More nuttery at Berkeley
techstepgenr8tion
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All I can say to this - I really hope this crap stays contained to California. If ANTIFA's getting to the point of throwing fireworks, rocks, and bricks at anyone they disagree with and if they police stand down vigilantism is going to be the fallback (as you see in the top video). I really have to hope that with this devolving to fist-fights we might have some meaningful dialog on the official level as to what's breaking down on the law enforcement side, what the police need to be able to keep groups separated when it comes to this, etc. so that it doesn't happen again. IMHO if these people really start acting like children and worst comes to worst we might need to think about having Blackwater security for political events.
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Knowing little about it I went looking. Found this:
Opinion: Berkeley protesters just fell into the most obvious trap imaginable. Again
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion- ... story.html
The alt-right and conservative media will slice and dice this footage to show the moral depravity of progressives. Conservative politicians will use this to ends progressives would never endorse; they will make innocent people suffer while citing these acts of extraordinary naiveté. It is the most obvious trap imaginable, and we fell into it. Again.
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techstepgenr8tion
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I think whoever wrote that made a really big mistake in saying 'we' as if claiming that ANTIFA is somehow aligned with their own approved ideology - that or they're nutty enough to be in a political wing of something with similar ideas to what ANTIFA would espouse.
Probably just better to say have reasoned debate, if you don't like someone's rallies try to get them into a reasoned debate so that their intellectual vacuousness is exposed. I really don't know how that logic is assailable unless its a postmodernist who considers logic itself a baseless or groundless tool for oppression, at which point we're looking at a religion of nihilism and solipsism that's probably best handled through psychiatry.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
techstepgenr8tion
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Why have these pro-Trump rallies near the very liberal Berkley campus?
I think a better question might be asked as well here - ie. do we want places of so-called higher learning where particular opinions meet with violence from their opposition? Another question perhaps as well; if we green-light this type of intimidation here in how many other places are we automatically green-lighting it?
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
The start of that first video is intriguing. For the first few seconds there's just people everywhere beating the s**t out of each other. And then it just stops. Obviously there's still stuff going on at the front where we can't see and a brick comes flying in close to where the camera guy is, but I wonder what made them stop beating each other up at the start.
EDIT - Second viewing it looks like the mob caught a few of the other side and laid in some hits on them but were happy with that and not going any further.
Now, since an author's ideology has been mentioned, I also looked up the author of the article I posted.
She writes stuff like this;
Opinion: One group is responsible for America’s culture of violence, and it isn’t cops, black Americans, Muslims or rednecks. It’s men
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion- ... story.html
And for an occupation does;
https://journalism.berkeley.edu/student ... sa_warnke/
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techstepgenr8tion
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Admittedly I didn't read the article, just the blurb you posted and I was referring to that.
Read the very last line of the blurb you posted up front. I was referring to the comment "It is the most obvious trap imaginable, and we fell into it. Again.". I really don't think any sane person, unless they're an AntiFa themselves, wants to say 'we' in a way that encompasses AntiFa. I'm not saying she is that, I just don't think it was a wise choice of words.
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Biscuitman
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Everyone has gone full-on psycho, one side is as bad as the other here.
They aren't protesting for what they believe in, just to annoy the other side, it's all very childish.
This. What saddens me is that rational people can't see that they are being dragged into it. Why can't people of all political persuasions just dismiss these small groups for what they are, extremist groups at both far ends of the political spectrum. When less extreme folk start trying to use these incidents as a way of generalising about everyone that holds a different political view to them then they themselves have walked right into the trap.
techstepgenr8tion
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While I'd agree that people toward the center shouldn't start labeling each other over things like this I don't think that calling these small disconnected extremist groups is quite right either. There's a climate in various places that creates this, the extremists are the tip of a bigger iceberg but the whole iceberg needs to be considered. For example professors afraid to voice their opinions on the stifling of free speech do to what can or will be done to them, as guys like Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad seem to get emails from these sorts of professors all day long, that climate is a problem. Similarly if a white male teacher suggests that he's fourteen, black, and female and all of the students are afraid to disagree in any way there's a problem.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin