At What Point Does A Protest Become A Riot?

[Andol]

I think most people are feeling a little ragged mentally.  It's important to remember self-care and look at what we, as individuals can do.  Taking time off of social media instead of letting yourself be immersed entirely, reaching out in our individual communities to find help - and helpers.  Fred Rogers once said, 'When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.'

One thing I realized about myself... I just had to unplug from the whole thing completely. It was not good for my mental health to immerse myself in this now constant thing at all. Couldn't handle it... never see how others do, but as you said... self care is important.

[CopperLily]

I was just about to post this - Stanford's never been successfully replicated because Zimbardo was actively coaching and directing the guards, rather than letting the cruelty 'spontaneously' erupt.

Not unlike "Stockholm Syndrome" - bad science that has wormed its way into how we think about the world.

[TheGlyphstone]

NASCAR has now banned the Confederate flag at its races.

[Sara Nilsson]

NASCAR has now banned the Confederate flag at its races.

lets hope it turns out better than in  2015 when they asked people to not bring them and the number of people that did tripled.

[Beorning]

Hey guys, I have a request:

I got into a discussion today with an acquintance here in Poland (well, she's in Germany, but she's Polish) about what's happening in the States. And she rejected the idea that there is any sort of systemic racism going on in USA and that there might be any reason for the black Americans to protest or riot. I'm trying to widen her worldview a little, so could I ask for some help?

First of all: could you provide me with examples of police brutality against black Americans? Also, some examples of everyday racism blacks experience?

Also, any counterarguments for statements such as:

"Black men are 12% of the population but are also 52% of all people arrested for murder - so, there's no racism in the fact that there more black than white people in prisons, obviously the black people simply commit more crimes?"

"Black Americans complain against violence by white cops - but many cops are black or Asian. Is there no violence against black people committed by black or Asian cops?"

"Black Americans speak of systemic racisms, but not all of them agree. I found these videos on YT with a black guy called Larry Elder saying the opposite..."

Finally, one quite big request: could I quote some of what you guys wrote here? Especially the posts about your personal experiences. I think these might turn out enlightening to my acquintances, but I won't quote anyone with their permission.

[RedPhoenix]

You're dealing with someone who is just regurgitating tired racist talking points. If she thinks she knows so much about somewhere she doesn't live from relying on entirely racist sources there's not much you can do for her. The same internet she read all that crap on she can find reality on too but she chose not to. And if you care you can just google the breakdowns of why all those tired racist talking points are wrong but they only really work on people who want to hear them in first place, most of it's just so self-evidently stupid it's a waste of time to consider.

[Beorning]

Well... probably. But I'd still want to try. Call me a hopeless idealist... or a masochist :)

So, if you could provide me with counter-arguments, I'd honestly be grateful.

[Formless]

From what I've been reading, and drawing parallels from how my countrymen are treated when they travel to the US. There's two ways to execute the law.

The first, is when the law is always handled with favor to the suspect.

The second is when the law is always handled against the suspect.

For example, a Black man is always a suspect more often than not, believed to be a criminal in any case, until unspoiled evidence are presented.

However, when a white man is a suspect, then he remains a suspect until unspoiled evidence are presented.

The same with how 9 times out of 10 when someone from my country travels to the US, is always greeted with the good ol' full cavity search that was 'chosen at random'. Of course that choice happens once they check the passport and not prior to that. Because we're expected to arrive to the US with the sole intention of attacking it. And we've been dealing with this for just a tad of 20 years.

Now compare it to people of color in the US. How long have they been dealing with that?

[RedPhoenix]

Well... probably. But I'd still want to try. Call me a hopeless idealist... or a masochist :)

So, if you could provide me with counter-arguments, I'd honestly be grateful.

Here's 158 resources to get you started.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/158-resources-understanding-systemic-racism-america-180975029/

[Oniya]

Well... probably. But I'd still want to try. Call me a hopeless idealist... or a masochist :)

So, if you could provide me with counter-arguments, I'd honestly be grateful.

Here's another one. https://twitter.com/KristaVernoff/status/1272561179462754304?s=20

[Skynet]

Also, any counterarguments for statements such as:

"Black men are 12% of the population but are also 52% of all people arrested for murder - so, there's no racism in the fact that there more black than white people in prisons, obviously the black people simply commit more crimes?"

