Comment by neartheplain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neartheplain | Hacker News Reader

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Let's not make light of terrorists who have killed people.

Many remain unaware that four city blocks of Seattle were occupied for a month by gunmen with assault rifles [0][1][2], or that those self-identified antifa gunmen shot and killed an unarmed black kid [3], or that antifa Twitter celebrated the killing and their shooter's "beautiful shot placement" [4] until it turned out they'd murdered a black kid instead of imaginary white supremacists. Note the now-deleted tweet's many likes and retweets.

The murdered kid's name was Antonio Mays Jr., and despite or perhaps because of [5] the many antifa eyewitnesses to the shooting, his killer remains at large.

That's just CHAZ/CHOP. I haven't even mentioned Michael Reinoehl, Matthew Dolloff, Jesse Taggart, and others. For some reason these incidents rapidly slipped from public view, or were never a focus at all. Fortunately the relevant livestreams, tweets, and video clips have all been archived.

Many of the original sources for the CHAZ/CHOP shootings are now unavailable. I encourage everyone to use tools like youtube-dl and archive-dot-is. Even if a clip, tweet, or stream doesn't seem to embarrass its owner or violate a platform's TOS, it may always get deleted for some other reason. If you want to refer to it later, always archive.

[0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/chop-shooting-seattle-defu...

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/after-early-mornin...

[2] https://www.the-sun.com/news/980814/heavily-armed-leftist-gu...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/us/seattle-protests-CHOP-...

[4] https://archive.is/D0fZs

[5] https://twitter.com/lporiginalg/status/1282703884721348609

You're telling me people are more concerned with an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America lead by the "leader of the free world" than some sideshow in Seattle?

Because Chaz or whatever it was called was certainly in the news. It's just, unsurprisingly, this is probably going to last for more news cycles than that did

People might be a lot more sympathetic to factual criticism of left wing political violence if mainstream Republican politicians didn't frequently lie about it, up to and including politicians today who are claiming that Antifa was responsible for the attack on the US Capitol.

When so many loud (and often elected) voices say Antifa or BLM have "burned cities down" or other such outright fabrications, it's hard to take the genuine criticism seriously.

Objectivity is a difficult thing. When you see posts like this it's usually people who don't belong to the Republican or Democratic party who get to observe both in a light which they have limited or no biases because their own political wants are never met. Anybody who participates in a riot deserves accountability, anybody who takes over/storms/whatever verb of the day you prefer any government institution is participating in insurrection/domestic terrorism and deserves to be held to account.

If you make excuses for these people, engage in hyperbole/exaggeration/dismissal, parrot narratives mindlessly, or gossip on twitter then you are contributing to a system which helps these people, groups, and institutions avoid accountability and makes us all worse off for it. We will never have a stable nation as long as any of these people do not understand the error of their ways. Immediately after this storming of the Capitol I watched liberals parrot narratives saying the "Capitol Police let them in!" and yet [0] we now have stories of how a Capitol Police officer died after trying to defend the Capitol. I watched conservatives make up all kind of rosy views about the storming of the capitol and yet ignored they were prompted by Donald Trump and his obsession with maintaining power. You're all wrong.

[0] https://www.euronews.com/2021/01/08/us-capitol-riots-police-...

> I watched liberals parrot narratives saying the "Capitol Police let them in!" and yet...

At at least one entry point, for whatever reason that narrative appears to have some justification:

https://mobile.twitter.com/disclosetv/status/134761599861091...

I've said it before on this website (about a multitude of political and cultural topics) and I'll say it again: immediately arriving at maximalist conclusions is rarely beneficial or even truthy. Let the investigations play out and the dust settle before you go making wide statements about a force of ~2,000 people who were most likely devastated at the symbology of this event and the fact that one of their colleagues is dead.

I couldn't agree more. I vastly prefer reading either analyses of last month's news–or forecasts of next month's–much more than I do what we call coverage of developing events.

That said, with due respect I would note that I was responding to your apparently 'immediately arriving at a conclusion before the dust had settled' by calling her assessment a parroted narrative, likely before having seen that video.

We can all do better.

Hence my framing it in a very specific way to address that portion of your comment.

In the first paragraph I was responding to the poster, the second paragraph is really just directed at political and political culture people in general. It was meant to be a metaphorical 'you'. I'll try to find better ways to phrase it so my point isn't lost in the future. That said, I've seen that video. While it's significant it doesn't mean much until federal authorities investigate it. What various people on here and abroad used it to do was to craft narratives favorable to their own stances.

Yeah, I have no idea what the narrative on that event will be, or what it should be, or whether those two will be the same. Facts will continue to come out and be amalgamated into various narratives to suit the various factions.

I guess what I really mean to say is that someone seeing that video and thinking, "some of those people were let inside by the Capitol Police" is not the most reckless interpretation of a video clip I've seen in the last twelve months, much less in my lifetime.

Now, "I saw that video and therefore it was staged by [Trump/Pelosi/etc.]," is where it becomes reckless and unjustifiable parroting of trending narratives. Let's wait for the investigation, and hope (however naively) that it is thorough and impartial, and that the public receives the full report.

Edited to add: I have never seen an American public so ready to be deceived and weaponized against each other as what we've seen with this last, long cycle of increasing tension (which appears to be far from over). And it's anyone's guess as to who will weaponize that more destructively.

So I think your ultimate point is both timely and important. Thank you for making it.

I agree and I see your point.

> Edited to add: I have never seen an American public so ready to be deceived and weaponized against each other as what we've seen with this last, long cycle of increasing tension (which appears to be far from over). And it's anyone's guess as to who will weaponize that more destructively.

Same. These times are very worrisome. I don't really know what to do anymore.

> So I think your ultimate point is both timely and important. Thank you for making it.

Same to you. I appreciate that there's still a place on the internet I can go where I can have discourse with people and not be shouted out of a room. I refuse to believe this is just the status quo going forward and meeting like-minded folks gives me hope.

Thank you. On the one hand, I'd like to think the world is still mostly full of reasonable people.

On the other hand, I'm also (lamentably) aware of how few griefers it takes to turn a great multiplayer environment into something nearly worthless for that large majority of reasonable people.

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