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Yeah, the more extreme you get, the closer the behavior and justifications on both ends become even if the aims are different, and a lot of these people doing the actual rioting in these places are just in it for the excuse to trash stuff and have no real aims other than "feth the system", despite having no idea what "the system" actually is or really what the protests are about. The Women's March (at least in Portland) was reasonably well organized and coordinated with the police and they were able to prevent any issues like they'd had with previous protests with those kinds of elements.

 feeder wrote:
Shutting up Milo (peaceably) is something I can get behind, though.

I'm all for people's right to protest and assemble peacefully. I'm also for students rights to hire the speakers they want and for them to assemble peacefully, as well.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah, the more extreme you get, the closer the behavior and justifications on both ends become even if the aims are different, and a lot of these people doing the actual rioting in these places are just in it for the excuse to trash stuff and have no real aims other than "feth the system", despite having no idea what "the system" actually is or really what the protests are about. The Women's March (at least in Portland) was reasonably well organized and coordinated with the police and they were able to prevent any issues like they'd had with previous protests with those kinds of elements.

Well yeah, there was a few thousand Moms present. You don't act the fool in front of your Mom.

That does get awkward...

 feeder wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 feeder wrote:

It is isolated and condemned. It's dozens of people at a rally of thousands. Not many people on "the left" are lining up to give these guys high-fives.

Outrage clickbait is certainly trying to paint this as some kind of epidemic, though.

I hope your correct. My social media feeds are full of lefties, and most who comment are hailing UC Berkeley as some kind of moral and political victory. And I've see this expressed on dakka as well, although admittedly nothing like a majority of folk.

I've seen no one celebrating the vandalism and hooliganism here. It's not okay when some gakhead is coming to your school speak gak out his gakhole, it's not okay when 1/5th of the country elects a narcissistic clownshow president, and it's not okay even when your hockey team loses the Stanley Cup in game 7.

Shutting up Milo (peaceably) is something I can get behind, though. If karma exists that gakhead is getting cancer of the larynx.

There were some posters here on Dakka saying it was acceptable to punch people out because of what they say.

Relapse wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 feeder wrote:

It is isolated and condemned. It's dozens of people at a rally of thousands. Not many people on "the left" are lining up to give these guys high-fives.

Outrage clickbait is certainly trying to paint this as some kind of epidemic, though.

I hope your correct. My social media feeds are full of lefties, and most who comment are hailing UC Berkeley as some kind of moral and political victory. And I've see this expressed on dakka as well, although admittedly nothing like a majority of folk.

I've seen no one celebrating the vandalism and hooliganism here. It's not okay when some gakhead is coming to your school speak gak out his gakhole, it's not okay when 1/5th of the country elects a narcissistic clownshow president, and it's not okay even when your hockey team loses the Stanley Cup in game 7.

Shutting up Milo (peaceably) is something I can get behind, though. If karma exists that gakhead is getting cancer of the larynx.

There were some posters here on Dakka saying it was acceptable to punch people out because of what they say.

Yeah, Nazi-punching is morally but not legally justified. Captain America and Indiana Jones started their careers doing just that.

But you're mistaken if you think that isn't an extremely specific corner case, and not a general acceptance of violence when someone doesn't agree with your point of view.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The Nazi punch issue will get this thread a permanent-ban! For real, drop that issue!

Please review the OP to this thread.

 jasper76 wrote:
Noooooooooooooo! The Nazi punch issue will get this thread a permanent-ban! For real, drop that issue!

Please review the OP to this thread.

You're right, of course. I shall say no more on the subject.

I was referring to the wider "is the left embracing violence?" theme that has been going on though.

Regarding Milo and his joke, a point I have is: do people just need to grow thicker skin?

If you choose to make yourself a public figure, you open yourself up to ridicule. The left does it, the right does it. It's a story as old as America.

I think if Milo had chosen to attack an anonymous student, his joke would have been abhorrent. But the student he attacked did make a choice to become a public figure on the issue of transgender bathrooms.

It seems to me it's overly sensitive to make yourself a public figure, and then cry foul when someone in the public decides to make fun.

Am I way off here? I mean, people ridicule right-wingers as a matter of course.

 jasper76 wrote:
Regarding Milo and his joke, a point I have is: do people just need to grow thicker skin?