In US law, an arrest is different than a conviction. An arrest by itself is not proof that a person is guilty of criminal conduct. A conviction is the process where someone's been proven guilty in a court of law.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/arrest

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conviction

Someone on Reddit went into far greater detail than I can possibly do in regards to this.

"Black Americans complain against violence by white cops - but many cops are black or Asian. Is there no violence against black people committed by black or Asian cops?"

"Black Americans speak of systemic racisms, but not all of them agree. I found these videos on YT with a black guy called Larry Elder saying the opposite..."

If you find his speech too slow, you can easily put it on 1.5x or 2x and still more or less listen normally.

Finally, one quite big request: could I quote some of what you guys wrote here? Especially the posts about your personal experiences. I think these might turn out enlightening to my acquintances, but I won't quote anyone with their permission.

Go ahead.

[Skynet]

Well... probably. But I'd still want to try. Call me a hopeless idealist... or a masochist :)

So, if you could provide me with counter-arguments, I'd honestly be grateful.

Double-post. Sorry.

I don't know what kind of ideology or political party your German friend subscribes to, although for what it's worth people who adhere to anti-intellectual and far-right talking points aren't going to be swayed by logic and evidence, as RedPhoenix earlier noted. Typically speaking a lot of people who are sympathetic to such claims are doing it more out of various personal things in their lives. They may only get their news from family members, or supported a candidate like Trump and have Sunk Cost Fallacy due to an unwillingness to confront that their worldview is wrong. Or may just be arguing in bad faith, in which case they already made up their mind and will only try to emotionally exhaust you for the sake of 'winning' the conversation.

A lot of times trying to 'deprogram' someone from this rhetoric has nothing to do with challenging their claims and everything to do with giving them an outside support network than their conservative bubble. Granted, this isn't always something everyone can do, can take months or years, and requires special training that one may not have. A lot of people point to Daryl Davis who got hundreds of people to leave the KKK and say "everyone on the left should do this instead of protesting," but that's akin to saying that everyone who wants Medicare for All should go to Med School.

[Fox Lokison]

A lot of these points your friend is citing are popular alt-right talking points. Speaking as someone who was once in that group, I can adamantly confirm these statements are specifically phrased the way they are to incite the very reaction your friend is giving. They tap into certain parts of human perception and belief, and play into logical fallacies. They are also gateway beliefs for some deeply racist shit, and it's very important to shut them down at this stage, because this entire rhetoric is designed to be an incredibly slippery slope into some deeply racist and bigoted stuff. I'm not saying your friend is going to be a member of the alt right, but this is rhetoric created by a group that has nothing but harmful intentions, and is actively designed for and used in converting the average, reasonable, rational person into a rather unpleasant mindset. And it's good at that.

The reason it's good at that, as a tangent, is because on some level, the logic makes sense. And that's not to say these are accurate views because of that. There are a lot of things that sound very logical that aren't true. The concept that humanity grows more progressive as time goes on and that the present day is the most progressive we've been, and the future will only be more progressive, for example, is one of those things a lot of people fall into. The idea that our past was barbaric and our future won't be. That advancement is linear and upwards. It's the reason why you'll find a lot of people who believe in a very linear idea of human advancement, and that technologies were developed in a certain order, and were all required for human settlements and civilization to arise - examples are fire, the wheel, agriculture, ceramics, metalworking, etc. A simplified view of the world is often the easiest for a human mind to grasp, because humans don't like the unknown, the unpredictable, and the invisible. These things have been a threat to us on some level since the dawn of our species, and we retain that. But I digress.

Systemic racism, for one, is a thing that your average person has a hard time grasping the nuance of. It's easy for us to see racism as a thing people do to one another, an overt act. It's hard for us to see things that aren't active, but passive, like systemic racism. Things woven into the fabric of society. Playing on a person's preconceived notions of the world is convincing. Then you have the Just World Fallacy, which is hugely common in this kind of thinking. If you're a good person, good things happen to you. If you're bad, bad things happen to you. Ergo, black people enduring such hardships and abuse means they must have done something wrong. This is a fallacy most people buy into, and it's easy to see why. In a world that really isn't all that fair, building and maintaining this semblance of fairness reassures us. If we do the right and good thing, then nothing bad will happen to us. And if a bad thing does happen, even if we didn't deserve it, then it will be fixed, because of course, this is a just world.

