There you go.

Indeed, so don't argue for it on their behalf. — Marchesk

Well Perhaps don't insinuate that I do. I have enough humility to argue on my own behalf, and not other people's. And at no point have I argued for violence; I identify as pacifist. However, I do suggest that violence works. This is because my experience is that it does. It pretty much runs the world. That does not mean I am in favour.

I am not sure that fascism can be defeated without violence, and I do not condemn it in the victims of fascism. And America is a fascist state.

Well Perhaps don't insinuate that I do. I have enough humility to argue on my own behalf, and not other people's. — unenlightened

Fair enough.

What you'll find in the political discussions is many emotive posts interspersed with some decent ones. That's just the nature of politics. Emotionally, people tend to react more strongly to things like police brutality than most philosophical topics. If we modded political topics like philosophical ones, we'd have to rip so much out of the discussions that they'd become incoherent. Anyway, the door's always open if you want to make the discussion better.

@Baden - Beau's righteous fury at the shitty WhAt AbOuT tHe JoBs AnD tHe BuSiNeSeS?! argument:



"Tell me if you've heard this: "well these businesses, they're not going back to "those" neighbourhoods, because they know its going to happen again". Which part? Which part are we talking about here? ... What you're saying is, that it's such a certainty, that they're making economic decisions based on it. OK. But what about the stuff that comes before??? In order for the fires to happen again, all that other stuff has to happen again. So when you make this argument, be very aware that what you're really saying, deep down is: a pile of unarmed people? - That's just the cost of doing business, in "those" neighbourhoods. ... That is a horrible argument. You are saying, with certainty, that it's going to happen again. So much so, that you don't blame businesses for making financial decisions based on that idea. And that the concern is the money. Not the people. But the money.

...Maybe that's something that we should, be like, demanding change. We don't have to accept this. It doesn't have to be this way."

I was hoping for some kind of discussion about what is happening, how it can/could be handled, and what steps to take towards a future goal - and what such incremental steps may look like.

I think it reasonably fair to say progress has been made, albeit with backwards steps along the way. The encouraging signs are that these public protests look string enough not to dissipate - this looks like an opportunity for rational discussion and a rethink about troubled areas in US culture.

The myth of “outside agitators” is being simultaneously weaponized by conservatives and liberals to demean and intimidate protesters. — Jacobin - Don’t Fall for the Myth of the “Outside Agitator” in Racial Justice Protests

How would that work? What's demeaning or intimidating about outside agitators? Also is Jacobin telling us that asking the question "are there outside agitators" is off-limits?

If society ignores or is indifferent to suffering and problems in a part of their community, then they have no right to condemn the violence and destruction erupting. — Christoffer

I agree with the sentiment. Though I wonder what exactly the relation between systemic injustice and individual morality is. It strikes me that while your argument sounds true, there seems to be an element of collective punishment. It doesn't matter who, specifically, the violence hits so long as they share collective guild as part of some group. Do you think that's a problem?

I think everyone’s got the message. The thing is a few bad people can make a helluva mess giving the misconception that more foul play is at work than there is.

Building something important takes time and coordination. Destruction is something any chump can put their hands to with success.

Note: There is no excusing such actions. They don’t need to be excused only noted. Human nature is what it is. When upheavals happen we’ll always see the demons of our natures come out to play.

How would that work? What's demeaning or intimidating about outside agitators? Also is Jacobin telling us that asking the question "are there outside agitators" is off-limits? — Echarmion

I'm just going to quote myself from earlier:

Police terror is an economic-political strategy, not an accidental feature of current social reality. None of what has been happening can be understood in isolation of these factors. The last of the factors mentioned here - the need to separate the 'deserving' from the 'undeserving poor' is yet another reason to resist the bourgeois attempt to parse out 'rioters' from 'protesters'. Grievance comes as a package, and it affects not only 'deserving' grievers, but those - especially those - who have been so destitute that looting becomes a viable strategy of response. — StreetlightX

Or to put it differently: the production of "bad actors" is a production and reflection of the social reality that birthed them. The attempt to separate those actors into little packets of 'good and bad' is an attempt to deny the reality that produced them. Or as a comrade elsewhere put it - there's protests in 150 cities in damn near every state in the country. These aren't outsiders, they're your fed up neighbours. Protests are not for your feel-good edification.

The thing is a few bad people can make a helluva mess giving the misconception that more foul play is at work than there is. — I like sushi

Right and the real problem is the systematic looters and burners going building to building causing all kinds of damage. I don't think they have much to do with protesting police brutality. They're either there to steal shit, or they're there to cause chaos.

Most of the protesters are peaceful.

Please put comments on racism, systemic racism, and police brutality in the US, along with the public reaction to these phenomena, here. — Baden

This will be a long and rambling post, but since the rest of this thread is long and rambling, I figure it fits here.

