The Murder of George Floyd & Subsequent Protests/Riots

[Jaguar]

White supremacists are gleeful as police violence and the resulting rioting tear apart cities. Even if the unrest ends in the weeks to come, they may look back at the violence as a win for their side. Some delight in the killing of George Floyd and in police violence against African Americans—“a knee is the new noose!!” exulted one sign held up by white supremacists during protests. It is unclear how much organized white supremacist groups are involved in the violence, and it is easy to use them as an excuse for much broader societal problems related to police violence and systemic racism. For now, any white supremacist involvement appears to be more individual than collective, but even if the violence declines it may bolster an increasingly important white supremacist concept—“accelerationism.”

Accelerationism is the idea that white supremacists should try to increase civil disorder—accelerate it—in order to foster polarization that will tear apart the current political order. The System (usually capitalized), they believe, has only a finite number of collaborators and lackeys to prop it up. Accelerationists hope to set off a series of chain reactions, with violence fomenting violence, and in the ensuing cycle more and more people join the fray. When confronted with extremes, so the theory goes, those in the middle will be forced off the fence and go to the side of the white supremacists. If violence can be increased sufficiently, the System will run out of lackeys and collapse, and the race war will commence.

Riots, White Supremacy and Accelerationism - Lawfare

 

[Jonny]

 

[Red Herring]

White supremacists are gleeful as police violence and the resulting rioting tear apart cities. Even if the unrest ends in the weeks to come, they may look back at the violence as a win for their side. Some delight in the killing of George Floyd and in police violence against African Americans—“a knee is the new noose!!” exulted one sign held up by white supremacists during protests. It is unclear how much organized white supremacist groups are involved in the violence, and it is easy to use them as an excuse for much broader societal problems related to police violence and systemic racism. For now, any white supremacist involvement appears to be more individual than collective, but even if the violence declines it may bolster an increasingly important white supremacist concept—“accelerationism.”

Accelerationism is the idea that white supremacists should try to increase civil disorder—accelerate it—in order to foster polarization that will tear apart the current political order. The System (usually capitalized), they believe, has only a finite number of collaborators and lackeys to prop it up. Accelerationists hope to set off a series of chain reactions, with violence fomenting violence, and in the ensuing cycle more and more people join the fray. When confronted with extremes, so the theory goes, those in the middle will be forced off the fence and go to the side of the white supremacists. If violence can be increased sufficiently, the System will run out of lackeys and collapse, and the race war will commence.

Riots, White Supremacy and Accelerationism - Lawfare

I remember several members on this very forum predicting and basically salivating at the thought of a civil war. This has been fermenting for a while.

I also remember a very adolescent threat along the lines of "Wouldn't it be great if there was a war? Life without is so boring and war is romantic!" 🙄

 

[Jaguar]

Kyle Rittenhouse attended a rally for president Donald Trump in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 30., according to a TikTok he posted from the event.

Am I supposed to be surprised?

 

[Z Buck McFate]

This is a good point. They didn't shoot anyone, but this definitely encouraged the behavior.

 

[The Cat]

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

They charged Kyle with murder 1 in Kenosha, given the video evidence homeboy is gonna be acquitted with the quickness. He'll probably get in trouble for being 17 in possession, but that's a slap on the wrist comparatively.

Richard Jewell's, now very famous, defense lawyer has agreed to represent him pro bono.

I suspect this will go down a lot like the Trayvon Martin shooting a while back. Everyone convinced they're right because of their emotions with zero grasp of how the law actually works. Proving murder 1 is a high fucking bar to get over. Good luck proving malice aforethought.

 

[The Cat]

I cannot imagine a non stacked jury believing that he found himself fearing for his life.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

What's in homeboy's hand?

Kyle getting domed with a skateboard before engaging.

Kyle kicked in the head before engaging latter two assailants.

For first engagement, here is a video from NYT.

This video from the
@NYT
is critical in the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

He clearly didn't shoot first.

- 11 seconds: Man fires a handgun.
- 15 seconds: Rittenhouse starts shooting.
- 17 seconds: Handgun fires again multiple times.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1298993985277456395

And another angle from NYT of the first shooting.