What I'm getting at here is that you're not just offering your friend counterpoints in hopes that will unroot them. That's not how this works. That's a fine effort and I'm not going to dissuade you from it, but personally I've found it's not enough to just offer counterpoints. Here are some articles on this. Cognitive dissonance is a HELL of a drug. And it's not easy to break.

I will be pulling a fair amount from Lee Lofland's Police Procedure and Investigation, a book published in 2007. If you are curious who Lee is, here is his "About" page. He is an incredibly experienced law enforcement officer, who has been in multiple positions and multiple branches of law enforcement, from correctional officer to detective to sheriff to law enforcement educator and police academy instructor. And spoilers to spare people a wall of text.

"Black men are 12% of the population but are also 52% of all people arrested for murder - so, there's no racism in the fact that there more black than white people in prisons, obviously the black people simply commit more crimes?"

Summary

One of the worst and most convincing arguments we used, and I hate this one. Here's the deal. This has a few steps to break it down. As Sarah Z so eloquently put it, it takes 5 seconds to put out misinformation, and upwards of 10 minutes to break down why just ONE part of it is wrong, so this might get lengthy.

First off. Arrests and convictions are not the same. In the United States, you are allowed your day in court, but you are not guaranteed the right to sit outside a jail cell waiting for that court date, nor are you afforded as much of 'innocent until proven guilty' as you might think. How this works is that once you are arrested, you are charged with a crime. Note the word 'charged'. There is a certain requirement of evidence, yes, but how much varies depending on state, county, city, and even borough, when you get down to it. Each police force does have a certain set of federal rules to obey, but due to the United States being, well, a series of independent states playing nice and each having their own sets of rules and autonomy on some level, this gets fuzzy. This means that you can be arrested for anything from, say, stabbing someone out of the blue, while an officer is right there witnessing it, or having drugs planted on you, or the suspicion of a crime, such as the possession of a counterfeit bill and the supposed intent to circulate it - even if you didn't know it was fake. You'll hear a lot in cop shows (usually said by lawyers) "Charge my client, or we walk". This is because in a fair system, without actual evidence, an officer cannot detain you. This is why you will see a lot of interrogation scenes and 'fishing' for evidence in these shows - because evidence that is not circumstantial is required for an arrest.

As an aside, if you are detained, and police have no evidence, they can interrogate you at length anyways. You can be held anywhere from 48-72 hours with no charges being filed, and your rights while in custody do not extend to 'the right to not endure 48-72 hours of nonstop interrogation, mind games, lies, and other tricks to get you to confess to a crime you did not commit'. You have your Miranda Rights. And often police will encourage you to waive the right to an attorney, claiming that innocent people don't need one and that it will 'complicate things' and 'make you look guilty'.

Once you are arrested, there is a process you must undergo. For clarification, I can only speak firsthand to how juvenile courts work, secondhand to how adult court works, from crimes ranging from sex work, drug possession, drug dealing, assault, DUIs, and sexual assault - at least in my personal life. I'll be drawing the rest from Lofland's book. After an arrest, you are booked - the process that enters you into the system and preps you for being inside a detainment facility, so they can keep track of you. This includes documentation of your possessions, removal of them, fingerprinting, being given appropriate clothing to wear, and a back and forth where the officers ascertain whether or not you can safely be placed in a certain facility, due to medical concerns, possible enemies within the facility, or a host of other things. From there, you will see a judge, and they will set bail. Mind you, at this point, there is only the requirement of enough evidence that you plausibly could have done the crime. This means nothing circumstantial, and they really like eyewitnesses. I'd like to point out as well, this evidence has not yet been brought to court and you have had no chance to defend yourself. At this moment, a judge decides whether or not this is enough evidence to hold you, and if they decide there is - which depends on the judge - they set bail.

