This is not about some general vague problem with "extremism" of which supposedly all sides are guilty. This is about the emergence of a right-wing terrorist movement which has already committed several attacks. When your first reaction to this is to to bring in some unspecified crimes of the left, then this calls into question whether you understand the seriousness of the situation. There is a real chance that real, actual fascists kill many more people and perhaps even gain more political power. We can talk about this without engaging in some false equivalence.
I realize that a large portion of young social media posters have already forgotten about this. Probably because John Oliver doesn't talk about it, and that's often their primary source of news analysis. But the Majority Whip for the U.S. Congress is STILL in recovery from a mass shooting over two months ago, by a deranged left-wing activist.
In Dallas last year, 5 police officers were assassinated and another 9 injured at a BLM protest march (the deadliest incident for U.S. law enforcement since 9/11), by an Army veteran who openly cited racial hatred as his motive. I went to church the following Sunday. I was a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, one of the most liberal American sects. The sermon more or less boiled down to, "Meh, they had it coming". I have since left the UU community, after more than a decade of fellowship there.
Where is the balancing point, at which you can declare "equivalence"? I don't know, and don't really care. But the narrative that polarization and extremism are entirely one-sided needs to go.
As a moderate, BOTH extremes in the U.S. scare the shit out of me right now. I'm a bit sick of being told that I'm "normalizing" awful things by not locking arms with one side, shutting my brain off, and chanting along with the mob. The mob has the intellect, the morality, and the attention span of a goldfish.
> I was a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, one of the most liberal American sects. The sermon more or less boiled down to, "Meh, they had it coming".
Who was the speaker of that sermon? I'd love to email them and get the real story, because that smells suspiciously like confirmation bias in your summary.
I think it was different bias where one paraphrased the past incorrectly, I do it all the time.
It was probably more along the lines of, "Making your bed and lying in it" or "When you poke the lion ten times, expect to get bit"
When someone trots out crimes of the left, it smells like "and you too!" that somehow the Right, which has the rule of force as their platform gets a pass with 1:100 ratios.
Weird? For a contentious sermon that allegedly resulted in a person who had been a member for over a decade quitting the church? I doubt it.
Anyhow, a UU sermon that is dismissive of terroristic violence is novel enough that requires a citation. In fact the only thing I could say to generalize about the variety of topics I've heard in various UU sermons is that none of them could possibly be characterized with the word "meh" in the summary. If anything it is the "Church of Anti-meh." And I'm not even a member, so I'm sure I've only heard the tip of the iceberg.
> But the Majority Whip for the U.S. Congress is STILL in recovery from a mass shooting over two months ago, by a deranged left-wing activist.
> As a moderate, BOTH extremes in the U.S. scare the shit out of me right now.
This is painfully ridiculous. The lunatic with a rifle is not representative of Sanders or his supporters, or the left in the U.S. I don't think an honest person of any political stripe would listen to Sanders condemnation of the guy and wonder whether he really meant it.
The Nazis and the Klan... are the Nazis and the Klan. Murder is what they do, and the best that could possibly have been said about the ones marching the other day was that they were just some kind of weak wannabes, not the real thing. Which would have been a smarter thing to say before they killed somebody at their rally.
I just cannot fathom some of the over-intellectualized naivete I'm reading here.
>And nazis aren't representative of Trump or his supporters.
It’s actually not clear if this is the case. It took three days and a ton of media pressure to get Trump to say he condemns Nazis, and then he immediately said that he only made the statement because “bad people” in the media forced him to.
A very logical conclusion is that Trump actually does support Nazis.
I'm not sure I agree that is a logical conclusion.
I think it's just as possible that not all facts were available on Saturday afternoon. Once the facts were available on Monday, the President made a definitive statement.
Also, since when did days become inclusive? I count 2 days (48 hours) between noon Saturday and noon Monday. Another media concoction.
Check the past and see how long it usually took Trump to make incredibly strong statements when it suited him politically. Including the denouncing of events that never actually happened...
> And nazis aren't representative of Trump or his supporters.
Putting aside the issue of his supporters, a charitable reading of Trump (whose true beliefs are well-concealed by ineloquence and constant displays of self-contradiction and dishonesty) would be that authoritarianism, nationalism, xenophobia, and many other fascist traits resonate strongly with him and he therefore feels some unconscious reluctance to criticize these guys who ought to be really, really easy for him to denounce by name. That's the charitable reading, which is consistent with him not really believing in their stated goals.
The behavior the press harps on - Trump being oddly appreciative of the qualities of "strongman" politicians when he speaks of them - is a common enough talking point, but I was shocked when Trump told the mass-murderer Duterte he was doing a great job. At some point the question of whether Trump is an amoral, dangerous idiot or an evil, dangerous idiot starts to feel a little academic.
> At some point the question of whether Trump is an amoral, dangerous idiot or an evil, dangerous idiot starts to feel a little academic.
