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Have you ever spent time on the leftist "tankie" / "Chapo trap house" kind of subreddits? Or the Gen Zedong groups that glorify the purge of landlords during th
by BitwiseFool 6y ago
Have you ever spent time on the leftist "tankie" / "Chapo trap house" kind of subreddits? Or the Gen Zedong groups that glorify the purge of landlords during the communist revolution in China? If we are really going to go after such people wanting to violently overthrow the government we can't be ignoring the left when they do it.
- eertami 6y agoWhat an absurd turn of whataboutery. There's no way any logical person believes this is relevant. I can only assume you're being intellectually dishonest by making such an argument.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoCall it whataboutism if you wish, but it's relevant to the discussion when it comes to evenly applying the rules.
- eertami 6y agoIt unequivocally is in no way relevant. Sure, if these people you mention had invaded the white house with weapons and make-shift bombs then it would be a fair comparison. However that didn't happen, it is a completely false equivalence. I simply don’t know what to say to you except to please re-examine your humanity as well as your critical thinking skills.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago>"I simply don’t know what to say to you except to please re-examine your humanity as well as your critical thinking skills. " If you're worried about logical fallacies like Whataboutism, you've just committed an Ad Hominem. Why go there? Why question my humanity?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nucleardog 6y agoAs soon as those people take action and start murdering all the landlords, absolutely. Speech is speech, when that speech begets action then we have a problem.
- coldtea 6y agoSo like several months of looting and burning in various cities like Portland?
- onethought 6y agoYes. People who break the law should be prosecuted, else you weaken the law. But, burning and looting is in a different category to the Capitol stuff, I think.
- coldtea 6y agoIs it? To me it's the same kind or even more symbolic - it just annoys people that it was the "wrong" thinking masses to do it. If it was done for some other cause, there would be no end of celebratory articles on the same outlets that now condemn it...
- onethought 6y agoGiven the seditious aspect to it off directly attacking a body of government. It seems different under US law compared with arson/vandalism that has most characterised the protests around US cities. I think it would be condemned equally no matter who tried it. It’s the beginning of an end game scenario of democracy... so it makes sense it is viewed so harshly
- scythe 6y agoIt is wrong to say that there was "burning" for "several months", unless you're referring to the forest fires. A few buildings were burned down in isolated incidents during several months of protests across multiple cities. Looting is not well-documented but my friends in Portland didn't seem very concerned. The vast majority of participants in the protests following the Floyd murder did not take part in any violence. It is all but certain that the fraction who did is much smaller than the fraction of 1/6/21 protestors who illegally entered the Capitol. Comparing the one to the other is not justified.
- aaronbrethorst 6y agoChapo hipsters buy fixies, not AR-15s. You're not going to kidnap the Speaker of the House, or murder a Senator with a gearless bicycle.
- zdragnar 6y agoUntil they throw moltov cocktails and explosives, or set buildings on fire, or permanently blind you with a high powered laser. Use of violent tactics is not particlarly novel on either side
- cygx 6y agoBut note that as far as the US is concerned, in the past couple of decades, right wing extremists have killed a significantly greater number of people than left-wing extremists (eg. the CSIS credits them with 90% of all extremist killings in the timeframe 2018/19). They also lead by number of plots - though by body count, Islamist terror still takes the lead for the obvious reasons.
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago"I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years" said (now-former) acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf in DHS's most recent domestic threat assessment. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/homeland-security-white-supremacists-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/homeland-secu...
- timwaagh 6y agoNot in the USA they don't. But in Venezuela it's a different story.
- aaronbrethorst 6y agoI don't think there's a large audience for Brooklyn hipster leftist podcasts in Caracas.
- MrZongle2 6y agoExactly. There are dangerous extremists on both ends of the spectrum, but God forbid you want to assess the entire landscape in some forums. You're just mocked for being some kind of centrist, as if not being a slobbering partisan is a character flaw.
- jasonlotito 6y agoOnly one party made their extremist the leader of their party.
- andybak 6y agoI'm a centrist by instinct and by UK standards. Unfortunately that would probably put me in the "radical leftist" bracket according to current US discourse.
- beaconstudios 6y agoif a centrist in the UK would be halfway between current Labour and Conservative policies, that would probably make you close to a mainstream Democrat. Labour is left of the Democrats and the Conservatives are right of them (primarily economically), but neither by a huge margin.
- nicky0 6y agoI agree with you. I would go so far as to say that the Conservatives are to the left of the Democrats, even economically. Look at the extent of public borrowing funding all the furlough schemes etc. Not to mention both Labour and Tories are fully behind free public healthcare, which Democrats are having to be dragged kicking and screaming towards. Although that is rather a special case. Come to think of it I can't think of any policies on which the (mainstream) Democrats are to the left of the Conservatives, but maybe I'm not thinking hard enough.
- beaconstudios 6y agoThat's a good point, especially since Thatcher the conservatives haven't even been all that economically right wing. They do have a tendency to cut public sector spending, with austerity and such policies, but the UK starting point for the welfare state is much more than the US.
- jahnu 6y agoHow many people are in positions of power that represent these leftist groups? I don't think it's in any way comparable to the fact that the far right literally have the US president on their side along with a sizable portion of the GOP. Tankie leftists that support violence have the political weight as furry enthusiasts afaik.
- jasonlotito 6y agoWe aren't. But one is the POTUS and is the leader of one of the two major parties in the US. So, let's calm down on the both sides arguments.
- thatguy0900 6y agoNoone cares anymore about the left rioting
- klyrs 6y agoThat's because they're laughably ineffective and tend to shit their own kitchens. It's also last year's news, a whataboutism to deflect from the actual insurrection that occurred this week.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago"Shitting in their own kitchen" got many/most major cities to examine how they allocate police and social service resources just like the protesters wanted.
- beerandt 6y agoNegotiate with terrorists, expect more terrorism.
- lamontcg 6y agoThe left wasn't being actively encouraged and incited by the sitting President.
- ufmace 6y agoNot by the sitting President, but by every single mainstream media organization and a pretty solid fraction of sitting Democrat Congresspeople and Senators, who spent months excusing and denying violent riots as they raged for months.
- jansan 6y agoHere are two examples. Chris Cuomo on CNN "And please, show me where it says that protests have to be polite, or peaceful" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter "The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable."