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This gang activity was inspired by social media posts calling for people to show up armed and ready for violence. This is more flat-out incitement and encouragement from him: he wants it and needs it to win.
And if we’re being candid: violence in an effort to bring about a political result is terrorism.
Inciting, encouraging, or calling for a violence against a particular group is stochastic terrorism.
Either way, it’s terrorism, driven by the state.
Inciting, encouraging, or calling for a violence against a particular group is stochastic terrorism.
Either way, it’s terrorism, driven by the state.
And I know very few people in politics will want to hear this, but the answer isn’t to stop protesting or to get Biden to act like protests are wrong.
The answer is to effectively and consistently tell the story of how BLM protestors are not the one being violent.
The answer is to effectively and consistently tell the story of how BLM protestors are not the one being violent.
BLM and M4BL are extremely good at organizing and moving the public. You saw that this summer. When the media narrative treats their peaceful demonstrations as inextricably linked with the violence being instigated by other parties, they are paving the way for fascist rhetoric.
That includes violence by individuals, white supremacist infiltrators, and state actors. Those engaged in these acts are discoverable, which happens often after the fact. But media reports lump protests and violence together in breaking news as if they are inextricable.
They are not. And acting as if state actors (at the event or exterior to it) bear no responsibility for inciting violence when that is absolutely the goal and the outcome is a severe abdication. And it isn’t enough to simply ask about whether they feel responsible.
They must be held responsible. If you report “protests, looting in third nights of unrest” you’re doing it wrong, in a dangerous way. We know inciting violence creates violence. We know that the state assaulting peaceful protestors incites riots. We have to call it that.
And we have to demand more of the media, in calling it that. We have to demand they do the work. Ceding this very obvious, easy thing will make it much harder to get it right about something more nuanced, like election results and / or election night.
And politically, we can’t say “everyone has the right to peaceful protest, but boy the riots have to stop” unless the very next thing out of our mouths is “so Trump must stop inciting violence, agents of the state must stop rioting, and white supremacy must be destroyed.”
Here @joelockhart is talking about the same thing, basically: https://twitter.com/joelockhart/status/1300066741029138432
Ben Collins has been on this beat for a while: https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1300072850691420166
None of these are my ideas or perspective alone, or even new. This is how propaganda, disinformation, and burgeoning proto-fascism always works. The main difference now is that the guy at the top isn’t even an ideologue. He just wants to keep doing crimes.
But everyone he’s inciting, encouraging, and weaponizing ARE ideologues, and they don’t care why they have this chance. They are just ecstatic to have the opportunity: to attack protestors, to spin up a race war, or to just be racist or violent or recreationally fascistic.
So: the media has to call this what it is, and so do campaigns, and so do we. If you give them this seemingly small piece of rhetorical ground - and you’ll hear pundits trying to do so all week - it is very bad.
They will use it, summarily, as a way to defacto outlaw protest.
They will use it, summarily, as a way to defacto outlaw protest.
A protest isn’t okay just because the local police or the president decide it is. That isn’t how it works in America.
Letting people aligned against those protests make those determinations is both un-American and fundamentally dangerous.
Letting people aligned against those protests make those determinations is both un-American and fundamentally dangerous.
We must hold those that attack protests or call for others to attack protests accountable. We have to call these incitements to violence what they are: terrorism. And the responsibility for the resulting violence must be attributed to those that’s incited it.
That starts with telling the story of what’s happening in objective reality correctly, and demanding that the rhetoric and narrative about what’s happening be accurate, and accurately reported, by the media and public figures.
On the crimes-as-motivation stuff, it is hard to do better than @sarahkendzior. On foreign ops and information war elements, I look to @wiczipedia and @noUpside for their excellent analysis. And @oneunderscore__ is terrific on domestic disinformation.
All of these interact.
All of these interact.
The anti-mask stuff and related protests are incitements to violence, too https://twitter.com/orlandosentinel/status/1300087670790434816
Look, David Frum gets it. David. Frum. https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/1300099381861867520
At no time should good faith or transparency be assumed by the media from people who only ever called the media the enemy, and lie with gleeful abandon.
