American Election

Just needed to put those bits together to show the dilemma and my unease with the situation.

So in the summer....after the first time that a protest turned from a peaceful gathering into a destructive riot......people knew that there were elements of the crowds who were angry, armed and potentially spoiling for a destruction.

If people were then subsequently encouraging the joining and escalation of the protests with terms such as "fight", "liberate", etc, etc, then aren't they at the very least doing something similar to Trump?

They knew their was the potential for violence and destruction (because those things had already happened) but used words that we now know can be contextualised as inciting that behaviour

Without looking at it through the prism of the race protests being right and the Trump supporters being wrong the behaviour and language behind it is difficult to accurately split.

 

Thats a matter for twitter really isn't it. Did any singular person wind up the BLM marchers the way donald trump has continually wound his own base up for four years? Did the BLM marchers go out looking for trouble? I would argue nobody went to those marches with the intention of causing violence, as they were anti police violence marches so it kind of defeats the point doesn't it. However I follow a lot of the qanon stuff and parler and all that crap, those people went to the capitol to do what they did regardless and that was always their goal. Bad faith actors. I would also say you're walking a fine line between questioning twitter's policy and seeming like an apologist for white supremacist terror as one or two others have on here.


I do also think you aren't being consistent yourself here - donald trump has broken twitters rules more than almost anyone else in the past four years and has gotten away with no punishment whatsoever because he's the president. if you want to see about inconsistently applying rules I'd start there.

 

Another one of the issues. I'm quite clearly questioning twitters policy and quite clearly saying the white supremacists who entered the Capitol were idiots and terrorists. The insinuation of any support for them is deeply insulting to be honest and undermines the debate.

The idea that nobody went on the BLM Marches went looking fot trouble is clearly unknowable. I would saynthat amongst such a large number of people the range of intentions would be mixed and the damage, destruction and death to an extent speaks for itself, not everyone who went on the marches was an angel. Don’t be an apologist for that. No one person was probably responsible but that still means that everyone involved was accountable.

Once again back on the Twitter rules. If he'd been banned for spreading disinformation and the final tweets were reflective if that then nobody would have had any complaints. Because they banned him for inciting violence and referenced tweets that used pretty standard language but required context to stretch to that is what causes the problem in consistency across the range of opinions.

 

I'm suprised you don't think that people were inciting trouble and violence with some of the BLM protests, majority peaceful but the minority peaceful which is surely the same as what we saw at that Capital. Standards clearly need to monitored and applied for both sides...

 

I've intentionally refrained from posting on this thread but that single line there is a prime example of why I can't take the majority of what you say seriously.

There's a good debate between the other two posters but your refusal to accept any kind of even minor negativity aimed at the BLM marches dilutes your opinion.

 

Has anyone else seen the leaked clip of the twitter CEO talking to his staff? Social media censorship on it's way!

 

Ive never said anything bad didnt happen at the marches, just that the overwhelming majority were peaceful which statistically they were. Its not that I dont accept any negativity aimed at it, I think whilst damage was done people make out its some kind of existential threat to everything when it just isn't and as soon as anything bad goes down a lot of people just engage in mass scale whataboutery with it

https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/ edit -this is my evidence for what I said

 

But the majority of the march on the day of the incident at the Capitol were peaceful.

 

I think violence and damage etc occurred in highly emotionally charged situations which were further riled by heavy handed policing in many cases, which particularly will have made people angry given what the demonstrations were about. I dont condone the response and have never condoned the response and the past threads of myself debating this subject at length with yourself and others when it happened will show that, but I can understand there will have been a lot of anger which is where there's a similarity to the capitol violence. However the cause and reason of people's anger is what makes comparisons to me apples and oranges. I said that because I don't think this riot was representative of wider right wing politics and theyre extremists who have no place in the debate, and whatabouting with blm marches to me just reads as not really willing to engage with what went on as opposed to actively condoning or supporting it, which I should have clarified better and I apologise for that.

For me it depends on how much you want to look at context around things. I think most of our society is actually quite well aligned in terms of right and wrong, so as long as the context of the whys and wherefore etc is clearly communicated most will understand the decisions, even if they don't agree. I don't think a decision agreeable to all is always possible in these sorts of subjects so the next best thing is if we all at least have a clear understanding of the thinking behind them.

