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How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

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Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#161

Post by iodbh »

stef25 wrote: post #121
paganel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very good reason why there are even international treaties forbidding an army force to physically molest the opposing side once the latter has surrendered, because that way the conflict doesn't need to escalate to the point of total destruction for both sides. More to the point, the protesters seeing this video will know that surrendering to the police will probably get their arms and feet broken so next ti…

> the protesters seeing this video will know that surrendering to the police will probably get their arms and feet broken The ones getting their limbs smashed weren't protesting, they had destroyed and broken in to property with the probable intent of causing more damage. All of this in a setting where police is massively outnumbered while being pelted with 10 pound rocks, bottles, fire crackers and tear gas. Giving…

By all accounts of those events, the people being assaulted by the riot police in this case went inside the restaurant to seek shelter from the tear gas. Restaurant employees were giving them water. Are you deliberately spreading lies or are you just just misrepresenting your wild guess as sound information ?

Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#162

Post by ceejayoz »

gruez wrote: post #150
XCabbage wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russians pretending to be Americans While I don't claim to have researched this issue in depth and it's worth taking this with a pinch of salt, I'm yet to see any evidence of this, nor has it been a part of most of the leftist reporting I've seen. The only instance I've heard of where a specific Twitter account has been accused of being a Russian misrepresenting their nationality was ian56789, and that accusation w…

What counts as "misrepresenting their nationality"? I'm sure russian bots aren't going around saying "I, John Smith, an American citizen, think that Hiliary is bad". It's probably going to be some user named @johnsmith2009 saying "Hilary is bad".

If your name is Misha Ivanovich, you're working out of Moscow, and you've got an American flag avatar, post mostly about US politics, and go by the name @johnsmith2009 on Twitter, I'd say it's clear you're doing some deliberate misrepresentation.

Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#163

Post by stef25 »

iodbh wrote: post #161
stef25 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the protesters seeing this video will know that surrendering to the police will probably get their arms and feet broken The ones getting their limbs smashed weren't protesting, they had destroyed and broken in to property with the probable intent of causing more damage. All of this in a setting where police is massively outnumbered while being pelted with 10 pound rocks, bottles, fire crackers and tear gas. Giving…

By all accounts of those events, the people being assaulted by the riot police in this case went inside the restaurant to seek shelter from the tear gas. Restaurant employees were giving them water. Are you deliberately spreading lies or are you just just misrepresenting your wild guess as sound information ?

> "to seek shelter from the tear gas"

Of course they would say that.

You can clearly see the restaurant wasn't open by the way the sliding doors were being pushed open (0:06), and a "fermé" sign on the door (meaning "closed") at 0:16. No employees visible anywhere.

To get away from the gas, why not run down the road the camera man was chased down by the cop? No gas there, no resistance from police and much easier than breaking & entering a restaurant.

In fact if you look on a map, the location of that BK is on a roundabout with no less than 10 roads branching off it.

But yes, those are my guesses based on the information available and I may be wrong.

Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#164

Post by rchaud »

I see; now that mass unrest has reached the doors of the rich world, social media is a serious problem and requires immediate regulation. I don't recall any such hand-wringing during the 2011 "Arab Spring", itself a darkly comical title given what later unfolded in Libya, Egypt and Syria.

Back then, the narrative among western governments and press was that Twitter was a beacon of hope, allowing free democratic expression in dictatorial regimes. Not a word about the potential for bad actors to leverage the power of such networks to create political instability so they could take the throne.

Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#166

Post by dragonwriter »

jklinger410 wrote: post #148
dragonwriter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I wrong to find it weird that the seemingly liberal, "woke" French are rioting over a carbon tax? Yes, the French routing over taxes is not historically uncommon, and the French aren't unified ideologically, and particularly aren't uniformly left-wing. And, as I understand, it's not as simple as just carbon taxes, either.

I understand the french-are-liberal trope, but, as an American, I view countries like Canada, France, and Germany as way farther left than the US. Economically, and culturally. We see much less representation of their conservatives here. Pardon me for being slightly ignorant on this, and thank you for the reminder.

