What we have seen conclusive proof of tonight is that police are happy to work with or at least to allow fascist mobs to storm the government, while they are willing to maim and kill leftist protesters against police brutality at the slightest signs of provocation.
The fact that a woman was shot by police in last night's protest is a tragedy, as all human life is precious. But a democracy can't bow down to mob rule for fear of violence. The protesters should have never even been allowed to get near the Capitol building while Congress was in session, and in that case perhaps this loss of life could have also been avoided.
Police brutality and the police culture of violence before other solutions is also something that has been discussed in leftist circles the entire year. It is a culture that must be changed, which will surely be a monumental task, if it even is attempted. Still, the alternative is not simply allowing mobs to attack federal institutions with impunity.
It's all the worse that the right is trying to paint her death as police brutality.
We need to be clear, she was shot while trying to force her way through a barricaded door when law enforcement was trying to safely get elected officials and other innocent people out of harm's way, and she was only shot after multiple warnings.
I fully agree that the terrorists shouldn't have been allowed into the building, but it happened, and given that, if this isn't a textbook example of a situation where law enforcement was justified in using lethal force, I'm not sure what is.
In case you have forgotten, last year saw literal insurrectionist leftist communes that took over parts of cities, and were left unsuppressed for weeks. This is definitely quite an escalation, but to me, a European looking from the outside in, it looks anything but unilateral.
How are protesters against police brutality 'insurrectionists'? Were they trying to stop an election from being certified? Were they trying to even overthrow elected officials?
Not to mention, the largest difference is that during the BLM protests you saw daily police brutality against the protesters from day one, with tear gas, rubber bullets, etc. You did NOT see police taking selfies on the steps of the buildings they were supposed to keep the protesters out of.
But you also saw police officers in demonstrations of solidarity (either photo-ops or sincere).
I think if you compare a single event with a large number of different events, you’ll find examples where one is worse by some measure and others where one is better. I don’t really want to comment on the recent events or the validity of the argument (or it’s spirit), but I think it probably isn’t reasonable to compare a single event with the aggregate of many different events.
Are you referring to the Red House? You believe that a fenced in house that was sometimes called an 'autonomous zone' (as far as I can tell, most often by people outside - the mayor of Portland for example apologized for calling it such) was closer to an insurrection than people seeking to overturn the legal results of the election entering the Capitol building while congress was in session?
Even if the people defending the Red House did call it an autonomous zone, their only real demands were to protect the livelihood of one family. They did not seek to expand, they did not try to gain political power from it,they did nothing that I would actually view as a significant attempt to challenge the authority of the state beyond a very specific case.
Even there, I understand the name "Autonomous Zone" was only used by the people occupying the area between June 8 and June 13 - afterwards they decided to call it an "Organized Protest" instead. They also never challenged the authority of the state itself (except for police), and all of their demands were social, not political. They eventually peacefully dismantled most/all of the area anyway.
I fail to see how this can be presented as comparable in gravity with people attacking the Capitol building with the intent of overturning the result of the federal election.
The fact remains that BLM related protests in 2020 were handled much more harshly than this. If this were a BLM protest, not only would the protestors have been all arrested and/or killed, but the media would be treating it like a national emergency.
And it's not just the fact that the police allowed it to happen or that the military was not asked to intervene until way too late.
It's also the alarmingly not-alarmed media response. What happened to "thugs" or "rioters" or "enemy combatants"?
Are we watching the same news channels? They were called "terrorists" on several cable news channels, and (fairly) "insurrectionists" on just about every news channel. I also heard "thugs" more than once. I heard the event as a whole called a "sacrilege".
The fact that a woman was shot by police in last night's protest is a tragedy, as all human life is precious. But a democracy can't bow down to mob rule for fear of violence. The protesters should have never even been allowed to get near the Capitol building while Congress was in session, and in that case perhaps this loss of life could have also been avoided.
Police brutality and the police culture of violence before other solutions is also something that has been discussed in leftist circles the entire year. It is a culture that must be changed, which will surely be a monumental task, if it even is attempted. Still, the alternative is not simply allowing mobs to attack federal institutions with impunity.