Death of George Floyd and Subsequent Riots.

[PointOfViewGun]

Who was Walter Wallace Jr., the man shot by Philadelphia police?
Another BLM hero, ehh...

Nice character assassination. It's a sign of lack arguments to use against his actual shooting.

[Mithradates]

Knife wielding violent criminal ignores orders to drop the weapon, gets shot by the police. Nothing to see here.

[Heathen Hammer]

Inb4 the far-left crawls out of the woodwork to talk about "systematic racism" and other intersectionalist nonsense.

[Abdülmecid I]

There seems to be an ongoing narrative of protests being overwhelmingly violent, but reality seems to dispute that picture, which actually relies on activist propaganda and selective media coverage than facts and scientific data. According to the statistics of ACLED, actually less than one tenth of the demonstrations turn violent, despite the widespread myth of mobs running amok in city centres. A significant portion of those are limited to certain districts and neighborhoods, where riots are sometimes ignited by provocateurs, who aim at increased polarisation and racial tensions. A typical example of that is the Umbrella Man, who had ties with Hell's Angels and white supremacist groups. Moreover, the situation has relatively deteriorated, as the authorities began responding in a gradually more aggressive and militarised manner, which led to even more violence.

The most glaring example is when Donald Trump ordered the dispersion of peaceful protestors by law-enforcement agents, in order to visit Saint John's church for a photo opportunity, but that was part of a wider trend, where the police adopted more lethal tactics and where the administration intentionally encouraged radicalisation and polarisation, by portraying the opposition as terrorists that needed to be crushed as mercilessly as possible. Finally, ACLED also explains how the instances of statue vandalisms were blown out of proportion, which rendered the political discourse even more toxic. In my opinion, caring more about pieces of bronze than human lives speaks more about your moral compass than that of the perpetrators, but, regardless of our subjective ethics, this misleading image reinforced the hysteria about culture wars and etc. Let's hope the situation will improve and that news will be more critically and soberly examined in the future. The disinformation campaign and the paranoia about Marxists infiltrating and sabotaging our prosperous society reminds me of how Chinese regime apologists attempted to describe the Hong Kong demonstrators as a bunch of lawless thugs, extrapolating from a small sample of unfortunate and usually misrepresented incidents.

[Lord Thesaurian]

The “90-93% peaceful protests” bit is deliberate misdirection designed to deflect criticism and shift the blame for the “violent” part onto Trump. These articles do a decent job of deconstructing it. To say the least, I guess we can only be grateful to the mob that the protests haven’t been 85% peaceful.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/...ots-narrative/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/14...nt-to-protect/

The “caring about statues more than human lives” bit is a troll talking point propagated from the earliest days of protests this summer. It merits only a passing reflection as such. At a minimum, the same paradox could be employed in either direction. If the question of statues is so trivial, why have protestors and local politicians targeted statues they perceive to be problematic in the first place, rather than focusing solely on improving conditions for people living and dying in certain communities? If the statue question is indeed a needlessly divisive distraction from real issues, the blame for making it one falls on those vandalizing and destroying property, thus requiring police response, not on the outraged reaction to seeing monuments to George Washington and Abe Lincoln desecrated by crazed mobs.

Lastly, there is of course the absurd conflation between the Hong Kong protests and George Floyd protests. This is another troll talking point taken straight from the pages of communist propaganda.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...d6e_story.html

For one thing, Beijing’s anti-protest law expressly prohibits any anti-government protests whatsoever, which it describes as “inciting hatred” toward the government, interpreted under the sole authority of the central government. Even so, NYT got in on this facetious comparison recently, publishing an article that argued the HK protests simply had to be put down at some point. This was presumably in response to blowback the paper got from publishing Tom Cotton’s op-ed calling for the national guard to put down riots in the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/o...urity-law.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/o...-military.html

It goes without saying that while the HK protestors truly were and are the hopeless underdogs defying certain doom in a last stand against the inevitability of totalitarian communist tyranny, the George Floyd protests have the right to peaceable assembly protected in the US Constitution, and have enjoyed the full support of domestic corporate interests, main stream media, Big Tech and the political establishment. Black Lives Matter activists have been given the power to effectively direct public discourse on the subject, curate media, and write national legislation.

https://variety.com/2020/digital/new...on-1234630160/

https://breatheact.org/wp-content/up...F_FINAL3-1.pdf

Those public and even many private personalities who ever speak critically of BLM or related narratives are ostracized from polite society.

https://twitter.com/SpeechUnion/stat...14030663012352

Despite such universal, almost mandatory support, rioting and looting continues at every given moment of pretext, defying the best efforts of the national narrative to explain and excuse it away.

