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Comment by dieortin | Hacker News Reader

You say it like “getting caught in the moment” and assaulting the Capitol is something completely reasonable that anyone in that situation might do.

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Too many people are trying to rationalize the polarization of our society, focusing exclusively on the ends and ignoring the means.

Remember NPR's puff piece justifying looting? Or (I think) CNN's reporter standing in front of a burning building while saying that the BLM protests were mostly peaceful? (They were, but the not-peaceful bits were downplayed in an obviously biased way). There was another interview I saw where some guy was talking about the change they wanted to see, and peace and justice and so on, and was interrupted when in the background the crowd cheered when they finally managed to topple a traffic light (that traffic light never hurt anyone)

False equivalence. Looting commercial districts (while objectionable) is not the same as falsely claiming a federal election was stolen and looting the Capital.

OK. The dems ran around for 3 years claiming the Russians somehow handed Trump the 2016 election.

"We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling." - Senator Marco Rubio, R-FL, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair

https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/8/rubio-s...

Now you trust Republicans.

Nowhere near enough to actually influence the election.

What information do you have that allows you to make that determination? It was a very close election.

The fact that the Senate report itself does not question the outcome of the 2016 election would be a big one.

The fact that Russian operation was much smaller that either candidate's political campaigns.

Also, just the general lack of evidence that it was a decisive factor.[1]

[1]https://time.com/5573537/mueller-report-russia-election-inte...

Neither the Senate report nor the Mueller report attempted to determine whether the Russian operations affected the outcome of the election, as your article indicates:

> [D]id those Russian efforts actually swing the outcome of the 2016 contest? ... Mueller's report does not attempt to answer this politically charged issue.

Indeed, that article explains quite clearly how it's not possible to say with certainty ("nowhere near enough") whether the outcome of the election was changed or not. You can't compare the impact of the stolen DNC and Podesta emails with campaign expenditures.

Amazed to see this being downvoted. We really do live in multiple realities in this country.

Perhaps the people who were looting commercial districts would have looted the Capitol if they were put in the same situation. Perhaps the people who looted the Capitol would have looted storefronts if they had been mad at what they represented. There's one way to look at it where you have a generalized trait of not caring about following the law when you're surrounded by a large group, a trait that some people have, and that can be activated whenever the right circumstances arise.

But they didn't and that is all that matters here.

But they did:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-hous...

Looks like the police did their jobs (for once).

The lack of police amd national guard response to the Capitol siege is a direct result of the media coverage of the BLM protests- both the mayor and security officials didn't want to look bad, or make matters worse.

It is worth pointing out that, prior to this, right wing protests have actually been very peaceful. Protesting tax rates really isnt enough to rile up the radical elements. "Stop the Steal" apparently was, and definitely caught them flat footed.

> Perhaps the people who were looting commercial districts would have looted the Capitol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

And yet they didn't, the Women's March following Trump's election was far larger and didn't lead to this.

It's one thing to make a run at a pair of jeans when police are distracted to sell on ebay later. That's common petty theft. It's another to force entry into the Capitol when both chambers were in session along with the Vice President to certify election results. That's terrorism.

They're different, literally. But would they take different people? Maybe there's a similarity.

The looting and rioting after the George Floyd incident (as a separate event from the peaceful protests) were not limited to commercial districts. Across multiple cities, government buildings and police stations were vandalized/looted. In an extreme case, in Portland, the federal courthouse was set on fire.

Also, the post-George-Floyd looting/rioting persisted for far more than a day. An example is the CHOP zone in Seattle, which lasted for 3 weeks before protesters were forcibly removed.

This doesn't absolve the Capitol Hill rioters either, but simply describing the BLM looting "looting commercial districts" downplays the amount of damage done. In my opinion, I think reasonable questions to ask are: over what period of time did the violence persist, what amount of value was destroyed, and how many lives were claimed during the looting.

> over what period of time did the violence persist,

According to BLM the violence against them has persisted since the founding of the country.

Rioting against being systemically killed for generations and destroying property because nothing else you do changes the system is absolutely fundamentally different than storming Congress because your cult leader and GOP officials have lied to you, you're dumb enough to believe it, and cause you to commit insurrection.

There is no comparing the two no matter how many times people try and draw up this false equivalence.

Because destroying people's businesses and livelihoods is more worthy somehow than damaging a political symbol where the damage will be paid for by taxpayers as a whole? They both seem morally wrong to me - The description "Damaging other people's property" seems applicable to both, or "equivalent", you might say?