(N.B: I am not an American, and far less a victim of the type of systemic racism being discussed. I don't think this discounts my opinion, nor do I think it makes it valuable. I simply offer this information for those who may be trying to understand where I am coming from.)

I spent September and October reading Taylor Branch's 3 volume biography of Martin Luther King Jr. It was an intense couple of months, and at certain points had me feeling like I was living through the most tumultuous parts of the 60s. There are many, many things I took away from this bio. The most important is:

The intense tragedy of America. I almost said 'of the MLK story', I could have said 'of the black story' - but this is untrue. What I feel the most is a sense of tragedy for all of the USA, and maybe the rest of us too. Here was the best we had - a man out of his mind, life on the line, beset on all sides by violence, disillusionment, political grievances both major and minor... wound up dead on a motel balcony in his 30s. That's what you get, in America. America loves to have its heroes but what it loves even more than idolising them is killing them. And part of the tragedy is that King so clearly foresaw this. He hated the violence of American culture, he knew he was one of its victims. He also knew that peaceful protest of the sort he engaged in relies on violence in order to be effective. His Christianity however prevented him from being the perpetrator of that violence. It is a portrait of a man being swallowed up by the earth and donating his final sounded spit to the watering of a seed. And the worst part is, by 1968 King was a broken man. He knew, he just knew, that America was fucked. Even he could not overcome nihilism, the man who spent his life tirelessly fighting nihilism.

Why is this important now? Because we are all living in Dr. King's nightmare. The civil rights movement won victories, important victories, hard-won victories. But the goals of the late 60s King are further away now than they were in his lifetime. The end of poverty, of war, of inequality, of discrimination... And so we will go on quoting MLK because the terrifying conditions he spoke out against will continue to assault us. History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake.

I have no doubt in my mind that the people protesting our 2020 version of a lynching are trying to wake us up from that dream. But I do not see America escaping its cycle of violence any time soon. 2020 will be more bloody than 1968. There are no illusions left, there is nothing to hold onto anymore. A black man has made it to the Presidency now, the glass ceiling has been reached. There is now more space for people to bash their heads into, over and over again...

I would like to say something of hope. I would like to be like King was. But we can't be like that anymore, because King is dead and getting deader. I'm sorry America, you entered the wrong timeline... I can offer solidarity with the protesters, but I don't even know what such a solidarity would mean. All that is left is inchoate anger, as evidenced by this thread including this post. Those of you who are saner than me, I respect but I cannot trust fully. You will, quite rightfully, debate the finer points of strategy and moral philosophy, you will work out a way to get your shining moment in the sun. I wish you all luck. If you can improve another person's life for even a moment you are doing the right thing. All I can say for myself is that I feel utterly powerless, and I am not half as powerless as those on the streets right now. Perhaps I'm getting old... or soft. Perhaps it is a dreadful admission of privilege. All I know is, America is a tragedy and we must keep watching up to the final curtain. Please prove me wrong.

Right and the real problem is — Marchesk

Try again and find the right way to finish that sentence.

Try reading the context of replying to someone else's post about the looting.

I was hoping for some kind of discussion about what is happening, how it can/could be handled, and what steps to take towards a future goal - and what such incremental steps may look like.

I think it reasonably fair to say progress has been made, albeit with backwards steps along the way. The encouraging signs are that these public protests look string enough not to dissipate - this looks like an opportunity for rational discussion and a rethink about troubled areas in US culture. — I like sushi

People have been opened to such debates for years now, especially since Trump took office. And Afro-Americans have been very forward with their observations and thoughts on police violence and segregation. The problem isn't what has happened now, because that is the result of inaction for fixing the problems. If people would actually listen to the one's discussing the issues, the socio-economics and segregation problems as well as the observations of the rise of fascism over the last couple of years, that would have been the start of the solution. But people are mentally lazy, they are surface-level thinking and media plays along. The actual problems are complex and deep and need a deep dive in order to find a solution. The biggest problem has been that the alt-right narratives of "leftist agendas" and other nonsense about "leftist propaganda" has become mainstream and people cannot discuss the actual problems without being branded Marxists in a negative fashion.

Here's the solution: silence all the alt-right propaganda, silence all the surface level anti-intellectuals and have a proper discussion about the problems in society. People need to stop pitting leftists against alt-right and think that is where the issues are. People need to stop branding any discussion about class and segregation as "leftist". I'm sick and tired of pseudo-intellectuals who does this and gets a voice in both media and social media.

The ones actually looking into the problems knows where the problems are, it's the indifference, inaction and apathy from the ones putting people in power and those in power that rolls out the carpet for fascism to have control over groups of people that now had enough.

No one who's intellectually seen behind the curtain of society is in any way surprised by the current protests.