At this point, if you cannot pay bail, you sit in jail until your trial. Here's the thing about trials - they can happen fast, but they often happen very, VERY slow. The United States is a huge country, with varying populations in each state, county, and city, and depending on where and when you were arrested, your time between arrest and your day in court varies significantly. Speaking from personal and familial experience, I had a rather speedy trial in juvenile court, but my family members who faced adult court on charges such as sexual assault, drug possession, drug distribution, and sex work, all saw months in jail. Their town was small, but the county was not, and was backed up with meth and abuse cases frequently. Cases that involve someone being actively harmed will often take precedent. If you were a solo operator - say, my grandfather, who made the meth he sold himself, and had no supplier - you would sit in jail longer than the guy who beats on his wife and has buddies who actively threaten to kill her if she testifies. Urgency and danger to others, as well as time constraints are all important parts of how fast you get a trial.

Now, I'll presume we've all seen enough Law and Order or just cop shows in general to get the general gist of a court - you defend yourself, either alone or with an attorney, and you face a prosecutor whose sole job is to get you convicted of a crime. Your fate is judged by a jury and overseen by a judge, who has varying powers depending on the type of court you were tried in, and whether this was a jury or a grand jury. However, the actual trial process isn't relevant, so I'll skip over that. Here's what's relevant - money and connections. Not just in the trial, but to even GET to the trial. Police departments and courts don't like bad press. They also don't like glaring attention on a case, because if they fuck up, they make their city or county or even state look bad. Which means that if you're anonymous, you're not likely to get a speedy trial. This is why efforts to put a spotlight on arrests, such as that of Kenneth Walker, are critical for swift justice.

The other factor is money. Money is good for getting a decent attorney, for helping yourself out in jail, and for oiling the gears of the system. No, bribery isn't going to make the US Justice System go round, but money to the right people or organizations can absolutely give you pull or speed up your chances of getting to trial. It also ensures better representation. A court-appointed attorney is basically the guy (or gal) run ragged. They have scores of cases just like you to deal with, and are booked out for months and years at a time, with no vacation, no breaks, and very little breathing room. You're just a number, because you have to be, in an overburdened justice system. They are often not going to be as good at or as lucky with getting you a speedy trial or out on the streets with lower bail, because they just don't have the time and resources available to put all their focus into your case.

So this was a lot of talk, but HERE IS THE SUMMARY. An arrest is just that. An arrest. It does not require that the evidence against you was tested in court. It does not require cross-examination. It does not require a day in court. It simply requires enough evidence that an officer and a judge both believe it's reasonable that you could have done the crime, or a confession, which again, does not have to face cross-examination and could be coerced or fake. Arrest rates are a shit metric for measuring the guilt of a population. Absolute TRASH. And by the time many people get their day in court, they are either worn down from their time in jail, from nonstop harassment from law enforcement, from fighting an overwhelming and complicated system they barely understand, or just from personal issues, that many people plead guilty for a lighter sentence, despite not having done the crime. Because a court battle means you spend more time in jail during the duration of the trial, and at the end of the day, this is what does a lot of people in.

I would never use arrest rates to indicate the criminality of a population. If anything, they indicate the bias of the society. They require very little to occur. And they immediately put the presumption of guilt on a person, that if they were arrested they MUST have done something, even though an arrest is not a day in court and in fact, not indicative of guilt.

Here is another source that would be good to read and utilize on this.

"Black Americans complain against violence by white cops - but many cops are black or Asian. Is there no violence against black people committed by black or Asian cops?"

Summary

This one is a less egregious example of a logical fallacy, but it's still pretty convincing. Here's the deal. We're shifting the focus in this question from a systematic issue, to a personal one. Let me explain.

First off, this is a slight shifting of the actual issue at hand, but it's a shift that changes the context significantly. While black Americans are indeed upset about white cops, that's not the WHOLE issue. White cops are a symptom of the whole issues, as are ANY cops. What is the issue is a system and a country built on a racial divide. I'll note that this issue hits Native Americans, Hispanic and Latinx communities, and Asian communities as well, specifically those perceived to be Arabic or Muslim. However, black Americans have taken the forefront lately. To quote Snow Tha Product; Yippee yippee yippee I should be so happy I'm; In 2016 and not living in the past where I; A brown person would be called colored but then not brought up in conversations about race; Because the world is black and white; But that happened like literally yesterday. While the focus may be on Black vs White, that's not the actual issue. It's just that it tends to take the focus, for a variety of reasons that aren't really any one group's fault.

