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Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

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Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#371

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Great example of other unwanted content that is more or less impossible to find on mainstream platforms, or even most seedy porn sites, or even the underbelly of the internet that was Parler.

It was apparently easy to find on Pornhub not long ago which is very mainstream? I usually go for the mature category to avoid it... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...

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Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#372
post #349
post #325

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> Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed. Or massively & publicly fail... if we’re trading conspiracy theories.

Fail in what way? I mean they didn’t actually overthrow the government or string up Pence, but their penetration and looting of the Capitol buildings was incredibly successful.

They were within minutes (reported in national newspapers as “within one minute”) of being in the room with Mike Pence, so perhaps the Vice President was lucky.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#373
post #279

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Most people who are idiots are not terrorists either. On average a terrorist would be smarter than the average person. Terrorists are highly motiviated individuals, they can deeply understand an ideology and they activity learn/train in specialized skills. Compared to the average person their IQ would be 20 points higher. Being a terrorist isn't easy. It's not a job for everyone.

> they can deeply understand an ideology Looking at what motivated most of the Capitol insurrectionists does not support this claim. They are seemingly unable to distinguish reality from obvious propaganda or wild conspiracy theories.

They are not terrorists mostly naive fools.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#374
post #263

It was planned for months, openly on Facebook in plain view of everybody. Remember that when politicians call for more intrusive surveillance in response.

Yeah "we need to break all encryption to catch people planning terrorism in Facebook groups, e-mail, and unencrypted SMS..." Most terrorists are idiots because most people who are not idiots are not terrorists.

There have been plenty of extremely well organised, sophisticated and technically competent terrorists. The IRA, the Red Amy Faction, the PLO and Black September, Al Qaeda.

Aside from 9/11 none of them have operated successfully in the US and your domestic terrorism has mainly been perpetrated by individuals or very small one off groups of just 2 or 3.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#375

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Compared to other DC protests, the absence of preparation was the preparation. Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed.

They employed tear gas to get Trump to hold a bible upside down. [1] It's hard to overstate how poorly they managed this. This is something a special investigation should be commissioned out by congress/the DOJ. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...

Doesn't change your point, but the Bible was right side up.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#377
post #351

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Such a lazy, and hateful attack. Your post doesn't belong here. We're talking about terrorism here, and your first reaction is: "But what about BLM?!?" They have nothing to do with each other. Your assumption is that people didn't condemn the violence this summer. They did. You just choose to ignore it so you can keep your political nonsense. Get a grip.

Any rational definition of terrorism (lives lost, property damage, etc) would implicate BLM/Antifa orders of magnitude more than the Capitol rioters.

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Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#378

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Thank you for the first legitimate critique of the Black Lives Matter organization that I've seen. I don't think it invalidates all of the points of the platform of BLM, but it does make me question the sanity and legitimacy of the organization's leadership.

I don't mean this unkindly, but your information diet has incredibly serious problems if you haven't come across any legitimate criticisms of the BLM org in the past. As someone whose pet issue has been police and justice system violence for a really, really long time, I really wish BLM wasn't the organization/movement representing this particular struggle[1]. The 2020 iteration is a little more connected to reality…

This is such a spot on comment. I think the trouble is that you can’t pick the way that opposition to very bad things finds it’s moment. We have had decades of horrible abuses and creeping police state totalitarianism. It affects everyone. It permeates life everywhere. I wish the current zeitgeist around changing that was less identitarian, but I will take what I can get and happily support it.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#379
post #45

It's chilling how quickly the tech industry has coalesced around oppressive and biased social media censorship policies. A scant few years ago, the tech industry was a beacon of free expression.

It's chilling how quickly radical terrorist groups have coalesced around using social media to coordinate their hatred and their attacks. A scant few years ago, America actively fought terrorists instead of encouraging and facilitating them.

Uuuuuuuum, that is emphatically not the parallel you want to draw here. We did fuck all to prevent extremism from metastasizing and set the Middle East on a course to be a shatter belt for our lifetimes and likely that of our kids. We also killed a bunch of civilians and terrorism was used as a pretext for a hell of a lot of pretty racist policies. Having power means you have to be the grownup in the room. It sucks but the choice is that or a kind of repression that strengthens the grievances of the people you’re supposed to be fighting. The way terrorists work, when they’re successful, is by leveraging the overreaction of their adversary to win adherents, resources, and eventually legitimacy. We can’t let that happen again, we can’t let that happen here, and we sure as hell can’t let it happen with white supremacists.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#380
post #360
post #308

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So you’re able to clearly separate out the bad actors from BLM, but apparently not with Trump supporters?

‘Even the bad actors aren’t really that bad because they support a cause I see as valuable’ seems to be the primary excuse floating around on here. All political violence should be treated equally. I also think that all races/genders/etc should be treated equally but even that has become taboo in progressive circles. Which is probably using the same sort of mental gymnastics that justifies some violence but not vilif…

I also think that all races/genders/etc should be treated equally but even that has become taboo in progressive circles.

Problem is, it's always been taboo in conservative circles as well. That is the great problem of our day. All these political ideologues espouse beliefs contrary to the good of large numbers of people in our society. They give speeches about how it's not "us" but the other side who are the bad guys, but then they all send their pet terrorists out to riot, loot, and in the case of the capitol attackers gather intel to hand over to our nation's adversaries.

These political extremists are simply bad people all the way around. No matter what way you look at it.

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