That's precisely it. There is a line where incompetence becomes malice but once you're far enough across the line it no longer matters where the line itself is.
The nut job volunteered for the Sanders campaign and asked if the people he was going to shoot were Democrats or Republicans. You might not identify him as left-wing but he sure as hell did himself. By the same logic, reasonable right-wingers could claim that the white supremacists aren't actually right-wing.
That's different than just condemning their actions and calling them nut jobs. It shifts the problem away from people who are in a position to maybe make an impact. Even if it's unlikely that extremists on either side are going to come to their senses, it's much more likely that the whip shooter would engage in conversation someone with a strong left-wing orientation, and that some white supremacists listen to Trump when he uses the right kind of language.
If you are part of a political movement, or any group with strong opinions really, it's a moral duty not just to accept that there are people in your group who go too far but also to use your standing to call them out on it.
John Oliver has made some excellent commentary, but you can hardly call it balanced. Maybe for good reason, but nonetheless. BLM is awesome and necessary, however they walk a thin line between protesting against oppression and demonizing police, which some take as encouragement for violence. It's a continuing sturggle to to tell people on "your side" that they're wrong and going too far, much harder and more important than to belittle or protest against people that you naturally disagree with.
This is not about some general vague problem with "extremism" of which supposedly all sides are guilty. This is about the emergence of an Islamic terrorist movement which has already committed several attacks. When your first reaction to this is to to bring in some unspecified crimes of the US, then this calls into question whether you understand the seriousness of the situation. There is a real chance that real, actual radical Islamists kill many more people and perhaps even gain more political power. We can talk about this without engaging in some false equivalence.
"Trump has not denounced white supremacist terrorism" is the equivalent to "Obama has not denounced radical Islamic terrorism".
It's a media trick used to derail any conversation about whatever the president is trying to get done and make everybody talk about something incendiary for a while.
There is no useful policy anybody is going to put in place against fascism that hasn't already been there since World War II. Terrorism is already the most illegal of things. Do we really need to encourage Republicans to pass another law against terrorism? One Patriot Act is already too many.
> Obama has not denounced radical Islamic terrorism
Well yea, Obama, like George Bush before him, didn't use those exact words because it's a pointlessly offensive term. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Almost all of those 1.6 billion people are peaceful, responsible humans, just living their lives. Obama and Bush denounced terrorism all the time. But both of them, being somewhat more thoughtful than Trump, decided not to lump those 1.6 billion in with a tiny group of murdering lunatics, by naming those murdering lunatics after peaceful group's religion.
It would be as if we called KKK lynchings to Radical Christian Terrorism, as the KKK's makes all kinds of claims relating their batshit ideology to Christianity. Doesn't mean it has anything to do with Christianity though.
In short, your comparison doesn't hold up at all, as Obama consistently denounced terrorism by Al Qaeda and ISIS in clear, strong terms.
Trump got pitched a total softball, and he somehow managed to screw it up. Violence at a rally organized by white supremacists? Seems pretty cut and dry.
In the sense that are a tiny subset of a much larger group? Well, sure I agree.
Or in the sense that "white supremacist" besmirches white people the way that "Radical Islamist" besmirches Islam? Ok, I'm not against referring to them just as "racists" or the groups by their respective names (Neo-Nazis, KKK, and so on).
In either case, your comparison between Trump and Obama doesn't hold up.
> "Trump has not denounced white supremacist terrorism" is the equivalent to "Obama has not denounced radical Islamic terrorism".
Obama DID denounce "radical Islamic terrorism," though he did not use that exact term, for the reasons described above. For example, Obama said the following regarding the San Bernardino shooters:
> So far, we have no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas, or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home. But it is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West. They had stockpiled assault weapons, ammunition, and pipe bombs. So this was an act of terrorism, designed to kill innocent people.
Trump denounced the racists in Charlottesville on Monday, but his statement Saturday did not.
It just vaguely criticized "hatred and bigotry," without referencing the fact that in this case the hatred and bigotry was that of Neo-Nazis, KKK, and other racist groups. To me, his statement sounded like he thought the counter-protesters were equally guilty of "hatred and bigotry", and I think many other people felt the same.
If Trump's statement Saturday had been like the one on Monday, there would have been no controversy.
> In the sense that are a tiny subset of a much larger group? Well, sure I agree.
> Or in the sense that "white supremacist" besmirches white people the way that "Radical Islamist" besmirches Islam? Ok, I'm not against referring to them just as "racists" or the groups by their respective names (Neo-Nazis, KKK, and so on).
It's that the larger group gets painted with the bad acts of the malicious minority.
And it's more about the motte/bailey thing than the specific words in the name, which makes "racism" the same problem.
When you have serious people arguing that all white people are racist because they benefit from structural inequality, that word isn't adequately distinguishing what the KKK does from everyone else.
We need something that means "definition by motives" and not the other ones:
Bigotry might be a good alternative -- but that's the one he used.
> Obama DID denounce "radical Islamic terrorism," though he did not use that exact term, for the reasons described above.
Trump did denounce white supremacist groups, both before and after Friday.
> It just vaguely criticized "hatred and bigotry," without referencing the fact that in this case the hatred and bigotry was that of Neo-Nazis, KKK, and other racist groups. To me, his statement sounded like he thought the counter-protesters were equally guilty of "hatred and bigotry", and I think many other people felt the same.
And maybe this is really the crux of the matter -- it isn't about "Trump fails to denounce white supremacy", it's that he implicitly criticized the people protesting it.
But only if the counter-protesters are guilty of "hatred and bigotry" -- and if some of them are, why is it wrong to criticize that?
I agree with some of your points, like that there is a sometimes a bit of motte/bailey with the term "racist". But I don't see the Saturday statement as a denunciation (as the word is generally understood by the media and public).
If after the San Bernardino shootings, Obama had said: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious violence and use of force on both sides," I don't think it would have been accepted by the public, not just with the partisans, but more generally. Because it makes it sound like Obama considers the police that shot the terrorists to be as bad as the terrorists.
I think we have the same situation here. "Racism" sometimes is used to label non-racist people, but that is not the case here. The protesters were actual racists, like Nazis, KKK, white nationalists and so on. I.e. groups that really do want to racially discriminate and worse, i.e. racists i.e. bigots. These people should be denounced because they are bigots and because they became violent.
The counter protesters aren't bigots. If counter protesters were instigating violence (I don't think they were), then I of course don't support that. But even in that case it only makes sense for Trump to clearly word the statement in a way that makes it clear he is only denouncing the counter-protesters for being violent, not for being bigots.
The difference is that the President, qua office, is the leader of the society that these white supremacists hail from. For islam, he is an outsider.
Obama's rational for his decision is widely known: That the criticism of an outsider, denouncing their culture as extremism and terrorism will, in the ears of even the most progressive, secular muslim, only be understood as an insult, and will therefore only lead to further the narrative of a "Clash of Civilisation" a la Fukuyama.
That statement can be argued with. But to feign ignorance can only be considered bad faith.
Note also that nobody is demanding any laws. What people are clamouring for are honesty, decency, and leadership.
> The difference is that the President, qua office, is the leader of the society that these white supremacists hail from. For islam, he is an outsider.
The problem with Obama's argument isn't that it's wrong, it's that it's all too symmetrical. Trump was barely accepted by the Republicans -- he's from New York. He's the outsider.
And Democrats have been doing a motte and bailey thing with racism for years, where denouncing racism is the motte and redefining racism to mean anything they disagree with is the bailey.
So on one hand, anyone who e.g. believes there should be equality of opportunity but accepts that it may not lead to equality of outcomes, or doesn't support unlimited immigration, or voted for Trump, is labeled a white supremacist. On the other hand, everyone is required to overtly denounce white supremacists, even though we just got through telling anyone who voted for Trump that they are a white supremacist.
> Except Trump constantly winks at white supremacists and actively seeks their vote.
This argument has never made any sense. White supremacists are concentrated in states that Republicans win by such large margins that victory is assured regardless of how the minority sporting swastika tattoos votes.
If this weekend has taught us anything it's that most white supremacists aren't rednecks from the deep south with swastika tattoos. A lot of the are perfectly normal looking, university educated young men living in nice suburbs all across the country.
His Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has strong ties to white supremacy, and back in 1986 was considered by both sides of the political aisle to be too racist to be a federal judge. Sessions has a record doing such wonderful things as suing voting rights activists for trying to register black voters[1], and joking that the worst thing about the KKK is their marijuana-smoking members.
So tell me: what kind of President would select a guy like this as his Attorney General?
Trump's Twitter retweet, literally last night. He retweeted a racist dogwhistle from an Alt Right personality hours after Trump supposedly condemned them.
That's racist? How is pointing out an ongoing bloodbath in Chicago, where most victims are not well-to-do fellow "white supremists", racist? To be fair you have to admit Trump has a lot more on his mind than just one white supremacist rally and he's been trying to get involved in Chicago's violence since before the election.
He hasn't been trying to get involved, he's done fuck all except tweet about it and use it as a dog whistle to talk about how insane those blacks in Chicago are at his bizarre post-election rallies.
But he has a black friend who will fix Chicago violence in a week!!
There is a big difference between ongoing gang violence and a terrorist attack. They are both problems, yes, but a terrorist attack by a Nazi during a public demonstration is by far bigger news.
That's classic whataboutism and incorrect as well. There's been plenty of media coverage about the Chicago gang violence (and other inner city gang violence) over the years. Political protests, as well as terrorist acts, do tend to receive more intense coverage than ongoing systematic violence.
I don't know about this Twitter account, but I do personally consider it racist when reporting or discussions are angled to only report ethnic group targets (or other tribes) negatively. Whataboutism like this is also a signal to me.
