"Evaded" monitors. If Facebook were to censor anything related to election security prematurely, the conspiracy theorists would never let them live it down. This was purposeful and the right move on the part of FB.
It's evident that conspiracy theorists just want to believe in the paranoid fantasies at any cost. They don't reject disproven theories; they don't admit to being wrong. They're not interested in the real, existing conspiracies that have been well-documented but are boring or require technical expertise to understand.
When these people lose the ability to think with nuance and show no regards towards reality, whether FB is the evil entity they think it is, or it's not, becomes completely irrelevant. And given that deplatforming has been shown to work because people look for outrage rather than reason and that outrage is fueled by the content put in front of readers, from a pragmatist's point of view the censoring doesn't seem to bad.
"So ahead of the election, the company tried to stop suggesting users join groups it thought they might be interested in" wouldn't it be ironic if the way the party in power took down Facebook was for meddling in the election prior to the events of the 6th.
Edit:
To the question of illegal vs unethical:
Undeclared contributions via services, and attempting to conceal the same donations would likely be considered illegal.
> Further, according to a DC metropolitan police report, the killing was unnecessary and unjustified
Incorrect. The report does not conclude that. A political advocacy site dedicated to “defending the value of American power against the true threats we face” concludes that “based on” the report, which is, very much, not the same thing.
There was a brief period where a police officer was reported as having been murdered by rioters at the Capitol [0], and iirc many people on social media conflated his death with footage of a riot officer being struck on the head by a fire hydrant, though I don't believe they were the same man.
An investigation revealed that he'd died of a stroke the day after the riot, and that his death could not be directly connected to the Capitol riot.
OK, but an officer being struck on the head by a fire extinguisher (not hydrant, IIRC) could be classified as "accidentally not murdered"; that is, the only reason it wasn't murder is because he survived an attack that easily could have killed him. "He wasn't murdered" doesn't exonerate the rioters; it merely says that they were unlucky or unskilled.
No officer was murdered on Jan 6. The story about the fire extinguisher was a lie, and it obviously worked much like a lot of other narratives that day.
> Diaz told The Washington Post that the autopsy found no evidence that Sicknick experienced an allergic reaction to chemical irritants. He also said there was no evidence of either external or internal injuries.
Wait, breaking and entering into the capitol is “illegal parading”? I think insurrection is the wrong word too since it was more of a joke than a serious coup attempt, but when they actually broke into the building that was a big security issue.
> Wait, breaking and entering into the capitol is “illegal parading”?
No, illegally parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the Capitol is a minor offense most Jan. 6 defendants were charged with, often along with much more serious offense, including, for many, that of breaking and entering, acts of violence, use of dangerous weapons, and destruction of government property (all of which are more serious offenses.)
The claim that that is the most serious offense charged (its a misdemeanor that can result in a maximum of 6 months on prison) is just a lie, many of the acts can be punished with a decade in prison, some maybe more than that (I haven't checked every charged offense.)
You cite the conviction of a couple "low-level" people who only trespassing, but there were certainly people who were violent. Multiple people died. They threatened to kill the vice president and members of congress. If they weren't stopped, surely government officials would have died. It might be a strong word, but I don't think it is entirely unwarranted.
> The only pending legal charges and accusations are, at worst, the illegal parading.
That's false. For one example (Zachary Jordan Alam), the charges are:
Assaulting, Resisting, or Impeding Certain Officers; Assaulting, Resisting, or Impeding Certain Officers Using a Dangerous Weapon; Civil Disorder and Aiding and Abetting; Destruction of Government Property Exceeding $1,000; Obstruction of an Official Proceeding and Aiding and Abetting; Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon; Engaging in Physical Violence in a Restricted Building with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon; Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Act of Physical Violence in the Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in Capitol
Is this a case of Gell-Mann amnesia in where the commenters usually lament how the US judicial system is fucked up in overcharging to force a plea deal but in this case the litany of charges is convenient proof of the extreme dangerousness of the Jan 6th protesters?
For me, I recognize that historical issue, but saying that the worst current charge is illegal parading is just patently untrue. There's even video proof of at least misdemeanor assault/theft/etc, so there's not much to debate.
I do recognize there's plenty of room to argue whether it was an insurrection or not. I'd personally call it a riot.
No. First, whether the charges are overcharged or not is irrelevant; the matter in debate was specifically the claim that the most serious charges alleged were illegal parading.
Second your post relies on treating “the commenters” as a unitary entity; unless the specific commenters involved tended to argue that DoJ systematically overcharges, there would be no inconsistency even if the charges were offered to support the dangerousness of the insurgents rather than to rebut a false claim about the charges.
Third nice demonstration of sealioning and gish galloping.
I honestly don't understand this. One commenter asserts that it shouldn't be called "insurrection", because the charges are not serious enough. When presented with evidence that there are more serious charges, you claim that it's done to force a plea deal.
When people gather outside the Capitol, shouting that they have to stop the Congress from enacting the will of the people -- and construct gallows while they're at it -- that's not attempted insurrection, that's free speech. When they force their way into the Capitol, that's not attempted insurrection, that's trespassing. When they fail to obey the commands of the LEOs charged with protecting the Capitol and the people working inside, when they beat up some of those LEOs, that's not attempted insurrection, either.
To me, it sounds like the goalposts keep moving. At what point do you call it attempted insurrection?
There are people claiming she was a victim of police violence as well. Though, considering there doesn't seem to be a serious investigation into this claim it is probably the realm of conspiracy theory.
Ummmm... Ashli Babbit was a QAnon conspiracy theorist who broke into the capital during the Jan. 6 insurrection. She was at the front of a mob trying to get into the Speaker's Lobby containing representatives sheltering in place. The mob was commanding the police to let them in and started chanting to break down the door. Police warned them multiple times. Instead, Babbit climbs through a window in front of a police officer with a gun pointed at her after being commanded to not enter. She got within feet of representatives (who... mind you the mob was screaming death threats about). There was no way to know if she had hidden weapons on her body, especially with others at the insurrection carrying assault rifles. Any reasonable person would say the shooting was justified doubly so with a mob of conspiracy theorists behind her ready to brutalize some politicians.
Don't gaslight people by just calling her "unarmed" especially when QAnon is turning her into a martyr for their movement. It's fundamentally dishonest.
This sounds like the type of justification of why other people who get shot by police might have been at more fault. We have way too many police shootings when other disarming methods exist.
I don't think it's a good look to try to justify police shooting unarmed civilians. Being a QAnon conspiracy theorist shouldn't be reason enough to shoot her in cold blood.
If she had not stuck her head through the window, she’d have walked out with all the other people in that room. It’s incorrect to categorize her death as due to her beliefs. It was her actions.
I'm trying to find a charitable way of interpreting this comment but I'm not able to. If I break the law and an officer shoots me in cold blood, it was my actions, not my beliefs which led to my death. Does that mean I deserved it?
“Unarmed” is usually relevant because the other facts framing the event make clear that only an armed person could have been a imminent threat to officers or others so aa to justify deadly force.
Babbitt was at the head of a mob breaking through a barricade preventing them from access to members and staff of Congress, against whom the mob was threatening violence, and whom had only seconds before cleared the lobby (and who therefore were in imminent danger of being overtaken by the mob had the mob not been stopped at the barricade.) There were insufficient officers present to control the mob even with deadly force were they not stopped at the barrier.
> If I break the law and an officer shoots me in cold blood, it was my actions, not my beliefs which led to my death. Does that mean I deserved it?
If you break the law in a way which poses an imminent serious threat to other people’s lives, and no other means are available that are likely to stop you, then an officer is certainly justified in using deadly force. (Whether you deserve it is a question of the morality of your act, not the officer’s, which is not germane to the shooting. Maybe your threatening act is under some kind of external compulsion or internal mental disorder that would make you not fully culpable and thus not deserving of the consequences of the justified response to your action. That you don't, in that case, deserve death doesn't make the justified action which proximately causes your death unjustified, though.)