If you choose to make yourself a public figure, you open yourself up to ridicule. The left does it, the right does it. It's a story as old as America.

I think if Milo had chosen to attack an anonymous student, his joke would have been abhorrent. But the student he attacked did make a choice to become a public figure on the issue of transgender bathrooms.

It seems to me it's overly sensitive to make yourself a public figure, and then cry foul when someone in the public decides to make fun.

Am I way off here? I mean, people ridicule right-wingers as a matter of course.

Seriously. Obama mocked Special Olympians on Jay Leno and the audiance laughed.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_E-EdGul8nI

 jasper76 wrote:
Regarding Milo and his joke, a point I have is: do people just need to grow thicker skin?

If you choose to make yourself a public figure, you open yourself up to ridicule. The left does it, the right does it. It's a story as old as America.

I think if Milo had chosen to attack an anonymous student, his joke would have been abhorrent. But the student he attacked did make a choice to become a public figure on the issue of transgender bathrooms.

It seems to me it's overly sensitive to make yourself a public figure, and then cry foul when someone in the public decides to make fun.

Am I way off here? I mean, people ridicule right-wingers as a matter of course.

I'd guess it's the difference between poking fun and being genuinely horrible and offensive.

All I will say on the matter is when Indiana Jones or Captain America do something, it is legit, always. Because....reasons.

I might suggest that some are according the subject of Milo's ridicule the kind of protection that we afford to children. Most people agree that it's socially unacceptable to ridicule a child, because they are seen generally as unaccountable for their actions and decisions...they are not yet mature enough to know what they are doing, or face the adult consequences of what they decide to do, so we back off and let kids be kids.

Should typical college age students be afforded the same kind of protections?

In other words, is 22 the new 18?

I dunno, could be all off here, but the guy sews discord and hate. He has already managed to get one one thread locked and a few posters on vacation here. Just please ignore the turd bucket and the reaction he gets, it only serves to feed what he does and evoke stronger counter reactions. Just shut up about him and move on already. I've spent way more of my time reading about him than he deserves in this thread. Get a new hobby horse to back. I, for my part, will not respond any longer to any post where he is the subject or cause. I suggest others do the same unless we want this one locked as well.

I agree. The guy is a strange new breed, the professional troll. We should ignore his existence, as that is the only way to defeat a troll.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
I don't think it will even affect the moderates, to be honest.

It will, it obviously will. Not likely in making them more Muslim, or more proponent of violent Islam, no. But it will obviously and very deeply taint their vision of the US and it's government. It has such a huge impact on many people's life for no reason beside bigotry and ignorance…

 Sentinel1 wrote:
At least it shows Trump wants to cut down the possibility of foreign terrorism occurring on American soil, if the results are extremely limited of being effective.

Does it shows that he wants to cut that down and is terribly incompetent (not blocking countries that send terrorists), or does that show he is competent but unwilling?
Got to pick one but you have to admit in any case it makes him a terrible choice.

 feeder wrote:
There is an issue of perception of refugee terrorism in the US, and this Muslim ban addresses those fears though.

Remember, my feelings on a subject are just as important as your facts on that same subject.

This last sentence is a way to mock proponent of the ban?

 whembly wrote:
As for why those 7 countries, they were identified by previous administration where the usual vetting process are challenged, which the current administration chose to use for this EO.

What were those countries identified as? Countries where the government is hostile to the US? Then yeah, that makes sense. Countries which citizens should be barred from entering the US? Hell no, Obama wasn't that dumb. Doesn't matter if Trump wrote that list or if he took a list that was made for an entirely different purpose, it's still 100% him being a stupid evil person.
[edit]I said stupid evil person, will I be banned for Rule #1? Suspense I never know. Others have said worse about Trump but that's not enough to show I won't be suspended for it. I feel like I'm playing Russian roulette.[/edit]

 jasper76 wrote:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The Nazi punch issue will get this thread a permanent-ban! For real, drop that issue!

Please review the OP to this thread.

Indeed.

But all of that still counts as "Strike 1".

