On the other hand, avoiding conflict in the short-term will only embolden those who create and thrive on conflict. For these types of people, their next move is usually to escalate. You see this with bullies, abusive relationships, rapists, serial killers, terrorists, etc. They learn what they can get away with, they like the power it gives them, and they try something more.
Therefore, we can't make decisions based on the fear of their response, even if we have a personal aversion to conflict. That's falling into the trap of the abused. We have to make decisions based on defending our principles and standing up for what we believe is right.
No matter what, some people are going to be pissed off at any sufficiently meaningful decision (or indecision). If the people pissed off are violent types, well, then perhaps that's a sign the right decision was made.
I understand that there's a hell of a lot of nuance to this - sometimes you don't poke the sleeping bear. I think Wednesday showed the bear is absolutely not asleep.
Nobody is saying “don’t arrest and prosecute the people who invaded the Capitol”.
This is about the campaign finance/social media account/etc of the current sitting POTUS.
You don’t need to condone the actions of the Capitol terrorists to take issue with him being banned from every platform having committed no crime (or at least, not having been convicted of any crime).
A few hundred people invaded the Capitol, but tens of millions of people voted for Trump. We’re not talking about the former; I think it’s very reasonable to be concerned that this divisiveness might radicalise the latter.
Maybe, I don't know. There was a group of people arrested in Michigan (?) for the kidnapping of the Governor (?), so it's possible.
But either way, I don't think it's relevant. If you want to boot someone off social media because they espouse a cause that others take too far, then there's a lot of BLM people who should receive the same fate. Anything else is rank hypocrisy.
It's worth adding that I think Trump is a puerile moron and "the election was stolen" people are loons (even the ones who didn't break into the Capitol or attend a protest). I'm not even an American, I have no dog in this fight.
But the double standard is so painfully clear, even from thousands of kilometres away. Applying these rules/bans/etc in such a blatantly partisan manner is only going to increase this divisiveness, the USA will tear itself apart from the inside.
At least when it comes to BLM vs Capitol there are three very important differences that far outweigh the surface level similarities:
1. Power - what happened at the Capitol was conducted by people who have enjoyed broad political power, whereas the BLM protests were about the people who have been unjustly under the thumb (or knee) of those in power.
2. Message - the BLM protests were about very real and well documented and long-standing mistreatment of Black Americans at the hands of police, where the ‘stop the steal’ crowd is angry about a complete fabrication.
3. Stakes - is the event threatening to the foundation of society? I think this one is pretty straightforward.
While on the surface the BLM and Capitol events look similar (large groups of people protesting, small groups within committing violence, some government buildings involved), their basis and moral authority are entirely different.
As far as the decision to deplatform, the nature of these types of things is there will never and can never be a simple rule to dictate important judgment calls. Law is not code, nor are the actions or ToS’s of companies. Trump is such a singular figure that is completely unlike others, commanding a huge amount of power through 85M followers and the bully pulpit of the presidency. He is nothing like any BLM or frankly any other Twitter user that it’s almost seems like a joke to draw comparison. That can’t be ignored, in fact that’s the very point - he’s unique, and uniquely dangerous. There is no double standard because there is no comparison. He’s literally the most powerful person in America and Black people are as a group are the least powerful. That matters.
As far as the consequences, well it’s damned if you do damned if you don’t as far as I can see. We have a lot of real problems and divisions in society, and now a lot of people have been whipped up into holding imagined grievances that some are likely to translate into violence down the line. Meanwhile the next few weeks are an incredibly vulnerable time in American democracy due to the power vacuum that occurs during a transfer of power, and based on what information we have available to us, it looks like violence and disruption was being planned prior to any deplatforming. That’s very scary, and we need to do what we can to reasonably minimize that risk.
>1. Power - what happened at the Capitol was conducted by people who have enjoyed broad political power, whereas the BLM protests were about the people who have been unjustly under the thumb (or knee) of those in power.
I don't think this is true at all. There is a lot of resentment out there from poor whites who have been getting the short end of many sticks lately. They may be better off than poor blacks on average, but they do not enjoy political power. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because the people who enjoy political power are white, that all, or even most, whites enjoy political power.
I believe both protests were by groups lacking in power, and that this sort of thing is only going to get worse as economic inequality increases.
Most people don't have power, and it's getting worse as power is concentrated into the hands of the few. As bad as black people have it on average, pitting poor blacks against poor whites is a distraction from the real power disparity, which is that a lot of people in the US are really, really poor. Whilst the elites pay lip service to the issues faced by blacks, whist doing almost nothing to help (a rich black kid getting into a better school does nothing for the impoverished masses), the poorer whites don't feel like the elites are even pretending to try to address their problems. And they're right.
The US needs to fix its inequality issues if it expects either side to stop protesting, and violence is only going to get worse as people see their issues not being addressed.