The muzzle flash of the first shot by the unknown gunman and the smoke rising from the handgun can be seen in this video capturing the first shooting from a different angle.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1298841139810893824

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

From the arresting documents concerning the incident provided in the link. If you ever wanna know what happened, at least in legal situations it's not that hard to get to the bottom of things.

Rittenhouse (2020KN003907) complaint.pdf - Google Drive

It's was a one shot stop on Huber.

The operative self defense statute in Wisconsin

 

[anticlimatic]

PA Trooper Kelly Almost Killed Letting Criminal Reach In Car | WI Officer Did Not Wait To Possibly Get Shot! - David Harris Jr.

Who would ever want to be a cop?

 

[anticlimatic]

WATCH: BLM rioters beat civilians in Portland streets, leave man bloodied and unresponsive | The Post Millennial


This guy is now on the run from the police "just for murdering a racist" whining about it on social media and begging for money. I guess people who try to defend trans women from getting beaten are racists?

 

[Red Memories]

Most say ‘protests’ have become ‘riots,’ new high in support for police





Well that's not good. Biden better get his pandering ass in gear and--

Biden: 'Burning down communities is not protest' | TheHill



About fucking time. Portland has been burning for months now. I'm not sure why anyone thought that looking the other way on this was going to be good for them politically. Hopefully its not too late for Biden. It's hard to be the "return to normalcy" candidate when you're justifying riots in the streets. Thanks to all of this, Trump is the one that looks like the stable voice of order and reason to anyone center/center-right.

The poll found that by a 49% to 42% margin, the battleground states believe that the protests “have stopped being about racial injustice and have become violent riots by people who hate America and want to tear down our government and radically change American culture.”

this is exactly how I feel about many of the protests now. I don't care which side it is, both sides are fighting. All I see is an imminent civil war between militias and these people who are using movements of equality to literally just destroy things. Honestly it's pretty terrifying, Oregon and Washington are state neighbors to me and we've have our militias saying they won't be quiet for much longer. This is a messed up situation. All this just reminds me of how bad revolutions begin and then you get something like communism or related terrible choices of dictators. What everyone is apparently afraid of.

What bugs me too is I feel like no matter how this election goes, it'll be a mess. If Trump manages a win again, I imagine all the people will riot and say the elections were fixed. I'd find it humoring if Trump merely disappeared after his 8 year tenure like any other President and proved he was in fact not out to be a dictatorship after all. Not saying it'll happen. On the other hand, with the rapid polarization of politics and virtue signaling coming from it, families are getting ripped to shreds, people doxxing people of different ideas on twitter and having people call their jobs to harass them. I'm sorry, how does ruining someone's life for not being a progressive liberal seem okay? I'm appalled at how ridiculous my own generation is. There was a day we sat across from each other and listened and had empathy and tried to see another person's point of view, and if we couldn't we agreed to disagree. And while you may cry about the GOP, in my days as a moderate I mostly see the avid misguided liberals performing these drastic behaviors. I'm calling them misguided because...well on a normal basis I am a democrat. But I do not resonate or relate with the way these "democrats" behave now and so it is easier to consider myself a centrist rather than a moderate democrat at this rate, as I've never been close to Republican except on border issues. Even then I'd prefer a more humanitarian way to handle those situations.

If anything I fear we are not going to have an America period after this election in some way...We'll start in fighting, go bankrupt or something, then some terrible country like China or Russia will swoop in to take us over.

 

[FemMecha]

What I wish (probably hopelessly) is that each individual case of violence doesn't have to be tried as the archetypcal scenario, and that each individual who caused harm or who was harmed, doesn't have to prove the validity of one entire social position.

People shouldn't be wandering the streets with guns just in case they need to shoot them, gathering for the intent purpose of social conflict, and then when people die, they are tried as icons to prove or disprove the legitimacy of racially based, discriminatory assumptions.

This, and every other individual instance is the "single story fallacy". Try each person as an individual with their individual facts, whatever they be.