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
I dunno, could be all off here, but the guy sews discord and hate. He has already managed to get one one thread locked and a few posters on vacation here. Just please ignore the turd bucket and the reaction he gets, it only serves to feed what he does and evoke stronger counter reactions. Just shut up about him and move on already. I've spent way more of my time reading about him than he deserves in this thread. Get a new hobby horse to back. I, for my part, will not respond any longer to any post where he is the subject or cause. I suggest others do the same unless we want this one locked as well.

Fair enough, for my part I actually think the effect of his college tour and the reactions it is causing are provoking debates that our country actually needs to have. Do we really value free speech? Freedom of assembly? Has progressive culture overreached? Are we fighting perpetual battles that have already been won? Are college age adults really still children? Stuff like that is fascinating to me, and I'm not at all afraid of the questions...let's meet them head on. Maybe it takes a crude, offensive, professional provocateur stirring up the pot for us to critically examine our own preconceptions.

My 2 cents, anyways.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Incidentally, I am fundamentally interested in these issues as a means to explain why a figure like Donald Trump could compete in, let alone win a US election.

I think the right has some serious questions to ask itself on the Trump phenomenon. The traditional right has been soundly rejected,and they should also be asking themselves where they went wrong and how and why they were defeated so utterly.

I get the idea of not feeding the trolls, but you get the idea of not shutting up when the trolls start demanding tolls too, right? In all of the stories the trolls don't live long, not because of subservience to them, but because of reaction to them. No, I am not asking for violent reaction to the trolls, just a recognition of where the phrase comes from before the Internet made people quit thinking. They didnt feed the trolls, they killed the trolls.

I think trolling comes from trawling, as in trawling/fishing for victims of internet pranks and is not really what Milo Y.'s doing. He's harassing/outing people and has such nice phrases like "somebody should do something about this", implying further harassment.

Vaktathi wrote:Yeah, the more extreme you get, the closer the behavior and justifications on both ends become even if the aims are different, and a lot of these people doing the actual rioting in these places are just in it for the excuse to trash stuff and have no real aims other than "feth the system", despite having no idea what "the system" actually is or really what the protests are about. The Women's March (at least in Portland) was reasonably well organized and coordinated with the police and they were able to prevent any issues like they'd had with previous protests with those kinds of elements.

There might be some anarchists who are only there to cause chaos but it's more complicated than that. Protesters here in Europe started using black bloc tactics because they couldn't trust the police who regularly try to instigate violence, sexual harass, randomly pepper spraying/tear gas people, guide naive protestors into certain areas "to disperse them and avoid bottlenecks in a march" while actually kettling them to cause panic (works well against first time protestors), destroying phones and trying to destroy videos, randomly arresting people who have done nothing, cause riots so they can crack down on the protest and disrupt peaceful protests instead of keeping the peace like they are supposed to. It doesn't help that the police overall is right leaning while these protestors are usually left leaning. And that tends to escalate especially when you throw in a few anarchsits.

Look at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. A woman may be losing an arm and another her eye, caused by nonlethal methods. Stuff like rubber bullets which sound like goofy paintball stuff but is made of metal, just coated with rubber. There's this joke that white people in the US finally got a taste of what real protests are like when the Occupy Wall Street protests happened because they finally experienced that the police is protecting power, not people. Anyone remember this guy who got $38,000 for psychological pain and suffering because he pepper sprayed protestors? The actual left (not liberals) have no reason to trust the police when it comes to protests but they usually know what they are getting into when they participate. Liberals who want to help are often not prepared for the police and that can be really sobering/horrifying if you actually expect the police to "protect and serve" in these instances.

The women's march got lucky that it didn't get the same treatment that most other protests do from the police who are usually far more aggressive, no matter how the protest behaves. Sure if you have never been in a one of these protests, only see what they show on TV, and just trust what the police says then all the violence was always caused by protesters and not by the, of course, always calm, even handed, and professional police force. The same police that gets twitchy when a dark skinned man wants to get out his wallet and the same police that would never lie about police brutality but looks to react much more aggressively in interactions with the population now that smartphone cameras are ubiquitous.

