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IMHO while both political parties are deeply flawed and both corrupted by the power of big money in our system, this whole “partisan divide” thing that makes it

IMHO while both political parties are deeply flawed and both corrupted by the power of big money in our system, this whole “partisan divide” thing that makes it sound like there’s no difference between the parties is silly, and inaccurate. The Democratic Party and the left has its problems. But “left wing extremism” isn’t on the top of the FBIs of list domestic terrorism threats. Of course ideally we all should be working together. But just like saying “all lives matter”, “working together” is often a way of denying historical truth and the flaws and struggles of our nation. Hacker News is supposed to be fact-based, right? IMHO folks should go do some googling about what political scientists - experts who work with reason, facts, are deep subject-matter experts and rational debate - have to say about the current functioning of the US political system. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/10/13/16431502/america-democracy-decline-liberalism https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/1... They talk about tribalism but it’s nuanced. And it’s not a simple “both sides need to listen and work together.” Sorry for the rant.

NoOneNew 6y ago
I do agree about the tribalism issue and the fact if both sides would stfu, they'd realize how similar they are instead of desiring to split hairs. But yes, there have been plenty of left wing terrorists. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez I think is the most famous one (Carlos the Jackal). Plenty of other ones, but he'd be the... Timothy McVeigh mixed with Bin Laden of left wing terrorism. That and citing Vox is like citing Fox News. No. They're different sides of the same coin. That and political science isn't a real science. Even the stuff I might agree with, it's all so warped in bias, I want to vomit.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Vox and Fox are not alike. Fox News is notorious. Simply look at the racist or race-baiting things Tucker Carlson says - or what he doesn’t say. There’s no equivalent behavior at Vox of which I’m aware. Fox News is literally a right wing propaganda machine. Vox may have a bias and you may disagree with it but it’s not regularly engaging in fear-mongering, untethered from any sense of journalistic ethics or responsibility. Folks may not like hearing this but we all know this is true. Plus the particular article I linked to has interviews with reputable folks (Harvard profs, etc) so if nothing else it’s a source of reasoned opinion. Lastly, political science is obviously not a hard science but it’s filled with people who have spent their careers reading about history and politics and studying it so, there might be some signal in that noise there :).
zaroth 6y ago
> But “left wing extremism” isn’t on the top of the FBIs of list domestic terrorism threats. Extremism (on either side) is absolutely on the top of the FBI's list of domestic terrorism threats. This was from a hearing on August 4th; https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/us-attorney-erin-nealy-cox-testifies-senate-judiciary-subcommittee-constitution https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/us-attorney-erin-nealy-... Watching what's been happening in Portland every night for ~90 days now, or even what's just happened in Kenosha, I would be surprised if it wasn't the top of the FBI's list.
- adamsea 6y ago
  I agree. The FBI should be investigating those masked men in camouflage without any insignia or identification and with guns and rifles who were attacking protestors and hauling people off in unmarked vans in Portland. ;)
- adamsea 6y ago
  All we need to do is look at the numbers of deaths which occurred in the incidents we are talking about. “In the deadliest attack on Latinos in American history, a 21-year-old white supremacist last August killed 22 people and injured 24 others at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. In April, another white extremist went on a shooting rampage at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one worshipper and injuring three others.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.voanews.com/usa/2019-deadliest-year-domestic-terrorism-says-fbi-director%3Famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.voanews.com/usa/2019-deadli... And so on. Dylan Roof in 2015 murdering nine people who were at church, because they were black. The right-wing crazy guy who murdered Heather Hayer by driving into a crowd at a protest against neo-nazis in Charlottesville in 2017 And so on. To compare terrible attacks like that to the riots (separate from the peaceful protests) which have occurred, and destroyed property, but not killed people, is ludicrous. And let’s not forget that people didn’t go into the streets for the fun of it - no one was doing anything until the police killed a man in cold blood, because he was black, exemplifying the racist violence (and domestic terrorism - look at the 1921 Tulsa race massacre - a mob killed at least 36, sent at least 800 to the hospital, and burnt a part of the city to the ground, leaving ten thousand black people homeless - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre) which black folks have sadly faced for a long, long time now. And which people are sick and tired of tolerating. Certainly any ideology can produce violent extremists. But conservatism and the right in the US currently has a white-supremacist/far-right extremist problem which the left does not have right now. Currently, its the far right and white supremacist ideologies which are producing domestic terrorists that attempt (or sadly, succeed) to kill people. Currently, there’s not a US equivalent of the Baader-Meinhoff gang (german left wing domestic terrorists from the 60s/70s) of which I’m aware. So I hope the FBI is spending the bulk of their domestic terrorism resources combating the groups which at this time pose the greatest threat to the lives of American citizens.