There is police violence committed on minorities. That is the issue, period. But since we are talking about black vs white, then I'm going to focus on that. This country, whether we feel comfortable admitting it or not, was not founded on ideals we would consider progressive or even overly okay right about now. At the time, they were, but in the modern context, no. And that is relevant, no matter how the discussion may sway to 'oh that happened hundreds of years ago'. Culture does not and never will exist in a vacuum. Things are, in part, the way they are today because some fuckoff goatherder in the Fertile Crescent eleven thousand years ago did one thing instead of another. Every single human action has had an impact on where we are today, and by extension, each societal action has as well. History is a lengthy series of actions and reactions, and each build on the other and cause one another.

This means that America being built on the values of white men of a certain class or ethnic origin being the only ones to have rights matters. It means that America utilizing slavery and genocide in the foundation of this country matters. Each of these things contributed to what cultural mores were created, what laws were passed, what decisions were made. And from those, we built upwards and upwards - but we didn't cut out the base. An example of this is the current state of Native Americans. Nowadays, as a broad stroke, you can find Native Americans in two groups - those on reservations, and those off. This is because, back in the day, you had a choice, if you were Native. You could surrender your culture, your identity, and even your name, and assimilate into White American society, or you could go live on the most undesirable land parcels in the country, which have been shrinking ever since they were made. There is a point in my family tree where you can see our names go from traditional Native ones to very standard English-American names in one or two generations, and never come back again. This is because my family chose assimilation. This impacts us to modern day. Many Natives who assimilated lost their culture. They passed on parts to their children, but as it was illegal, very few traditions carried on, and their children passed on even fewer. This is why word of mouth and generational knowledge is so critical to Native peoples here - because much else was destroyed and that was the only way to keep the culture alive. So now you have two populations. Those who have grown up apart from the culture and heritage and blood they have, and those who grew up with it. I would encourage you to research the situation of Natives who live on the reservations, but 'not very fuckin good' sums it up pretty well. This is hundreds of years after laws that criminalized Native practices were struck down, and efforts were made to undo this damage. It was an irreparable blow that to this day, has left deep scars.

Let's apply that to a population that exists here in America mainly because of slavery.

You have hundreds of years of laws in this country built on the values that a white man is a free man, a citizen, and a black man is not. First, he was a slave. Property. Then, there was a war that was built on the backs of two different economies. One that required slaves, and one that didn't. And yes, the Civil War was far more complicated than that, but it's very important to the current situation that the southern economy and culture utilized slavery, which meant income, profit, and jobs for a certain race, and slavery for the other. Then, he was an indentured servant, who had the supposed capacity to leave, but no system in place to actualize these rights. Then, he had a system - a ragged one, but a system - that allowed him to buy his own land and own his own property, or even rent. Except he also had banks who wouldn't give him loans, landlords who wouldn't rent to him, landowners who wouldn't sell to him, and the option of either shit land or just the places no one wanted available to him. The worst of the worst. None the less, he persevered. Eventually, he's allowed an education, and the same rights as his white peers. The Civil Rights Movement happens. He's allowed to breathe the same air, sit in the same seats, drink from the same fountains as a white man. And finally, he's considered an American, a full-blooded, allowed-to-be-here American.... Except not exactly.

Banks still will often deny loans to black families. As they once did to black farmers, banks perceive Black Americans as a too-risky investment. I invite you to look into redlining and land/asset distribution in this country, btw. It's horrifying. Anywho. You have the signs of segregation still around, with the ghettos and slums and predominantly black communities which face higher rates of poverty, and thus, crime. You have generations of black men and women facing harsher punishments for the same crimes as white people (as seen in the end source in the previous spoiler). You have medical neglect, with a history of sterilization, mistreatment, and even downright experimentation on black people (and the mentally ill, that's a pretty recent thing still on both parts), a lack of access to the same resources. You have generations of people who have grown up with absent family members, and thus, struggle with poverty and crime, and pass on this generational trauma to their children. When you have a young black man in this country, who lives in a poverty-stricken neighborhood full of crime, in a part of town that was zoned off for black people during segregation, that was poorly built and maintained, far from resources, and often harassed by police and even slavecatchers, depending how old the section is, you have a young man who has started out in a society biased against him.