Storming the capital was not a bright idea, but angry people are stupid, and they're going to just cause as much destruction as possible until life for them gets better. History is littered with examples of inequality leading to violent uprising.
I completely agree with your point about the power and wealth imbalances in American society today regardless of race. We have growing wealth inequality and that is limiting opportunity relative to what we used to enjoy and is usually destabilizing to societies. It’s bad and getting worse.
It sounds like we generally agree but I also don’t think I did a good job of stating my point about power imbalance. The stated purpose of the gathering at the Capitol was to take power away from other people who voted. It was a demonstration in support of disenfranchisement, in so far as people were there to ‘stop the steal’. And it was done with the support and incitement of the most powerful person in America. BLM has never been about taking peoples rights away, and that’s a huge difference.
It’s also come out that a lot of the people there weren’t exactly poor, we’ve seen lawyers and business owners and cops and a whole bunch of middle class people, flying in and staying at the Hyatt etc. This makes sense, it cost money to get to DC, and the poorest wouldn’t be able to make the trip, and it shows in voter demographics too. I absolutely believe that some of the unrest and dissatisfaction on the right is due to the real economic anxiety arguments that you point out, but I think there’s also something deeper down that is much darker than that - a loss of privileged status that certain voters are experiencing due to changes occurring in America.
This is happening along gender, race, age, education, and economic lines simultaneously. 40+ year old whites that make up the majority of the right grew up with social expectations and experiences that have changed a lot. You used to be able to get a HS or maybe college degree and have a well paying job right there waiting. You used to be able to buy a house. You used to watch TV and see people that look like you. You used to interact with the opposite sex in a particular way. You used to be perfectly healthy. Now you’re older, you’re navigating different gender dynamics, more voices and cultures are coming up and different people are on tv, and you’re now dealing with health issues. Your job, where you used to get paid well and find worth, is not doing that anymore. Your sense of purpose, self-worth, and place in the world is challenged.
Some of this status loss is necessary as America moves forward on gender and race. Some is just the indignity of aging. Some is economic. Put together this loss of status is creating resentment, which is being used by media and demagogues to sow division and feelings of victimhood.
Where on the spectrum these people were of ‘totally manipulated and brainwashed’ vs ‘just here because I’m worried about status loss’ vs ‘conscious support for disenfranchisement and anti-democratic power grabs’, their actions and the implications of those actions at the Capitol were nonetheless something altogether different than past protests & riots.
> We’re leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes, and then late in the evening or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of and bullshit, and all of a sudden. All of a sudden it started to happen.
> Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican party. He’s got guts, he fights. He fights, and I’ll tell you.
> We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us.
> We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.
> I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
> It was going to be great. And now we’re out here fighting.
> I want to thank the more than 140 members of the House. Those are warriors. ... Where is Hillary? Where is she?
> But it used to be that they’d argue with me, I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight. I’d fight, they’d fight. ... What happened to Hunter? Where’s Hunter?
> Now that’s many, many times what it would take to overthrow the state. Just that one element. 400,000 ballots appeared from nowhere, right after the election. (Use of “overthrow the state.”)
> Let them get out. Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength. ... They want to indoctrinate your children.
> We did good. We got rid of the ISIS caliphate. ... In Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat run cities deployed more than 500 illegal unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 unlawful votes.
> When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do.
> Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future.
> So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give… The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.
- POTUS Trump
That’s only part of the stuff he said during the speech immediately before they marched, at his direction, to the Capitol building. He mentioned being peaceful once in his speech. Most of the undertones of the speech were about fighting/being strong for their way of life and belief in him being the rightful winner.
Based on how the German press was claiming that Trump was clearly guilty for the Capitol building incident, I was expecting at least some kind of controversial statement, but there's no explicit call for violence or anything in there. Nothing.
If this is all that the people blaming Trump have, they can't even convince an impartial observer or a judge, never mind his supporters.
Perhaps I should have made it more clear, but this is only part of the hour long speech. He spent most of the speech claiming that we had an illegitimate election, that he won by a lot, that all the media is lying, and that Biden will destroy America and all that they believe in.
So you know, basic undermining of our entire democracy. Also, Trump almost always gets supporters to read between the lines. It’s the expectation he sets.
Therefore, we can't make decisions based on the fear of their response, even if we have a personal aversion to conflict. That's falling into the trap of the abused. We have to make decisions based on defending our principles and standing up for what we believe is right.
No matter what, some people are going to be pissed off at any sufficiently meaningful decision (or indecision). If the people pissed off are violent types, well, then perhaps that's a sign the right decision was made.
I understand that there's a hell of a lot of nuance to this - sometimes you don't poke the sleeping bear. I think Wednesday showed the bear is absolutely not asleep.