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A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

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Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#61

Post by ThinkBeat »

_Microft wrote: post #34
supernova87a wrote: post #16

I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum, breaks into factory chicken farms to free birds, or who torches an entire dealership of SUVs to save the planet? Is there not something a little bit fascinating in realizing that regardless of the particular political belief driving them to do something, there must be something…

> I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum This sounds like the "horseshoe theory": "In political science and popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, closely resemble one another, analogous to t…

Thank you for sharing that. I was not aware of the term, but I have been aware of the idea.

In a narrow manner I have seen this up close.

The people some call Antifa, a term they also use themselves, will show up for protests and demonstrations. Nobody invited them, many would prefer that they were not there. In general, they detract fromt the message of the protests.

Black clad people with various accoutrements needed to fight the police and damage privat property and related activities.

They do not want to talk much with the organizers, and they have no wish to leave.

Their expected presence means that a lot more cops show up with shields and what not to do battle.

I swear that the cops want to fight them, and they want to fight the cops.

These are young men (the people fighting the police are nearly all men from what I have seen, but this was back 10 years ago)

They have a lot of aggression, and they like to break stuff, fight and cause mayhem.

The young men on the other side (and again mostly men) who also wish to fight, break stuff and because mayhem is pretty much identical in mindset, in approach and in action.

Their willingness to hide behind a "political ideology" to further their political wishes through violence.

I think what cause they end up fighting for is somewhat arbitrary. They meet some chick who is left wing, or right wing. They grow up in a certain place with parents of a political persusation.

They may well and up aggressive and causing trouble without the excuse of a political or religious ideology.

Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#62

Post by cardanome »

hntroll666 wrote: post #21

The FBI specializes in this kind of operation, providing encouragement, support, and money to unhappy young men who would most likely never get around to actually doing anything were it not for the FBI's involvement, always in such a way that it somehow doesn't quite legally qualify as entrapment, despite looking like entrapment to any normal person. The FBI are corrupt enforcers for the left now. A dozen agents will…

> The FBI are corrupt enforcers for the left now.

If you are a literal militant Nazi, sure they are enforcers of everything left from you but so is basically anyone. If you mean actual political left or even any form of progressive politics, yeah good riddance.

The FBI is sure known for being very kind towards the civil rights movement. (nope).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/26/fbi-bl...

The job of the FBI is to protect the current order. They will target anyone threatening that whether they agree with their reasons or not.

Now you do have a point regarding your critique on how the FBI runs things. I think their might be some perverse initiatives at play that lead the FBI towards building up treats that they can destroy as a way to justify their own existence and getting more funding. On the other hand there is no denying that right wing terrorism is a real issue in the US regardless of the meddling the FBI.

Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#64

Post by luckylion »

bananaface wrote: post #42
supernova87a wrote: post #16

I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum, breaks into factory chicken farms to free birds, or who torches an entire dealership of SUVs to save the planet? Is there not something a little bit fascinating in realizing that regardless of the particular political belief driving them to do something, there must be something…

I think there's crossover but I don't think those two groups are motivated by the same thing. My observation is that far-right activists tend to feel that they're being deliberately stabbed in the back by the powers that be, rather than seeing themselves as collateral damage. They're also significantly more likely to be paranoid, and they perceive their targets as you would an invading army. Far-left activism isn't l…

> They don't perceive The Man as sadistic, they perceive him as disinterested.

This doesn't fit with the whole oppression thing where essentially everything is done to hurt $class, $minority, or $cause.

The social thing seems accurate. There are far right networks, but their violent extremists appear to be mostly loners, which seems to be extremely rare on the far left. The gender distribution is a good point as well. Would the far right act the same if half their members were women?

Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#65

Post by roflc0ptic »

dempseye wrote: post #30
startup_boner wrote: post #18

I sincerely hope this does not come across as provocative in the worst possible way, but what exactly defines this guy as Far-Right? I understand we're not given full context in this short article and that label is likely all too accurate, but it feels out of place as the rest of the writeup goes on to just describe him as a run-of-the-mill nutcase obsessed with the "big tech" boogeyman.

It's sad you feel as if you have to apologize preemptively for asking a question. It is a fair enough question, as there is a certain amount of bilateral support for bombing data centers. There are conceivable justifications for it from many points on the political spectrum. That said, he talks like a right winger, not like a radical environmentalist or a militant communist.

... yeah, I don't know about any radical environmentalists or communists aiming for data centers. Radical environmentalists want to blow up other things.

Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#66

Post by luckylion »

Quanttek wrote: post #35
sucking4SaaS wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or someone else making snarky comments like this in response. Let's not pretend that the problem of people being brainwashed into extreme beliefs and even acting on them inside the various echo chambers of the internet is limited to any particular demographic. It's one of the elephants in this increasingly digital room of ours that achingly needs addressing.

