Comment by toomuchtodo
9 years ago
I'm cringing at the cognitive dissonance. Every major silicon valley tech company helps China oppress it citizens on an unparalleled scale to allow them to continue to operate in the country, but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle, a hate crime) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off.
Edit: This country isn't getting fixed without empathy, understanding, and compromise on a national scale. Without that, we're all just yelling how lovely the moral high ground is when we're all wallowing in the mud.
We might agree on a few points but trying to clarify that the murder wasn't a terrorist attack, that it was just "unplanned murder with a vehicle", makes me want to re-examine my opinions on the points where we agree.
The murderer may not have woken up that morning and pulled out a binder full of detailed notes on vehicular murder from under his bed, but he did not accidentally drive into that crowd of people. When he got into the car and plowed into that group, he did so because he stopped regarding them as fellow human beings, because he disagreed with their opinions on some issues, and because he hated them.
It was an act of terrorism, identical in purpose and outcome to other acts of terrorism in the UK.
You make it sound like the facts are known and the arrested has already been convicted. I have every suspicion that the events happened as you describe with murderous intent, but will wait on the criminal court's decision.
EDIT: I struggled to figure out how to include that the horrific events happened in less than a minute.
I'm sorry, is it empathy to agree with folks that, "yes" it is okay to kill? Should we not call that act of violence and act of violence?
This seems to me like a category error that you're making here.
It's possible to be upset about treatment of citizens in China but also strongly disagree with racially motivated violence in the United States. People walking around with torches chanting blood and soil art literal, not figurative, Nazis. They have a very clear agenda. That agenda claimed a life and injured many others. Daily Stormer then supported it. This doesn't seem like a very grey zone to me.
I'm also not entirely sure that I agree with your characterization of the Chinese government has a fascist government. There are degrees of Badness in the world.
> I'm sorry, is it empathy to agree with folks that
I may not be able to understand where White Supremists are coming from, but I fully appreciate their right to free speech. I also don't understand people who prioritize limiting speech, but respect their opinion. That's the empathy I refer to.
You yourself have called it a position of hatred and spontaneous and fatal violence. A spontaneous violence that is unrepentant upon it's exposure, that claims it has to kill to make it's point and that those who stand against it deserve killing.
And not even the cold, calculated murder of widespread cultural warfare which you yourself demand we awknowledged uniquely. It's the unstable and white hot murder of people so indignant at the existence of opposition that one spontaneously murdered one and injured over a dozen more as his fellows cheered him on.
This is all what you've agreed they are. And it sums up to a picture of danger. I think you understand them quite well.
Ignoring the issue about calls for violence which are not always protected, how has their right to free speech been affected? CloudFlare is not the government and the first amendment doesn't generally obligate a private company to provide service. They're still free to speak all they want, run their own servers, etc.
> I may not be able to understand where White Supremists are coming from, but I fully appreciate their right to free speech.
These two facts are connected. Another example would be not being fully sure what bleach exactly is, but being all for drinking it.
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> but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle, a hate crime) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off.
There's no "unplanned murder". Intent, and (depending on jurisdiction) premeditation are requirements for a murder charge.
Terrorism is defined as "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims".
So we have three requirements:
- "unlawful": Intentionally driving a car into a crowd is obviously unlawful
- "violence": yes, equally obvious
- "in the pursuit of political aims": He was a participant in a white supremacist march, and drove into a group of people opposing his politics.
> There's no "unplanned murder". Intent, and (depending on jurisdiction) premeditation are requirements for a murder charge
Generally, the only real requirement for a charge is an affirmative response by a Grand Jury. Intent is certainly not a requirement before levying a charge, which is why it is so common that charges levied do not merit conviction. The prosecution needs to prove intent in order to get the charge to stick.
You seem to have conflated 'charge' and 'conviction' here, and are then using that conflation to prop up your argument that intent has been proven, when it has not.
I have no personal insight (or any insight really) as to whether or not the driver did have an intent, but being charged with a crime for which intent is a requirement to convict does not mean that they will be able to prove intent, or that any such intent was present at the time.
It might just as easily have been a prosecutor who wanted to send a strong message by imposing strong charges that may or may not stick.
So you're saying it was wrong to assume 9/11 to be a terror attack before 2006?
Because until then, nobody had been convicted, and, by your logic, everyone would have been obligated to act with the assumption that no crime had been committed, right?
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> but one "terrorist attack" (unplanned murder with a vehicle) occurs in a state in the US and suddenly the gloves are off.
> According to the Government Accountability Office of the United States, 73% of violent extremist incidents that resulted in deaths since September 12, 2001 were caused by right wing extremists groups.[41][42]
73% of incidents?
This is pure sleight of hand meant to deceive.
When incident can be defined arbitrarily and possibly include both a gun massacre and a spray painted swastika as equal events, this stat is incredibly deceptive.
What's the ratio when you count deaths? I'm on mobile but iirc it's about 90% killed by Islamic terrorists.
> What's the ratio when you count deaths? I'm on mobile but iirc it's about 90% killed by Islamic terrorists.
53% Islamist, 47% (other, as Islamist actually fit this description too) far-right, 0% other. (So the ratio is closer to 1:1 than the 9:1 you suggest)
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/aug/16/...
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It seems hugely disingenuous to leave sept 11 from that.
9/11 was a foreign in origin. The GAO and the FBI / DHS risk assessments are domestic extremism.
>unplanned murder with a vehicle
Hold up here.
Substantiate your claim, where does it come from, how do you quantify it?
On it's face you seem to be agreeing with the Nazis that he just 'accidentally' gained ramming speed into the demonstrators his group was attacking earlier.
You wouldn't be doing that would you?
> This country isn't getting fixed without empathy, understanding, and compromise on a national scale
They are nazis. We do not compromise with nazis. The only understanding necessary is that they are nazis.