reading through the latter pages, i find again find the notion incredibly strange that it's the left causing mayhem. irt floyd riots, which are incredibly weirdly phrased here ("burning down cities" reads of a perspective that has been in the wrong media mill, not having much connection to the actual degree of disorder, which was present, but much less severe), it was also not because of floyd per se, but general police violence towards black americans which indeed does include random killings, all the time, constantly, before then and up to this day. coming from a country with more sane policing, the structural problems and pseudofascistoid pretentions of american policing are obvious. "why don't you calm down" is using a hell of a lot of intersectionalist work when threaded between kirk's adored violence and active government-sanctioned murders of you and your family. (and it's also kind of bleakly funny that right media is using intersectionalism now, discussing trans shooters in the same vein as black-lead riots, all while decrying that it's real anywhere else in the system. this thread aside, it's standard jesse watters stuff, he literally tied this shooting to blm the moment kirk's death was confirmed)
for the left being scary and we all needing to calm down here,
- the vast majority of shootings are done by right-wingers. 2/3 trump-related shootings so far were done by disenfranchised trumpers.
- the left did not march on the f* us government
- the left are not sending federal armies to parade and intimidate, fishing for someone to shoot them
- the left is not disappearing people from their work and homes
- the left pushes papers and is rude on tiktok
mind you - none of this means, of course, that the left is incapable of violence. the left's political methods have largely been in academia and media far beyond my own lifetime. the notion that the left is actually basically harmless is correct - but it's not innately so. a larger historical picture paints a different story. social democrats and activist workers, like not even talking commies, were at best rowdy a century ago. in europe, the tension of suppressed workers and arbitrary government force was solved by soft implementing socialist policies; that and naturally some harsh policing was what calmed the left down into the modern iteration. appeasement works when the target isn't fascist (ie, doesn't actually wants violence). it's the bell curve meme; dumb: the left is violent, normal: the left is peaceful, smart: the left is violent. i'm not gonna draw it, but the implication here is that everyone has the capacity for violence. but what left wing violence is, what its context is (specifically its temporality) and how to whine about it is so far removed from talking heads making "burning down cities" scary in the news today. this extends to posters in this thread:
stop watching fox news. "but i don't!", i know you don't, it's metonymic: whatever podcast you're listening to, stop listening to that. you're being fed slob not reflective of what's happening in the world or how it works.
now, of course, we may see this change in the future, where we see the left's capability of violence show itself again. we've had one largely public leftist shooter this year, factually drowned by the number of incidents by right-wingers, nevermind the conservative government's insane crackdowns - but it got the media mill, it happened. according to this thread, this may also be an instance of that happening. the thing is that the processual, academic left was done so as appeasement, a method to disappate the left's capacity of violence. but conservatives just can't help themselves. a core political pillar there is the delineation of hierarchy (often nonviolently, and often violently). as such it's for some reason important to either have the government shoot minorities, to suppress worker wages, to silence activists, to reroute wealth upwards, to ignore general acts of arbitrary violence done by right wingers, and to mock a lame duck left while doing so. the right is doing an atrocious amount of violence, they push for it to continue, the left responds by fingerwaggling. when an incident then eventually happens, the right is surprised that it's not just manufactured. when leftists were crying wolf for so long, it's not just because of being (rightfully) scared for themselves, it's also because we know that at some point, push comes to shove, and nobody wants that. save maga. more on that below.
we may be within a generation where left wing violence actually starts happening again. i'm not sure why you'd want that, and why you'd keep voting for it, but here we are. i can believe the current shooter is on the left (i can also believe that the evidence is doctored, but i don't). but it's absolutely a drop in the ocean of right wing gun violence you do nothing about, so being angry that the left is violent is just that; you don't actually care about violence, you care about the left being violent.
so on maga wanting this. trump has been pushing the national guard on what's essentially peaceful nothingburgers or literally nothing recently. fascists want chaos because it's a good utility to sideline laws, use violence, and coagulate power. keep an eye on the news. there is a fine line between left wingers crying wolves and being canaries in the coal mine, and to the actual world out there outside your podcast, the land is buried in coal.
www.jezebel.com
www.usatoday.com
www.independent.co.uk