Has trump used that term "radical Islamic terrorism" since he took office? I thought I'd read that the military had finally convinced him that they thought it was counter-productive. (edit: turns out he last used it in July, so he's still not doing what the military advisors suggest).
This reminds me that during his rallies, Trump would point to a camera that he knew was contractually obliged to point only at him, and tell the crowd that the fake news media didn't want to show his crowd.
Just in case you think that he's just a total idiot, who regularly complains about the sitting President following military advice. No, he's a mendacious demagogue who intentionally riles his idiotic followers up by pretending that Obama following military protocol is either cowardice or complicity in terror.
> Two Republican lawmakers in North Dakota started the trend in January when they introduced a bill that would protect motorists who hit pedestrians blocking traffic, as long as the consequences are unintentional.
You're honestly putting too much stock in the media's narrative. Were you not watching the violence coming from left-wing protesters for the last couple of years? Such as Antifa and similar groups smashing towns and beating people with fists and shovels. It's a miracle the guy they were beating on the streets of Berkeley didn't die. Edit: and how about the Scalise shooting or the police officers killed at the hands of BLM supporters. Apparently those don't arouse the same response.
It turns out there's violent people of all political stripes who would do us harm.
There's a time for that discussion. But not now. Nazis, KKK, and white supremacists terrorized a town and killed a women. And our morally depraved president couldn't bring himself to put a name to evil.
Without going into my stance, I will say that in all my years observing politics, every single time I've heard this comment it's to hide a double standard. Not a single exception. How do I know this?
Because when that time does come (in this case it would be violence by the left), they are silent, and will not condemn.
Do you have some clear examples of this? Thinking back to the last notable American left-wing oriented violent act (the 2017 Congressional baseball game shooting), I cannot think of a major Democratic politician that did not strongly condemn the act. Who is the "they" you are speaking of?
In fact, regarding Charlottesville, this really isn't a right wing issue, it's a Trump issue. Most Republican leaders that I can think of condemned this immediately and strongly as well. Trump's response was unusually tepid at first, which is what people are taking issue with.
>Do you have some clear examples of this? Thinking back to the last notable American left-wing oriented violent act (the 2017 Congressional baseball game shooting), I cannot think of a major Democratic politician that did not strongly condemn the act. Who is the "they" you are speaking of?
By "they" I meant individuals I've interacted with, not a generic "they". My experience is with individuals who are polarized about various things (abortion, Middle East, etc) - I wasn't referring specifically to left vs right examples.
Some personal examples:
Muslims upset at a local newspaper for publishing certain cartoons. At the time they were protesting and demanding the editors get fired (one of them eventually was fired). I discussed it with them (friends, not just strangers), and they said a few things:
1. This isn't just about Muhammad but all of Islam's prophets (which includes Jesus, Moses, Abraham, etc).
2. This isn't just about Islam - they'd complain even if it happened to reverent figures of other religions.
3. The very statement that is being discussed here: Those are not the current problems and they are discussions for another time.
I pointed out to them that the comic section of the same newspaper had some years prior published really "offensive" cartoons about both Moses and Jesus. Response was "Well we weren't aware". Fair enough. Then later there was a news item about people upset with offensive depictions of Jesus. I pointed it out to them, and their response was the equivalent of "Leave me alone." Happened again related to a Hindu god. Same response.
The examples suggest the three points were not true. When those events became current problems, they did not want to have a discussion about it at all.
Similar story regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. Without talking about which side did what, in one of the conflicts one side was accused of carrying out war crimes. Protests. I asked some of my friends (protesters) why this issue is so potent to them when similar or worse crimes are not. The response:
1. This is about human rights, not favoritism to a particular group. "We condemn it when it happens to any one".
2. This is the issue of the moment. Don't distract from it.
Sure enough, later there was another conflict so eerily similar to what they were protesting, but in a whole other part of the world. Point it out to them, and get the equivalent of "Leave us alone". And then of course much worse conflicts occur than in the Middle East (DRC, for example). Crickets.
This is what I meant when I said "Every single time I've heard this comment it's to hide a double standard."
And of course, I have to endure accusations of aligning with the other side (by both sides) whenever I ask these questions. I'm asking because I'm curious and want to know. In some cases I may be neutral, and in others I'm actually siding with one side. But my taking a stance to one side does not mean I'll blanket accept the hypocrisy by that side's proponents.
That's fair. But people in this thread are already comparing left and right wing politics. If it's too soon for this discussion, there are up-thread comments it would be appropriate to object to as well.
> He specifically named KKK, Nazis and white supremacists. But you wouldn't hear about that thanks to your echo bubble.
It took him two days and only after great pressure from people across the political spectrum. From Saturday when he gave his first statement to Monday before he gave the statement you referred to he refused to answer multiple times when he was asked by reporters to condemn white supremacy by name and call the attack an act of terrorism.