I don't think protests/riots will stop being a thing or calm down in the US because, like explained above, it's not just some random anarchists but also the police, and the actual left has started organising in the USA and they don't trust the police to treat them fairly. The cherry on top is that the USA has, with Steve Bannon, an actual white supremacist in the White House (or race realist, or human biodiversity advocate, or whatever new euphemism for racist they have introduced, I just can't keep up with the right wing PC culture). The right is causing much more violence (and actual deaths) than a punched alt-right demagogue here and there, it's just usually explained away as a "frustrated loner" like Dylann Roof or the Quebec Mosque terrorist who were radicalised by alt-right/Nazi rhetoric (for example by people like Milo Y. and Richard Spencer) but that, for some reason, doesn't get so easily attributed to the whole right side of the political spectrum. When the left has mass murderers like these (let's add: in comparable numbers, so we can keep score for the pedants) then people can start throwing around that centrist "both sides are equally bad" and horseshoe theory drivel.

Bonus silly points to people making that argument, because that's not even what horseshoe theory claims to describe

Guys I found a source on the bowling green massacre and it is as horrible as ConJob says it is

To be fair to the Berkely police, I went to a lot of protests in Berkeley armed because I was worried about my safety (on the Pro-Israel side), and the police never once let those screaming matches break out into violence that I saw...unless you count this one tiny Palestinian lady who went around kicking people's shins. The police were great at avoiding escalation. The events that went crazy were usually the ones you'd never expect, like marches in solitary with the grad student union or the ethnic studies department against budget cuts.

 Ustrello wrote:
Guys I found a source on the bowling green massacre and it is as horrible as ConJob says it is

Spoiler:

That is just sick and depraved! You will notice the perps wearing the traditional red of the right wing (and commies somehow)

On the point of Milo, having listened to him, he is no more a troll than his counterparts on the left. The issue this election is that the traditional stances of both parties was rejected in favor of someone who *(really could have been anyone) would change things up. the dems have been losing at the state level fairly regularly until they got swept out of the federal side (not surprising for the incumbent party in the white house) and their response is to double down on what made them lose, sure it is popular with their constituents, but when you look at it, both parties are being hijacked by their extreme elements. consider how a rubio v webb, or omalley v bush election would have been.

 thekingofkings wrote:

On the point of Milo, having listened to him, he is no more a troll than his counterparts on the left. The issue this election is that the traditional stances of both parties was rejected in favor of someone who *(really could have been anyone) would change things up. the dems have been losing at the state level fairly regularly until they got swept out of the federal side (not surprising for the incumbent party in the white house) and their response is to double down on what made them lose, sure it is popular with their constituents, but when you look at it, both parties are being hijacked by their extreme elements. consider how a rubio v webb, or omalley v bush election would have been.

One of my sincere hopes is that out of all this political turmoil, a new center will arise that actually represents the majority of Americans...one that abandons issues of yesteryear and focuses instead on our current common ground.

Mario wrote:

Spoiler:

I get the idea of not feeding the trolls, but you get the idea of not shutting up when the trolls start demanding tolls too, right? In all of the stories the trolls don't live long, not because of subservience to them, but because of reaction to them. No, I am not asking for violent reaction to the trolls, just a recognition of where the phrase comes from before the Internet made people quit thinking. They didnt feed the trolls, they killed the trolls.

I think trolling comes from trawling, as in trawling/fishing for victims of internet pranks and is not really what Milo Y.'s doing. He's harassing/outing people and has such nice phrases like "somebody should do something about this", implying further harassment.

Vaktathi wrote:Yeah, the more extreme you get, the closer the behavior and justifications on both ends become even if the aims are different, and a lot of these people doing the actual rioting in these places are just in it for the excuse to trash stuff and have no real aims other than "feth the system", despite having no idea what "the system" actually is or really what the protests are about. The Women's March (at least in Portland) was reasonably well organized and coordinated with the police and they were able to prevent any issues like they'd had with previous protests with those kinds of elements.

There might be some anarchists who are only there to cause chaos but it's more complicated than that. Protesters here in Europe started using black bloc tactics because they couldn't trust the police who regularly try to instigate violence, sexual harass, randomly pepper spraying/tear gas people, guide naive protestors into certain areas "to disperse them and avoid bottlenecks in a march" while actually kettling them to cause panic (works well against first time protestors), destroying phones and trying to destroy videos, randomly arresting people who have done nothing, cause riots so they can crack down on the protest and disrupt peaceful protests instead of keeping the peace like they are supposed to. It doesn't help that the police overall is right leaning while these protestors are usually left leaning. And that tends to escalate especially when you throw in a few anarchsits.

