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What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

practical.engineering

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Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#221

Post by mrtesthah »

mc32 wrote: post #5

"Officials have stopped short of calling it an act of terrorism, presumably because we don’t know the motive of whoever perpetrated the act" There was another one elsewhere [Washington state [1]] and they found out the perps did it to facilitate knocking over some business of some sort. So, just because it quacks like a duck does not mean it either walks like a duck nor end ends up being a duck. There have also been…

FBI warns of neo-Nazi plots as attacks on Northwest power grid spike

https://www.opb.org/article/2023/01/19/surge-in-oregon-washi...

(Shrug) Then maybe you should ask the FBI why they'd issue that warning.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#222

Post by yucky »

mrtesthah wrote: post #220
yucky wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If US government and it's institutions are rooted in white supremacy as so many claim, then why would white supremacists be anti-government? Seems like they'd be on the same team, no?

Most white supremacists are not in intrinsically anti-government. They are more than happy to support it by becoming police officers, soldiers, and prison guards. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...

Ah so it's like Schrödingers white supremacists?

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#223

Post by mrtesthah »

yucky wrote: post #222
mrtesthah wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most white supremacists are not in intrinsically anti-government. They are more than happy to support it by becoming police officers, soldiers, and prison guards. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...

Ah so it's like Schrödingers white supremacists?

Not really, I don't see the confusion here. Maybe you could explain what it is you're having trouble understanding?

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#224

Post by yucky »

mrtesthah wrote: post #223
yucky wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah so it's like Schrödingers white supremacists?

Not really, I don't see the confusion here. Maybe you could explain what it is you're having trouble understanding?

I thought I already did. If white supremacists are so anti-government then it doesn't make sense to pretend the government is run by white supremacists.

It turns out that the people who make those sorts of claims are really just anti-white.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#225

Post by boppo1 »

jonathanlb wrote: post #213
boppo1 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your first article: "hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted social media content" According to Statista[0] there were 660,288 officers in the US in 2021. Even one racist cop is too many, granted. But if we assume the maximum on 'hundreds', 999/660,288 = 0.0015. 0.15% is still a problem, but your article makes it sound like a pervasive problem, which it clearly isn't. That article…

You left the first point unaddressed- that there is a white supremacy problem in the United States, and the fact the people of color are _already_ under police state surveillance. Secondly, your argument that _only_ 0.15% of cops are racist is disingenuous. If you RTFA [1]: > Obviously, only a tiny percentage of law enforcement officials are likely to be active members of white supremacist groups. But one doesn’t nee…

>to enable the government to spy on white people is... sketchy

My contention is that the government would like to spy on everyone/erode the bill of rights. I'm not worried about white people.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#226

Post by mrtesthah »

yucky wrote: post #224
mrtesthah wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, I don't see the confusion here. Maybe you could explain what it is you're having trouble understanding?

I thought I already did. If white supremacists are so anti-government then it doesn't make sense to pretend the government is run by white supremacists. It turns out that the people who make those sorts of claims are really just anti-white.

Who is pretending that "the government is run by white supremacists"?

If you're referring to my statement, I only said that many law enforcement agencies contain white supremacists, which includes anyone with a white supremacist viewpoint. They don't even need to identify as one openly or even in action. How many white supremacists are and are not anti-government is immaterial to the point.

The way you're using the definition "white supremacist" implicitly assumes that "white supremacy" as an ideology is inherently anti-government. We know that's never been the case, because all white supremacist states around the world have had strictly authoritarian governments. There's no way to enforce the supremacy of one group of people over another without coercive force. Either violence or authoritarian government are required for a white supremacist state.

As for whether US itself is a white supremacist state, on one hand you could say that it has allocated a massive amount of resources in systematically rounding up black men (1 in 3 will be arrested in their lifetimes) without addressing the factors used to justify that, and many states systematically disenfranchise their vote. And historically it was economically reliant on chattel slavery. Many southern states are effectively authoritarian governments at the state level due to district gerrymandering and black disenfranchisement, now no longer stoppable by the Voting Rights Act after a conservative supreme court decision a few years ago.

OTOH, federally, is democratically accountable to the people, making it a coalition of whites and non-whites. So you could still see white supremacist reactionaries taking anti-government standpoints for as long as this governing coalition includes non-white people.

>It turns out that the people who make those sorts of claims are really just anti-white.

Do you think it is somehow "anti-white" to point out ways in which white supremacy harms and oppresses non-white people when it is used at the level of state and federal governments?

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#227

Post by neuronexmachina »

kyrra wrote: post #77
panarky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the sabotage in Washington State, it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack four substations simultaneously just to steal from the cash register of a small business. If I fancied myself to be an antigovernment militia leader who had read all the white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and s…

They were found because they carried their cellphones to each substations and the robbery. They were then confirmed because they used their own car and it was matched to video surveillance. They were pretty bad at what they were doing.

Yep. I think it's safe to assume that the half-dozen earlier attacks in the area were by a different group, since the group behind the earlier attacks was presumably smart enough not to carry their cellphones with them.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#228

Post by lelanthran »

mrtesthah wrote: post #214
lelanthran wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just very wary of the 'white supremacist terrorism' narrative that politicians and alphabet agencies have been trying to sell lately to justify increases in domestic surveillance/police state infrastructure. "OMG Racists!" is the new "Think of the children!" .

I mean sure, as long as you’re a white christian man, why would you ever need to fear violent acts committed by white christian nationalists? Now if you’re Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, or any other religion, or your skin is dark, or you’re a woman, or you’re gay or trans —- and therefore have legitimate safety concerns… well then that’s just more identity politics, isn’t it?

> I mean sure, as long as you’re a white christian man,

I'm not.

Well, at least you got one out of three.

People like you are annoying people like me, especially when you pretend that you are talking on behalf of me.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#229

Post by mrtesthah »

lelanthran wrote: post #228
mrtesthah wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, as long as you’re a white christian man, why would you ever need to fear violent acts committed by white christian nationalists? Now if you’re Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, or any other religion, or your skin is dark, or you’re a woman, or you’re gay or trans —- and therefore have legitimate safety concerns… well then that’s just more identity politics, isn’t it?

> I mean sure, as long as you’re a white christian man, I'm not. Well, at least you got one out of three. People like you are annoying people like me, especially when you pretend that you are talking on behalf of me.

Because you're choosing to ignore the growing threat of white supremacist violence to minorities all over the country, I couldn't see any other reason you'd have to do that. There have been many mass shootings targeted at them already.

But I'm not talking on behalf of you, I'm talking on behalf of myself, because I am a member of one of these many groups which are targeted.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#230

Post by klooney »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #19

I think it's interesting Russia isn't doing more things like this in protest of Ukraine support, whether this was them or not. Realistically, two teams of 5 guys with good opsec training could probably take out any infrastructure they wanted, and do it repeatedly

There's been a lot of mysterious explosions in Russia since the Ukraine war started, so they'd have a reason to believe they were striking back and not striking first, I guess.
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