But when Merck's CEO resigns from the business council he was able to vehemently attack him and his company on twitter almost immediately. When a terrorist attacked the Louvre in France at 5 am Washington time it took him 3 hours to denounce 'radical Islamic terrorist'. His response to the London attacks also involving terrorists driving a car through crowds was just as swift and specific. But he holds off on calling out the neo-Nazis and KKK by name, disgusting.
Liberals and conservatives have been united in their condemnation of Trump's failure to call out evil by it's name. You are the one living in an echo chamber that is willing to defend white supremacists and their President.
> When a muslim plows into a crowd it's a lone wolf and we should jump to conclusions. But now that it was a white guy the second it happened the media reached the consensus that it was an act of terrorism. This kind of double standard is what fuels white supremacists.
The "lone wolf" moniker has something to do with the proximity to and coordination with other wolves. When a white supremacist commits homicide at a white supremacist rally the label would not seem to apply.
Nazi's have a bit of a history, which you would do well to familiarize yourself with. See, as soon as people like that start talking about 'taking their country back' and feel that they now have their man in charge it is time to get really worried about where your country is headed. Lest you end up arguing the equivalent of 'I didn't know' a couple of years down the line, which to many 'moderate Germans' must have been quite a hard time.
A couple of crazy religious people we can deal with, they are nowhere near to overtaking any Western country. But the largest Western country just got taken over by the ultra-right, according to their own statements. Whether or not that is factually true remains to be seen but for now Bannon, Miller, Gorka and Trump seem to be pretty secure in their positions.
>When a muslim plows into a crowd it's a lone wolf and we should jump to conclusions
That is literally the opposite of the actual media narrative associated with Muslims, and is often held out as the difference in coverage between Muslim-related incidents and non-Muslim ones (for want of a better differentiator).
Muslim/brown/whatever attackers are always framed in terms of their religious affiliations, and white attackers are almost always described as "lone wolves".
It beggars belief that you are trying to present that switched, with a straight face.
There is violence on all sides ... however, only one side appears to have the tacit approval of POTUS. I think we can safely assume that he already (and quite rightly) disapproves of left wing violence -- but a lot of us remain unconvinced by his seemingly forced and totally unconvincing denunciations of violence committed by those who also vocally support him and claim to act in his name. WE need to condemn violence on both sides. The president, on the other hand, particularly and specifically needs to convincingly disown right wing violence and the language of division and hatred. We will take a lot of convincing after this.
Why don't we demand the same disavowal of left wing radical groups like Antifa from Democratic politicians. There is countless footage of peaceful right-wing protesters getting beat, fire bombed, etc. at Berkeley and elsewhere.
re: Scalise Shooting: In a statement, Senator Sanders wrote that he had been “informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign.” He went on to say: “I am sickened by this despicable act. Let me be as clear as I can be. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/scalise...
That's my 5 minutes of doing your research for you. High ranking Democrat politicians don't tolerate heckler's veto, much less violence. Republicans are so cowed by losing support from their radicals that they can barely bring themselves to speak up against them. Charlottesville is notable in that its pretty much just Trump who failed to speak up.
1. The statement (politico) you refer to was made 5 days after the incident, in a private meeting, Obama said it was "hate crime", did not use the word "racist", did not mention they were BLM sympathizers.
2. Obama did speak up just one day after the events [1], but he did not specifically mention BLM in particular, claiming lack of confirmed info (justifiably so)
Trump immediately spoke up, but did not mention white supremacists, drawing huge criticism.
I am far from a Trump enthusiast, but can you not see double standard applied here?
We can and we should. Democratic politicians need to strongly disavow and condemn violence in general and left wing violence in particular and in exactly the same manner Republican politicians need to strongly disavow and condemn violence and right wing violence in particular. I would also like to see politicians from across the political spectrum come together to endorse peaceful political processes and to emphasise that the criminality of violence and hate has no place in a democratic society.
"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Then what are you saying? I posted a screenshot of this conversation below.
1. Poster asks about other poster's position on the groups in question.
2. Other poster says, 'Pure cancer. All of them.'
3. I ask if poster is really equating groups like BLM to white supremacists.
4. You ask which part of the group.
5. I ask you what positive aspects can we attribute to white supremacists - since you seemed to be backing the guy grouping them together.
6. You say you don't compare opposing groups.
So, why did you respond to the 3rd reply listed above with the 4th reply? If you don't want to compare groups, why are you injecting yourself into a conversation comparing groups?
I don't take responsibility for what others have stated. Since I'm not the one comparing groups I fail to see how I can be held responsible for that. I can have my opinion in the conversation without having to be lumped into something I didn't state. Stop trying to paint me into a corner so that you can label me in a negative way for your own benefit. You are attempting to do the childish response of "if you say this then you obviously must support that". Which is utter nonsense and you really should stop.