 

Have you got a source I can read? If that was truly the case I'm happy to accept that, from my own reading they certainly weren't.

 

This right here is exactly my point.

It's viewed through the prism of whether you agree with the motives. This isn't what I believe. I believe that the repercussions and outlook should be exactly the same regardless of whether the people involved are of the same ideology as you.

I'm not whataboutering. I'm saying that both things happened and both things are wrong. The reaction to them by Twitter (and other internet companies) is different and long term that increases division and limits free speech.

 

Well they weren't identical events so why would they be, I don't think the BLM marches were terrorism whereas I do think these were which separates them. A lot of those crazies have been on doing something like that for a long time now and if the lawmakers hadn't been evacuated tis would be a very different discussion. You have to draw the line somewhere or those sorts of people continually get airtime and attention. Thats a big part of why what happened happened, because a lot of people like donald trump who have been very cynically encouraging the far right haven't been made accountable for that and now it's the biggest terror threat in the US.

 

The only distinction here between terrorism and rioting in this situation is where it occurred and that people in power were in direct danger.

As for the rest of it you're right but once again focusing on whether you agree with them or not rather than their words and actions.

So, lets get back to the details of what happened and draw exact parallels to try and get you to see my point.

Trump was banned because of the following words



Here are two Tweets from May that I found pretty simply. Both are from accounts that are still live.





This was a picture from the 29th - so before the second tweet had been published. It's obviously not an isolated picture from those nights and by this point 4 people were already dead (including one policeman that the Department of Homeland Security labeled as an act of domestic terrorism). A further 15 people would sadly follow.



"Revolution", "rage", "fire", "protest takes many forms", "invite to meet each night in whatever way we need"

If you're telling me - truly impartially - that the language used on the first tweets incites violence and is worthy of a ban - but the second tweets don't, then I genuinely don't know what context you're using.

 

https://eu.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/elections/presidential/2021/01/07/protest-leader-says-they-couldve-burned-capitol-ground-wednesday-washington-riot/6578925002/

A read of that suggests it was the minority that weren't peaceful

 

"Whataboutery" - another leftist term to defend/ignore their own similar indiscretions whilst attacking the very same indiscretions from the right wing.

Whatever happened to people ignoring political leanings and condemning the action for what it was/is rather than basing their opinion on which side of the political leaning the perpetrators are/were?

 

I've actually said above I don't see this as a left v right thing because I think these are a fringe group of extremists, which is also why I don't see comparisons to BLM as relevant because that's pretty clearly political as well, they're separate situations entirely.

 

He also starts repeating the proven false claims about election fraud according to the interviewer which means I already don't trust this persons judgement

@Aaron Baker If thats what he got banned for then thats patently ridiculous, if it was of a similar vein to what youve posted in the blm tweets then I don't think anyone would complain. He's said much more controversial stuff than that in the past and I would say telling people to liberate places is on a similar level to the blm tweets there, so whist this decision in itself is wrong, I imagine its more them dumping him at the first chance they could get than applying a weirdly inconsistent moral code

 

I wasn't aware that these kind of incitements were being bandied around with the BLM events. I still believe that the majority of the violence in the George Floyd protests was spontaneous, rather than premeditated, but there's no doubt in my mind that those tweets were incitements to violence.
I've no idea why those tweets weren't taken down and/or the accounts suspended, but it's my belief that they should have been. I can't accept a double standard on this - those tweets were irresponsible and dangerous in exactly the same way that Trump's were.
The only differences are that Trump's immeasurably greater profile meant they will have hit more people, and the assumption that we normally expect the POTUS to adhere to high standards of behaviour, not sink to the gutter like Trump repeatedly does.

 

Yep, those are what he got banned for. I took that screenshot straight from the Twitter explanation of his ban and I completely agree he's said worse things in the past. If they were banning him for consistent minor rule breaks then nobody could complained but that's not what occurred,

That's where the consistency issue becomes impossible. If that is the barometer of when people should be banned then how can that be applied fairly? Especially when the BLM statement are judged as completely fine.

 

And those Tweets were just from the official BLM account - If I'd done some proper digging into the more underground factions of the protests I'm sure I would be able to find much more numerous and explicit incitements. There will have been an element of spontaneity but it definitely indicates there was guidance and incitement.

But I agree with you, there is clearly a double standard and an inconsistency which is impossible to justify long term.