The cops shooting people who don't pose an imminent threat to the officers or others justifying shooting is a bad thing.
In lots of circumstances, other clear and undisputed facts make it so that “unarmed” added to them implies “no imminent threat”, but “unarmed” is not, otherwise, decisive.
No, I think it's significantly more serious than that when considering the rhetoric being used by some of the people.
One of the people who was charged with misdemeanor trespassing posted a video saying “We broke into the Capitol. . . . We got inside, we did our part,” adding, “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her.”
I'm pretty strongly in the conservative-free-speech-maximalist camp and can't condone this kind of violence apologia; it's on the wrong side of an uncontroversial bright line. The voices of anyone who can't talk without espousing violence against politicians they disagree with won't be missed in the national conversation.
If someone dies while committing a crime in some states the entire party can be tried for murder.
On the other hand I have watched videos of the "unwanted guests" being invited in, and in one case being given a tour.
If you invite people in and then shoot them it could rightly be considered murder.
Property was stolen and damaged which lends itself to being more than a guided tour.
A similar event happened to the White House in March 4, 1829. A party was thrown and they trashed the white house.
Another event for context:
Bomb explodes in U.S. Capitol, Nov. 7, 1983
President Bill Clinton pardoned the now styled "activist".
The whole event on the 6th was a cluster, and there was FBI involvement.
Calling it an insurrection maybe right for the wrong reasons. "Cui bono" certainly not Trump nor the Conservatives.
Either way both sides are in bed with big tech and all should resign from politics and we should have elections again and disqualify anyone who took money, or favors from big tech.
> Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon or inflicting bodily injury; civil disorder; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building
Thanks for describing the Portland riots that went on all of last year. Oh and they went a step further and actually tried to burn down federal buildings and kill police officers.
People with riot gear and zip ties stormed the capital with the express purpose of stopping the certification of a free and fair election. They were literally trying to overthrow an election. That was the point.
It was coordinated with the highest levels of The GOP, including the president.
There were two bombs.
It has the full throated support of the entirety of the GOP leadership, who are doing everything in their power to block any investigation.
More people died because of Jan 6th than the Beer Hall Putsch, which was substantially less successful than January 6th.
The zip tie dude apparently got them from within the capitol and took them so they couldn’t be used against them.
The rally was coordinated by the president, not breaking in to the capitol.
We don’t know who placed the bombs. From their placement it seems to me they could have been used to kill people at the rally, but who knows.
Let’s be real: it was a bunch of idiots that found an excuse to do something they thought would be fun, the same with all the other riots we’ve seen recently. If those people really wanted to mount an insurrection they would have brought and used firearms that they almost certainly own.
If they had been brown, or, heaven forfend, muslim, it would have been an absolute massacre of epic proportions, and you’d want to invade someplace that happen to have a lot of brown people that live there.
It includes a few felonies, as well as misdemeanor assault charges, misdemeanor theft, etc. Use the search box and search for "felony", "weapon", "theft", "assault", "injury" and so on.
The worst offense charged thus far is not illegal parading. It may the worst already fully pleaded out, because, well, people tend to plead out early for charges that sound like that.
They hold on longer for more serious charges. I think there's also some effort from the various prosecutors to plead charges down either for expediency, or PR purposes , etc.
Such a one-sided argument, There was a summer of BLM riots with way more violence going on for months, dozens killed , hundreds injured, countless shops looted and destroyed but that’s obviously “peaceful protests”.
60 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadIt's evident that conspiracy theorists just want to believe in the paranoid fantasies at any cost. They don't reject disproven theories; they don't admit to being wrong. They're not interested in the real, existing conspiracies that have been well-documented but are boring or require technical expertise to understand.
When these people lose the ability to think with nuance and show no regards towards reality, whether FB is the evil entity they think it is, or it's not, becomes completely irrelevant. And given that deplatforming has been shown to work because people look for outrage rather than reason and that outrage is fueled by the content put in front of readers, from a pragmatist's point of view the censoring doesn't seem to bad.
