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We already know from history what happens when large groups are disenfranchised from the public sphere. Violence. Lots of it. And once it starts, it's not easil

We already know from history what happens when large groups are disenfranchised from the public sphere. Violence. Lots of it. And once it starts, it's not easily stopped. Some welcome this because they think it can be managed for their own purposes. But once civil order breaks down, things simply accelerate with no possibility of talk being able to stop it anymore. It takes on a life of its own. Those who dream of the power they can seize once the violence starts are completely delusional. The winners and losers cannot be predicted ahead of time. There's no good path through it but this does appear to be the path that some have decided to force society down. Doubt most of them are even aware that this is what they're doing.

CyberDildonics 6y ago
Ironically this mildly marginalized group seems to be very unforgiving of other marginalized groups. When they have to put their most extreme words on alternative websites they blame that preemptively for extremist actions. When other groups have been marginalized systemically by public infrastructure, violence and a lopsided legal system, they advocate personal responsibility as a solution for systemic problems.
- sjg007 6y ago
  The downvotes your post is experiencing is disheartening. Either there’s a big proTrump component of HNs or there are disinformation bots.
  - dang 6y ago
    You broke more than one of the site guidelines with this. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. A corrective upvote would have sufficed. Notice that the comment you're talking about is no longer in a downvoted state.
gamblor956 6y ago
These groups became violent while still enfranchised. And they're still enfranchised: they can still vote, and still post to the internet, and still talk to people outside. They simply no longer get a free internet loud speaker to envangelize to others.
- zests 6y ago
  Everyone is enfranchised but some people are more enfranchised than others.
- aksss 6y ago
  We've spent a couple years now (right?) tacitly approving rioting as an acceptable response to feeling disenfranchised. Now we're surprised when the same medicine gets used by others. For either side, I'm not sure it's proper minimize their complaints. If the BLM crowd says they have a serious problem with police violence, the best reaction is, "what can we do to restore confidence?" Similarly, when 40% of the country says they have serious concerns about the integrity of voting in this country the proper response isn't "everything is okay", it's "what can we do to restore confidence?". The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society. Listen to those feeling alienated and see what can be reasonably done to promote inclusiveness. It's hard to take advocates of inclusiveness seriously when they eagerly cancel, disenfranchise, and deplatform people that disagree with them even remotely (and yes, there are plenty of examples of rational criticism being deplatformed).
  - sjg007 6y ago
    The best thing is for republicans to admit that they are lying about election fraud.
    - aksss 6y ago
      I'm not convinced about a critical amount of 'fraud' in the election, but I think you're off your rocker if you think the US election system generally has sufficient controls in place not to be easily abused. This year saw even more loosening of the control structure because of knee-jerk reactions to perceived pandemic limitations (warranted or not, I don't care). I also don't care what your politics are or which team you root for, but from a systems perspective there are very obvious control deficiencies in how elections are carried out in this country. Claims of fraud would be far, far, far easier to dismiss if a better control structure was in place. Maybe a national certification (a la NIST) that would be optional for states to adopt, but would at least would provide a framework for transparent state and local alignment (or misalignment) with best practice.
sjg007 6y ago
You should look up the definition of enfranchised. The insurrectionists will definitely be disenfranchised if convicted of felonies.
- Dma54rhs 6y ago
  Right but weren't there tons of demonstrations and violence because of black criminals who got killed by police? Tolerance is easy if you pick and choose, hence it's not tolerance. I don't hear a lot of excuses for those trump fans for their sins because of lack of education, money, opportunities. They get lumped in with privileged white people posting here from Silicon Valley, that's what they obviously feel. Why didn't the so called paradox of intolerance imply to a case where someone is doing an armed home invasion and why are people surprised when political and protest violence was long normalized and tolerated? It doesn't make any sense looking it over the ocean.
TheGRS 6y ago
Also the main argument this group was making for the last 2 months was to disenfranchise much of the US voting population. The people voted, and this group attempted to say it wasn't legitimate. They proved nothing in court to their claims, but persisted anyway right up until they got worked up into a frenzy and stormed the Capitol.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  Voter ID, removal of hackable voting machines, and hand count of votes are not disenfranchisement. You may have been told by the media that it is, but it's not. Many advanced democracies have such things in place.
  - jariel 6y ago
    This is completely false. The machines are not hacked, and the voter rolls are legitimate. There is zero evidence of systematic fraud, therefore, there is no 'disenfranchisement'. To suggest that 'maybe one day, someone could mess with our election' is not 'disenfranchisement'. "You may have been told by the media" - Rudy Giuilani and the President clearly failed to make a case or provide any evidence - moreover, they lied, lied and lied through the process and have no credibility. The election was fine - Trump's claims of fraud are completely fabricated.
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      > The machines are not hacked, and the voter rolls are legitimate. > The election was fine - Trump's claims of fraud are completely fabricated. Their capacity to claim fraud is _because_ of these weaknesses that make such a claim possible. Regardless of what the truth is, there are millions of people who think the election was rigged. If we don't placate those people and fix the issues, it could continue to escalate.
      - jariel 6y ago
        This is upside down. We don't investigate innocent people for murder to placate an angry mob. What we do is implement a communications strategy to get the mob to realize the random person is not guilty of murder. The President is using the authority of his position to lie and misrepresent the issue, so we'll have to stop that somehow and get the proper message out. There are no fundamental weaknesses in the system to the point wherein any organized attempt could flip the election - other than in the known grey areas which we fight about in public such as 'voter rolls' and how we purge them etc. There is ambiguity there. But the voting itself is actually really credible. The 'voting machines' and ballot counting is probably the most impossible to defeat system. Russians wanting to throw the election would have far more effect using Twitter and FB to incite crowds and to divide Americans, which is exactly what they have shown to be doing.
minikites 6y ago
>But once civil order breaks down, things simply accelerate with no possibility of talk being able to stop it anymore. The left is mad that they're getting shot in the head by cops for peacefully protesting. The right is mad that they can't tweet insurrectionist rhetoric. I don't buy the "civil disorder" argument, the USA hasn't been "civilized" for a long time.