And if he makes the uphill climb and surpasses all these challenges, and makes something of himself?

He still has to face racism within the laws and culture of his country, that cast him as less than, as other, as reprobate, as a thug, as a criminal. Because those values carried on, because those laws carried on, because we as a people internalized these things as facts, as actions made by black people and not reactions. Because we believe, as a people, that the system is not unjust, it was cleansed of all these evils of the past, and that everyone gets the same chances. And they do not. Because there is no such thing as a clean slate in that. There is no cleansing of this. That does not come unless you break down the system and entirely restructure it.

So how does this tie back to cops of color? It's simple. A system that is built on these differences of race and ethnicity and religion and all other things will carry them on to modern day in some context. It's impossible to erase. The actions of an individual are not indicative of a system. A black cop does not mean the system is fair to black people. It means that this one black person overcame a systemic issue and joined a force that historically brutalized people that looked like him. The same for Asian cops - lest we forget racism and internment camps here. These are individual people. To say 'well black or asian cops do this stuff so racism can't be that big of an issue, they must just be criminals' is about as realistic as saying 'Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox are doing fine so transphobia isn't that big of a deal'. Those who overcame a system rigged against them are not proof that the system is not unfair or biased, just that individuals can get past barriers sometimes.

And when we're talking 42 million people struggling against that system, a few hundred or even a few thousand overcoming is simply not enough.

"Black Americans speak of systemic racisms, but not all of them agree. I found these videos on YT with a black guy called Larry Elder saying the opposite..."

Summary

This really can be tied into the above statement, but I'll summarize.

People are not a hive mind. I was a trans alt righter. I was part of an organization that thinks I am an abomination, a depravity, a degenerate, a sign of a corrupt culture, and a disease to be scoured. And they kept me around because here's the fun fact about minorities speaking against their own minority - they're immensely effective weapons. The fact that one black person disagreeing with millions of African Americans is enough to counterbalance the concerns of those millions in the minds of your friend - or anyone, really - is horrifying, and effective as fuck. If all you have to do to convince someone these issues aren't really issues is show them one person that disagrees and looks like the people upset, then that's an easy bar to hit.

And here's the thing. As linked above in the bit about facts vs opinions, people are DESPERATELY looking for the one thing that agrees with them over the hundreds that don't. Call it confirmation bias, call it cognitive dissonance, call it whatever the hell you want. At the end of the day, the ability for my peers to go "we can't be transphobic, Fox agrees with our beliefs and he's a trans man" mattered more than any coherent argument, facts, sources, or evidence anyone opposing them could bring. In winning the hearts and minds of the moderate, of the undecided, of the person who does not want to see the conflict or is too afraid to embrace that there might be one, this is a terrifying and powerful weapon.

If a population of 42 million is expected to agree unanimously on a point to make it valid, then nothing is valid. Absolutely fucking nothing. You can't get a group of five people to agree on pizza toppings. You can't get two people to agree on everything. Hell, as ANY manager. Coordinating people is like managing a sack of wet ferrets, while also holding a bag of wet cats, and juggling a beehive. It sounds like a reasonable bar to set, but it's absolutely not. Human beings cannot agree on everything, and should not have to for their perspectives to be valid. And if you asked your friend about issues affecting their own in-group, I bet everything in my bank account they'd have a lot of fucking opinions about someone who they share a trait with, but not a perspective.

This was lengthy and wordy, and I apologize for that. Unfortunately, as stated above, it's very easy to make a false statement that sounds convincing, but requires a ton of work and effort to debunk it. There are no quippy short answers. That is the problem. One-liners and 5 second soundbites that are wonderfully convincing but woefully inaccurate. These are complicated issues that cannot be summed up in such short excerpts, and that fact is weaponized.