A government sponsored media outlet giving justification to the victimization of innocent civilians is much worse.

Did any of the summer looters say "NPR said it was okay" as a defense after getting caught?

In both cases rioting and looting are unacceptable and the rioters should be arrested, but the BLM protests are based on legitimate political grievances while the Trump protests are based on a total fabrication and manifested as a literal attack on the foundation of our democratic intuitions. The philosophy behind the election fraud narrative is utterly unredeemable and should be condemned on its face.

> the BLM protests are based on legitimate political grievances

If you can claim the BLM looting, rioting and violence (and murders) which has been ongoing for months are based on "legitimate political grievances", you need to substantiate that.

The right wing fringes can equally claim to have legitimate political grievances with how they have been systematically dismissed, villified and represented in national media for the last four years.

Anything else is going to be a double standard.

It is transparent lie. They came in prepared for it. They had bombs, zip ties, clubs, etc.

I don't think it is reasonable - I am just explaining the psychology of how people can get swept up in the fervor of crowds. I am fully in support of arresting all who participated. But my point is that it is not reasonable to conclude that Trump's speech incited people to illegally invade the capitol, commit theft/vandalism, and assault officers. His speech literally had a line saying "peacefully protest". The vast majority of people hearing his speech did not break the law. So how can there be a conclusion that he incited people to break the law? Those who broke the law are independent humans who hold personal responsibility for their actions. Unless Trump explicitly urges them to commit crimes, charging him with incitement is wrong.

On that note, what specifically from Trump’s speech was inciting violence? “March” != “Riot”

This is the section about marching to the Capitol.

“ And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.

We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated. Lawfully slated.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today, we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections. But whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time. Far longer than this four year period.”

“

Full text of his speech (rambling and painful to read, but there was no advocating for violence: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-told-supporters-storme...

Rudy: "Let's have trial by combat" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5FfcbpVLNo

Trump: The entirety of this speech, but specifically the "fight like hell" part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjYh4tIhVi4

Trump: "Be there, it will be wild": https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/capitol-mob-t...

This article covers a lot of it too. It's been stoked for a while: https://fortune.com/2021/01/07/trump-speech-capitol-attack-r...

All figurative language that politicians (and non-politicians) use all the time.

Joe Biden literally expressed a desire to physically harm the President, and dramatic, ecstatic portrayals of his death have been shared for his entire presidency.

It's looking like there might be a trial in the senate so we'll see if the "figurative language" argument holds up. Trump telling the rioters "I love you" after they stormed the capitol doesn't look too good in that regard.

Comparing what you're saying about democrats and Biden to what the president has been saying for years and all of the talk on facebook, twitter, r/thedonald, Parler, and Gab is being willfully ignorant. The results speak for themselves.

He said "I love you" in order to connect emotionally with the crowd as part of a message to tell them to go home. It's also just how he speaks to his supporters. He's not telling them that his loves them for having stormed the capitol.

You are engaging in the most disingenuous interpretations of his words.

And there is no willful ingorance here. I know the things said by randos on r/thedonald can often be pretty horrendous. There are horrendous randos everywhere. Just look at r/politics.

The things people in power have said about Trump and his supporters is also quite terrible, and the fact that they have power makes it worse.

The ignorance is yours.

Thank you for posting a link to the full text of Trump's speech. Consider this section from the last paragraph...

"the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything, not even one vote"

If he does get charged, it will be a jury that decides, after they hear all the evidence. All we know are what we see in the internet.

> I am just explaining the psychology of how people can get swept up in the fervor of crowds.

So, “Whoopsie! I accidentally entered the Capitol through that broken window and got peer pressured right into the Senate?”

"Oops, I may have committed some light treason"

People do get dumb in mobs, so that could be true

It’s pretty wild that statements like “people do dumb things in mobs” are controversial depending on the prism people are looking through

Alcohol makes some people aggressive. The right solution, for those people, is to not drink alcohol. And "but I was drunk" is not considered a valid defense.

Maybe the same standard should be applied to people who decide to join a mob, if we're assuming they're not dumb already before joining one.

Ah, yes, the spontaneously generated pipe bombs, firearms, merchandise (t-shirts, caps, you name it), messages organising weeks before, zip-cuffs, hangman's platform, and spears.

It'd be an interesting twist in the simulation if the entities were materialized/determined only when the chest^H^H^H^H^H^H truck was examined.

Their opposition loses any credibility to attack these few 100s when they accepted the BLM riots and looting as peaceful. Either stop picking sides and come up with a meaningful solution or you’re contributing to the problem.

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