semi organized and did some dumb stuff and justified it because of rightful injustice. Are they bad? No. Was it wise? Of course not. That's what happened. Outside of that - I've been involved in a coroner's inquest before as my jury duty and it was very interesting. You basically are tasked with deciding whether a death was homicide, suicide or natural causes. I've heard about these civilian oversight boards as the answer but they have challenges with "local political manipulation" and require "steep budgets for investigators" [1] So from my coroner's inquest experience, I was thinking - you already have civilians. It's efficient. If an officer is involved and the coroner's inquest participants rule it to be a homicide - boom, you could mandate an automatic trial! This seems like it would be easier to roll out, more efficient, and provide pure accountability to any officer involved shooting. They'd know they would be legally required to go to trial if the coroner's inquest ruled a homicide. Certainly, some evidence could still be tampered with by the powers that be, but that would elude the civilian oversight boards too in those cases. And with body cams, social media and business and civilian cameras, it's gotten much harder for them to hide evidence. So if you have an easy path to a trial originating from jury peers after coroner input, then you have a ton more accountability. [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/is-civilian-oversight-the-answer-to-distrust-of-police/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/is-civilian-overs...
  • WalterBright 6y ago
• blake1 6y ago
  Unfortunately, you seem to be right. The Governor of Minnesota admitted precisely that, stating simply that he didn’t want to believe that his own people could act that way. Scapegoating allows politicians to avoid angering their own constituents, and it also makes it rhetorically easier for politicians to avoid taking the demands seriously. And a significant fraction (1/6 to 1/3) of arrests have been from out of state. So, the original claims had an element of truth. But I disagree with you that it’s just “BS”, which would imply a level of cynicism which may exists, but for which you provided no evidence.
  • threatofrain 6y ago
    I wonder what's the mechanism of coordination among various parties for them to converge at the right time and place for a protest?
    • pjc50 6y ago
      Whatever means of mass communication is at hand? Facebook? Twitter? Whatsapp? I remember during the 2010 London riots it was alleged that the organisation was happening over Blackberry Messenger, and the government was outraged that RIM refused to turn over decrypted messages to them.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        And a few months later they did research on it and it turned out to be driven mostly by television coverage.
    • chongli 6y ago
      Riots are a classic coordination problem [1]. Peaceful protests, of course, can use official means of communication. The hard part is how to coordinate violence and looting, which would otherwise preempted by law enforcement. The linked essay is a fascinating read on the topic. [1] https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-disorder.html https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-disor...
• sparkling 6y ago
  Those "white nationalist" sure have quite a dark skin complexion on the looting videos i am seeing.
  • thrwaway69 6y ago
    Just so you know, these were the people in pol meet-up. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpx9rbHM5BuK9ZV5sMDZEtVkL57IODRh8j-VMhU5Y2-ts7TG-oORCk27mKQw&s=10 https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpx9rb... https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7DOx52BQZ8P3eCbwBIcn28qE38USpb3VM7p7Ziy7ENCke-vEPqvfHBXLUpw&s=10 https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7DOx5...
    • z9e 6y ago
      So you’re posting a pic of 4chan trolls from the He Will Not Divide US stint in 2016 to refute a statement that the looters this past week comprising of African Americans are not white supremacists?
      • thrwaway69 6y ago
        I think you are misunderstanding. I am saying white supremacists can be other than white so judging based on the skin complexion of the person seems a bit silly like op did.
• hkai 6y ago
  Would you also say that rioters can be blamed for some of the damage, or only politicians? I'm pretty sure I've seen videos of people looting stores and beating up others. I hated that tactic in my own country, where some of my fellow rioters last year blamed covert police agents for the damage and provoking violence, and I hope you hate that tactic from your own side as well.
  • happytoexplain 6y ago
    By calling it a tactic, you make it sound like it's a lie. But these things are in fact happening. There certainly is a lot of noise - false positives, false negatives - but false flagging is occurring.