> I understand the french-are-liberal trope, but, as an American, I view countries like Canada, France, and Germany as way farther left than the US.

Sure, most Western countries are; by the standard of most other developed Western, the dominant faction of the Democratic Party is somewhere between center-right and right-wing, while the Republican Party as a whole (not just it's extremist fringe) is far-right. But that doesn't mean that other countries don't have as much (or, often, more) left-right range as the US, just different centers.

Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#167

Post by iodbh »

stef25 wrote: post #163
iodbh wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all accounts of those events, the people being assaulted by the riot police in this case went inside the restaurant to seek shelter from the tear gas. Restaurant employees were giving them water. Are you deliberately spreading lies or are you just just misrepresenting your wild guess as sound information ?

> "to seek shelter from the tear gas" Of course they would say that. You can clearly see the restaurant wasn't open by the way the sliding doors were being pushed open (0:06), and a "fermé" sign on the door (meaning "closed") at 0:16. No employees visible anywhere. To get away from the gas, why not run down the road the camera man was chased down by the cop? No gas there, no resistance from police and much easier tha…

There have been multiple account of what happened as several journalists were present.

Here is one of the many articles that have been published, I am linking this testimony by two journalists since liberation is a reputable publication, but you'll find more articles and more witness interviews if you look around.

https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2018/12/05/la-video-des-...

Everybody present has told that the riot police just waltzed inside and starting beating people up, then let people leave but only going through a tunnel of cops beating them up some more. There are also more videos from different angles.

Assumptions are dangerous, and so are these stormtroopers.

Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#168

Post by stef25 »

iodbh wrote: post #167
stef25 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "to seek shelter from the tear gas" Of course they would say that. You can clearly see the restaurant wasn't open by the way the sliding doors were being pushed open (0:06), and a "fermé" sign on the door (meaning "closed") at 0:16. No employees visible anywhere. To get away from the gas, why not run down the road the camera man was chased down by the cop? No gas there, no resistance from police and much easier tha…

There have been multiple account of what happened as several journalists were present. Here is one of the many articles that have been published, I am linking this testimony by two journalists since liberation is a reputable publication, but you'll find more articles and more witness interviews if you look around. https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2018/12/05/la-video-des-... Everybody present has told that the riot…

I'm not going to argue with journalists from la Liberation and have no doubt their testimonials are true.

It's still not clear why they would enter a BK (full of tear gas, according to the journalist) while at least some of the surrounding roads were free.

If they really were beating innocent bystanders then they should be punished to the full extent of the law, while at the same time I understand the violent reaction of the police after having been pelted with rocks for hours just for wearing a uniform.

I've been in these kind of protests before, you can tell well in advance that things are going to get ugly. When you have police being attacked from all sides and you intend no harm, you know it's time to gtfo because you will get caught up in the violence.

Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#169

Post by wazoox »

Poor analysis by a journalist who works for the most corporate French newspaper (le Monde), which is largely subsidized by the government (21 millions euros a year). Nothing to see, really. 72% of the French population still supports the movement, albeit all the efforts from the government and media, the insisting on violence... and the explanation still is "people are stupid and manipulable?". No, the explanation is simple, the People is right, and its Will is just; and the smug Parisian journalists are just displaying their class contempt for the unwashed masses, and this is frankly disgusting. "Macron, démission".

Re: How Facebook Is Fueling the French Populist Rage

#170

Post by dang »

matt4077 wrote: post #146
mc32 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s odd because they pick and choose which “violence” is right and wrong. When Arab spring (in the end a very destabilizing movement) was facilitated by FB and Twitter it was great. When it facilitates caravan protests it’s great. When it facilitates anti-tax movements that threaten viability of an unpopular (vis a vis locals) but popular internationally (ie elites) then it’s seen as facilitating “bad” protests. Obv…

Who is “they”? Your little anti-media ciclejerk here seems to target “the media”. But you can’t all be so dense as to not notice that this is just some guy on medium.com, right?

Please omit name-calling from your HN comments, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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