43 ms·

I've been here for almost 15 years and this is not some normal blip. It's true that the 2016 comment threads (the only corollary to this that I have seen) sucke

I've been here for almost 15 years and this is not some normal blip. It's true that the 2016 comment threads (the only corollary to this that I have seen) sucked, but they were not dominated by the toxic as this one is. It is not true that a third of the population is partaking in apologetics for violence. But it is true that more than half the community here appears to be. Thanks for your reply, though.

jacquesm 6y ago
Yes, you are right it is worth than before. But this is a phenomenon that I correlate with the rise of Trump and hopefully it will sink away again as well.
- sanderjd 6y ago
  :fingers crossed emoji:
throwaway894345 6y ago
No one here is "partaking in apologetics for violence"; everyone is condemning the violence. Some people (myself included) are pointing out that while this event was violent and violence is never acceptable, that it alone wasn't a serious threat to our democracy, it wasn't a real insurrection, etc. The violence needs to be prosecuted, but no one needs to hang for treason. To your point though, this forum does occasionally flirt with violence. Over the summer, some were waxing poetic about how "riots are the language of the oppressed" and arguing that burning someone's business to the ground isn't violence but rather "just property damage". Some were arguing that antifa and other violent groups were "freedom fighters" and so on. So yes, it does get pretty toxic here, but this thread isn't it.
- slg 6y ago
  >Over the summer, some were waxing poetic about how "riots are the language of the oppressed" and arguing that burning someone's business to the ground isn't violence but rather "just property damage". When you put violence against property and literal murder on the same moral footing you are being an apologist for more severe violence. Property can be replaced. Businesses can have insurance. The murdered police officer and the 4 other dead people aren't coming back. People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    > When you put violence against property and literal murder on the same moral footing you are being an apologist for more severe violence. Right, thankfully no one is doing that (I've seen you around other threads and straw man arguments like this one are beneath your usual high standard of discourse). Everyone here agrees that the people responsible for murdering the police officer ought to be held criminally accountable for murder but not for treason. But this was almost certainly a small number of people and its reprehensible to hold the entire mob responsible, and certainly not for treason. We don't hold every BLM protester accountable for the BLM riots and we don't hold every BLM rioter accountable for the murders that took place during the riots, and we should hold the same standard here. Elsewhere you remarked that 1 murder constitutes a larger proportion than the BLM murders, but of course you can't extrapolate anything from a sample of 1. > People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious. They aren't the same, but they're not so different that we can justify glorifying violence for one and exaggerating it for the other. FWIW, I personally think the Capitol Hill riots were worse in the sense that they were incited by a sitting President and that the security was concerningly inadequate. The President should be held responsible for insurrection, there should be accountability among the police as well (although I don't know enough to venture into details about what kind or degree of accountability), but the rank and file rioters are only guilty of rioting, trespassing, etc (those who assaulted need to be held accountable for assault, those who murdered for murder, those who planted bombs for planting bombs, etc). But this isn't "a coup" nor were the rioters "traitors". They were misled into believing their candidate lost the election and they were angry, but I can't imagine they seriously expected to break into the capitol and forcibly reinstate Trump (apart perhaps for the mentally ill). So yes, the Capitol Hill riots were worse, but not so much that the BLM rioters (including those who assaulted people or killed people) deserve to escape justice nor that the media should be forgiven for their incitement and later apologetics of the violence. Nor does it merit exaggerating the violence on Capitol Hill.
    - slg 6y ago
      >Right, thankfully no one is doing that You seemed to do that further up this thread. When confronted with questions about the violence on 1/6 you responded with references to the violence perpetuated by BLM protesters. However I can't find a single instance of collective violence at the BLM protests that comes close to a mob beating a police officer to death like happened in DC. As far as I have seen, there were no murders committed by BLM protesters as part of any protests, riots, or whatever you want to call them. Even in this post you are still referring to "BLM murders". In a previous comment a few posts up I directly asked you how many murders occurred at these BLM protests and you didn't respond. Is that because you know that the person to person violence that occurred at these events was routinely instigated by the police, other right leaning people, or people using deadly force in response to looting? And like I said previously, we are already comparing millions of people protesting over months in cities around the country to thousands of people in one city protesting on one day. There were vastly more opportunities for violence at the BLM protests and yet the only person to person violence seen appears to be in response or initiated by people on the other side. I appreciate the complement and agree with most of the second half of your post, but it isn't just the origins or motivations for these two groups that differentiate them. One was much quicker to instigate violence against people.
- sanderjd 6y ago
  Your comment is a great example of the apologetics I'm talking about. The apologetics for rioting over the summer were also bad.