Stories like this do make me rethink the whole gun issue and why it's a problem for people to be wandering around with guns without proper technical and psychological training. It shouldn't just be background checks for criminal behavior, but people who are psychologically capable of getting an idea like, 'hey, it looks like people are gathering looking for trouble, let me get my gun and wander around, just in case I see someone I should shoot', shouldn't be allowed to have guns. That is an example of being psychologically unstable, even if the majority of Americans are.

 

[anticlimatic]

The poll found that by a 49% to 42% margin, the battleground states believe that the protests "have stopped being about racial injustice and have become violent riots by people who hate America and want to tear down our government and radically change American culture." this is exactly how I feel about many of the protests now. I don't care which side it is, both sides are fighting. All I see is an imminent civil war between militias and these people who are using movements of equality to literally just destroy things. Honestly it's pretty terrifying, Oregon and Washington are state neighbors to me and we've have our militias saying they won't be quiet for much longer. This is a messed up situation. All this just reminds me of how bad revolutions begin and then you get something like communism or related terrible choices of dictators. What everyone is apparently afraid of. What bugs me too is I feel like no matter how this election goes, it'll be a mess. If Trump manages a win again, I imagine all the people will riot and say the elections were fixed. I'd find it humoring if Trump merely disappeared after his 8 year tenure like any other President and proved he was in fact not out to be a dictatorship after all. Not saying it'll happen. On the other hand, with the rapid polarization of politics and virtue signaling coming from it, families are getting ripped to shreds, people doxxing people of different ideas on twitter and having people call their jobs to harass them. I'm sorry, how does ruining someone's life for not being a progressive liberal seem okay? I'm appalled at how ridiculous my own generation is. There was a day we sat across from each other and listened and had empathy and tried to see another person's point of view, and if we couldn't we agreed to disagree. And while you may cry about the GOP, in my days as a moderate I mostly see the avid misguided liberals performing these drastic behaviors. I'm calling them misguided because...well on a normal basis I am a democrat. But I do not resonate or relate with the way these "democrats" behave now and so it is easier to consider myself a centrist rather than a moderate democrat at this rate, as I've never been close to Republican except on border issues. Even then I'd prefer a more humanitarian way to handle those situations. If anything I fear we are not going to have an America period after this election in some way...We'll start in fighting, go bankrupt or something, then some terrible country like China or Russia will swoop in to take us over.

It's really not looking good, but nobody knows what the future will bring, so maybe everything will more or less be alright. Civil war/riots still seem to be the most likely outcome unfortunately.

After Attending a Trump Rally, I Realized Democrats Are Not Ready For 2020 | by Karlyn Borysenko | GEN

I don't know what the hell happened to the left that got them so divorced from reality and compassion for their fellow human beings, but I find the type of people like the woman who wrote this article encouraging. I've always loved parts of both the left and the right (at least until the Obama administration, which transformed the left into something almost entirely awful), and I've always enjoyed conversation with different-minded individuals (well evidenced by my presence here), but at this point I'm more or less done. I can count on two fingers the amount of people who retain the capacity for dialogue with different point of views here.

My dream is that more people will follow this lady's lead and make independent thought and analysis cool again. I think the backlash to these riots might help- because nobody in the right mind, especially heavy liberals, can condone what's going on in their heart of hearts- and there's just nothing else to blame it on (try as they understandably might), except their own catastrophically toxic culture.

 

[Red Memories]

What I wish (probably hopelessly) is that each individual case of violence doesn't have to be tried as the archetypcal scenario, and that each individual who caused harm or who was harmed, doesn't have to prove the validity of one entire social position.

People shouldn't be wandering the streets with guns just in case they need to shoot them, gathering for the intent purpose of social conflict, and then when people die, they are tried as icons to prove or disprove the legitimacy of racially based, discriminatory assumptions.

This, and every other individual instance is the "single story fallacy". Try each person as an individual with their individual facts, whatever they be.

Stories like this do make me rethink the whole gun issue and why it's a problem for people to be wandering around with guns without proper technical and psychological training. It shouldn't just be background checks for criminal behavior, but people who are psychologically capable of getting an idea like, 'hey, it looks like people are gathering looking for trouble, let me get my gun and wander around, just in case I see someone I should shoot', shouldn't be allowed to have guns. That is an example of being psychologically unstable, even if the majority of Americans are.

