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'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

reason.com

251–260 of 325 posts

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#251
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. It’s all our team or their team based on whatever news channel they subscribe to. No one takes time to dig below the surface and think for themselves.

It's unsettling. It seems like there is an increasing number of people who simply adopt the narrative for their team, and assume all others do the same. Anyone who disagrees with that narrative must be a member of the opposite team. If presented with evidence that goes against their narrative, the response is usually that it doesn't matter. If they completely flip to the opposite position on an issue, the response is…

> If they completely flip to the opposite position on an issue, the response is often that both their earlier position was correct and that their new position is also correct.

A wonderful thing about nuance is that this is often ok.

Sometimes, their actual earlier position and new position are consistent. But will anyone listen if they try to explain why? Usually not.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your point is that people on both the right and the left are capable of immoral behavior and that we should condemn, I agree with you! I think I missed the point you were trying to make because it appeared that you were only highlighting and correlating heinous acts from one person who supported a position that you disagree with.

My point is actually beyond politics. If this thread was about my therapist, I might talk about a particular family member and their tribe. And how I had to cut contact with that tribe because of abuse and the tribe conveniently forgetting the abuse. But this is a thread about BLM, so I'm bringing up an issue related to that. For a personal take, I avoid any tribe where I see this forgetfullness and will point it out…

This thread is about Black Lives Matter, which is a movement focused on the injustice of police brutality and criminal justice reform. Your point - which I take to be that that tribalism is bad - is less potent because you pointed out “forgetfulness” of people who support black lives matter but not in people who support the status quo of police use of power, which seems to be a demonstration of tribalism rather than a repudiation if it.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#253
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small minority get violent and the cops prematurely declare a riot? Portland is not the war zone the media claims it is.

Is this before or after rioters set someone on fire with a molotov?

Likely before?

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#254
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s some absurd hyperbole. Death? These people are scared of going to jail. They know they are breaking the law and they know if they get caught they could go to jail.

They only go to jail if they are judged to have committed crimes in court. I wonder if antifa gives similar due process rights to the people it accuses and attacks?

"They only go to jail if they are judged to have committed crimes in court."

Not true. Plenty of people in jail have not been found guilty of anything and are there waiting their day in court.

That could go on for months or even years.

That's not to mention people dying in police custody, and the fact that some people's lives and reputation could be ruined by the mere accusation of a crime.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#255
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this before or after rioters set someone on fire with a molotov?

Likely before?

Maybe you should stop with the blatant disinformation campaign in this post. It's not helpful to people trying to understand the truth.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#256

The mainstream reporting was so bad I just started looking on Twitter. I found both pro- and anti-"protest" accounts with video. Even the pro-protest account videos debunk the narrative that these are peaceful African-American protestors. Whenever one lets the mask slip or shows her hands or hair, it's a young white person. These are night time riots, plain and simple. Surveillance footage released by law enforcement…

>these Antifa people (who "don't exist"

I've heard people argue about their identity and level of organisation, but "don't exist"? If this narrative is out there at all, it must be extremely fringe.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#257
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen no shortage of pearl-clutching over breathlessly reported videos of almost all of the violence so far. Some buildings and vehicles have burned. On the other hand, children have been shot in the face with projectiles and suffered TBIs. Police have permanently blinded people and shattered bones. I think it is a mistake to even begin to equate the amount of police violence that has been inflicted with the viol…

> Some buildings and vehicles have burned. And some people have been murdered: https://apnews.com/864cb5c14ba08b4411a16577042d0773

At least one of the deaths mentioned in that URL... was shot by police.

Recall also that these protests began because the police in the US have murdered thousands in the last few centuries.

Anti-police-violence protests would have to sustain dozens of related deaths every single night for months to even approach the level of depravity exercised by police for years.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#258
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the state wants people to respect the laws and remain peaceful, it needs to clean its own house of violent criminals first. No, the people demand that everyone respect the laws and remain peaceful. To that end, the people fund and enact a police force to protect life and property, and to apprehend suspected criminals. I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “some of the protestors have turned violent.” There is…

Can I get some details? Who makes up the contingent? Are they protestors, counter protestors or what? What motivates them, and how do you know this information?

Presumably the same sort who says

> If the state wants people to respect the laws and remain peaceful, it needs to clean its own house of violent criminals first.

Or “peaceful protesting wasn’t working so what else are protestors supposed to do?” Which I see all over Reddit.

Personally, I hear friends who dislike the violence but have an attitude of “well we’re so privileged, who are we to judge?” It’s not PC to disavow it because our voices aren’t the ones that need to be heard right now (unless we agree, in which case we’re being allies and have a moral duty to speak up and lend our privilege).

This quote comes up a lot in that context (MLK, Letter from the Birmingham Jail):

> First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”

That said, I don’t know anyone who supports violent protest, and my friends are as left as they come.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This one, in particular, that “antifa is a violent mob that is super hypocritical”, and also aliasing “antifa” and “blm” as coterminous. The truth is very different, but I fear that many in their libertarian audience have shifted a lot more authoritarian in recent years, so it’s a logical evolution. It’s just super disappointing to see them regurgitating the off-the-shelf battle lines instead of digging for real. Y…

Publications are generally not titled x-ism, where x is the ideology they represent. Libertarianism is not "a trojan horse for ideology" it is an ideology.

>Libertarianism is not "a trojan horse for ideology" it is an ideology.

It can be both, though for many proponents it's natural to blindly reject the notion of one's identity being polluted by people who are ostensibly on "your side". It's not something that's only happening in libertarianism, but I strongly agree that it is abused in the way the parent describes.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#260
post #32

It makes me sad that an institution I used to like and respect, reason.com, seems more and more often to subscribe to the standard (and, taken uncritically, untrue) set pieces of the standard American culture war. This one, in particular, that “antifa is a violent mob that is super hypocritical”, and also aliasing “antifa” and “blm” as coterminous. The truth is very different, but I fear that many in their libertaria…

Your assessment was thoughtful, reasonable - and hammered with downvotes. I'm sensing a pattern where it's the well-expressed concerns with authoritarianism that are getting dogpiled.

The culture war in the US has pretty much devolved into generic sports-teamism at this point, calling for blood and demanding cancellation of anyone who doesn't agree with a narrow set of viewpoints.

This may seem like I'm pointing a finger in a particular direction with use of the term "cancellation", but it really applies to almost everyone civically involved in the US presently. It's become really boring and difficult to discuss any nuance in the situations.

I wrote about it last month:

https://sneak.berlin/20200808/partisan-politics-are-boring/

I like to focus on the fact that the vast majority of people, everywhere in the world, regardless of "sports team" are decent and nonviolent. It's easy to get caught up in these things, war-of-the-worlds-style, when the media is both spewing fuel onto the culture war fire, and also increasingly custom-tailoring all of their output to one of two such teams.

Already, pretty obvious plain facts are being disregarded by a lot of prominent people simply because they don't fit the expected and normal us/them narrative that so many are now invested into.

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