NoOneNew 6y ago

I do agree about the tribalism issue and the fact if both sides would stfu, they'd realize how similar they are instead of desiring to split hairs. But yes, there have been plenty of left wing terrorists. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez I think is the most famous one (Carlos the Jackal). Plenty of other ones, but he'd be the... Timothy McVeigh mixed with Bin Laden of left wing terrorism. That and citing Vox is like citing Fox News. No. They're different sides of the same coin. That and political science isn't a real science. Even the stuff I might agree with, it's all so warped in bias, I want to vomit.

adamsea 6y ago
Vox and Fox are not alike. Fox News is notorious. Simply look at the racist or race-baiting things Tucker Carlson says - or what he doesn’t say. There’s no equivalent behavior at Vox of which I’m aware. Fox News is literally a right wing propaganda machine. Vox may have a bias and you may disagree with it but it’s not regularly engaging in fear-mongering, untethered from any sense of journalistic ethics or responsibility. Folks may not like hearing this but we all know this is true. Plus the particular article I linked to has interviews with reputable folks (Harvard profs, etc) so if nothing else it’s a source of reasoned opinion. Lastly, political science is obviously not a hard science but it’s filled with people who have spent their careers reading about history and politics and studying it so, there might be some signal in that noise there :).

zaroth 6y ago

> But “left wing extremism” isn’t on the top of the FBIs of list domestic terrorism threats. Extremism (on either side) is absolutely on the top of the FBI's list of domestic terrorism threats. This was from a hearing on August 4th; https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/us-attorney-erin-nealy-cox-testifies-senate-judiciary-subcommittee-constitution https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/us-attorney-erin-nealy-... Watching what's been happening in Portland every night for ~90 days now, or even what's just happened in Kenosha, I would be surprised if it wasn't the top of the FBI's list.

adamsea 6y ago
I agree. The FBI should be investigating those masked men in camouflage without any insignia or identification and with guns and rifles who were attacking protestors and hauling people off in unmarked vans in Portland. ;)
adamsea 6y ago
All we need to do is look at the numbers of deaths which occurred in the incidents we are talking about. “In the deadliest attack on Latinos in American history, a 21-year-old white supremacist last August killed 22 people and injured 24 others at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. In April, another white extremist went on a shooting rampage at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one worshipper and injuring three others.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.voanews.com/usa/2019-deadliest-year-domestic-terrorism-says-fbi-director%3Famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.voanews.com/usa/2019-deadli... And so on. Dylan Roof in 2015 murdering nine people who were at church, because they were black. The right-wing crazy guy who murdered Heather Hayer by driving into a crowd at a protest against neo-nazis in Charlottesville in 2017 And so on. To compare terrible attacks like that to the riots (separate from the peaceful protests) which have occurred, and destroyed property, but not killed people, is ludicrous. And let’s not forget that people didn’t go into the streets for the fun of it - no one was doing anything until the police killed a man in cold blood, because he was black, exemplifying the racist violence (and domestic terrorism - look at the 1921 Tulsa race massacre - a mob killed at least 36, sent at least 800 to the hospital, and burnt a part of the city to the ground, leaving ten thousand black people homeless - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre) which black folks have sadly faced for a long, long time now. And which people are sick and tired of tolerating. Certainly any ideology can produce violent extremists. But conservatism and the right in the US currently has a white-supremacist/far-right extremist problem which the left does not have right now. Currently, its the far right and white supremacist ideologies which are producing domestic terrorists that attempt (or sadly, succeed) to kill people. Currently, there’s not a US equivalent of the Baader-Meinhoff gang (german left wing domestic terrorists from the 60s/70s) of which I’m aware. So I hope the FBI is spending the bulk of their domestic terrorism resources combating the groups which at this time pose the greatest threat to the lives of American citizens.