A final note, I don't know how old your friend is, but the main group targeted by this rhetoric and the groups who use it, are disaffected young white men, usually in their 20s and early 30s at the latest. I was 21 and newly disabled when I was targeted, and many of the people I in turn targeted were anywhere from their mid teens to mid twenties, and usually disaffected or scared of what was going on around them, because they didn't understand it, relate to it, or see themselves represented in it. While this rhetoric appeals to all age groups, races, genders, and minds, it is particularly successful in this group, in America and other Western countries. This is because it appeals to a certain set of 'Western Values' (a loaded term) that are shared across the ocean, and came about around the fall of the colonial empires, and has been growing since. I can confirm that it is designed to appeal to shared belief systems about justice, fairness, racial issues, and a whole host of other things. And that will factor into how effective talking this over with your friend will be, because it all depends on how personal these values are to them, and how much they relate to these ideals.

Best of luck.

[TheGlyphstone]

Can I ask how you managed to escape, Fox? You've gotten a eye-level view few people have and can still talk about it, which is rare.

[Fox Lokison]

Someone who I both liked romantically and really wanted to impress disagreed with me. That was the start. The sort of 'foot in the door'. They were a person I wanted to like me. So I listened when they spoke. And I spoke back, repeated my trite points. She beat them down. She could be kind or really, really not, but she never failed to be blunt and honest, and speak with care for me, but disdain for my ideas. She often would show me love the members of my own group didn't. Support I desperately needed. Care and compassion. But she didn't take my shit, and she had the dedication to spend HOURS just battling words with me. We talked about everything, and I mean everything. I don't think we left a stone unturned.

Like a lot of young men in that group, I had a deep and profound sense of loss I couldn't really pinpoint or handle. This sense that I was supposed to do something of value and hadn't. That I didn't know where to go or what to do. The world I'd known growing up was changing so rapidly, and had been since 9/11. After the Obama presidency and the fracturing that came with in the nation, for whatever reason, I felt lost and disaffected. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that many of us also were underprivileged in some areas. Poor, sick, mentally ill, with broken families or homes, abused, of some sort of minority, be it racial, sexual, psychological, physical... I myself had just had the crippling news of 'you are totally and permanently disabled, and you may heal but will likely never fully recover' delivered after a year of hospitalizations and brain damage thanks to a loved one. I was 21. I was an alcoholic with a history of being abused in multiple ways, and now the one thing I had, my ability to work, to provide for myself, had been taken. And I was far from the only physically and mentally disabled one. There was a lot of talk of people mooching off the disability system and food stamps, 'welfare babies', and all that. A finger to point at when the system worked against us.

Honestly that's a big part of why this person was able to break me out. This rhetoric thrives on Just World Fallacy stuff, the intersection of 'bad things only happen to bad people, and if they happen to good people they get fixed' and 'I see myself as a good person, but a bad thing happened to me, and something is stopping it from being fixed.' The group offers you a reason for things not being fixed - other minorities. It's sad to say, but I had to be reunited with my basic human empathy by this person, who pointed out that I was no different than the people I was attacking, and if anything, they were the ones fighting for me, and I was the asshole punching down at them because it made me feel good to be the puncher and not the punchee.

We all just want someone to hear and see our pain, and tell us "It's okay, it's not your fault, and I'm here to help. Let's do it together." Deep wounds can drive us apart, and lead us to attack one another, but they're also the thing that can draw us together. If we're willing to admit we're not the only ones hurting anyways. I wanted to be heard and loved and not hated, and was tired of fighting a hostile world and against my own family's abuse for my disabilities and struggles. Showing me empathy, giving me time, actually talking to me and treating me like a human being did more than anything. Deradicalization is such hard work, and it's so heavily criticized for not being PC, for being harmful, for using tactics used by unsavory people, but honestly, as ugly as it gets, it works. We're complicated creatures, and we all just need a little love and understanding, and someone willing to give a fuck and talk to us.