Things like your response is exactly why I stated I don't like playing the game of false equivalence by comparing opposing groups.
edit: let's try it this way, I wasn't doing the comparing, I was asking for clarification of what was being compared
On the internet these days take it as a badge of honor honestly.
You hear people chant speak truth to power when they repeat the safe narrative and everyone pats their back.
The fact that the media, large corporate business leaders, online forums, and government representatives are dog piling all over this narrative and ignoring even basic facts and events that happened in very recent memory, it should shock anyone paying attention to what is currently going on.
It's called censorship to blatantly disregard and shout down any opinion or factual information that works against the popularly driven editorial narrative, which is now apparently that Trump and his supporters are extremist violent Neo nazi kkk communist Russian spies, and I'm not even joking when I put that list together.
On the day the shooter was killed, Obama gave a press conference[1] where he said:
We still don’t know all the facts. What we do know is that there’s been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement. Police in Dallas were on duty, doing their job, keeping people safe during a peaceful protest. These law enforcement officers were targeted, and nearly a dozen officers were shot, five were killed.... According to police there are multiple suspects. We will learn more undoubtedly about their twisted motivations, but let’s be clear, there is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks. Grave violence against law enforcement. The FBI is already in touch with the Dallas police; anyone involved in these senseless murders will be held fully accountable. Justice will be done.
Three days later he had returned from Spain (before planned) to visit the survivors, where he ... described the Dallas shooting as a "hate crime" against police, according to a top law enforcement representative in the meeting with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. One really striking thing the president said in his opening remarks was that the shooting in Dallas in many ways was strikingly parallel to the Dylann Roof shooting in Charleston in the sense that it was a hate crime[2]
The Dallas shooting were a terrible thing, and Obama seems to have responded as one would expect a President should.
Outside the Dallas shooting, Obama himself seems to have had some issues with police behavior. But that didn't stop him saying what should be said.
Let's not forget that Obama immediately used the Dallas shootings as an opportunity to aggrandize gun control at the same time. During his Paris release he also said:
"We also know when people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately, it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic, [...] In the days ahead, we will have to consider those realities as well. In the meantime, today, our focus is on the victims and their families."
I don't know if that's something I would consider to be in the wheelhouse of what the president should do, as it reads like exploitative base rallying to me, which is something I've accused Trump of as well. I get it, never waste a good tragedy and all that, but it seems modern presidents are far too open about using tragedy to push an agenda.
Obama was a decent human being and Trump had to coerced into being one, yep. I was just pointing out "left wing" violence. Insofar as skinheads are "right wing".
The right-wing violence runs a lot further than that, all the way back to the Civil War and the people who went to war to defend their "right" to violence against black people. There is a continuous line between that and today. The Charlottesville protests were centered on a statue: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-rally-...
Did the Americans ask the Iraqi zoning board before pulling down all those statues of Saddam Hussein?
Less controversially, there is actually a political process here, and in the normal manner the city had decided to remove the statue. The white supremacists decided to demonstrate against this, sparking the violence.
The statue recently pulled down in Durham NC is a different Confederate statue.
Democrats today are not Democrats of yesteryear. The ideology of the two parties switched during the Civil Rights movement. The Civil War was not “left wing violence”.
That's a pretty gross simplification. Around the time of the Civil War, there were more than two significant parties (including Whigs, Progressives, etc) and they were much less clearly left/right polarized in today's terms. Over the next 100+ years, there was a lot of shifting of policy priorities (from war, to slavery, to business, to civil rights, etc) followed by consolidation culminating with LBJ that left us with the two modern parties.
The point is that the people who used to be known as Democrats did not share the same belief that modern Democrats share, so comparing them to each other is ridiculous. It’s like saying “Roman Republicans owned white slaves so all Republicans hate white people”. It’s the same word, yes, but not the same beliefs.
I don’t understand that. Democrats today fight for civil rights for minorities. Surely you can’t argue against that. It’s part of the core platform. Democrats of the 1860s fought to keep black people enslaved. You yourself said this.
So with those two statements, how can you then argue that the positions have not flipped? How does that even reconcile in your mind?
You're right, it doesn't mean they had to. But they did. The Civil War was fought to abolish slavery, basically a civil rights argument. It was fought and won by the Republicans. Where do the Republicans stand on civil rights issues today? Would Republicans fight a war to protect gay marriage? Would they fight a war to keep businesses from hiring illegal immigrants and paying them pennies on the dollar while working them in horrible conditions? Once upon a time they fought a war to protect the rights of workers and humans who were being taken advantage of, would they do the same today?
Even more recently, Ronald Reagan supported strong gun control. He's the reason California has such strict gun laws. How about Nixon, a Republican who created the EPA that modern Republicans hate so much? Lincoln was also strongly pro-immigration, saying at one point "Foreign immigration... should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy". By 1920, they said "the practical exclusion of Asiatic immigrants is sound and should be maintained". Seems like a pretty big shift to me!
The Republicans of today, even moderate Republicans, are not the Republicans of yesterday, or yesteryear. It would be political suicide to run on some of the most successful Republican platforms from even 30 years ago.
So again I ask, how can you reconcile in your mind the idea that ye olde Democrats are pro-slavery and ye olde Republicans are the party that fought against the South in the Civil War with your claim that they have in no way changed positions over the years?
That's a nice speech, but I have not claimed that they have not changed positions over the years. I am disagreeing with the notion of the "switch" that supposedly happened in response to the Democrats changing some of their positions.
Both parties have altered their message and platform over the years for various reasons.
>the "switch" that supposedly happened in response to the Democrats changing some of their positions
But no one argued that. No one argued that the Democrats changed so the Republicans said "oh man, guess we have to switch too". It was a gradual shift over decades to the point where Democrats are now the civil rights party when they used to be the pro-slavery party and the Republicans are now the party of holding back civil right progress when they were literally willing to start a war to abolish slavery.
Setting aside the one point that literally only you are arguing, I'm glad we've come to the point where we can realize that we actually do agree. Our only disagreement is that you think the word "switch" implies a sudden and coordinated effort to flip places.
Democrats and Republicans, through decades of policy shifts, now represent views they have historically been against. The point of that is "the party of Lincoln" and "the party of Reagan" is Republican in name only, not in actual policy, and the Democrats surely are not the pro-slavery party anymore.
>> Democrats and Republicans, through decades of policy shifts, now represent views they have historically been against.
That's the part I'm disagreeing with. I'm not arguing against a "sudden switch" as you put it. I'm arguing against the entire notion that the two parties switched at all, be it suddenly or over decades. The two parties have adjusted over time to their needs over the years to the point that, fundamentally, they are not that much different other than their fringe elements, which does not define them as a whole.
If we're bringing European politics into a US discussion, then we should arrest everyone displaying Nazi symbols or using the Nazi salute, and we should probably also ban displays of the Confederate flag as well. Also now the Democratic party is far-right extremism, and the Republicans are banned by law.
I'm loving my new single-payer healthcare and free college tuition, though.
Please stop. I guess all the rioting, arson (of which at Berkeley nothing was done about by law enforcement), and assaults (by mainly people hiding their face, mind you) carried out by the anti-Trump crowd this year don't count right? And this isn't to marginalize what happened over the weekend either, but people with polarizing narratives like you are a large part of the problem. We didn't get to where we are while in a vacuum.
>>assaults (by mainly people hiding their face, mind you)
Antifa also does some nasty things. However, it's worth noting that they hide their face because they don't want to be doxxed by groups such as The_Donald and /pol/.
Fortunately, the Nazis on this weekend's rally weren't so smart, so now quite a few of them have lost their jobs and faced other types of backlash from their friends and neighbors.
Riot.im uses the OLM encryption library (that is also used by XMPP OMEMO, see the OMEMO XEP). The OLM protocol is (I gather) very similar to the Signal protocol.
Riot is based on Matrix which is a decentralized protocol (you're not tied to one company), and it doesn't need your phone number.
Matrix.org/riot.im has working federation, end-to-end cryptography, works without Google Play and is completely open source.
The encryption is audited, but not yet enabled by default, as there are still some rough edges. But the apps have tremendously improved over the last few weeks alone and I am very happy with it.
I'm surprised to see that matrix.org / riot.im is not mentioned as an alternative to Signal. They have a federated, open protocol, usable open-source apps for web/Android/iOS, registration without a phone number (even email is optional), do not require Google Play, and support double-ratchet encryption (in beta, it's not activated by default yet, but it will be activated by default in private rooms in the future).
Because, frankly, the UX around encryption in Matrix is dire, as well as being beta. I've never seen someone actually use the same keys for two conversations over as many days, due to switching devices, logging out of the web interface, etc.
If you are interested in federation, riot.im [1] / matrix.org seems to have comparable security properties to Signal, allows federation of servers and does not require your phone number or Google Play.
At the moment, Signal and Wire seem to be the best options. They have open-source clients, end-to-end encryption, are easy enough to use that even less-computer savy people can be realistically convinced to use them and they seem to offer decent protection for metadata (not technical, but policy-wise).
There are, however, some upcoming developments which will change the situation in the next couple of months:
1) The main matrix.org client, Riot (https://riot.im) has end-to-end encryption now in beta. This will offer Signal-strength encryption, but in a decentralized, e-mail-like system with federated servers. This will create an ecosystem where people are no longer dependent on the goodwill (and solvency) of a single entity to use a good, encrypted messaging app.
2) Briar (https://briarproject.org) is a new (Android-only) app, designed for people with an especially high need for privacy. It works without central servers (through Tor hidden services, but hides the complexity of that), even works when the internet is down (e.g. when mobile networks are shut down during a protest) via Bluetooth and direct Wi-Fi connections, and it offers extra features, like a panic button that deletes all your data. It's in beta at the moment, with a planned release early next year.