    • hutzlibu 6y ago
      It is a lie, to be involved and advocate violence on demonstrations - but later to claim any actual violence was done by provocateurs. And it also is a tactic, even though mostly not a conscious one. At least, this is my experience with large parts of the german (radical) left movement. It is allmost surreal, when you follow the left wing online news ticker about the demonstration and everything that happens. Police and fascist violence there and there and again there! And when you also follow neutral mediums or the other side, or are even there to see for yourself. Because then you can see quite some leftist/antifa violence or threats of violence, as well. The agressors are allwas the others, the police and fascists, never they themself. And sure, police and fascists do use aggressive violence. And in numbers probably a lot more. But not only them. So it is a tactic. It is propaganda. I have seen all three sides (antifa, police and fascist) use it. And was quite some of that violence in fact done by covert police? Possible. But usually with the applause of the crowd. (And the german right-wing movement is of course even worse at being hypocrites, because no one there is officially a rassist or a nazi and they get angry, if you point out rassist or nazi-ideologie arguments they made)
• heresie-dabord 6y ago
  As an observer of the chaotic US experiment with a brazenly mendacious, profoundly corrupt and childishly inept president, and the far-too-intimate relationship between government and profiteers, I contemplate a few things: =] democratic society needs education and honest public discourse (maybe a cultural sense of shame would help) =] social memia is incapable of serving the public interest; in the end, USians have only themselves to blame if their democracy achieves total collapse The DJT experiment didn't bring this woe onto the country. He is a little vermin feasting on much deeper rot.
• throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  way to do PR for Nazis...
• treden 6y ago
  I live in Minneapolis less than a mile from the fifth precinct. There are in fact metric F-Tons of out of state cars in the neighborhood since late last week. Tons of violence tourists driving around gawking, and several cars with NO plates trawling around to boot. The thugaroos we've seen "patrolling", and who neighbors have had "friendly" chats with have been rural white guys feigning concern (White-knighting, one might even say) that we dont have enough guns to protect ourselves. The burning has been targeted at certain businesses that nobody local has beef with (Ie the post office- that racist institution, the gas station that everyone buys their gas from- even if you hate gas companies and hate standing in line, you recognize when you're hurting your neighbors). Sure, the police haven't arrested many of these out of staters, non-community members, but they are most certainly here. They had to walk back their comments because they can't just say "but we're there in the community and we see it".
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• null4bl3 6y ago
  This particular case becomes very interesting since it made its viral round in conservative circles on social networks. People waking up their kids in the middle of the night to get them ready, while loading guns because of the manipulation of this Twitter account. That then ended up posing a real threat since a lot of conservative people was up in arms with loaded guns, and any sort of innocent scenario could have had a deadly outcome
• epakai 6y ago
  The problem is antifa has become the new boogy man for the GOP, and they've been pushing this narrative extremely hard. It's apparent they've identified their enemy, but this approach has me worried that "First they came for the antifa..." might not be far off. I see a lot of mischaracterization of what is a category, not a group. From what I can tell antifa is anti-fascism, and somewhat characterized by people willing to take direct action.
  • at_a_remove 6y ago
    Some of their direct action includes running up behind people and striking them with a bike lock across the back of their head for the crime of voting the "wrong" way.
    • kevingadd 6y ago
      Citation needed
      • drak0n1c 6y ago
        I believe the parent comment is referencing the 2017 Berkeley incident where a professor ambushed multiple conservative and libertarian protesters from behind, hitting them in the back of the head with a bike lock. https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/08/eric-clanton-takes-3-year-probation-deal-in-berkeley-rally-bike-lock-assault-case https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/08/eric-clanton-takes-3...
        • fiblye 6y ago
          3 years probation for whacking 7 people in the head--something that could very easily result in death. A person his age knew this without a doubt. How he didn't get 7 counts of attempted murder is beyond me.
          • at_a_remove 6y ago
            Presumably, as a professor of ethics are Berkeley, he was hitting people in the head with a bike lock in an ethical manner.