Every single person I knew in that group, without fail, was deeply fucking wounded in some way or another. Often by an uncaring system, a society that told them they could be anything and do anything, then yanked it out from under them, or, very very often, by someone very close and dear to them who they'd trusted, who had either planted a seed of hate in them, or hurt them so much that they felt the need to lash out, because they couldn't take on the person who hurt them. I saw that last one so many times. Almost none of us could actually face of battle what had hurt us, but we had such pain and rage and just... ennui, I suppose. Really, the amount of people who would leave those groups if they'd just had access to therapy or a support system was staggering.

[Mister Ugly]

Beorning, I had known about problems within police departments but this really made me rethink things. Hope it helps!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/black-nypd-officers-really-feel-185236301.html


>MU

[Fox Lokison]

The story about a couple in st Louis who came out brandishing their guns at protesters on the street keeps crossing my dash, felt pertinent to share after looking over.

Out of all the examples of agitators turning protests violent, I admittedly didn't expect this nonsense. The lack of trigger discipline and the paranoia are... astounding.

“The only thing that stopped the crowd from approaching the house was when I had that rifle."

Horrifying mentality.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/29/st-louis-protest-gun-mayor/

[Tolvo]

https://twitter.com/AttorneyCrump/status/1278655042690703360

Body cam footage is starting to be released from officers who didn't realize their cameras were on. As they're shooting and gassing people they sound like they're playing a video game(In regards to how they talk obviously gaming doesn't make someone like this and who knows if they even play anything. Just that they're talking like people playing a shooter together). Many of them seem excited and to be enjoying hitting protestors. This isn't news to many protesting but maybe it'll help those who are centrists, who are ignorant, who don't do any research or know the history and current events, to understand what is happening as police are wildly out of control and rioting.

[Fox Lokison]

What worries me is that, even in the face of such blatant evidence, people have a tendency to still go 'well what did the other side do to deserve this, because clearly these cops/people/judges/whomever wouldn't do this unless there was a reason'. And don't accept 'maybe they're just not good people' or 'maybe their reason is a bad one'. That's what I'm still seeing, anyway, and it worries the hell out of me. Cognitive distortions and just world fallacy BS are one thing, but willful denial of evidence is a whole other beast.

I just hope that trend doesn't continue.

[Tolvo]

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/04/887257243/2-people-injured-after-vehicle-careens-into-protesters-in-seattle?utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social

Yet another terrorist killed a protestor has occured. Summer Taylor has died due to the injuries they got from being rammed by a car, along with Diaz Love being rammed. Diaz is currently still alive. The driver was arrested. The mayor is trying to place blame for this on the protestors, and various ghouls are misgendering Summer who went by they/them pronouns.

[Fox Lokison]

Seattle is... rough. Right now. Cap Hill got attacked by cops, residents there are facing police violence casually, at least ones I know, and it's just become a city in crisis. I'm worried sick for my friends there. Most are hiding in their homes from the cops because of some of the incidents happening. Violence, brutality, and arrests mostly.

The mayor is a coward. Trump prodded her damn ego about the CHOP and now she is throwing police at all problems. They abandoned that district. They didn't want it back. That was made clear. And now that they realize they screwed up massively, they're covering their asses.

It's disgusting.

[Tolvo]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/07/14/george-floyd-protests-police-blinding/?arc404=true

Police partially blind 8 people over the course of a single day(Taking out one of their eyes). CW for graphic images and clips, including blood, gunshots, smoke, scars, and injured eyes.. The video below does have it's own warning at the start with interviews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYPpAxQJjAY

[Fox Lokison]

Well, there's federal officers in unmarked vans, grabbing protesters in Portland. I've heard reports of this elsewhere in the US but this seems to have garnered the most outcry.

https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/

So that's horrifying.

[Lyron]

Apologies for blowing the dust off of this one, but it seemed like the most relevant topic. At the beginning of the month, ACLED released a statistical report on protests occurring between May 24 and August 22. There are two sets of data: one for BLM and another for those related to the pandemic. With the former, ACLED found more than 93% of protests to be peaceful. The link is to a Time article that summarizes some of those findings and mentions the methodology and who funds ACLED. The actual report is of course linked in the article.

[Regina Minx]

Food for thought. I saw this in a comment on a YouTube video, of all things.

a huge number of people seem to think that property damage justifies killing, but that killing does not justify property damage. The idea that livelihoods are worth more than lives seems to run deep.