Or will we keep justifying direct justifications of violence, while ignoring the calls to peace spoken and written by Trump.
Honestly, I'm done at this point. I hope people like you keep saying what you're saying. You'll just convince more people, just like y'all have convinced me.
Here's vice interviewing a man who just shot a trump supporter and killed him. They did this after he had done so, but before he was turned over to police. Harboring a criminal is illegal: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7g8vb/man-linked-to-killing...
EDIT: and just like I thought, from the downvotes, people actually agree with the direct calls to violence issued by these mainstream outlets that led to over 30 deaths this summr]er, and $2billion in damages, mainly to small businesses all over america. The lack of moral convictions on this forum is pathetic.
They went straight from his rally to Capitol hill. Ultimately his MO is edging very close to unacceptable and saying the right things to the right people to please his ego.
IMO he should've been banned from Twitter on the spot after he retweeted a video of a gut shouting white power at a bunch of black people
> I'm so done. If I cannot live in a country where a politician, of any background, cannot call on their supporters to protest
Calling on your supporters to protest is fine. Calling on your supporters to protest, with a pattern of all the protests becoming violent is less fine. At some point you become complicit in not enforcing the value of peace strongly enough. And when trump rewards violent people, and celebrates them, and encourages them, and then things turn violent, people see through the indirection.
And I'll note that the left doesn't have a pattern of a leader whose calls for protest reliably all turn violent. People protest outside Mitch mcconnell's house weekly, and they've never been violent. They don't give him peace, but they are peaceful. That's what democratic politicians encourage, and what they show they value, and so that's what happens.
> Unlike all the politicians I mentioned above, the moment Trump heard about the violent breakins,
Reports from wh sources indicate that he had to be forced to include statements like "stay peaceful" and "go home" in his tweets.
> Wich all protests are you referring to? IIRC most Trump rallies were overwhelmingly peaceful until now...
Rallies != protests. IN cases where the president has asked his supporters to confront other groups, be it the media, other politicians, etc. there is reliably violence.
But they called the rallies (the completely peaceful ones) dangerous white supremacist meetings. I am a brown man. They are none of those things. The hyperbole is astounding.
I don't believe I've seen the characterization of Trump's rallies as, specifically "dangerous white supremacist meetings". I have seen the characterzation of many of trump's followers as white supremacists though.
Can you cite an example (and preferably multiple, since you said "they") of the former, that his rallies are "dangerous white supremacist meetings", and not simply the latter?
If not, I think it's you who is engaging in hyperbole.
(I'll also note the difference in tone between Trump's address today from the Oval Office and his prior statements. Today, for the first time, he didn't speak out of both sides of his mouth when discussing violence from his supporters. He unequivocally denounced violence. The difference between "Stand back and stand by" and "Violence and vandalism have no place in our country and no place in our movement...no true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence" is obvious. If his statements had been, from the beginning, that clear and unequivocal he would have faced far less criticism. I mean he clearly would have faced some, Biden faced criticism for repeated unequivocal denouncement of violence[0], from people to his right and left. I expect trump would have faced the same. But we probably wouldn't have had last Wednesday, and Trump probably wouldn't be facing down a second impeachment, nor enough upset Republican Senators that he might actually get convicted).
Where to? Nearly every country in the western world is far less absolutist when it comes to freedom of speech. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you'd find them far more socialist than you'd like too.
Those people over the summer were't protesting for Kamala Harris or Biden, dude. Try again. Like, they aren't even comparable. Trump told these people to gather, on a lie, and fed them nonsense.
Bringing up BLM as a counterpoint to these terrorists is the weakest argument I've heard in a long time. Whataboutism to the max. Pathetic. There is exactly 0 connection to the two events, yet you people seem to keep bringing it up to distract from the right-wing terrorism you seem to support.
Also, the looters during BLM were not connected to the message - they were thugs looking to take advantage. Not the same of last week. But, you must have known that, right? Since it's pretty basic knowledge. Ignorance is bliss, I guess, right?
Trump and friends talked about being defrauded ("stolen election!") for an hour, and then said "So we are going to--we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol, and we are going to try and give--the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything, not even one vote but we are going to try--give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help, we're try--going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue." (and then he took a limo back home to the White House), does that not sound like "let's intimidate them!"? And considering his audience, he must've known that they're ready for violence.
As grandparent post said, Trump never asks anyone directly to avoid breaking the law (he did something similar with Comey, and on the "find me 11780 votes!" phone call).
I think there are a few problems with this theory.
First, what Trump actually told the protestors on the 6th was to go peacefully. His plain language has been analyzed by qualified legal scholars and they conclude it does not meet the very high threshold of “fighting words”. [1]
Second, as we can clearly see, the attacks on the capital were planned well in advance of Trump’s speech and therefore could not have been incited by that speech in the first place.