A Black Lives Matter Chicago organizer has defended the mass looting that took place in the city early Monday, calling it "reparations.”

"I don't care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy's or a Nike because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes," Atkins said, according to NBC Chicago.

"That's reparations. That is reparations. Anything they want to take, take it because these businesses have insurance. They're going to get their money back. My people aren't getting anything."

https://www.newsweek.com/black-lives...ations-1524502

[Aexodus]

https://247wallst.com/economy/2020/0...sive-ever/amp/

Why are these peaceful protests the most expensive and destructive ever in history, costing at least $1 billion, and as much as $2 billion.

[Infidel144]

The “90-93% peaceful protests” bit is deliberate misdirection designed to deflect criticism and shift the blame for the “violent” part onto Trump. These articles do a decent job of deconstructing it. To say the least, I guess we can only be grateful to the mob that the protests haven’t been 85% peaceful.

The Kennedy motorcade in Dallas was mostly peaceful. The Titanic had a mostly uneventful voyage...

Then again:
Abdulmecid: "propoganda" " myth" etc.
Also Abdulmecid: "Death of George Floyd and Subsequent Riots"

The “caring about statues more than human lives” bit is a troll talking point propagated from the earliest days of protests this summer.

These statues of Lincoln, Washington, the Elk, Heg, Grant etc are well known for brutal attacks on human lives.
Peaceful Protesters Peacefully removing them is a purely defensive reaction to the continued threat to life and limb these statues present.

[PointOfViewGun]

Just wow. I have never seen simple facts twisted in such a petty manner. There isn't even much sense in it. The country didn't live through the protests and crushed. If an iceberg skimmed through Titanic causing superficial damage because of a number of mishaps from faulty calculation of Titanic's path to navigators not doing their job properly it would make sense to compare. Similar with Kennedy. USA did not collapse. What happened could be akin to having a spectator throwing a milk bottle at Kennedy's car.

[Abdülmecid I]

The “90-93% peaceful protests” bit is deliberate misdirection designed to deflect criticism and shift the blame for the “violent” part onto Trump. These articles do a decent job of deconstructing it. To say the least, I guess we can only be grateful to the mob that the protests haven’t been 85% peaceful.

Both articles are just describing the negative repercussions of riots, embellished by specific stories. Foreign Policy doesn't even mention the research, presumably because it was published a couple of weeks before the source I cited. National Review whines about ACLED's statistics, but nowhere does it "deconstruct" the statistical data. The author simply complains that the perspective of the researchers does not illustrate sufficiently the destructive impact of the riots, which, in reality, the scientists never denied. They simply argued that, statistically speaking, riots are not representative of the protests. I understand that some might find the conlusion contradictory to their narrative, but that doesn't give them the right to straw-man their opponents and seek refuge to emotional appeals.

The “caring about statues more than human lives” bit is a troll talking point propagated from the earliest days of protests this summer. It merits only a passing reflection as such. At a minimum, the same paradox could be employed in either direction. If the question of statues is so trivial, why have protestors and local politicians targeted statues they perceive to be problematic in the first place, rather than focusing solely on improving conditions for people living and dying in certain communities? If the statue question is indeed a needlessly divisive distraction from real issues, the blame for making it one falls on those vandalizing and destroying property, thus requiring police response, not on the outraged reaction to seeing monuments to George Washington and Abe Lincoln desecrated by crazed mobs.

Not sure where the paradox lies. ACLED demonstrated that the instances of statue vandalism were rare and overall insignificant, statistically speaking. ACLED didn't claim that the actions were legal and, being professionals, refrained from commenting on how morally justifiable or not the bronze statue of Jefferson being pelted with tomatoes was. So, logical fallacies aside, the point of the ACLED still stands, apparently.

Anyway, in other news, in Kentucky, the traning slide for the State Police used Confederate and Hitler quotes to encourage officers to act violently, like "ruthless killers". The slide has probably not been in use since 2013 or 2015, but if such ideas were promoted, it's not that surprising that the law enforcement corps of the most prosperous country in the globe has been proven incapable of handling public unrest and even performing routine duties. Given how counterproductive that strategy is, is it perhaps the time to think of an alternative to the ''über alles'' mentality and increased militarisation? In Philadelphia, the public relations of the police force also deteriorated, since videos emerge of officers attacking a random car, hitting the driver and grabbing his child. The irony is that the Fraternal Order of Police used the photo of the abducted toddler to rant about how the thin blue line rescues lost, disorientated and barefoot from the chaos of the riots. The tweet has been unfortunately deleted.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Both articles are just describing the negative repercussions of riots, embellished by specific stories. Foreign Policy doesn't even mention the research, presumably because it was published a couple of weeks before the source I cited. National Review whines about ACLED's statistics, but nowhere does it "deconstruct" the statistical data. The author simply complains that the perspective of the researchers does not illustrate sufficiently the destructive impact of the riots, which, in reality, the scientists never denied. They simply argued that, statistically speaking, riots are not representative of the protests. I understand that some might find the conlusion contradictory to their narrative, but that doesn't give them the right to straw-man their opponents and seek refuge to emotional appeals.

Strawman? Come now. Posting old trigger bait talking points to jump start this thread, only to deflect response is hardly sportsmanlike. I don’t recall anyone in this thread arguing that the protests were overwhelmingly violent in nature, and I included the FP article to address the narrative being advanced before and after the study’s publication of “mostly peaceful protests,” to which the latter became a source of vindication. If there’s a strawman here, it’s yours, unfortunately. The NR article specifically discusses aspects of the study’s methodology and the subsequent framing of the findings by the authors, not just the severity of property destruction. It’s ironic to suggest, as the study’s authors do, that the concern about violence and decline in public support for BLM is the result of biased media coverage, given their data is collected from media and journalistic reports:

What types of sources does ACLED use?
ACLED uses four types of sources. Every week ACLED researchers assess thousands of sources in multiple languages to provide the most comprehensive database on political violence and demonstrations. All types are reviewed each week. These include:
1. Traditional media​. This includes all subnational, national, regional, and international media outlets that are governed by journalistic principles of verification.
2. Reports​. International institutions and non-governmental organizations – such as aid groups, human rights organizations, and investigative journalist groups – regularly publish reports on political violence. Where applicable, ACLED incorporates events from these reports. Under certain conditions, reports from groups involved in the conflict themselves are also included (Ministry of Defenses, armed groups, NATO, etc.).
3. Local Partner Data. ​The past decades have seen an increase in conflict observatories established at the local level as both social activism and the ability to report political violence have increased. These organizations leverage their local knowledge as they collect and obtain information through primary and/or secondary means. ACLED develops relationships with local partners to enhance the depth and quality of its data.
4. New Media (targeted and verified). ‘​New media’ (e.g. Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp) can be a powerful supplemental source, but varies widely in terms of quality. Therefore, ​ACLED does not crowdsource or scrape large amounts of social media. Rather, a targeted approach to the inclusion of new media is preferred through either the establishment of relationships with the source directly, or the verification of the quality of each source.

https://www.acleddata.com/wp-content...ethodology.pdf

In any event, it’s is hardly a partisan stretch to say that 7% violent protests is quite alot, given the national crisis presented by blacks who had contact with police in the last year experiencing physical force by police during that time, representing 3% of total police interactions, of which the fatal use of force is some even smaller percentage.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp15.pdf

I understand people may find 97% peaceful police interactions contradictory to their narrative, but that doesn’t give them the right to seek refuge in emotional appeals about what BLM calls “the rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20200917...at-we-believe/

Not sure where the paradox lies. ACLED demonstrated that the instances of statue vandalism were rare and overall insignificant, statistically speaking. ACLED didn't claim that the actions were legal and, being professionals, refrained from commenting on how morally justifiable or not the bronze statue of Jefferson being pelted with tomatoes was. So, logical fallacies aside, the point of the ACLED still stands, apparently.

That’s a strawman against what you said yourself, though:

In my opinion, caring more about pieces of bronze than human lives speaks more about your moral compass than that of the perpetrators, but, regardless of our subjective ethics, this misleading image reinforced the hysteria about culture wars and etc.

The juxtaposition of human lives, statues, and moral compasses was your choice to repeat a common rhetorical emotional appeal. I merely indicated that, in terms of emotional appeals shifting focus away from more substantive issues, the blame for such appeals would just as well fall squarely on protestors and local politicians targeting statues they perceive to be problematic (ie offensive) in the first place. To the extent we’re dealing in logical fallacies here, this was yours and yours alone.

Anyway, in other news, in Kentucky, the traning slide for the State Police used Confederate and Hitler quotes to encourage officers to act violently, like "ruthless killers". The slide has probably not been in use since 2013 or 2015, but if such ideas were promoted, it's not that surprising that the law enforcement corps of the most prosperous country in the globe has been proven incapable of handling public unrest and even performing routine duties. Given how counterproductive that strategy is, is it perhaps the time to think of an alternative to the ''über alles'' mentality and increased militarisation? In Philadelphia, the public relations of the police force also deteriorated, since videos emerge of officers attacking a random car, hitting the driver and grabbing his child. The irony is that the Fraternal Order of Police used the photo of the abducted toddler to rant about how the thin blue line rescues lost, disorientated and barefoot from the chaos of the riots. The tweet has been unfortunately deleted.

As long as we’re recounting rhetorically advantageous anecdotes, I suppose I could bring up the cop killers the FBI reports were influenced by BLM and the false narrative promoted by the group:

Specifically in the Dallas, TX and Baton Rouge, LA, attacks, the assailants said they were influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement, and their belief that law enforcement was targeting black males.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resourc...dsetReport.pdf

You [cops] think that you’re a good person because you have a gun. My comrades already know, I tell them every Thursday, right there in their face: I know you got a gun, but so do I. Go ahead and shoot me. I’ll shoot back. Am I lying, my comrades? ..... You [cops] need to be charged with murder. They need to hang you high. They need to send you to the electric chair, and let you fry like a piece of burnt bacon. [Cheers and applause]

https://twitter.com/livesmattershow/...4424320077826?

The Tweet/footage seems to have been removed; you can google related coverage. Given the public promotion of such ideas, it's not that surprising that some among the law enforcement corps of the most prosperous country in the globe have taken a militaristic outlook to their jobs. Given how counterproductive that kind of rhetoric is, is it perhaps the time to think of an alternative to the violent Marxist/anarchist revolutionary mentality and rhetoric?

[Aexodus]

Regardless of how representative they are, the riots happened, terrorised thousands if not millions of Americans, and caused an unfathomable amount of damage, not just to property, but also to America’s reputation as a civilised country.

[swabian]

The video clearly shows cops backing away from the subject, ordering him to drop the knife, as he rapidly advances towards them waving said knife at them. Suicide-by-cop. Police are not going to get stabbed if they can avoid it just to “serve the public,” nor should they.

Guess the same thing would happen in Germany or France. I wonder if Germans and French rioted and looted in response? Maybe that sort of thing isn’t condoned or even praised as the work of civil rights heroes over there.

https://dw.com/en/germany-police-in-gelsenkirchen-shoot-dead-knife-wielding-attacker/a-51895038
https://dw.com/en/germany-investigation-into-deadly-police-shooting-in-bremen/a-53870938

The guy didn't charge at any of the officers with the knife. Of course French and German police shoot center mass in a situation where they are being charged with an knife, but this wasn't the case here. Before the camera moves away, we can see that the assailant waves their hand at one of the officers, then he vanishes from the picture and a moment later can be seen lying at the same spot, so he didn't seem to charge at anyone. He was shot in a standing position. Of course he could be on meth and lunge at anyone in the next moment... i can't really tell from that video and arguably you can't either, which is why i asked why you even find it worthy of showing the video in order to make a point. Of course there are situations when aggressive :wub:s like this need to be shot. It's also understandable that tasers aren't being used in such a situation since it has only one shot and can be blocked by robust clothing. Could also have been suicide by cop yes.