TL;DR: Use Signal or Wire for now, but be ready to switch to a better system when available.
Wikipedia says that Open Whisper Systems has received a significant amount of funding [1] from the Open Technology Fund, run by Radio Free Asia [2], a US-government-run propaganda organization.
Of course, this is the arm of the US government that very actively doesn't want back doors, because they operate in territories controlled by other not-necessarily-friendly governments. They need communications to be reliably secret, and they have no need to tap those communications. It's the same reason that government funding for Tor isn't inherently a problem for Tor's security, and you see other parts of the US government, like the FBI, trying to hack it.
It's definitely worth worrying that the government could decide that this part of its mission is no longer worth funding. But it isn't likely to be a risk of back doors. (Especially compared to all the other usual risks, notably simple bugs like Heartbleed and Weak DH.)
The best way to go is Threema, IMO. Can be used completely anonymously. Servers are located in Switzerland. Uses NaCl. Recommended by Steve Gibson. Not free, though.
- "requires payment" and "completely anonymously" seem at odds; especially when the person you're communicating with will likely have purchased it from an app store. i understand that there is a way to purchase it with btc at their own site, but that doesn't really help with licencing and GCM
- proper implementation of e2e means where the servers are shouldn't matter
- threema uses GCM too -> whole google play services framework
riot.im [1] (which is based on matrix.org) seems a good, decentralized, open messaging app. They have relatively nice mobile apps and they promise to soon release end-to-end encryption based on the OLM [2] ratchet which is similar to the Signal encryption. In contrast to Tox, Matrix relies on federated servers. Tox is pure P2P which, in my experience, never works very well on mobile devices.
> Tox is pure P2P which, in my experience, never works very well on mobile devices.
That's (UX) my biggest concern, honestly. UX is just too important, and it's becoming an increasingly fast moving bar. Simple things like hitting up arrow to edit your message, to more complex things like stickers and gifs, these are (unfortunately) requirements for me in my peer circles.
They sound silly, i know, but Telegram has (mostly) a great UX, and for such an important tool i can't currently give up features.. let alone convince my friends to likewise give up features.
I totally agree. My hope is that because Matrix has an open protocol, there will be more competition in the client space which will lead (eventually) to good UX.
We (ZeroTier) do P2P on mobile just fine. I just randomly pinged my phone over a virtual network to check.
Granted it depends on how chatty a P2P system is and how much it depends on intermediate nodes for network assist. Ours is pretty idle when nothing is happening, so it doesn't impact battery life or bandwidth quotas very much.
The best design for a P2P network with more involved nodes would probably be to allow nodes to elect their level of availability to perform network assistance roles. Another alternative would be to build a network with two kinds of nodes: 'large' and 'small.' Large nodes could assist small ones.
It's a solvable problem. To some extent "you can't do P2P on mobile" is a dated idea that came from the era when phones were pretty tiny CPU and RAM wise, networks were slower, mobile OSes were more restrictive to background processes, and the battery cost of things like CPU and network I/O was higher. All these things have improved dramatically in recent (past 1-2 years) phone models. The iPhone 7 and the latest Samsung phones have near-desktop-class processors and radios have become more power efficient.
You do have to do a few things differently. One thing we do is to temporally group / quantize background I/O. Instead of sending packets whenever we feel like it, we do it in longer spaced batches when the network is otherwise idle. This saves a lot of battery power by causing the radio to only wake from sleep once for a batch of routine network traffic instead of waking constantly.
Thanks, that looks like it is what I'm after! I saw Matrix a few months ago but didn't realise there were mobile apps. Now time to get my friends on board...
I am very hopeful that Briar (https://briarproject.org/) will achieve this. They don't use any centralized infrastructure, the app works even when the net is down, and they have e completely distributed and thus uncensorable forums and blogs.
As far as I know, the identity is just a public key. You can add contacts only by either scanning a qr-code disayed on your contact's phone in person or by being introduced to each other by a mutual contact, so there is no real need for discovery. As there are no servers at all (not even federated), this also means that no one can even enumerate users.
"No servers" doesn't feel quite right -- no dedicated servers, maybe, but the project depends on TOR, which has quite a lot of servers. I've not dug into the source, but I'm expecting each client to be using a TOR hidden service to allow peer-to-peer connections.
The ability of TOR to allow essentially roaming services like this is a feature I'm always surprised isn't used more often. And although it's not something I was ever going to actually get around to, something like Briar has been on my list of interesting thins to try to do for a while -- I'm really glad someone else has had a similar thought and been able to run with it :).
Metadata-free chat exists already on the desktop with Ricochet (https://ricochet.im) and it will soon exist on mobile with Briar (https://briarproject.org). Both work through Tor hidden services - Briar also allows to exchange messages over Bluetooth and direct wifi.
