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I’m saying that on occasions where reactionary political violence in the US has been discussed on this board, many civilized posters have argued that it’s inevitable because the left have broken the social contract and have been steamrolling the right and that there might be no alternative. I mean, are you really disputing this? It’s not a great leap of a hypothetical really.
You are currently discussing an example of what strongly appears to be the Left breaking the social contract in a way that makes "reactionary" political violence inevitable. They whipped themselves into a frenzy over Trump, and now someone has actually tried to kill him, and for many on the left there is no actual way to walk it back, nor ability to recognize the realities of their position. All they know how to do is double-down, which makes further incidents inevitable, which in turn makes reciprocity from the Reds inevitable.
The Left actually rioted nation-wide. They actually have used national security assets to persecute their political rivals. They actually have inflicted lawless violence on Reds in particular and on the nation generally. They actually have made two serious attempts at assassinations of Republican leadership. They actually have prosecuted Reds for lawful self-defense. They actually have attempted to jail political opponents. They actually ignore all of the numerous violations they actually commit on a regular basis, and paper it over with fictions about Nazis and the Handmaid's Tale.
There is only so long this pattern can continue before it breaks things none of us will be able to fix. Today was just another step closer to the brink.
Here is an excellent article on the Russian revolution:
https://www.theconundrumcluster.com/p/you-should-really-read-this-introduction
Before the bloody civil war there was a lot of incompetence and appeasement. People to the right of other figures, refusing to use power, abdicating their duties and giving power to people to their left and letting them get away with crimes. Then came the violence.
A very rough summary of this: You had the Tsar giving power to a liberal relative Grand Duke Michael, who gave power to the Constituent Assembly (which imprisoned Tsar Nicolas)and the monarchy disintegrated to provisional assembly to lead the country during the elections lead by to Kerensky who followed a "no enemies to the left" dogma while the Bolsheviks were rising. Lenin ended up removed from prison. Both The Grand Duke and Tsar were murdered and Kerensky ended up in exile.
If they actually suppressed the radicals with force, and didn't give them more power the civil war would had been averted or less severe.
Point being, refusal to try to shut down leftist radicals and being afraid more of doing so than them makes future conflict larger, inevitable, and also their future atrocities. Putting and keeping people like Lenin in prison is more important than violent fantasies. It is only a failure to keep law and order and suppress such elements that lead to the Russian civil war and then the red terror.
Rather than lamenting future violence, you ought to be critical of the current right refusing to use power to suppress leftist extremists. I do agree with most of what you say of how the left breaks norms. I also don't want to see things breaking down in the ways the Russian revolution, civil war did.
But the right also breaks norms by complicity and not stopping them. For example, how about actual strong reprisals like trying to shut down left wing media with unhinged hateful rhetoric towards right wingers? Such as advocating to limit their reach by reprisals from their specific state We know the republican party is willing to do plenty of authoritarian moves, by looking them doing so when it comes to the Israel issue.
Although stopping criminals does include a component of physical violence, which is part of any duties of any police force, there are ways to exercise power, (and you are a moderator who have some power of your own however limited), that is different than just physically hurting people.
For example treating antifa as a criminal organization and then arresting their members, and have them subject to prosecution could be one of the possible ideas to suppress leftist extremism, targeting one of the worst of the worst groups most characteristic of it and it would qualify as qualitatively different than just physically harming in a purity spiral people identified as a different political tribe.
Another example, would be to try to debar antifa lawyers.
I see suppression of leftist/liberal radicalism and anti-right wing radicalism as preventive of current and future escalating violence, and the refusal to act as ensurer of things escalating...
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Leftists hold Jan 6 like it was dooms forthcoming. Jan 6th attacked the govt, and didn't burn DC.
Did anyone actually get prosecuted for BLM riots? Are bippers and shoplifters actually arrested? Did Raz Simone actually get arrested for distributing guns that got black boys killed? Dems seem intent on fumbling the bag whenever its their protected classes who inconveniently express their criminal intent, while hushing up every instance where an accepted target is attacked by their pets.
Dems are surprisingly adroit at bending the machinery of govt to protect themselves. They are just afraid that the right will take this machine built by the left and turn it back on them.
He was caught on video distributing AR-15s to random passers-by, but I didn't see those people in the post-killing celebration video.
The distribution itself is a crime in this state, every transfer except gifts or inheritance between family members have to go through an FFL.
GUN CONTROL, screams the democrat, decrying the mass shootings in schools. But a warlord distributing AR15s to randoms is simply community wholesome chungus.
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Yes? For example, Shamar Betts got 4 years for making a Facebook post inciting a riot.
Uh...
It's a prosecution (well, guilty plea), but summarizing it as 'making a Facebook post' is... a little misleading.
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120 people with the majority given deferred sentences in exchange for freely burning and looting cities, while Jan 6th and Whitmers glowies get railroaded. The discrepancy shows clearly who is the protected class.
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Now would be a good time to not fumble the bag. God I hope American rightists are smarter than Israelis.
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Seems like if you guys were going to do anything about it you'd have started by now. After 2020 they know they can do anything to you and you can't or won't stop them.
It's way too late to talk tough now. If Robert Evans and all the other antifa leadership had been found decaying under a bridge in September '20, maybe they'd actually be scared to fuck with you.
Taunting people for not doing terrorism doesn't seem like the best of ideas unless you want there to be more terrorism. Do you?
Leftist journalists are ranting about how this shows they need to murder more fascist republicans, with no apparent fear of a 2am knock on the door from the police.