The problem is that far-right extremism is by far the biggest violent threat, a multiple of Islamist extremism or far-left extremism. This applies not only to the US but most of Europe as well. Feel free to check out any of the pieces below https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/27/in-ameri... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/us/domestic-terrorist-gro... https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM/PRISM-Volume-6-no-2/Artic…

For the US, that's likely. For Europe it heavily depends on how you count. Is a far-right loner murdering a politician the same as a group of Islamists murdering 200 people in Madrid? That is, are you counting events or impact? By events, the far right might (which is hard to calculate, because it's fuzzy, e.g. Turkish Grey Wolves are considered to be a far right group, but are Islamists) be more than Islamic terrorism, by impact they certainly are not in the last decades.

Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#67

Post by boomlinde »

supernova87a wrote: post #16

I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum, breaks into factory chicken farms to free birds, or who torches an entire dealership of SUVs to save the planet? Is there not something a little bit fascinating in realizing that regardless of the particular political belief driving them to do something, there must be something…

> I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum, breaks into factory chicken farms to free birds, or who torches an entire dealership of SUVs to save the planet?

If I am convinced that in so doing I'm helping save the planet, a little property damage, sabotage or violent intimidation is a small thing to ask of me. Even if it saved only my family, I'd easily burn every SUV in the world to the ground. I just haven't found any reason to believe that it will save my family, or the planet.

> there must be something that goes haywire in the mind to think that "this is so right that I am justified in destroying property, people to get it done"

As an example, what is it that's gone haywire in me to believe that the police are sometimes justified in killing? We all pretty much accept different forms of institutionalized forms of violence that destroys property and people. It seems to me like a fundamental aspect of human culture and it shouldn't be surprising that someone who feels cornered or unjustly treated will somehow resort to violence, nor should it necessarily be considered sick behavior. Humans have always used violence as a tool to drive change (or maintain the current state of affairs), to assert their power and to communicate what is right and wrong. We should be extremely wary of the fact that normal, healthy people will resort to it if they believe it's necessary.

> Maybe our belief that we are morally right is not as great a motivator of action as we think it should be?

I rather think that our beliefs in what is morally right is fungible and circumstantial. We can create a moral framework for ourselves in which meeting our needs and wants at the expense of others' is justified, and we don't always have the capacity to see how our needs and wants can be met. Someone else can even create it for us, more easily if they can construct evidence for our convictions. That's how you get people to agree to shipping their neighbors off to concentration camps, how "yes" is an acceptable answer to "should we send a bunch of 20-somethings halfway across the glove to kill and cause havoc, stabilizing our oil prices?" or how freeing slaves might at one point have seemed as excessive and extreme as freeing birds.

Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#68

Post by cm2187 »

mcbutterbunz wrote: post #8
beej71 wrote: post #4

Not to turn a blind eye to what would have been a tragic loss of life, but how resistant is Amazon to such an attack, data-wise? How much collateral economic damage can you do by taking down an AWS data center?

I don’t know much about this data center but I imagine it’s pretty massive. It’s probably highly redundant with multiple pipes in and out on all ends. I highly doubt this guy could procure enough explosives to take out the entire data center. Granted, I’ve never blown one up so I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

I would speculate that you only need to generate enough blasts inside to damage hard drive disk heads through the shock waves. Plus perhaps take out the fuel tank and the external power cables. And if you build your datacentre with straw like the OVH little pig...

Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#69

Post by luckylion »

roflc0ptic wrote: post #65
dempseye wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad you feel as if you have to apologize preemptively for asking a question. It is a fair enough question, as there is a certain amount of bilateral support for bombing data centers. There are conceivable justifications for it from many points on the political spectrum. That said, he talks like a right winger, not like a radical environmentalist or a militant communist.

... yeah, I don't know about any radical environmentalists or communists aiming for data centers. Radical environmentalists want to blow up other things.

I consider Kaczynski an environmentalist and he's an anarchist.

Take a time machine and move him straight from 1978 to 2018, what would he target? My guess is data centers would be on the list.

Re: A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers

#70

Post by ahelwer »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #61
_Microft wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum This sounds like the "horseshoe theory": "In political science and popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, closely resemble one another, analogous to t…

Thank you for sharing that. I was not aware of the term, but I have been aware of the idea. In a narrow manner I have seen this up close. The people some call Antifa, a term they also use themselves, will show up for protests and demonstrations. Nobody invited them, many would prefer that they were not there. In general, they detract fromt the message of the protests. Black clad people with various accoutrements need…

As someone with quite a few left-wing friends, this comment was pretty funny to read. I have no idea why people think they can pick apart the inner machinations of the minds of people they've seemingly never spoken to, not into whose ideology they have the slightest insight or interest. Very strong "boomer opining at their suburban kitchen table about the problem with today's youths" energy.

Any given person who identifies as an antifascist is vastly more likely to have deeply sincere & considered political beliefs than essentially anyone else you know in your life.

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