Was any of it untrue, asshole? — Marchesk

Yes, all of it. Biden - a senile corporatist rapist - is neither 'electable' nor can he be trusted with civil rights protection, given his shitty track record.

In any case, my point was not about Biden but about electoral politics more generally. That Biden happens to be the current cadidate is immaterial.

I quoted an NPR article, dumbass. — Marchesk

You quoted a shill piece for a corporatist racist.

And any violence was always going to be used to deligitimize the protests. Where does that leave us, strategy wise? Is there any strategy?

Are you telling me the riots are the start of the glorious revolution? — Echarmion

Hardly, but the WhAt AbOuT TaRgEt???? corporatist brigade can all STFU or jump off a bridge - that'd be a start.

And can we not forget that giant retailers like Target almost always destroy local independent shops by way of displacing them? They're a market ecosystem killer, like a pesticide. Targets monopolize and offer poverty wages in retrun - they ruin, not nourish, local economies.

As if black voters vote as a collective block, dickhead. And yeah, when faced with a presidential candidate who tried to sustain school segregation and voted for the crime bill which helped entrench black poverty, frankly anyone ought to wonder if electoral politics has any significance whatsoever - not forgetting that Minnesota is a blue state.

Imagine thinking voting will solve this. For who? Joe Biden? That piece of shit has done more to entrench black poverty in the US than Trump could ever dream of.

https://www.leftvoice.org/police-brutality-in-a-blue-state

"Both Frey and other Democratic representatives have called for pacifying the protests, equating the violence of the demonstrations with the racist violence perpetrated by the state, of which they are a part. The political class in Minneapolis, in particular, and Minnesota is trying to prevent an escalation of this crisis in order to, among other reasons, protect capitalist interests. Target, which is owned by the Dayton family, emerged as a site of protest and looting. One of the family, former Minnesota Democratic Governor Mark Dayton, served until 2019 and was later succeeded by Walz. Target has benefited from the pandemic with a 141% increase in its digital purchases, according to Axios. The interests of the capitalist parties are increasingly exposed as the pandemic and the economic and social violence against workers and the oppressed advance. Target workers, by contrast, spoke out in solidarity with the protesters."

(The stuff about Klobuchar in the article is wrong - like factually wrong - but everything else is on point).

Gotta fight that good fight.

Conservatives and "libertarians" like to blabber on about the left's propensity to gatekeep and engage in 'purity testing' over matters of speech and identity. Yet when it comes to one of the biggest social and political movements of the current day - people in the streets, black men murdered in broad daylight - suddenly they become purity freaks.

Infinitely worse than destroying things that have nothing to do with the police? — Marchesk

Insofar as it aims to delegitimize protest and deflect from the systemic injustices and in fact restore and prop them up - feeding into the very cycles the brought it all about - yes, infinitely worse. Orders of magnitude worse.

And if the protests had been peaceful to begin with, that entire argument wouldn't have happened. — Echarmion

The protests were never going to be peaceful, and it is naivety and bad strategy to use that as some kind of standard for discussion. As I said, there have been two movements of co-opting here: one by violent protestors, and one of violent protestors. The latter - happening in this thread and elsewhere in the media - is infinitely, incalculably worse than the former.

It is absolutely the sentiment. Last 5 pages+ have been spent arguing about 'violence' in protests, and barely a peep about the actual issues. You being yet another.

In case who or what Antifa is confuses anybody.

People talk about the protest being coopted by violence.

But the only thing worse is liberal shittards who coopt that violence in turn to shift all discussion away from the injustice and violence which birthed it. Protest which doesn't pass their ivory tower purity test.

Parasite gatekeepers of 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' protest. It's PC, whitewashed protest they want.

"Valid protest" = "Protest which doesn't inconvenience anyone".

No one's there for your aesthetic pleasure.

Nah, your concerns lie exactly where you've spent hundreds of words talking about - defending MNCs and the rights of property, and then saying otherwise. Not interested in your revisionism.

I ended our conversation because I can't really reason with someone who supports complete anarchy and burning everything down and doesn't care about the people harmed. — BitconnectCarlos

Well that's fine because I guess I can't really reason with someone who walks into a thread on systemic racism and then defends Target as an opening post and top priority - in the name of bloody neutrality. That's insanity.

