13 thoughts on “Holy Shit”

1. WOTD: "Fascism – Conservatives rally behind Rittenhouse, declare his killings justified"

   And one of the defining features of a fascist movement is an eagerness to celebrate redemptive, cleansing, or necessary violence; that is, violence against the movement's enemies, always defended as now-required because the normal laws of the state have not been able to contain the hated other, necessitating a more aggressive, and more definitive, violent purge.

   Log in to Reply

   1. The #WhiteProsperityJesus crowd is getting in on the action: 

      Christian Crowdfunding Site Raising Money For Kenosha Killer Kyle Rittenhouse

      Domestic Terrorism For Jesus: The Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo is hosting a fundraising drive for alleged domestic terrorist Kyle Rittenhouse after legitimate crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe refused to do so.

       

      Log in to Reply

      1. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

         Log in to Reply

         1. Oh, yes they do, and they're just as evil as that little monster.

            Log in to Reply

2. WOTD2 from the Guardian: "White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says"

   This week, police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, faced intense scrutiny over their response to armed white men and militia groups gathered in the city amid demonstrations by Black Lives Matter activists and others over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black father of three who was left paralyzed after being shot in the back. On Wednesday, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who appeared to consider himself a militia member and had posted “blue lives matter” content, was arrested on suspicion of murder after the fatal shooting of two protesters.

   Activists in Kenosha say police there have responded aggressively and violently to Black Lives Matter demonstrators, while doing little to stop armed white vigilantes. Supporting their claims is at least one video taken before the shooting that showed police tossing bottled water to what appeared to be armed civilians, including one who appeared to be the shooter, the AP noted: “We appreciate you being here,” an officer said on loudspeaker.

   Police also reportedly let the gunman walk past them with a rifle as the crowd yelled for him to be arrested because he had shot people, according to witnesses and video reviewed by the news agency.

   The Kenosha sheriff, David Beth, has said the incident was chaotic and stressful.

   German told the Guardian on Wednesday: “Far-right militants are allowed to engage in violence and walk away while protesters are met with violent police actions.” This “negligent response”, he added, empowers violent groups in dangerous and potentially lethal ways: “The most violent elements within these far-right militant groups believe that their conduct is sanctioned by the government. And therefore they’re much more willing to come out and engage in acts of violence against protesters.”

   Log in to Reply

3. WOTD3 from VOX: "Why police encouraged a teenager with a gun to patrol Kenosha’s streets"

   How can we understand this behavior? Why do the police in Kenosha seem perfectly fine with armed militia members patrolling the streets — behavior that, just minutes later, ended with two people dead? Shouldn’t police want to be the only ones with guns?

   …

   A recent paper by University of Arizona sociologist Jennifer Carlson offers some insight into the police’s behavior. She conducted dozens of hours of interviews about guns with 79 police chiefs in three states — Michigan, California, and Arizona — to try to better understand the way police see armed civilians. 

   Carlson found that police leaders tended to see armed civilians as allies, maybe even informal deputies — provided they fit a set of racially coded descriptors.

   “Police chiefs articulated a position of gun populism based on a presumption of racial respectability,” Carlson writes. “‘Good guys with guns’ were marked off as responsible in ways that reflected white, middle-class respectability.”

   …

   In her research, Carlson distinguishes between two kinds of attitudes police have toward civilian ownership of firearms.

   The first, “gun militarism,” sees armed individuals as a threat to blue lives. “It favors a state monopoly on legitimate violence, whereby police both protected and expanded their own access to firearms while policed and delimited gun access among the racialized, urban populations targeted by the War on Crime,” she writes.

   At other times, the police chiefs she interviewed embraced “gun populism”: the idea that “rather than a threat to stability (as under gun militarism), armed civilians may be imagined as generative of social order.” Gun populism is an “embrace of ‘the people’ and a deep suspicion of elites, especially elite lawmakers who aim to regulate gun access in the United States.” In essence, it’s the National Rifle Association view of gun rights.

   …

   These two frames might seem contradictory. How can you believe both that widespread gun ownership poses a threat to your officers and oppose regulations that aim to limit it?

   Typically, officers got around this dilemma by reference to legal and illegal uses of firearms. The chiefs supported throwing the book at armed criminals, believing that anyone who uses a gun in commission of a crime should face serious jail time. But gun ownership itself should be permitted and maybe even encouraged.

   But here’s the thing: When they talked about gun-wielding criminals, the racialized nature of the language was unmistakable. The criminals they were worried about were described as “urban terrorists,” “gangbangers,” and “illegal immigrants”; their descriptions of respectable gun owners had a very different racial valence.

    

   Log in to Reply

   1. "Gun populism" is just the old German militarist ideal of "Das Volk im Waffen" (The People in Arms) first introduced by Colmar von der Goltz in 1883. The People in Arms, and only the People in Arms, are the citizenry. Everyone else is a threat that the People in Arms must fight.

      As you point out Park Hill, there's no contradiction because it's the "People" in arms as a nationalist concept that matters. Those who are not "the right People" shouldn't be armed, and all those who are not armed clearly aren't the right People.

      Log in to Reply

      1. I don’t want to have to start wearing body armor when protesting, but it might be necessary, unless the police stop coddling the white supremacists. It’s the modern day version of lynching – an act intended to intimidate dissenters, to kill or injure them, and to take them out of action. This is part of the “Race War” Trump wants to cultivate to stay in power.

         A car is the vigilante’s weapon of choice during daytime protests, though, and body armor won’t help with that.

         Jennifer Watson, who ran down protesters at the Capitol in May, was finally charged with assault and reckless driving. It’s still in court. The guy who drove a Jeep through a crowd of protesters on 225 is still free and his case is “under investigation. “

         But 5 drivers in Colorado have hit or attempted to run down protesters, and over 40 incidents of this type happened nationwide, according to Ari Weil, a researcher from the University of Chicago. Weil has studied 84 ramming incidents, in which a car struck pedestrian protesters. 
          

         In the 40 other civilian cases, including the Jeep incident in Aurora, Weil is waiting for more information from the legal system to determine motive. But court proceedings aren’t always guaranteed. So far, 36 civilian drivers of the 77 have been charged: Two with attempted murder, three with hit-and-runs, 17 with assault, and 18 with reckless endangerment or driving. Two assault charges also came with hate crime charges..

         The “Run Them Over” message became popular in far-right circles in 2015 and 2016, Weil says, after a few drivers struck Black Lives Matter protesters, as well as Indigenous peoples blocking the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. After right-wing extremist James Alex Fields deliberately drove into a crowd protesting the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, sympathizers, and some police officers, ( my emphasis)were scrutinized for spreading violent memes containing phrases like “Black Lives Splatter.” A ProPublica investigation later found that, while plannin the Unite the Right rally, white supremacists had made comments about using cars to run over opponents. Some people, including certain officers, have continued engaging in such language. Keith Wrede, a sergeant with the Colorado Springs Police Department, was temporarily suspended after using a fake profile to comment “KILL THEM ALL” and “KILL EM ALL” on a livestream of a protest in late June. CSPD Chief Vince Niski wrote a letter to the public calling the comments “unprofessional, distasteful, and not reflective of our department,” but defended his decision not to outright fire Wrede, saying he did not want to deprive the community of a good officer over an error in judgement.

         Log in to Reply

4. How and why is a 17 year old kid "peacefully defending businesses?" Adult business owners aren't capable of doing that themselves?

   Maybe the Dudster can tell us why a Kenosha cop saw the need to "dry gulch" an unarmed black guy with seven shots in the back?

   Log in to Reply

   1. Anything else aside, he was 17 and illegally posssed a gun. He was not a law abiding gun owner.

      Log in to Reply

5. Dudley Brown needs to get a goddamn job. Maybe he'd be slightly less sociopathic if he made his own way in the world and contributed something of value to society instead of sponging off the fruits of others' labor.

   So then:

   – Heavily armed right wingers show up at a protest site in Kenosha, WI, ostensibly to protect property.

   – Kenosha police welcome the wingers with open arms, voicing encouragement over loudspeakers and passing out bottled water. (All caught on video.)

   – Kenosha police intentionally herd protestors toward the heavily armed wingers. (Also caught on video.)

   – The inevitable happens.

   – People in the crowd point out the shooter to Kenosha cops, who let the shooter go on about his business.

   – Kenosha police chief issues a public statement essentially characterizing the shooter as a plucky problem-solver.

   The answer, of course, is more money, more armored vehicles, more automatic weapons and more general military accoutrements for the Kenosha police. And, of course, the most important component of all — absolute, unqualified freedom to fuck with non-whites in any way the Kenosha police goddamn jolly well please.

   Log in to Reply

6. Wisconsin abolished the death penalty in 1853. Too bad — Dudley’s hero might have not have ambushed three men for his evening’s entertainment if he’d known it might cost him. Of course, he’s still 17, so SCOTUS probably wouldn’t allow frying the murderer anyway.

   As it is, kid, don’t pick up the soap.  Your next 60 years in prison ain’t gonna be much fun.

   Log in to Reply

   1. Let's hope those years are absolutely miserable.

      Log in to Reply