Quote (fender @ Jan 10 2021 12:36am)
the fact that you uncritically bought into the far right media obsession with looting and violence (not that by police though) - outright ignoring the overwhelming peaceful majority of the movement, and their goal: an end of police violence and racial discrimination - and now construct your whole 'argument' based on that deliberate mispresentation, just further proves my point about you not being a critical thinker, and her article resonating with gullible fools like that.
you even directly confirm my analysis that she's trying to re-contextualise the coup, the attempt to overturn a democratic election because your candidate lost, by suggesting it's just the latest exhibit of already broken "norms" - and then arbitrarily pointing to the blm movement to suggest they are responsible.
why not point to the many incidents of right wing trump fanatics committing acts of terrorism (mass shootings, bombings, death threats) in his name? why not point to conservative media's incitement that lead to the acts of terrorism (bombings, murder) against abortion providers? they also had peaceful protests in favour of their respective goals.
there is no reason or objective distinction, no logically coherent justification for her choice of framing. it's just a transparent effort to discredit blm and make you people feel better about yourselves.
and yes, during previous movements for social justice you had both: powerful people and their institutions trying to smear their goals by focusing on acts of violence, and others highlighting how that is a distraction, an attempt to discredit the cause, or even that violence is an adequate means under specific circumstances - you really need to brush up on your civil rights movement history if you're genuinely unaware of that, buddy.
you're basically just doubling down on her (and thus your) dishonest whataboutism (uncritical regurgitation thereof) here. all while still ignoring the fundamentally different natures of the movements, one addressing a real and systemic problem, looking for justice, equality, and accountability - and the other one mad about losing an election, trying to abolish democracy to keep their leader in power.
you know, this one guy woke up one night and heard a burglar in his home. he got up, grabbed his baseball bat, took a good swing at the intruder, and managed to drive him off. a month later he used that bat to mercilessly bash his wife's head in. he did that because a stranger on the internet told him, without any evidence though, that she's a murderer, and he would be her next victim. he simply couldn't understand how anybody would blame him for that - he thought using his baseball bat had become established and accepted practice, so what's the difference? that man's name? barry 'albert einstein' white.
Let's analyze the facts of what happened. Multiple confirmed deaths (e.g. CHAZ shootings, business owners immolated, elderly former police captain shot dead as he tried to save his neighbor's business from looting). Hundreds of police injured. Over a billion dollars in costs relating to arson and looting. Compared to any protest, or series of protests in the last half-century, the BLM protests of 2020 were exceptionally, extraordinarily violent. That is the "news". One isn't "obsessed" when they report the news, especially when so many people, look in a mirror, are hell-bent on denying that the news ever happened.
You've made two claims as you go down the rabbit-hole. One, if there are many peaceful protesters, that somehow eliminates the historic level of violence, arson, and looting. It does not. Two, that if the goal of the protest is for a nominally good cause, then the violence is excused. That is incorrect. Most participants in any protest or struggle are peaceful, which is why we quantify the violence. The vast majority of Trump supporters are peaceful, as with Trump protests. And yet that does not excuse the riot in the Capitol, although by your logic it certainly might.
The author was highly critical of both Trump and the far-right, but what the author is fundamentally commenting on is the increasing desire or willingness to use political violence to achieve desired ends. Looting and arson do not address real and systemic problems. Killing a retired police captain does not address real and systemic problems. It would have been easy, as many conservatives are now doing, to immediately denounce the looting and violence. But instead we have a mix of commentators arguing that either the violence doesn't exist ("it's an obsession!"), or that the use of violence is a) non-violent (see defense of looting), or
justified violence. It is likely a combination of Orwellian denial and radicalization that has driven the author towards her conclusion in the first place.