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The president didn't post a video making cupcakes. He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. Anyone else making

The president didn't post a video making cupcakes. He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged but not the president. Zuckerberg is not the kid in the social network movie who's "not an asshole, you're just trying really hard to be one." No one has ever said a single good thing about him, or his partner Sandberg, in a long time. By all measures they seem to be selfish people who have nothing else in their minds other than keeping and growing the power they have now. The only other thing they are now famous for is how they manipulate good founders of great products with false promises and then kick them out to consolidate even more power. At least that's all you can tell from what little we know of these billionaire oligarchs lives. In the end, I'm going to hypothesize that America became a great country because for a while some of its leaders and rich people at least tried to do _some_ good things to its people and try to be the better person now and then. Given the degree to which every single rich person and politician in power seems self-obsessed if not overtly corrupt, it doesn't bode too well for the life of the common man in America or anywhere else for the matter. I'm not particularly worried about WW3 though, because I don't see any good country left behind to fight every totalitarian nation that's getting created now.

champagneben 6y ago
>He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. I thought the consensus was that the looters were mostly young out-of-states whites? And to insinuate that the President had read some 1940s Florida mayor's (sorry, I can't remember who the saying is originally attributed to) speeches and knew the connotations of that phrase is ridiculous.
- nfin 6y ago
  if he doesn’t know the connotations of the words he employs, he should finally learn that the white house would be happy to proof read his tweets (or any person he would like to choose) in case he makes a mistake. This is easy and standard procedure for talks, ... of big company leaders, politicians, ...
- alwayseasy 6y ago
  "When the looting starts, the shooting starts" is a phrase by Walter E. Headley, the police chief of Miami, Florida, who said it in response to an outbreak of violent crime during the 1967 Christmas holiday season. Donald Trump was already an adult in 1967 and even if he didn't know this was a dog-whistle for white supremacists.... Facebook doesn't have to amplify destructive ideologies just because the ones who relay it are ignorant. Otherwise everyone would invoke that excuse.
  - hackissimo123 6y ago
    Oh, please. Walter Headley is so obscure he doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. The closest he's got is a page for the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts", which wasn't created until after Trump had made his Tweet. The idea that this is a well-known racist catchphrase which anybody had heard of a month ago is absurd, and you know it. (For the record, I despise Trump. All I ask is that we keep our criticism of him tethered to reality - it's not like we don't have enough non-fictional reasons to oppose him.)
    - alwayseasy 6y ago
      I would tend to agree but him retweeting a video of someone yelling "White power", clearly and distinctively multiple times does tend to lower the tolerance for any type of catchphrase that has a racist past.
  - z9e 6y ago
    How is this a dog whistle for white supremacists? When people loot, other people will shoot them to prevent their livelihood from being destroyed. It’s a good phrase to sum up that there is going to be a violent reaction to looting.
- hackissimo123 6y ago
  I'd add that if you think that "looters are going to get shot" is code for "black people are going to get shot", you're implying that only black people can be looters. Who's the racist?
vbezhenar 6y ago
> Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged Fix that problem then. Censorship on huge public platforms should not be allowed.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > Censorship on huge public platforms should not be allowed. Goatse for everyone!
golergka 6y ago
I may be a bit out of context of American politics, so an honest question here: how a threat to looters, who actively commit a crime, without any reference to skin color, can be racist? Seeing how violent these riots can get, that phrase is exactly what I would love to hear from authorities as black business owner, for example.
- nix0n 6y ago
  The references to skin color are usually implicit (especially after his presidential term started), but they are always there. I can understand how a non-American might miss Trump's racist phrases, but he's pandering to a white supremacist base who are sure to see them. I don't have a specific link to reference, but the tactic he's using is often referred to as a "dog whistle".
  - z9e 6y ago
    Do we have an estimate as to how many white supremacists there are in the US? I’m genuinely curious, because the popular march in VA had what, a few hundred? I realize that may not be the entire population. There’s probably more anti-vaxxers than white supremacists at this point. I don’t understand how people think there’s a white supremacist base that has a ton of power in this country.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      If there aren't very many white supremacists, where is all the racism coming from? > I don’t understand how people think there’s a white supremacist base that has a ton of power in this country. The police can shoot people dead, lie about the circumstances, and not even face trial or suspension? Have you missed all the protests and the wall to wall news coverage of the past few weeks?
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        I agree (being an amateur crowd counter) that there is a wide difference in the observed popular support for white supremacist and for anti-lynching demonstrations. (How well people in the streets translates into political representation, we'll discover at the end of this year. For a while after 2016 there was a cottage industry of german TV reporters going to the US to interview Trump voters, and finding they often had strong views on minorities despite not having known any themselves. That may or may not be true in general, but it's the picture we got here.) However, it does seem that even though the soviets haven't been with us for several decades, the subject of their favourite whataboutism fallacy didn't end when the cold war did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes "Police brutality" was common enough to be portrayed in 2004 childrens' pop culture (note the knee on the neck) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg3NFHv7ASo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg3NFHv7ASo
cryptica 6y ago
>> He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. He said "When the looting starts, the shooting starts". This is obviously not a serious, literal statement and it doesn't even say who would be doing the shooting - Merely that the situation could escalate into shooting. Also, I don't see any trace of racism in that sentence. If this statement leads to a reduction of actual on-the-ground violence, then this is a net positive and is why freedom of speech is important. Talking about violence is much better than actually carrying out violence. Trump is likely one of the least violent presidents when you actually count the injured and the dead. Yet he has repeatedly made all sorts of verbal threats in the past... None of which he actually implemented.