No it's exactly how you post.

All I know is that the rioters have turned a substantial portion of the country less sympathetic to the movement and more concerned with personal safety from rioters. — BitconnectCarlos

Maybe it's because of people like you, who, instead of highlighting police violence against protests, the arresting of journalists, the inflammatory language used by a certain fuckwit President and so on, the first thing you post about is fucking Target. You're part of the very problem you've identified.

You can't help yourself, can you? Disagreement doesn't mean bad faith. — Marchesk

It does with you. You never follow up your objections. You simply throw out new ones if the last one didn't work. It's rubbish.

So why not more progressive taxation and larger inheritance taxes with better safety nets? — Marchesk

We can start with that sure. But you're going to have to reverse a 50 year trend. And besides, I made a whole thread on this with some very educational videos. If you were genuinely interested and not just throwing out bad faith objections, maybe you could educate yourself even minimally.

Wealth isn’t a zero-sum game. There is no fixed amount of wealth in the world. Wealth is created and constantly expands. — NOS4A2

This is true, with the caveat that the game is rigged so that all the expanding wealth gets sucked upwards while those without are made to be entrenched in that position. As they say: money makes money, and being poor is extremely expensive.

I wasn't talking about people arguing on here for a socialist revolution, I was talking about people who are actively protesting. They're not doing it to win the moral argument, they're doing it to stop the police killing them. It's not just about some abstract principle of justice, it's about the reality of applied injustice. — Michael

:up:

Does a bear shit in the woods?

Society was already burning, you're just too blind to see it.

Then why criticize those who criticize the riots as not being critics of the murder? — Hanover

Come back to me when they do the latter. So far neither Bitwhatsheface nor Marches seem to give shit other than to suck the balls of Target. Would hate for you to join in.

I don't know what the fuck side you're talking about.

So if the social contract is voided, why not just do whatever? — Marchesk

Why not indeed? Defending an unjust, broken social contract on the basis of it supposedly being better than there being a void one is stupid.

It certainly isn’t about the injustice of George Floyd’s murder anymore. — NOS4A2

Damn straight it isn't.

Is it not possible to object to both the unjust murder and the riots? Why must we choose only one injustice to notice? — Hanover

It's possible to do anything you want.

Given that the current system is killing and starving countless many - whatever's less than that would be a start.

Trevor Noah bloody gets it.

8m 34s: "Ask yourself when you watch those people [who loot] - what vested interest do they have in maintain the (current social) contract? Why don't we all loot? Why doesn't everybody take? Because we've agreed on things. There are so many people starving out there, who don't have ... But still, think about how many people who don't have - the have-nots - say: you know what, I'm still going to play by the rules even though I have nothing, because I still wish for the society to work and exist. And then - some members of that society, namely black American people, watch time and time again how the contract that they have signed with society is not being honored by the society that has forced them to sign it with them. ...

And alot of people say: 'what good does it do? What good does it do to loot Target, how does it help you to loot Target?"; Yeah but what good doesn't it do? That's the question people don't ask the other way around. How does it help you to not loot Target? Answer that question. Because the only reason to not loot Target before was because you were upholding society's contract. [But] there is no contract if law and people in power don't uphold their end of it".

Well shit, let's burn it all to the ground and start over. — Marchesk

Now you're getting it.

The only thing extreme is the utter shitness of a society in which George Floyds happen regularly and when all people like you can moan about are property.

Don't pretend you give two shits about local owners if you have nothing to say about the systemic conditions that keep black people poor and vying for uninsured minimum wage jobs, all while defending MNCs.

It begins with bootlickers like you, of course.

One could see how a wannabe fascist would be scared of antifacists.

Good, 'cause I'm not.

Burning precincts and cop cars should be enough to get everyone's attention. No need to destroy the rest of the community. — Marchesk

You don't get to decide what is and is not enough from your high chair.

I could just take the other side and treat the protesters like they're all murdering business owners, looting stores, and assaulting police officers and civilians. — BitconnectCarlos

You could, but then you'd be an complete fucking idiot.

Ha, tell me how it is. I only read her Being Numerous, which I thought was awesome.

But I don't have enough breath to hold at the moment for pandemic reasons. — unenlightened

This is incredible dark humor :sweat: