Synagogue Shooting in Pittsburgh

[Lexicus]

I live in the greater Pittsburgh area about a half hour from where this happened. As you can imagine this has absolutely shocked the region. Nobody even imagined, though I suppose people always say that everywhere.

To me it's not surprising at all. I'm here for the election and the area surrounding the city is full of heavily armed far-right nutjobs.

Trump hasn't approved of mass killings

Well, you know, except the ones our military and the Saudis are carrying out but sure...

Most Republicans would condemn these attacks, and many republicans have. In the same way we shouldn't call all muslims terrorists, let's not call all Republicans nazis or terrorists. Obviously, none of the Republicans running for office are advocating the acts of these people or would do such acts.

The shooter said that the Jews are responsible for bringing in refugees to "kill our people," ie, replace the whites. If you don't believe that the Republicans are massively culpable in giving credence and legitimacy to this idea with their positions on immigrants and refugees you're not paying attention.

that's kind of it.

He is carrying out the ethnic cleansing of the United States, has locked thousands of children in concentration camps to that end, has relaxed the rules of engagement for US forces in the middle east leading to a massive uptick in civilian casualties, gutted regulatory enforcement of a number of areas of law in the US - as some examples, his Department of Education has given the green light to predatory for-profit "universities" to rip students off with impunity, has made it virtually impossible for people to reduce their student loan burdens. His Department of Justice has essentially halted all civil rights enforcement in particular voting rights enforcement meaning that the neoconfederates in Republican-controlled states like Brian Kemp are free to purge hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters from the voting rolls (needless to say these are mostly black people). His Environmental Protection Agency is a complete joke, not enforcing any of the environmental laws which is certainly going to have mounting effects on public health etc.

Perhaps most tragically of all he has taken a whole slew of regulatory and other positions which will have the effect of increasing the pace of climate change, and has totally withdrawn the US from any kind of international leadership role on the issue (not that I was happy with what Obama did in this area but Trump is a lot worse and frankly you should be pissed about that more than any of the other stuff).

 

[Berzerker]

Well, you know, except the ones our military and the Saudis are carrying out but sure...

I dont have a problem including foreign policy in a discussion of mass killings but you know partisan Democrats will howl 'whaboutism' when their politicians are mentioned.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/09/yemen-saudi-arabia-obama-riyadh/501365/

 

[Bootstoots]

On second thought (and since i effectively dodged the argument there):
(Let's go the uncomplicated way and talk about the actual US instead of the hypothetical FRG.)

Actually i'm not all that convinced that your fear is warranted. People have been exposed to plenty of islamist attacks and even more right wing terrorism.
Does one more thing really sway people who weren't already commited to the coresponding partisan position anyway?

For the US I'm only talking about a marginal effect on voting - a point or two one way or another, nothing large or durable. I still end up caring quite a bit about potential small effects in the few weeks leading up to an election, because they're often decided by small margins.

Omar Mateen was the best example (i didn't bring him up just to stick that Dunham line to you, even though that was fun too):
If Democrats were like Republicans they'd have gone with:

"Look, there are millions of proub Muslim Americans, nutters exist in every community, we've talked about this before, Islamism is evil and our Ninja President is bombing half the middle east to stop it. We are actually very good at keeping you save, but who the frack figures for fairy jihadists? Like, maybe accept that that's a bit of a slippery curve ball and calm you damn nipples."​

Instead Democrats insisted on bringing this contorted nonsense to a new high where they try to weasel around using words such as "islamism" at all, like one's prude aunt who tries to talk about genitalia without using a bad word.
Add to that: Blabla "toxic masculinity", something something homophobia trans people Lena Dunham.

It's sickening. The way Democrats are incapable of intelectual honesty as soon as something is about women, islam or teachers is sickening, even to millions of people who agree with the actual policies, or for that matter more liberal ones.
Point being: The way liberals talked about Pulse helped cost them the election, the event itself probably had little effect.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of US identity politics and the self-defeating ways US liberals try to use it. It is a small minority of people who actually respond favorably to it while quite a few more will oppose it. IIRC, polls have shown that "political correctness" as a concept is opposed by about 80% of everyone asked the question, including majorities of every minority group; the main supporters* are upper middle class liberals, most of whom are white. The median American is actually fairly tolerant, but the way liberals go about identity politics seems almost designed to trigger as much of a backlash as possible.

*"Support" should also include "that's not a thing, it's a smear by racists/other bigots". The next poll on the issue should include it as an option; they'd find roughly the same result, but it'd be interesting how that option distributes itself.

 

[Lexicus]

1) Oh, really?

These numbers are highly misleading.

2) You are refering to the seperation policy? Which was in effect for, what, 51 days and affected three thousand children?
You think this particular datum constitutes a fundamental shift in the US's immigration policy which has been a complete fecalshow for about a quarter century?

First of all, using "affected" in the past tense is obviously idiotic given the actual effects of that policy on the children concerned. But I'm not surprised you were unaware that the family separation policy has been replaced by a policy of detaining families together indefinitely, which has lead to a steady increase in the number of people in immigration detention.

I'm not arguing that it represents a "fundamental shift," but that it represents an escalation of human rights abuses.

3) Do you actually have evidence to back up such an increased death toll?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...344968-2932-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html

https://airwars.org/news/trumps-air-war-kills-12-civilians-per-day/

Coalition civilian casualty claims double under Donald Trump

Of course, I'm sure this information won't stop you from repeating that Trump hasn't really changed anything and from endlessly heaping scorn on your real enemies: Youtube feminists and the Anglosphere left or whatever it is.

5) Sorry, again, that's another drop in a preexisting ocean of "bad" to me.

You really just don't know what you're talking about. The Obama DOJ produced for example several devastating indictments of police departments in various places in the US after high-profile shootings of unarmed black people. Sessions has completely stopped that. There are plenty of other examples of policy changes that have real consequences for people.

My point is: I really can't be bothered with your inability to run elections all that much

LOL. I wish I were more surprised at the intellectual dishonesty on display here.

Oh, right, you were about to tell me how Trump differs from a generic Republican and how things being screwed up is new.

Strawman. My position is that generic Republicans are largely just as evil as he is.

At any rate, continued discussion seems pointless. Your position that Trump is no big deal seems to be a consequence of your absolute commitment to the idea that liberals are stupid, so they must be wrong when they criticize Trump. It's transparently not based on the facts as when presented with the facts about what Trump is doing you simply shrug them off and say you don't care. And the funny thing is that I've been trying to impress upon other American liberals that Trump is no aberration, rather that he represents deep continuities with the trajectory of the US over the past several decades, and that if you really want to oppose Trump you need to completely overturn the rotten political economy in this country.

 

[Lexicus]

Look, for one there's little reason for you to get all huffy and puffy with me.

There is, because you're being transparently dishonest. You simply don't think the things Trump's doing are "significant policy achievements" and you're not going to be convinced otherwise.

You have presented no evidence defeating that notion.

How am I supposed to present evidence disproving a hypothetical? AfD isn't scarier than Trump because it's still a fringe party nowhere near exercising real power. Trump is the head of state and the head of government, and his party controls the legislature and the courts.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Trump is the head of state and the head of government, and his party controls the legislature and the courts.

As well as the preponderance of power in the collective state's governments.

 

[Lexicus]

Yeah... they're not. I'm sorry, but they aren't.

The climate change stuff alone is not only significant, but it may be the most significant 'policy achievement' in all of human history. To some extent this is due to happenstance, because while obviously Bush's climate policies were pretty terrible we still had a lot more time to act then. We don't anymore.

Like... (obviously i don't see myself that way), in your frame i'm a far left misogynist cook from the other side of the planet.

No, I just think you have an odd obsession with certain Youtube personalities is all. And I think you have a hateboner for the Anglosphere left and consequently need to array a lot of your thinking around them being wrong.

 

[Bootstoots]

That's a perfectly fair point. There are inherent problems with Boots' comparison.
I suppose Boots knows that.