champagneben 6y ago

>He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. I thought the consensus was that the looters were mostly young out-of-states whites? And to insinuate that the President had read some 1940s Florida mayor's (sorry, I can't remember who the saying is originally attributed to) speeches and knew the connotations of that phrase is ridiculous.

nfin 6y ago
if he doesn’t know the connotations of the words he employs, he should finally learn that the white house would be happy to proof read his tweets (or any person he would like to choose) in case he makes a mistake. This is easy and standard procedure for talks, ... of big company leaders, politicians, ...
alwayseasy 6y ago
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts" is a phrase by Walter E. Headley, the police chief of Miami, Florida, who said it in response to an outbreak of violent crime during the 1967 Christmas holiday season. Donald Trump was already an adult in 1967 and even if he didn't know this was a dog-whistle for white supremacists.... Facebook doesn't have to amplify destructive ideologies just because the ones who relay it are ignorant. Otherwise everyone would invoke that excuse.
- hackissimo123 6y ago
  Oh, please. Walter Headley is so obscure he doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. The closest he's got is a page for the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts", which wasn't created until after Trump had made his Tweet. The idea that this is a well-known racist catchphrase which anybody had heard of a month ago is absurd, and you know it. (For the record, I despise Trump. All I ask is that we keep our criticism of him tethered to reality - it's not like we don't have enough non-fictional reasons to oppose him.)
  - alwayseasy 6y ago
    I would tend to agree but him retweeting a video of someone yelling "White power", clearly and distinctively multiple times does tend to lower the tolerance for any type of catchphrase that has a racist past.
- z9e 6y ago
  How is this a dog whistle for white supremacists? When people loot, other people will shoot them to prevent their livelihood from being destroyed. It’s a good phrase to sum up that there is going to be a violent reaction to looting.
hackissimo123 6y ago
I'd add that if you think that "looters are going to get shot" is code for "black people are going to get shot", you're implying that only black people can be looters. Who's the racist?

vbezhenar 6y ago

> Anyone else making this comment would have been flagged Fix that problem then. Censorship on huge public platforms should not be allowed.

pjc50 6y ago
> Censorship on huge public platforms should not be allowed. Goatse for everyone!

golergka 6y ago

I may be a bit out of context of American politics, so an honest question here: how a threat to looters, who actively commit a crime, without any reference to skin color, can be racist? Seeing how violent these riots can get, that phrase is exactly what I would love to hear from authorities as black business owner, for example.

nix0n 6y ago
The references to skin color are usually implicit (especially after his presidential term started), but they are always there. I can understand how a non-American might miss Trump's racist phrases, but he's pandering to a white supremacist base who are sure to see them. I don't have a specific link to reference, but the tactic he's using is often referred to as a "dog whistle".
- z9e 6y ago
  Do we have an estimate as to how many white supremacists there are in the US? I’m genuinely curious, because the popular march in VA had what, a few hundred? I realize that may not be the entire population. There’s probably more anti-vaxxers than white supremacists at this point. I don’t understand how people think there’s a white supremacist base that has a ton of power in this country.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    If there aren't very many white supremacists, where is all the racism coming from? > I don’t understand how people think there’s a white supremacist base that has a ton of power in this country. The police can shoot people dead, lie about the circumstances, and not even face trial or suspension? Have you missed all the protests and the wall to wall news coverage of the past few weeks?
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      I agree (being an amateur crowd counter) that there is a wide difference in the observed popular support for white supremacist and for anti-lynching demonstrations. (How well people in the streets translates into political representation, we'll discover at the end of this year. For a while after 2016 there was a cottage industry of german TV reporters going to the US to interview Trump voters, and finding they often had strong views on minorities despite not having known any themselves. That may or may not be true in general, but it's the picture we got here.) However, it does seem that even though the soviets haven't been with us for several decades, the subject of their favourite whataboutism fallacy didn't end when the cold war did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes "Police brutality" was common enough to be portrayed in 2004 childrens' pop culture (note the knee on the neck) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg3NFHv7ASo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg3NFHv7ASo

cryptica 6y ago

>> He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down. He said "When the looting starts, the shooting starts". This is obviously not a serious, literal statement and it doesn't even say who would be doing the shooting - Merely that the situation could escalate into shooting. Also, I don't see any trace of racism in that sentence. If this statement leads to a reduction of actual on-the-ground violence, then this is a net positive and is why freedom of speech is important. Talking about violence is much better than actually carrying out violence. Trump is likely one of the least violent presidents when you actually count the injured and the dead. Yet he has repeatedly made all sorts of verbal threats in the past... None of which he actually implemented.