Third, the violent protesters had already started breaching the capital while Trump was still speaking a mile away.
So I think there are important facts on the ground that do not support the allegation that Trump’s speech on the 6th incited a spontaneous mob.
I think you could argue that denial of the election result and false claims of election fraud — over many weeks and by many people including Trump — led in part to certain people to plan for violence on the 6th.
The people that planned and executed the violence should be charged with crimes and face a jury of their peers.
My understanding is that the laws against inciteful speech require the speech to result in imminent lawless action. If I listen to a podcast on Monday and decide to violently protest next week, the podcast would not be illegal speech.
> First, what Trump actually told the protestors on the 6th was to go peacefully. His plain language has been analyzed by qualified legal scholars and they conclude it does not meet the very high threshold of “fighting words”.
None of the major tests of whether speech is protected apply to the decontextualized plain language of the utterance in isolation, and the “fighting words” test is particularly non-germane here in any case, since it is a test that specifically relates to provocation of an audience hostile to one’s ideas, so you'd have to be either grossly incompetent or intensely dishonest to measure something suggested to be incitement of a friendly crowd to violence against a common enemy against it.
> Second, as we can clearly see, the attacks on the capital were planned well in advance of Trump’s speech and therefore could not have been incited by that speech in the first place.
That's...not how incitement works. It is not the case that once a a breach of the peace has been planned, encouragement immediately proximate to the planned breach to steal the nerves of either those who were in on the plan, or to fire up other susceptible persons in the area to join in, is no longer incitement. That's nonsense.
The only relevance that the prior planning has to incitement is that, if Trump knew about that planning, assessment of intent and reasonably forseeable effect of his words would have to be made in light of that knowledge.
> Third, the violent protesters had already started breaching the capital while Trump was still speaking a mile away.
Again, that's not how incitement works. The fact that a riot or other ongoing breach of the peace has begun doesn't make further immediate encouragement not incitement.
As with the last point, this is only relevant at all to the extent that, if Trump knew of it, assessment of his intent and the reasonably forseeable consequences of his action must be made with that knowledge in mind.
> The people that planned and executed the violence should be charged with crimes and face a jury of their peers.
Sure. That's not exclusive of accountability for incitement, whether by Trump or others.
> So I think there are important facts on the ground that do not support the allegation that Trump’s speech on the 6th incited a spontaneous mob.
No one made the allegation that Trump incited a spontaneous mob.
Yes, Trump’s speech clearly does not fall under “fighting words” which leaves only the even harder test (from Brandenburg) of speech that “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
> Saying things that foreseeably move some audience members to act illegally isn’t enough,” notes Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment specialist at UCLA Law School. “Speaking recklessly isn’t enough. The Court was well aware that speech supporting many movements — left, right, or otherwise — that merely moves the majority to political action may also lead a minority of the movement to rioting or worse. It deliberately created a speech-protective test that was very hard to satisfy.” [1]
If someone is already causing a pre-planned disturbance a mile away while you are speaking, it’s impossible to argue that the words were an incitement to imminent lawless action in that case. I’m not sure how you get around the fact that an imminent cause-effect relationship is a necessary component of this form of unprotected speech.
If the question is whether a political speech falls into the unprotected category of incitement to imminent lawless action, it’s highly probative to that specific charge if the lawless action was pre-planned and already occurring when you spoke.
An additional necessary element for incitement is intent. You would have to prove that Trump intended for his supporters to try to actually carry out a riot on that day, despite his calls for them to be peaceful, and how much he stood to lose (did lose) if (when) they were not.
To throw another question into the mix, if someone makes a rousing speech which rallies up a crowd, and then after the crowd takes a mile long walk they encounter an existing volatile situation like an ongoing riot, I’d be pretty surprised if the earlier speech can suddenly become illegal unprotected speech based on some true incitement to violence which happens later.
I certainly have never heard of any such case of speech that “got the ball rolling” but didn’t actually directly instruct a person or crowd to commit a specific illegal act.
> If someone is already causing a pre-planned disturbance a mile away while you are speaking, it’s impossible to argue that the words were an incitement to imminent lawless action in that case.
Its not if people hearing your words join in the disturbance. (There’s other ways it could, as well.) Again, the fact that a disturbance is under way does not make it impossible for someone to commit incitement with regard to that disturbance. Repeating the same false claim doesn’t make it any less false.
> First, what Trump actually told the protestors on the 6th was to go peacefully. His plain language has been analyzed by qualified legal scholars and they conclude it does not meet the very high threshold of “fighting words”. [1]
1. Language doesn't have to be illegal for it to break Twitter's TOS.
2. Language requires context. When Michael Corleone says "I don't want anything to happen to him while my mother's alive" everyone listening to those words understand exactly what they mean - that his brother's a few weeks away from ending up with a bullet in his head.