Sure, any attempt to port over the problems in one country into another to create an analogous situation is going to be rather strained. It's even harder with Germany, because the German electoral system is designed pretty well to prevent this sort of thing from happening for obvious historical reasons. In order to make a scenario where it does, I had to make AfD more powerful than it is ever likely to become, and obviously I had to ignore any differences between them and the Republicans.

What I was trying to communicate was the gist of the situation - an illiberal right-wing party has taken power, and you're scanning the news in the weeks ahead of the next election, in which it might lose power but might not, hoping for events that might weaken it even slightly and hoping against events that might strengthen it. Under such a scenario, you would, I believe, probably be relieved if the attacker of a synagogue turns out to be a right-wing extremist rather than a jihadist.

I don't dispute that AfD, or really most other far-right or otherwise illiberal parties throughout the world, would be more competent and effective with their power than Trump and his Republicans have been. I actually think we might have dodged a bullet in that another Republican would likely have had virtually the same policies for the most part, but would have more effective at enacting them and more popular as they did so.

 

[Lexicus]

I actually think we might have dodged a bullet in that another Republican would likely have had virtually the same policies for the most part, but would have more effective at enacting them and more popular as they did so.

I actually think this is highly unlikely. I mean, I don't dispute that many of the same crap policies would have been implemented by any other Republican. The climate-change denial was for example a given. But I also think it's easy to forget how much Trump dragged the Republican Party mainstream to the positions that he espoused. I mean, sure, to some extent the voter base held these positions anyway, and I was arguing that the Republican Party was dangerous and authoritarian long before 2015, but before Trump I think the crazies in the base were mostly resigned to having to choose the least RINO-ey candidate.

It's also interesting because I think the incompetence/disarray of the Trump administration is largely a media construct that of course has some reality behind it (obviously his White House is administrative chaos for example) but behind the scenes his appointees are actually quite competently going about the project of totally destroying the American government that was built over the middle decades of the 20th century, starting with the New Deal and going through WW2 and the civil rights era.

 

[Birdjaguar]

with luck, Trump et al will have/is destroyed the Republican party/brand for a decade or more.

 

[Lexicus]

But... you do appreciate that your vision needs to be adapted to the present. The roosevedtian legacy can't be enclosed in amber. It has to live and breathe.

This seems like kind of an odd response to me. Like you've seen the actual policy positions I advocate right?

 

[Lexicus]

I'm more of a Jacobin than a liberal these days.

 

[Stewniversity]

Republican news outlets were speculating that George Soros was funding the caravan, which I don't think there is evidence for and is an instance of the conspiracy that Soros funds everything. But Soros is one person who certainly does not represent all Jews. The shooter believed that all Jews were globalists and all globalists were evil, which is a belief the people on these news outlets do not share. These outlets are not anti-jew.

The shooter was murderously angry at the HIAS, Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, which helps Hebrews and Jews emigrate, not Venezuelans, Guatemalans, etc. who are almost certainly not Jewish. So the caravan does not even consist of Hebrew or Jew marchers, and is therefore not likely to be getting help from HIAS at any time. Regardless of whether Soros was funding the caravan or not (which I don't think he was) and regardless of the shooter's beliefs about Jews and immigration, he wasn't playing with a full deck in attacking a synagogue that was involved in HIAS because they wouldn't be involved in the caravan anyway.

Wild speculation on news programs comparable to speculation on comment boards should not be done. It's not responsible. But in this case, I don't believe it caused the shooting. That was a leap in dyslogic on the part of the shooter.

I do blame Alex Jones for making conspiracy theories more mainstream and thus making nutjobs feel more empowered. His political predictions on how the 2016 election was going to come out came true and so people started giving him credence in general, which he did not deserve. Then people started looking up conspiracy theories more and taking them more seriously. The conspiracy that George Soros funds everything came from Alex Jones. It seems to be the one people believe the most. People on FOX news, while not being against Jews, seem to suspect Soros himself of funding almost everything. Before the 2016 election, they would never have thought things like that. Thanks a lot, Alex

Someone told me the other day that Alex Jones said Obama or somebody was going to use the kill switch that was installed on the internet and turn the internet off. The day it was supposed to happen came and went without incident. I told them stuff like that is why I stopped listening to Alex Jones, and it's taken quite a while to clear his garbage out of my head.

