George Floyd

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah Dan but I think that there isn't an entirely coordinated response from top to bottom. What I mean is yeah the - let's call it - regime doesn't want videos spreading round the world of its police attacking news teams, but I do think that in the moment a lot of the police do have less fear of doing precisely that... so it's true in at least one sense.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Is everyone seeing that picture of the soldiers with no badges and so on who won't identify their precise role beyond saying they work for the DOJ? That is scary.
 

Dusty

Tone deaf
I think that photo is actually of one specific DOJ building they have been hired to guard. They aren't being used to manage/suppress demonstrators directly. Just a department upping it's security private detail.

The more disturbing photos for me are the police with black masking tape over their badge identity numbers.
 

version

Well-known member
Within minutes of the David Dorn story breaking on Twitter, Paul Joseph Watson and a bunch of other right wingers were pretending to be up in arms about CNN etc not talking about it and saying stuff like "I thought Black Lives Mattered?" as though there'd been anywhere near enough time for everyone to have heard about it.

Fucking shameless.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'm wary of saying this as I don't want to be thought to be advocating for something I'm not, but — this militarisation of the police in America has me wondering if that whole second amendment argument for gun ownership has something to it.

Strange to say, I've never thought to consider gun control in a racial context.
 

Leo

Well-known member
2nd amendment applies only on white dudes with guns. black dudes with guns get their heads busted.
 

droid

Well-known member
Its a nonsense. No amount of assault rifles is gonna stand up against the US military. Ask Fallujah. Martin Oppenheimer had it sussed 50 years ago.

"It is clear that modern technology, particularly the speed of communication and travel, has made that harder than ever to accomplish, even with a general strike. The use of such devices as helicopters, light bombers, and gas and napalm, while not excluding revolutionary outbreaks, makes them much more costly than a century ago...

...To attempt a revolution without such majority support is almost inevitably bound to result either in a counter-revolutionary fascist society or in a revolutionary dictatorship which destroys the goals for which the revolution was undertaken."
 

version

Well-known member
I'd consider owning a gun if I were in the US tbh. It's not just the government you need to protect yourself from. Look at those right wing militias wandering around...
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
4pm curfews here in/around LA two days ago, 6pm yesterday. Not sure how uniform these policies are - but that is because I haven't done the research.

How often do such riots unfold in "upscale" areas? Riots and looting at The Grove, a major mall in LA and one of Rick Caruso's projects.

If the genuine protestors, meaning those motivated by effecting social change (especially those who do not even resort to violence) - if much of their fight becomes damage control, clarifying that the violence/looting is not what they're advocating, is their message pretty much snuffed out? Or can a large enough number of people effectively sift through the obfuscation/sabotaging undertaken by those who either had unrelated agendas or had agendas against the legitimate protestors? Probably a better way to phrase all that.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Its a nonsense. No amount of assault rifles is gonna stand up against the US military. Ask Fallujah. Martin Oppenheimer had it sussed 50 years ago.
Yeah this is something I often think when you watch that Drugs Inc programme or whatever. You see these gangs - even cartel related - with pitbulls, massive stashes of knives, ridiculous guns (massive shotguns and assault rifles, even flame-throwers and grenade launchers sometimes) and metal reinforced doors on the trap house and all kinds of crazy stuff.... but when the full SWAT team rolls up in an armoured vehicle with a team of guys with years of training, bullet proof vests etc, it takes maybe ten seconds before the whole crew are on the floor facedown in handcuffs.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I'm wary of saying this as I don't want to be thought to be advocating for something I'm not, but — this militarisation of the police in America has me wondering if that whole second amendment argument for gun ownership has something to it.

Strange to say, I've never thought to consider gun control in a racial context.
This is what the Black Panthers were about though, right? Armed black men policing the police. Can absolutely see why they did this but as I understand it, it was simply matched and escalated by the police.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
How's it being presented across the media over there? What are the news channels saying?
First off, I am rather disconnected from the kind of media outlets that would be providing immediate coverage of this, but between this thread, my family, and certain email newsletters I can begin to piece it together. Plus, I was away from home for the last few days.

So take a few grains of salt with all this.

From what I gather, based primarily on people's reactions to much of it: It seems that any kind of sabotaging/derailing of the protests by outside parties, be they opportunistic, antagonistic, or plainly irresponsible - it seems this kind of outside influence has been enough to convince many people (and maybe there can be drawn, statistically, some age/generational divide) that the protests do more harm than good, because the protests seem to be conflated with the riots. This conflation, I must say, whether in theory or practice or both, seems a damned near sure-fire way to tilt the opinion of the masses against the movement behind the protests. If you can conflate the agendas of the protestors with the rioters, although some people undoubtedly qualify as both, you can tarnish the integrity of the protest.

As a tactics of control, it almost seems bulletproof: all you really need to do is add more flak and fire to the mix (and you don't even need to do it that strategically) and can effectively obfuscate and ultimately illegitimize (?) an otherwise genuine, even peaceful activism.

To risk being redundant: it doesn't seem to require much organization to derail the kinds of movement these protests represent/embody - all you need to do is stir things up. Then, those who would otherwise have held fast to their agenda of protest - they are now forced to clarify their assertions, to distill them from the ever-heightening cacophony of destruction around them.

This is why I was asking you all about what prospects the movement, here BLM, has of preserving their intended message amidst all the noise. Much of the imbalance here (BLM having a disproportionately more difficult task of retaining their message, as opposed to the comparatively simple task of sullying said message) seems to boil down to this: organization is more difficult than disorganization.

edit: it is interesting that, usually, one would associate organization with control and disorganization with revolt... Here it seems the roles are reversed

But to really answer the question, it seems that the news coverage sheds light on unfavorable collateral damage, small business losses etc, to enough of an extent as to demonize the rioters and, unfortunately and perhaps unintentionally, generalize the whole shebang as a clusterfuck, which, clearly, it is - but must the signal be lost in the noise?
 
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droid

Well-known member
6 days after the '68 riots the civil rights act was passed. Thats not gonna happen now, but violence, can and does, sometimes work. In fact you can make a good argument that sometimes violence is the only thing that works, borne out by the bloody history of labour, civil rights & suffrage.

One of the few universal political truths is that nobody ever gives up their privileges by choice. Rights have to be claimed and the forcibly defended.
 

version

Well-known member
I find the fact this has all happened before simultaneously encouraging and frustrating. The former because it suggests this isn't a unique "all is lost" moment that can never be bounced back from, the latter because it's the same shit happening over and over and too many people simply refuse to learn and develop and do something about it.
 
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