CyberDildonics 6y ago

Ironically this mildly marginalized group seems to be very unforgiving of other marginalized groups. When they have to put their most extreme words on alternative websites they blame that preemptively for extremist actions. When other groups have been marginalized systemically by public infrastructure, violence and a lopsided legal system, they advocate personal responsibility as a solution for systemic problems.

sjg007 6y ago
The downvotes your post is experiencing is disheartening. Either there’s a big proTrump component of HNs or there are disinformation bots.
- dang 6y ago
  You broke more than one of the site guidelines with this. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. A corrective upvote would have sufficed. Notice that the comment you're talking about is no longer in a downvoted state.

gamblor956 6y ago

These groups became violent while still enfranchised. And they're still enfranchised: they can still vote, and still post to the internet, and still talk to people outside. They simply no longer get a free internet loud speaker to envangelize to others.

zests 6y ago
Everyone is enfranchised but some people are more enfranchised than others.
aksss 6y ago
We've spent a couple years now (right?) tacitly approving rioting as an acceptable response to feeling disenfranchised. Now we're surprised when the same medicine gets used by others. For either side, I'm not sure it's proper minimize their complaints. If the BLM crowd says they have a serious problem with police violence, the best reaction is, "what can we do to restore confidence?" Similarly, when 40% of the country says they have serious concerns about the integrity of voting in this country the proper response isn't "everything is okay", it's "what can we do to restore confidence?". The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society. Listen to those feeling alienated and see what can be reasonably done to promote inclusiveness. It's hard to take advocates of inclusiveness seriously when they eagerly cancel, disenfranchise, and deplatform people that disagree with them even remotely (and yes, there are plenty of examples of rational criticism being deplatformed).
- sjg007 6y ago
  The best thing is for republicans to admit that they are lying about election fraud.
  - aksss 6y ago
    I'm not convinced about a critical amount of 'fraud' in the election, but I think you're off your rocker if you think the US election system generally has sufficient controls in place not to be easily abused. This year saw even more loosening of the control structure because of knee-jerk reactions to perceived pandemic limitations (warranted or not, I don't care). I also don't care what your politics are or which team you root for, but from a systems perspective there are very obvious control deficiencies in how elections are carried out in this country. Claims of fraud would be far, far, far easier to dismiss if a better control structure was in place. Maybe a national certification (a la NIST) that would be optional for states to adopt, but would at least would provide a framework for transparent state and local alignment (or misalignment) with best practice.

sjg007 6y ago

You should look up the definition of enfranchised. The insurrectionists will definitely be disenfranchised if convicted of felonies.

Dma54rhs 6y ago
Right but weren't there tons of demonstrations and violence because of black criminals who got killed by police? Tolerance is easy if you pick and choose, hence it's not tolerance. I don't hear a lot of excuses for those trump fans for their sins because of lack of education, money, opportunities. They get lumped in with privileged white people posting here from Silicon Valley, that's what they obviously feel. Why didn't the so called paradox of intolerance imply to a case where someone is doing an armed home invasion and why are people surprised when political and protest violence was long normalized and tolerated? It doesn't make any sense looking it over the ocean.

TheGRS 6y ago

Also the main argument this group was making for the last 2 months was to disenfranchise much of the US voting population. The people voted, and this group attempted to say it wasn't legitimate. They proved nothing in court to their claims, but persisted anyway right up until they got worked up into a frenzy and stormed the Capitol.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
Voter ID, removal of hackable voting machines, and hand count of votes are not disenfranchisement. You may have been told by the media that it is, but it's not. Many advanced democracies have such things in place.
- jariel 6y ago
  This is completely false. The machines are not hacked, and the voter rolls are legitimate. There is zero evidence of systematic fraud, therefore, there is no 'disenfranchisement'. To suggest that 'maybe one day, someone could mess with our election' is not 'disenfranchisement'. "You may have been told by the media" - Rudy Giuilani and the President clearly failed to make a case or provide any evidence - moreover, they lied, lied and lied through the process and have no credibility. The election was fine - Trump's claims of fraud are completely fabricated.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    > The machines are not hacked, and the voter rolls are legitimate. > The election was fine - Trump's claims of fraud are completely fabricated. Their capacity to claim fraud is _because_ of these weaknesses that make such a claim possible. Regardless of what the truth is, there are millions of people who think the election was rigged. If we don't placate those people and fix the issues, it could continue to escalate.
    - jariel 6y ago
      This is upside down. We don't investigate innocent people for murder to placate an angry mob. What we do is implement a communications strategy to get the mob to realize the random person is not guilty of murder. The President is using the authority of his position to lie and misrepresent the issue, so we'll have to stop that somehow and get the proper message out. There are no fundamental weaknesses in the system to the point wherein any organized attempt could flip the election - other than in the known grey areas which we fight about in public such as 'voter rolls' and how we purge them etc. There is ambiguity there. But the voting itself is actually really credible. The 'voting machines' and ballot counting is probably the most impossible to defeat system. Russians wanting to throw the election would have far more effect using Twitter and FB to incite crowds and to divide Americans, which is exactly what they have shown to be doing.

minikites 6y ago

>But once civil order breaks down, things simply accelerate with no possibility of talk being able to stop it anymore. The left is mad that they're getting shot in the head by cops for peacefully protesting. The right is mad that they can't tweet insurrectionist rhetoric. I don't buy the "civil disorder" argument, the USA hasn't been "civilized" for a long time.