 

[Goodfella]

The shooter was murderously angry at the HIAS, Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, which helps Hebrews and Jews emigrate, not Venezuelans, Guatemalans, etc. who are almost certainly not Jewish. So the caravan does not even consist of Hebrew or Jew marchers, and is therefore not likely to be getting help from HIAS at any time. Regardless of whether Soros was funding the caravan or not (which I don't think he was) and regardless of the shooter's beliefs about Jews and immigration, he wasn't playing with a full deck in attacking a synagogue that was involved in HIAS because they wouldn't be involved in the caravan anyway.

A quick look at their website indicates they were founded to aid Jewish refugees but nowadays aid all types of refugees: "HIAS provides services to all immigrants in need of assistance, regardless of their national, ethnic, or religious background."

I have no idea if they have any involvement with the caravan (more power to them if they do), but they do not only help Jewish refugees.

 

[Lexicus]

These outlets are not anti-jew.

To the extent that "these outlets" are peddling George Soros conspiracy theories, they are absolutely anti-Jew.

which I don't think he was

Oh, very astute of you.

Wild speculation on news programs comparable to speculation on comment boards should not be done. It's not responsible. But in this case, I don't believe it caused the shooting. That was a leap in dyslogic on the part of the shooter.

The idea that it didn't contribute is abject nonsense. The Republicans deliberately and dishonestly are creating a hysteria about this caravan to motivate their voters to go to the polls. This guy obviously hated Jews independently of that, but it seems fairly obvious that he was driven to violence at least in part by this hysteria.

The conspiracy that George Soros funds everything came from Alex Jones.

It almost certainly came from neo-Nazis, not Alex Jones.

I stopped listening to Alex Jones

Why would you ever listen to him in the first place tho?

edit: also, "globalist" is literally just a term that means "Jew," it has no other real meaning...

 

[Cutlass]

with luck, Trump et al will have/is destroyed the Republican party/brand for a decade or more.

The way GW Bush did?

Face it, destroying the Republican brand just isn't enough to keep them out of power. Because their supporters hate the American brand too much.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The way GW Bush did?

Face it, destroying the Republican brand just isn't enough to keep them out of power. Because their supporters hate the American brand too much.

Hopefully, Trump is the last link in the chain of their destruction. If it takes someone worse, that would be really scary.

 

[Stewniversity]

Goodfella, I see. Still, it isn't very logical to attack someone just because they help refugees and are Jewish. The synagogue still probably had nothing to do with funding the caravan, and he had no evidence of it.

Lexicus, peddling George Soros conspiracy theories is not anti-Jew, it's anti-George Soros. The shooter already believed all Jews were in league with George Soros, which is not something news outlets peddle.

If the idea that George Soros is behind everything originates from Neo-Nazis, as you say, then the shooter, as a Neo-Nazi, already was sure the caravan was Soros funded anyway, so the news outlets speculating it was Soros funded didn't add to the false information in his head.

Like I said, I don't think the news outlets should be speculating wildly. I don't think they should be using sensationalist scare tactics whether they be right or left. In this case, they probably nudged him somewhat by the way they kept covering the caravan as Soros funded. It probably increased his anxiety. But I think they were more of a contributing factor than a cause, and it seemed as though some people were saying that the news reports were the main thing that caused him to go do it. I don't think that was the case.

I listened to Alex Jones because I didn't know any better, I'd never heard of him before, and my parents told me I should check him out.

 

[Berzerker]

To the extent that "these outlets" are peddling George Soros conspiracy theories, they are absolutely anti-Jew.

Why? They dont care if he's a Jew, they care that he supports the left and the Dems. I'll admit I dont watch Republican news outlets but the clips that show up on MSNBC rarely if ever mention Soros being a Jew.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I listened to Alex Jones because I didn't know any better, I'd never heard of him before, and my parents told me I should check him out.

Seems like bad parenting.