Remember Popehat the famous legal blogger? He's on bluesky telling people to do mass shootings at "soft targets" like federalist society meetings. Can link later if you'd like: unsynced phone.
Political violence is happening. Political violence is going to happen. And somehow the people with all the guns have become so bad at it that all the violence is happening to them and their families.
The time for right wing terror was 20 years ago, and I fully endorse going back in time to shoot evil robots and impregnate hot waitresses.
But it's sad to promise that it'll happen any day now, we'll totally go apeshit if there's just one more riot or malicious prosecution or assassination or ATF death squad or CPS seizing more of our kids to cut their dicks off, we really mean it this time!
They won't even sue the freaks talking about how the shooting was faked by crisis actors for 60 billion dollars. They're not even rioting and smashing up enemy monuments like the left does every single time they throw a wobbly about a criminal getting shot.
They can't even march to protest violence against them without being put in prison for a decade with some bullshit lawfare because one of them held a cigarette lighter, which suddenly counts as cross burning (unlike leftists torching city blocks).
Why should the left fear their threats when they've never once made good on them?
I would like the link. I used to like Popehat before he succumbed to TDS, and I still find his legal commentary sometimes sound. I admit I am slightly skeptical that he actually advocated shooting up Federalist Society meetings, but I would like to see his actual words.
Here. [EDIT] - I've changed the link to Gatt's comment, as his archive link apparently doesn't work when I copy it.Raw URL, since the link system suddenly hates me for some reason: https://www.themotte.org/post/1070/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/229599?context=8#context
There's this thing in the FromSoft games, where you have these Gods and Heroes who did great things, built mighty works, achieved beauty and glory, only to be worn down by the inevitable march of time and decay, until all that remains is a miserable shade. The internet feels that way now, when I compare what is now to the flower that came before.
We need a way to leave each other alone. I don't want to rule the Popehat dude. I really don't want him to rule me. I just want us to go our separate ways, to each have a chance to deal with the world's problems without having to fight each other every step of the way.
Broken link
fixed, thanks.
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Here, with a backup here for when he purges his timeline next time.
Thanks. Does he purge it a lot? This is the first I've seen from him since he flounced from Twitter.
He blew up almost everything during his twitter flounce, and I'm pretty sure the remainder only exist because he couldn't (figure out how to) delete the remainder. I haven't seen him yglesias his bluesky timeline yet.
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You guys do terrorist attacks all the time though. Every couple months one of you ODs on 2016 /pol/ memes and shoots up a synagogue or a mosque or a crowd full of blacks and Mexicans.
Who is "You guys"?
Speak of specific groups, not in generalities, and if you want to start lobbing accusations of mass shootings and terrorist attacks, you really need to be specific.
"You guys" meaning the category of right-wingers he wishes would take violent terroristic action, using the specific example of mass-killing prominent antifa figures, a category he presumably identifies with (or else why would he be mad they're not doing terrorism?).
A few replies down he says that Anders Breivik made "a fair effort" so it's fair to say he's pro-mass shooting in principle but takes issue with its practice. Real right-wing terrorism never been tried.
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Just appalling.
Fc writes the following and this is the guy you mod?
"They whipped themselves into a frenzy over Trump, and now someone has actually tried to kill him, and for many on the left there is no actual way to walk it back, nor ability to recognize the realities of their position. All they know how to do is double-down, which makes further incidents inevitable, which in turn makes reciprocity from the Reds inevitable."
Yes. Talking about what "leftists" or "Reds" do is arguable (if FC wrote "Leftists are terrorists" as a blanket statement, that would not be okay - but he didn't). Directly addressing someone with what "You guys" do is not okay unless you can justify it by explaining who "you guys" are (and if what "you guys" are doing is terrorist attacks, you'd better be very specific).
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What's your actual objection to the passage you've quoted? Where am I wrong?
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That's chimps running wild with a Glock, not planned political violence. The closest the right ever got to that is Breivik (a fair effort) and McVeigh (absolute "please read literally any other book" retardation)
Where's the White Army Faction that car-bombed blackrock CEOs, disappeared politicians, shot down air liners, massacred a whole country's Olympics team? And then went on to get hidden in safehouses by right wing politicians until their financial backers got them pardons?
That's political terrorism.
I'm curious: what is it about the Oklahoma City bombing that you consider "retardation"? Presumably you're not worried about discrimination given your suggestions; are you making the same objection Pierce did, or something else?
Ashamed to say I haven't read Pierce's comments yet, that book report project is on hold for a bit. I'm guessing he said that it was done too soon, against a target that wasn't strategically important (unlike the surveillance center targeted in the book), nor aimed at destabilizing the regime?
The amazing part to me was that the protagonist of the book even second-guessed their bombing because in retrospect it focused the attention of the regime too early, when the resistance didn't have anything lined up to exploit the brief opening it gave them. The surveillance system was rebuilt with better hardening by the time the war got going, and it was only total economic and social collapse that stopped the regime wiping them out.
I said "read any other book", but honestly reading past the first hundred pages of the book he did read should have made him think twice about bombing symbolic targets without a strategic plan.
That's actually the reason I found the book fascinating enough to write about. It avoids so much of the wish-fulfillment you see in other rebellion stories: most of the characters' ideas don't work, most of their plans go awry or backfire, many of their successes are ultimately irrelevant or sideshows in the larger picture. Pierce ended up writing such a realistic story he had to pull a cabal of hooded supermen out his ass to have it end in any kind of victory.
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Little terrorism > symmetric terrorism >>> asymmetric terrorism against me and mine.
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