The context in this case has been weeks of crying from the rooftops about how the deep state is stealing the election from you, and that your boys should go to Capitol and do something about it. Meanwhile, your lawyer is shouting about how it's time for 'Trial by combat.'
I think it’s totally clear that in the court of public opinion Trump is guilty of inciting the riot.
In the context of a court of law, if we’re speaking about the actual limits of free speech in America, I think Trump’s speech does not meet the threshold.
So I’m not trying to make a political point, but I think there’s an interesting legal discussion to really understand that just because violence happens after a speech, or in this case concomitant to a speech, there’s still a very high bar - very direct language that has to be used for that person to be guilty of incitement in a court of law.
I completely agree it’s totally up to Twitter to decide to ban Trump from their platform. They likely don’t even have to give you a specific reason under their ToS. I wasn’t speaking about the Twitter ban in this case.
Lastly, I’d agree completely that context matters. Interestingly, the context of Giuliani’s “trial by combat” statement was discussing some hypothetical investigation that was supposed to happen over the next 10 days that they were going to “stake their reputation” on;
By that metric, I can point to many statements by many democrats, including the incoming Vice President, that 'directly incited' violence. This is a ridiculous standard. The double think is insane.
Calling all cops ‘racists’ indiscriminately and promoting an image of police as violent trigger-happy thugs who kill innocent black people is exactly what set the stage for violence.
The aim of propaganda is to elicit an emotional reaction. WaPo and other media did a great job at inciting violent reaction, riots that lasted for months, fed primarily by the media and amplified by facebook and Twitter.
Does your definition of the West include Latin America? Because law enforcement in Latin America kill far, far more people than law enforcement in the US.
In the US (pop 330M), law enforcement kills about 1000 people per year (about 34 people per 10M pop per year). [0]
In Honduras (pop 9.1M), law enforcement kills about 40 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In the Dominican Republic (pop 10.7M), law enforcement kills about 130 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Brazil (pop 210M), law enforcement kills about 275 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Jamaica (pop 2.9M), law enforcement kills about 470 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Nicaragua (pop 6.2M), law enforcement kills about 530 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In El Salvador (pop 6.4M), law enforcement kills about 950 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Venezuela (pop 29M), law enforcement kills about 1830 people per 10M pop per year [1]
> Does your definition of the West include Latin America?
Wikipedia's does not.[1]
Also from the info you provided, it seems like US police are only 20% less violent than Honduran police. This is despite Honduras having the 5th highest murder rate in the world - which presumably means Honduran police deal with violent criminals far more often than American police.[2] That's pretty wild!
In that case, you're comparing the US, a country with extremely lax gun control laws and the resulting greatly increased threat to police safety, to countries with far more stringent gun control. I'm a homicide researcher in Chicago. There were over 4000 shootings and nearly 800 homicides in my city last year, and I've seen footage from a lot of them, including a lot of completely justified police shootings. Calling officers "trigger-happy thugs" ignores the reality of policing in a country where the frequency of encountering someone carrying a firearm is so high.
That being said, somehow the Newark Police Department(in Newark, New Jersey's biggest city, and about 50 homicides per year) went all of 2020 without any of any officers firing a single shot (outside of training and firearm qualification contexts, I assume) [0].
How did correctly indicating that us police are unusually violent set the stage for an attack, by various groups, including police officers, on elected officials and the capitol?
Yes! Thank you! And now the same politicians and reporters who said that are pretending to care for the police hurt in this riot and talking about how important law enforcement is.
Forgive me for believing that law enforcement protecting family businesses is 1000x more important than law enforcement protecting politicians.
EDIT: love the downvotes from people who believe torching family businesses, often immigrant ones, is cool! I'm telling you guys keep downvoting. You really look like the good guys.
What is wrong with you? Literally nobody is saying that.
Holding police accountable is something we should all get behind. Whatever it is you think the "other side" supports sounds like something you picked up from Breitbart. Get real man.
I agree we should hold police accountable, which is why I voted for whatever the BLM protestors asked for in my city of Portland. When they protested, I supported them. When they harassed mayor wheeler, I supported them.
When they started destroying local businesses, I didn't support them. I posted once on my next door to please let's all remain peaceful and stop the destruction of local small businesses, and was met with immediate condemnations of being racist. I got so many hate messages, despite being brown myself, that I eventually left next door, out of fear of doxxing.
When BLM then went and tagged Pelosi and McConnell's homes, I cheered them on. I don't mind seeing people harass politicians. I just don't want them destroying private citizen's stuff, or killing them when they defend it.
And I don't read Breitbart. I read Mother Jones and the New Yorker, and sometimes I read Breitbart when left wing people get outraged by their articles.
The police already have the power to deal with things like that, the vast majority of it was people protesting.