I've read the entire thread including your comments. You're missing the forest for the trees with your looters and insistence on peaceful protest. It's not the real problem and it's not going to be anytime soon.

It's not the real problem and it's not going to be anytime soon. — Benkei

It's a problem, as if only one problem can be real at a tiime.

For whom?

You're missing the forest for the trees with your looters and insistence on peaceful protest. — Benkei

Also, I did make several posts offering ideas for police reforms, along with linking to some ideas.

For whom? — Benkei

Anyone who lives there.

Yes, which gave the impression you got it and then you got back discussing looters and violence as a problem.

It's possible to be both for reform and against violence.

Good. Most of those who live there didn't give a fuck other than maybe signing a change.org petition and then sleeping soundly again. For years.

Nice to know you don't care. Some of the places are also immigrant or minority owned.

I'm against violence if society has a system that allows for the peaceful enforcement of justice and fairness. If it enforces injustice and unfairness, violence becomes an option and sometimes a duty.

Why should we care about people acquiescing to injustice or those actively defending it?

Why should we care about people acquiescing to injustice or those actively defending it? — Benkei

Why should we care about anyone? I don't agree with this collective notion of guilt that demands violence. Also, it's not just privileged neighborhoods getting ransacked, in case you didn't notice.

I agree with the sentiment. Though I wonder what exactly the relation between systemic injustice and individual morality is. It strikes me that while your argument sounds true, there seems to be an element of collective punishment. It doesn't matter who, specifically, the violence hits so long as they share collective guild as part of some group. Do you think that's a problem? — Echarmion

To compare, we can compare to feminist theories about the collective guilt of white males. That is a much harder collective guilt since I have not chosen to be born into the privileges that I'm in and therefore cannot really be blamed on past actions by others because of it. However, the guilt of the people in society within the context of the protests, are directly linked to the situation at hand. The inaction and indifference to the problems within their own borders of society is the exact reason to why Afro-Americans have been subjected to systemic racism by the police.

If people in this community had any interest in changing things for the better they would have elected politicians that would work for solutions to the segregation problems. They would have acted together for the inclusion and empathy towards people of color, for building bridges where bridges are needed. They would have listened to Afro-Americans instead of just ignoring them. But they didn't. Throughout the years, there have been so many invitations from Afro-American communities to act against the problems. To discuss, inform and educate people on the complexities and there have been so many peaceful protests that have just been ignored or downright mocked.

People blame the police, but the police and their level of violence is a power that is positioned there by the people. So the people outside of these communities are as much to blame for what is happening as the police conducting violence. It's not that if you give a police officer a gun he will murder someone, it's not that if you give the police an automatic rifle he will murder ten people; the level of violence in power is given to the police from the people, directly or indirectly.

If people wanted a better space for everyone, they would have acted for it, but they didn't and what is happening now isn't punishment, it's the desperation against that inaction, indifference and apathy that people shows the world. If people don't listen now, then the people are the appeasers of fascism and appeasers of fascism was the ones who paved the way for Nazi Germany. What did the world think about appeasers after the war? The apathetic narcissistic people who paves the way for fascism, deserves the fate that fascism deserves. Act and do something or consequences will unfold, not as punishment, but as a deterministic force to balance out the inbalance.

One last one and I'm done with this thread.



https://www.kbtx.com/content/news/George-Floyds-son-a-Bryan-resident-speaks-with-KBTX-at-Black-Lives-Matter-rally-570911061.html

I think it reasonably fair to say progress has been made, albeit with backwards steps along the way. The encouraging signs are that these public protests look string enough not to dissipate - this looks like an opportunity for rational discussion and a rethink about troubled areas in US culture. — I like sushi

I hope you are right, there are not the lynchings and the overt apartheid there used to be. But things that have gone can return, and since the organisations responsible are still active, and black people are still dying for nothing, progress is not huge. I have proposed education, I have proposed specific empathic training for law enforcement, I could suggest that the KKK be termed a terrorist organisation, rather than ... a non organisation that combats fascism. I can offer loads of suggestions that you may think are rational to even practical. I really hope this time around it doesn't take a world war to defeat fascism.

But first identify the problem. We cannot even get that far on this thread of supposedly reasonable people. It's not a problem of black people being violent, but of them being denied justice, and denied a place in society, and the violence that supports this state of affairs is deeply entrenched and clear to see, but people are still looking the other way. How can we have a rational discussion in these conditions?

The cynical thing to say here is that racism, its cause(s) whatever it/they maybe, can be solved with the world's greatest problemsolver - no, not reason, or love, or anything of that kind but MONEY. Make the discriminated race(s) rich and you'll find racists disappear from the face of the earth like the morning mist when the sun comes out and bathes the land with its "golden" rays.

:fear: :sad: