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Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

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)

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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.

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