No signature requirements.
Mass mailing empty ballots.
A year of riots
A year of lock downs due to a foreign bio-weapon
Two impeachments from corrupt federal police
If Dick Cheney did all of that, how would it make you feel?
Edit:
To the question of illegal vs unethical:
Undeclared contributions via services, and attempting to conceal the same donations would likely be considered illegal.
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-di...
Ever wonder if this whole thing is politically motivated to make sure anybody remotely conservative can't talk on Facebook?
"Insurrection" is monstrously strong language to call something whose worst legal offense is illegal parading. [0]
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/jail-sente...
https://securitystudies.org/report-shows-babbitt-not-a-deadl...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/department-justice-closes...
Incorrect. The report does not conclude that. A political advocacy site dedicated to “defending the value of American power against the true threats we face” concludes that “based on” the report, which is, very much, not the same thing.
An investigation revealed that he'd died of a stroke the day after the riot, and that his death could not be directly connected to the Capitol riot.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/brian-sicknick-police-o...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/19/politics/brian-sicknick-death...
"Neutral" NPR reporting on this:
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/02/963336791/brian-sicknick-capi...
> Diaz told The Washington Post that the autopsy found no evidence that Sicknick experienced an allergic reaction to chemical irritants. He also said there was no evidence of either external or internal injuries.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/capitol-polic...
No, illegally parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the Capitol is a minor offense most Jan. 6 defendants were charged with, often along with much more serious offense, including, for many, that of breaking and entering, acts of violence, use of dangerous weapons, and destruction of government property (all of which are more serious offenses.)
The claim that that is the most serious offense charged (its a misdemeanor that can result in a maximum of 6 months on prison) is just a lie, many of the acts can be punished with a decade in prison, some maybe more than that (I haven't checked every charged offense.)
That's seriously it.
https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-ar...
Just on the first of 86 pages there are several worse than what you site.
Many have been charged with theft, disorderly conduct, assault, and obstruction of an official proceeding: https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-ar...
Most are understandably still pending.
That's false. For one example (Zachary Jordan Alam), the charges are:
Assaulting, Resisting, or Impeding Certain Officers; Assaulting, Resisting, or Impeding Certain Officers Using a Dangerous Weapon; Civil Disorder and Aiding and Abetting; Destruction of Government Property Exceeding $1,000; Obstruction of an Official Proceeding and Aiding and Abetting; Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon; Engaging in Physical Violence in a Restricted Building with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon; Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Act of Physical Violence in the Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in Capitol
There are lots more like that: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases
I do recognize there's plenty of room to argue whether it was an insurrection or not. I'd personally call it a riot.
In contrast to the 'mostly peaceful' BLM protests leading up the elections of 2020?
No. First, whether the charges are overcharged or not is irrelevant; the matter in debate was specifically the claim that the most serious charges alleged were illegal parading.
Second your post relies on treating “the commenters” as a unitary entity; unless the specific commenters involved tended to argue that DoJ systematically overcharges, there would be no inconsistency even if the charges were offered to support the dangerousness of the insurgents rather than to rebut a false claim about the charges.
Third nice demonstration of sealioning and gish galloping.
When people gather outside the Capitol, shouting that they have to stop the Congress from enacting the will of the people -- and construct gallows while they're at it -- that's not attempted insurrection, that's free speech. When they force their way into the Capitol, that's not attempted insurrection, that's trespassing. When they fail to obey the commands of the LEOs charged with protecting the Capitol and the people working inside, when they beat up some of those LEOs, that's not attempted insurrection, either.
To me, it sounds like the goalposts keep moving. At what point do you call it attempted insurrection?
The only person that died a non-natural cause death on that day was the unarmed woman shot by Capitol Police.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/trump-rio...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-sicknick-capitol-riot-die...
Although technically Rosanne Boyland died of non-natural causes too.
https://news-block.com/the-police-killed-her-three-more-eyew...
Don't gaslight people by just calling her "unarmed" especially when QAnon is turning her into a martyr for their movement. It's fundamentally dishonest.
