Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

:fingers crossed emoji:

>Correct, I was comparing the violence in general. This is different than your original claim that I was comparing BLM property damage to the Capitol Hill murder.

I guess I simply don't like the "in general" part as it inherently equates the two. Like I said, I believe there is a fundamental difference between violence against property and violence against people and categorizing them all as "violence" sets up a false equivalency.

>I'm thinking of incidents like Michael Forest Reinoehl (Antifa). He murdered a right-wing activist and was very explicit that he did it because he believed the right-wing was a threat to Black lives. In any case, we're not going to learn much by looking at the outlier instances of violence; in both cases there are much more uniform trends of lesser degrees of violence spanning from trespassing to property damage to assault. All I'm asking (indeed, all anyone is asking) is that we hold BLM rioters to the same standard as MAGA rioters, BLM assailants to the same standard as MAGA assailants, etc.

That was a violent confrontation that happened because armed alt-right counter protesters showed up to the BLM protests to start some shit. We have no clear picture of how the confrontation started, in part because Reinoehl was also killed by police under suspicious circumstances. The same type of confrontation happened with Kyle Rittenhouse except it was people on opposite sides that ended up dead. If we are going to blame BLM for Reinoehl than it only seems fair to start a tally of extreme right violence that includes Rittenhouse and runs through the riots in DC. That extreme right violence would have a much higher body count.

>The murder is an outlier, you can't conclude on the basis of this single event that the broader group is uniformly more dangerous. I don't know what value there is in even trying to compare how dangerous either group is; what's important is that we're holding violence to the same standard and not glorifying some violence and condemning others on political grounds.

I am not just basing it on the single murder. I am basing it on the video I have seen of how people behaved at the scene. I have not seen that type of mob violence at an BLM protest. That Reinoehl example was a single person getting in a confrontation. That is fundamentally different than the type of collective behavior seen here[1]. The former is an individual that is acting independently of the crowd. The latter is numerous members of the crowd joining together to take a cop to the ground and beat him. I am much more comfortable drawing large scale conclusions about the group based off the second example.

>What? How do you get there? There were tons of assaults recorded on camera during the BLM protests going back to probably 2014 including many unprovoked assaults. In ~2016 one guy went on a killing spree, explicitly targeting white police officers (and as I recall, WaPo or someone released a sympathetic portrait article rationalizing the mass murder). I don't have tremendous sympathy for MAGA folks, but there's half a decade of clips of people getting the shit beat out of them for wearing a MAGA hat in the wrong place, virtually none of which featured prominently in the media.

Once again you are expanding the scope of of what we are considering as BLM violence to basically any extreme left violence and once again I think the violence from the extreme right exceeds violence from the extreme left for basically any time period you want to choose.

>Again, this isn't about which group is more violent, it's about consistency. Even if MAGA folks are more violent, it doesn't justify us completely letting BLM violence off scot free. If you (universal) failed to condemn years of BLM violence, you have very little credibility to demand justice for an afternoon of MAGA violence.

I can't argue against that on principle. However there are numerous parts of this that have lacked consistency. This starts with the preparation for the various protests and how the people in the capital were allowed to leave the scene while numerous peaceful BLM protests ended with police kettling and mass arresting protestors. It also includes how people on the right respond specifically to the violence directed at police. Could you imagine the outrage in right wing circles if the protesters in Portland mobbed police, literally beat one with an American flag like in that previously linked video, and beat another to death with a fire extinguisher? If we are going to ask for consistency, lets be consistent in asking for it.

[1] - https://twitter.com/CalebJHull/status/1348334770103660553

>This is a lie by omission. He "called for violence" against people who attempted to physically disrupt his rallies, and I would go so far as to call the "violence" that ensued in all of those cases (forcible removal from the venue) justified.

You keep moving the goal posts to try to justify abhorrent behavior. First he didn't call for violence, until I provided proof he did. Then the violence was justified because "they rushed the stage" - which they didn't. Now it's OK to advocate assault because someone is peacefully protesting?

I'll be honest: it's pretty sad the lengths you're going to in order to justify actions that wouldn't be tolerated in a kindergarten classroom.

>Using this standard, I could accuse anyone against the Capitol "protestors" as "calling for violence against their political opponents", except we both know that characterization omits a great deal of critical context. So it is here.

No, you really couldn't without the same mental gymnastics you've been going through to ignore reality. The Capitol "protestors" physically assaulted badged police officers while breaking into a federal building. The protestors at Trump's rally paid for a ticket to enter a place they were lawfully allowed to be - peacefully spoke out in protest, and then left when they were told to. In the process they were assaulted.

The fact you'd try to equate the too shows a complete lack of honesty and integrity on your part.

>He literally told the people assembled there to go home.

Hours and HOURS after the damage had been done, and the police had the situation back under control, he issued a taped message telling the rioters that he loved them but they needed to go home.

At some point it's obvious you condone physical violence against people that have different political views than you do, and you should just own it. But you also should take a long, hard look at history. The founding fathers didn't agree with your point of view. The constitution doesn't agree with your point of view. The majority of Americans don't agree with your point of view. Our Democracy is founded on a peaceful transition of power, and intelligent thoughtful discourse on policy. Your violence has no place in America.

The thing is, the argument I outlined earlier wouldn't have been very compelling a decade ago. As you have shown, there are examples of speech restrictions that aren't that big a deal. Some people might indeed debate the finer merits of free speech such as genocide denial in such and such countries but in the end it rarely affects the entire fabric of society beyond a few individuals getting convicted here and there. So to answer your question, I do think Germany is still democratic despite my own argument because whatever restrictions currently exist aren't that important in the bigger picture of how the state functions.

But now with social media misinformation, we are moving from the tutorial of shouting 'fire' in a theater to the boss level whose final form we can only speculate on. That's what in my opinion ought to motivate some fundamental questions about what democracy is actually supposed to be moving forward.

Essentially, I'm totally on board with your failure mode idea: it's just that we diverge on the definition of what democracy is. If the future of society consists in heavy manipulation of information feeds for the purpose of maintaining a specific equilibrium, I believe it is better referred to as a technocracy especially if that manipulation will mostly be done by tech companies and other unelected officials. In this case, if Germany were to regularly curtail certain forms of speech with fundamental consequences on how the broad masses of voters behave (a path it is already on in my view) then it will eventually cease to be meaningfully democratic as the years go by. But I accept and understand that there are other ways of evaluating the situation.

My classmates who went on to become medical doctors were no smarter and possibly less ethical. What they had was the family circumstances to delay gratification. Sometimes this was family wealth to support them for years, other times it was the family pooling their resources for one chosen member of the family, other times it was the family wealth to support them going to a lower tier medical school, and lastly it was family members who got them positions. I really hated the guy who cheated in honors English and went on to become a doctor.

Turning your descendants into doctors and lawyers is one of the traditional ways families use to preserve their wealth. It isn’t because these people were smarter.