Or it could have been another over the top response, like the others. We can't tell according to the content of the video. At least i can't maybe there is a law enforcement expert who can shed some light on it.

[Lord Thesaurian]

The guy didn't charge at any of the officers with the knife. Of course French and German police shoot center mass in a situation where they are being charged with an knife, but this wasn't the case here.

Citation needed. The video was provided because it is the closest thing available to a first hand account, obviously. You were the one who claimed it’s not visible whether there was cause for the subject to be shot, and that there was no cause. Your claim contradicts the self evident video footage of officers rapidly backing away from the advancing armed assailant, ordering him to “drop the knife,” as well as publicly reported information in the media.

[swabian]

Citation needed. The video was provided because it is the closest thing available to a first hand account, obviously. You were the one who claimed it’s not visible whether there was cause for the subject to be shot, and that there was no cause. Your claim contradicts the self evident video footage of officers rapidly backing away from the advancing armed assailant, ordering him to “drop the knife,” as well as publicly reported information in the media.

I'm sorry? It isn't clearly visible? The officers had a good distance to the man when they shot and by what i can tell, the man was shot on the spot. He also didn't drop to the front, but to the side, which indicates he didn't have any forward momentum that made his body fall to the fron where the officers were standing. I know camera angles can distort a lot and make it difficult to tell the distances between individuals, so i'm absolutely considering that.

"Citation needed", ok. I only judged from what i can see on the picture, is there any further information on the case? Sorry, if i have missed additional information you provided on the case.

[Lord Thesaurian]

I'm sorry? It isn't clearly visible? The officers had a good distance to the man when they shot and by what i can tell, the man was shot on the spot. He also didn't drop to the front, but to the side, which indicates he didn't have any forward momentum that made his body fall to the fron where the officers were standing. I know camera angles can distort a lot and make it difficult to tell the distances between individuals, so i'm absolutely considering that.

"Citation needed", ok. I only judged from what i can see on the picture, is there any further information on the case? Sorry, if i have missed additional information you provided on the case.

You evidently missed the video footage and subsequent media reports, yes. The police will also release body cam footage and 911 recordings.

[swabian]

You evidently missed the video footage and subsequent media reports, yes.

According to the footage, the guy was not lunging or charging at anyone. He was incapacitated right where he stands. How is this plain obvious evidence of an attacker that has to be stopped, immediately. To me it looks like they shot the man several times (!) while he was holding his spot and the officers took up distance to up to 8 meters. The last time i've seen the attacker (and he is an attacker, yes, of course), he was holding the knife in his right close to the body and was waving to the cops with the left. This is usually interpreted as a gesture of submission in a potential combat situation. They were both far away from close combat range and the guy was not running towards them. This is what can be seen!

[Lord Thesaurian]

According to the footage, the guy was not lunging or charging at anyone. He was incapacitated right where he stands. How is this plain obvious evidence of an attacker that has to be stopped, immediately. To me it looks like they shot the man several times (!) while he was holding his spot and the officers took up distance to up to 8 meters.

Sorry you have trouble seeing what’s happening in the video. I can’t explain it to you any more effectively than I, the video, or publicly reported accounts of what happened already have.

[swabian]

I was literally glued to the screen when i watched and i stopped and replayed several times. Yeah... alright. I also have a good "eye" for visual details, regardless of the sharpness of my eyes (whioch is admittedly bad, but it doesn't play a role here). If i can see it, it gets processed by my brain and my visual brains' acuity is independent from the focus point of my cornea.

[Heathen Hammer]

While "systemic racism", "patriarchy" and "white privilege" do not manifest themselves outside imaginations of far-left fanatics, there are structural problems with police, mainly pertaining to police labor unions that tend to defend officers even if they were objectively in the wrong. The problem is that anti-police people also tend to be... pro-labor unions.

[Gromovnik]

While "systemic racism", "patriarchy" and "white privilege" do not manifest themselves outside imaginations of far-left fanatics, there are structural problems with police, mainly pertaining to police labor unions that tend to defend officers even if they were objectively in the wrong. The problem is that anti-police people also tend to be... pro-labor unions.

Oh the horror. Imagine joining up with your colleagues in order to negotiate better pay and work conditions.