Look at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. A woman may be losing an arm and another her eye, caused by nonlethal methods. Stuff like rubber bullets which sound like goofy paintball stuff but is made of metal, just coated with rubber. There's this joke that white people in the US finally got a taste of what real protests are like when the Occupy Wall Street protests happened because they finally experienced that the police is protecting power, not people. Anyone remember this guy who got $38,000 for psychological pain and suffering because he pepper sprayed protestors? The actual left (not liberals) have no reason to trust the police when it comes to protests but they usually know what they are getting into when they participate. Liberals who want to help are often not prepared for the police and that can be really sobering/horrifying if you actually expect the police to "protect and serve" in these instances.

The women's march got lucky that it didn't get the same treatment that most other protests do from the police who are usually far more aggressive, no matter how the protest behaves. Sure if you have never been in a one of these protests, only see what they show on TV, and just trust what the police says then all the violence was always caused by protesters and not by the, of course, always calm, even handed, and professional police force. The same police that gets twitchy when a dark skinned man wants to get out his wallet and the same police that would never lie about police brutality but looks to react much more aggressively in interactions with the population now that smartphone cameras are ubiquitous.

I don't think protests/riots will stop being a thing or calm down in the US because, like explained above, it's not just some random anarchists but also the police, and the actual left has started organising in the USA and they don't trust the police to treat them fairly. The cherry on top is that the USA has, with Steve Bannon, an actual white supremacist in the White House (or race realist, or human biodiversity advocate, or whatever new euphemism for racist they have introduced, I just can't keep up with the right wing PC culture). The right is causing much more violence (and actual deaths) than a punched alt-right demagogue here and there, it's just usually explained away as a "frustrated loner" like Dylann Roof or the Quebec Mosque terrorist who were radicalised by alt-right/Nazi rhetoric (for example by people like Milo Y. and Richard Spencer) but that, for some reason, doesn't get so easily attributed to the whole right side of the political spectrum. When the left has mass murderers like these (let's add: in comparable numbers, so we can keep score for the pedants) then people can start throwing around that centrist "both sides are equally bad" and horseshoe theory drivel.

There is certainly truth in here. There is this strange thing where even peaceful, constitutionally protected protests are looked at with disdain from the "law and order" types. With the mere act of protest, making fuss, inconveniencing others is looked at negatively, because it upsets the Status-Quo.

Now we certainly have problems with people like anarchists and some far-leftists types (i.e. actual communists) causing violence (although it should be noted that violent 1st world communists are well in the minority). But that is exsaerbated by how protests are treated and viewed. And how certain news organizations would rather report on the vast minority of violent ones, rather than all the non-violent ones.

Or a Biden v. Trump? It woulnd have been a contest.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
Or a Biden v. Trump? It woulnd have been a contest.

A real contest for a change? I bet that Biden would even win the popular vote by, like, millions.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
Or a Biden v. Trump? It woulnd have been a contest.

Biden would have won in a landslide, against any of them. But we really as a nation had no right to ask him or his family to sacrifice any more than they already had.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
Or a Biden v. Trump? It woulnd have been a contest.

A real contest for a change? I bet that Biden would even win the popular vote by, like, millions.

I would've voted for Biden over Trump...

 jasper76 wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:

On the point of Milo, having listened to him, he is no more a troll than his counterparts on the left. The issue this election is that the traditional stances of both parties was rejected in favor of someone who *(really could have been anyone) would change things up. the dems have been losing at the state level fairly regularly until they got swept out of the federal side (not surprising for the incumbent party in the white house) and their response is to double down on what made them lose, sure it is popular with their constituents, but when you look at it, both parties are being hijacked by their extreme elements. consider how a rubio v webb, or omalley v bush election would have been.

One of my sincere hopes is that out of all this political turmoil, a new center will arise that actually represents the majority of Americans...one that abandons issues of yesteryear and focuses instead on our current common ground.

It would take a good number of centrist pubs and dems to break off, but a moderate party that could compromise on things would keep the far left and far right in the fringes where they belong. But what we really need is to stop looking at each other with contempt and condescension, its pretty obvious that the left and right despise one another.