That I can follow as well. I don't see the people protesting for actual social justice peacefully as anything related to the looters. I see the burners and looters as a different protest entirely, a different cause that has nothing to do with social justice but are using the movement as a reason to do what they're doing. It is completely separate from the peaceful people asking for a better place.

I agree. If you're out hoping you can shoot someone...you shouldn't have the ability to shoot someone...

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

A lot of the violence at these things has been alleged to have been instigated by inflitrators. The Boogaloo Boys, for instance.

I'm sure right wingers and Trumpies will just dismiss this as a far fetched conspiracy theory. Normally I might give them that, but considering some of the unsubstantiated shit they've taken as fact from Trump and Fox News, without an ounce of the skepticism the right claims to hold being applied to said shit, I just have to laugh when they have the nerve to pick and choose what they're accepting as fact versus conspiracy theories.

It's all about serving a narrative with the right. And lefties, don't think you're off the hook either. Ultimately everyone just seems beholden to their own narratives, and they just cite or dismiss facts when it's convenient to those narratives. There are few true skeptics remaining anywhere.

 

[Lark]

There's a sizeable part of the US that cant tell order and oppression apart anymore, if it ever could, which is a bad sign, it means that the betrayal of the US' revolutionary founding myths is almost complete.

 

[Lark]

A lot of the violence at these things has been alleged to have been instigated by inflitrators. The Boogaloo Boys, for instance.

I'm sure right wingers and Trumpies will just dismiss this as a far fetched conspiracy theory. Normally I might give them that, but considering some of the unsubstantiated shit they've taken as fact from Trump and Fox News, without an ounce of the skepticism the right claims to hold being applied to said shit, I just have to laugh when they have the nerve to pick and choose what they're accepting as fact versus conspiracy theories.

It's all about serving a narrative with the right. And lefties, don't think you're off the hook either. Ultimately everyone just seems beholden to their own narratives, and they just cite or dismiss facts when it's convenient to those narratives. There are few true skeptics remaining anywhere.

I'd agree with you but I'd also say that not everything is narrative.

I'm kind of skeptical of any one or perspective that actually highlights the narrative thing as its usually not too far removed from all this crazy shit which keeps popping up which is a sort of racist, traditionalist objection to post-modernism.

No one does "fashionable nonsense" quite like the left, I think largely since they started to make their homes in academia, instead of in communities, farms and workplaces but the right wing does it too. Largely because they're mirrors of each other in so many ways. However, every time I read anyone who seems to find transcending that particularly divide and all its trappings its usually just to indulge some other kind of mania.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I'd agree with you but I'd also say that not everything is narrative.

I'm kind of skeptical of any one or perspective that actually highlights the narrative thing as its usually not too far removed from all this crazy shit which keeps popping up which is a sort of racist, traditionalist objection to post-modernism.

No one does "fashionable nonsense" quite like the left, I think largely since they started to make their homes in academia, instead of in communities, farms and workplaces but the right wing does it too. Largely because they're mirrors of each other in so many ways. However, every time I read anyone who seems to find transcending that particularly divide and all its trappings its usually just to indulge some other kind of mania.

I'm not coming at this from the position of a moderate or a centrist, I'm coming at it as someone who holds very strong left wing positions. I don't think the left is equal to the right in terms of their current or past evils, at least concerning in the USA and what we'd call 'the west', I do think the right is and has been generally more evil than the left (whose greatest evils have often been committed in reaction to evils first committed by the right--necklacing in south Africa, for instance, while kind of fucked, wouldn't have even began if not for the history of discrimination by a right wing colonial government), so I'm not trying to equate them as balanced in that regard.

I expect a lack of consistent skepticism and scrutiny from right wingers, it just saddens me when I see it happening on the left, since we as the left are supposed to the ones who value science, skepticism, humanism. individuality and critical thinking. I just expect a little more consistency in that regard and I'm not going to excuse it when I see a lack of skepticism just because it happens to be the team fighting on the "right side of history"