jacquesm 6y ago

Yes, you are right it is worth than before. But this is a phenomenon that I correlate with the rise of Trump and hopefully it will sink away again as well.

sanderjd 6y ago
:fingers crossed emoji:

throwaway894345 6y ago

No one here is "partaking in apologetics for violence"; everyone is condemning the violence. Some people (myself included) are pointing out that while this event was violent and violence is never acceptable, that it alone wasn't a serious threat to our democracy, it wasn't a real insurrection, etc. The violence needs to be prosecuted, but no one needs to hang for treason. To your point though, this forum does occasionally flirt with violence. Over the summer, some were waxing poetic about how "riots are the language of the oppressed" and arguing that burning someone's business to the ground isn't violence but rather "just property damage". Some were arguing that antifa and other violent groups were "freedom fighters" and so on. So yes, it does get pretty toxic here, but this thread isn't it.

slg 6y ago
>Over the summer, some were waxing poetic about how "riots are the language of the oppressed" and arguing that burning someone's business to the ground isn't violence but rather "just property damage". When you put violence against property and literal murder on the same moral footing you are being an apologist for more severe violence. Property can be replaced. Businesses can have insurance. The murdered police officer and the 4 other dead people aren't coming back. People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > When you put violence against property and literal murder on the same moral footing you are being an apologist for more severe violence. Right, thankfully no one is doing that (I've seen you around other threads and straw man arguments like this one are beneath your usual high standard of discourse). Everyone here agrees that the people responsible for murdering the police officer ought to be held criminally accountable for murder but not for treason. But this was almost certainly a small number of people and its reprehensible to hold the entire mob responsible, and certainly not for treason. We don't hold every BLM protester accountable for the BLM riots and we don't hold every BLM rioter accountable for the murders that took place during the riots, and we should hold the same standard here. Elsewhere you remarked that 1 murder constitutes a larger proportion than the BLM murders, but of course you can't extrapolate anything from a sample of 1. > People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious. They aren't the same, but they're not so different that we can justify glorifying violence for one and exaggerating it for the other. FWIW, I personally think the Capitol Hill riots were worse in the sense that they were incited by a sitting President and that the security was concerningly inadequate. The President should be held responsible for insurrection, there should be accountability among the police as well (although I don't know enough to venture into details about what kind or degree of accountability), but the rank and file rioters are only guilty of rioting, trespassing, etc (those who assaulted need to be held accountable for assault, those who murdered for murder, those who planted bombs for planting bombs, etc). But this isn't "a coup" nor were the rioters "traitors". They were misled into believing their candidate lost the election and they were angry, but I can't imagine they seriously expected to break into the capitol and forcibly reinstate Trump (apart perhaps for the mentally ill). So yes, the Capitol Hill riots were worse, but not so much that the BLM rioters (including those who assaulted people or killed people) deserve to escape justice nor that the media should be forgiven for their incitement and later apologetics of the violence. Nor does it merit exaggerating the violence on Capitol Hill.
  - slg 6y ago
    >Right, thankfully no one is doing that You seemed to do that further up this thread. When confronted with questions about the violence on 1/6 you responded with references to the violence perpetuated by BLM protesters. However I can't find a single instance of collective violence at the BLM protests that comes close to a mob beating a police officer to death like happened in DC. As far as I have seen, there were no murders committed by BLM protesters as part of any protests, riots, or whatever you want to call them. Even in this post you are still referring to "BLM murders". In a previous comment a few posts up I directly asked you how many murders occurred at these BLM protests and you didn't respond. Is that because you know that the person to person violence that occurred at these events was routinely instigated by the police, other right leaning people, or people using deadly force in response to looting? And like I said previously, we are already comparing millions of people protesting over months in cities around the country to thousands of people in one city protesting on one day. There were vastly more opportunities for violence at the BLM protests and yet the only person to person violence seen appears to be in response or initiated by people on the other side. I appreciate the complement and agree with most of the second half of your post, but it isn't just the origins or motivations for these two groups that differentiate them. One was much quicker to instigate violence against people.
sanderjd 6y ago
Your comment is a great example of the apologetics I'm talking about. The apologetics for rioting over the summer were also bad.