Babbitt was at the head of a mob breaking through a barricade preventing them from access to members and staff of Congress, against whom the mob was threatening violence, and whom had only seconds before cleared the lobby (and who therefore were in imminent danger of being overtaken by the mob had the mob not been stopped at the barricade.) There were insufficient officers present to control the mob even with deadly force were they not stopped at the barrier.
> If I break the law and an officer shoots me in cold blood, it was my actions, not my beliefs which led to my death. Does that mean I deserved it?
If you break the law in a way which poses an imminent serious threat to other people’s lives, and no other means are available that are likely to stop you, then an officer is certainly justified in using deadly force. (Whether you deserve it is a question of the morality of your act, not the officer’s, which is not germane to the shooting. Maybe your threatening act is under some kind of external compulsion or internal mental disorder that would make you not fully culpable and thus not deserving of the consequences of the justified response to your action. That you don't, in that case, deserve death doesn't make the justified action which proximately causes your death unjustified, though.)
In lots of circumstances, other clear and undisputed facts make it so that “unarmed” added to them implies “no imminent threat”, but “unarmed” is not, otherwise, decisive.
And you agree that if it was brown people, it would have been called a coup and there would people on trial for treason.
One of the people who was charged with misdemeanor trespassing posted a video saying “We broke into the Capitol. . . . We got inside, we did our part,” adding, “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her.”
I'm pretty strongly in the conservative-free-speech-maximalist camp and can't condone this kind of violence apologia; it's on the wrong side of an uncontroversial bright line. The voices of anyone who can't talk without espousing violence against politicians they disagree with won't be missed in the national conversation.
If someone dies while committing a crime in some states the entire party can be tried for murder.
On the other hand I have watched videos of the "unwanted guests" being invited in, and in one case being given a tour.
If you invite people in and then shoot them it could rightly be considered murder.
Property was stolen and damaged which lends itself to being more than a guided tour.
A similar event happened to the White House in March 4, 1829. A party was thrown and they trashed the white house.
Another event for context:
Bomb explodes in U.S. Capitol, Nov. 7, 1983
President Bill Clinton pardoned the now styled "activist".
The whole event on the 6th was a cluster, and there was FBI involvement.
Calling it an insurrection maybe right for the wrong reasons. "Cui bono" certainly not Trump nor the Conservatives.
Either way both sides are in bed with big tech and all should resign from politics and we should have elections again and disqualify anyone who took money, or favors from big tech.
https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-ar...
> Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon or inflicting bodily injury; civil disorder; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building
It was coordinated with the highest levels of The GOP, including the president.
There were two bombs.
It has the full throated support of the entirety of the GOP leadership, who are doing everything in their power to block any investigation.
More people died because of Jan 6th than the Beer Hall Putsch, which was substantially less successful than January 6th.
If it wasn’t an insurrection, what was it?
The rally was coordinated by the president, not breaking in to the capitol.
We don’t know who placed the bombs. From their placement it seems to me they could have been used to kill people at the rally, but who knows.
Let’s be real: it was a bunch of idiots that found an excuse to do something they thought would be fun, the same with all the other riots we’ve seen recently. If those people really wanted to mount an insurrection they would have brought and used firearms that they almost certainly own.
If you believe that the guy in tacticool gear randomly found zipties and didnt bring them himself, I have a bridge to sell you.
Storming the capital in riot gear…
If they had been brown, or, heaven forfend, muslim, it would have been an absolute massacre of epic proportions, and you’d want to invade someplace that happen to have a lot of brown people that live there.
There's a searchable table of charges as of October 19th, here: https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-ar...
It includes a few felonies, as well as misdemeanor assault charges, misdemeanor theft, etc. Use the search box and search for "felony", "weapon", "theft", "assault", "injury" and so on.
The worst offense charged thus far is not illegal parading. It may the worst already fully pleaded out, because, well, people tend to plead out early for charges that sound like that.
They hold on longer for more serious charges. I think there's also some effort from the various prosecutors to plead charges down either for expediency, or PR purposes , etc.