An open thread to discuss the shootings in Dallas. What’s been reported so far: 5 officers were killed and 6 others wounded when multiple shooters opened fire on police at a BlackLivesMatter protest in Dallas. Three suspects are in custody; a fourth reportedly killed himself during a standoff with police. The police say he was spouting apocalyptic rhetoric and claimed more police deaths were to come.
More details here.
Whoever the shooters are, whatever justifications they’ve cooked up, this is a massacre, an act of terrorism. Abusive cops need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But vigilante “justice” isn’t justice. These officers did not deserve this. Not only that, but the shootings will make it harder to fight the police abuses that have left so many innocent black men (and black boys, and black women) dead.
No trolls, no MRAs allowed in this thread. Anyone who justifies the shootings in any way, whether they’re sincere or a troll, will be banned and their comments will be deleted. Please email me to let me know if you see any inappropriate comments.
I’m scared.
Please, somebody wake me up.
@EJ: Yeah. I was expecting it; Occam’s Razor solution was always going to be someone sick of this shit and lashing out.
Haven’t felt this sick about the state of the world since the Abu Ghraib photos came out.
@EJ
You and me both, brother
I’ve spent some time today reading most of the Swedish news coverage of the Dallas shootings. American commenters may or may not be interested in how various foreign media outlets react to these events.
Our biggest newspaper is treating this as a somewhat expected event, and drives home the point that segregation in the US is worse than most Swedes can imagine. Aftonbladet’s veteran political analyst Wolfgang Hansson expressed that he’s surprised nothing like this has happened sooner, considering the escalation of violent rhetoric and actual violence. He goes on to say that black people in the US have “worse schools, worse jobs, worse opportunities in general” and top of that “racially motivated police violence”. Aftonbladet is considered politically left of center, or social democrat.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article23141464.ab
Magnus Falkehed wrote a piece in the right of center tabloid Expressen, lamenting the likelihood that the aftermath of the shooting will increase polarization and militarization of American society, as well as undermine the Black Lives Matter movement. He also reluctantly predicts that gun sales will go up, and more violence will follow.
http://www.expressen.se/geo/magnus-falkehed/mordarna-raserade-allt-som-demonstranterna-kampade-for/
Political columnist and USA correspondent Michael Winiarski, with the right of center Dagens Nyheter, attacked what he calls “the culture of violence” in America. He was strongly critical of the Republican narrative and obstructionism. He focused on the fact that the GOP has rejected all discussion of gun control while engaging in an openly racist rhetoric throughout Obama’s presidency. Winiarski also dismissed the conservative idea that more guns would solve the problem, pointing out that the murdered police officers were of course armed.
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/michael-winiarski-nagot-slut-pa-valdskulturen-syns-inte-till/
Firmly conservative Svenska Dagbladet acknowledged the racial aspect, but somewhat downplayed it in favor of focusing on gun culture. New York correspondent Erik Bergin wrote that 40% of those killed by American police are black men, who constitute only 6% of the total population. He moved on to describe American gun fetishism as “difficult to understand” and “deeply ingrained in the American soul”. He specifically identified “the idea that gun violence can be a solution to any problem, or an accepted way of protesting” as dangerous in combination with Republican paranoia and hate-mongering. He also criticized the mindset that gun culture is justified by the constant presence of various nebulous, existential threats. Bergin’s piece started out with a hopeful expectation that the country would finally be able to see the link between these shootings and general societal problems, but ended in a pessimistic conclusion that more polarization and escalation of the violent rhetoric is more likely, considering Trump is the Republican nominee for president.
http://www.svd.se/usa-maste-hantera-flera-samhallsproblem-pa-samma-gang/om/skottdramat-i-dallas
Nothing good can come of this because in order for things to change, people in general would have to examine WHY it happened and nothing is more heretical in US society than suggesting something could be blowback against the nation, the military or the police. Just bringing up the subject raises the specter that the speaker is somehow justifying the act that is being discussed. It’s like in the run up to and the early days of the second Gulf War, it was nearly impossible to mention being against it without having to firmly establish that you had no desire to spit on American soldiers.
(The ultimate lesson from Vietnam was that the US needed its own Dolchstoßlegende – stab in the back legend – so that we could claim we were never actually defeated in war.)
Another shooting in TN.
@Imaginary petal : some frenchpapers news and site have the same tune of “in the USA it’s worse than anything you can imagine”.
Given that discrimination by cops is commonplace in France, either the USA are far, far, far worse than I can imagine, or the guys writing that are disconnected from the reality of poor cities in France.
An interesting thing I have read is someone pointing out that one of the main justification for gun fetishist is to be able to fight back the government in case of abuse ; hence one of the factor for thoses cop killing is, in his mind, the NRA and republican 2nd amendment fetishists. He scoffed at the idea that thoses same group would actually acknowledge the connection.
Posting this is the Open Thread, because it feels inappropriate in the DOTR thread.
I watched UnicornRiot’s LiveStream coverage of the police cleanup of the site of the Philando Castile shooting, and the subsequent protest at the Governor’s mansion.
At the site of the shooting, there was a lot of screaming about “pigs!” and just general, nasty dehumanization — directed at people who had done nothing wrong (that the people protesting knew of) other than choose to be a police officer. Being Minnesota, many of the people doing so were white.
I bit my tongue in the Antifa thread, when a poster there replied to David by telling him that it wasn’t his place as a “white boy” to criticize minorities who don’t subscribe to non-violence. To me, there was a disturbing amount of support for that sentiment in that thread. It felt like the majority of the comments were on the side of “don’t criticize, stand in solidarity”.
The poster suggested reading Ward Churchill’s “Pacifism as Pathology” — to “correct” David’s mistaken impression that it was his place to criticize violence as a means of protest, and to “call liberals out” for doing the same.
The allegations were clear: white people holding up MLK and non-violent protest as the better path are siding with the oppressors, by telling black people to “curl into a ball” and “take it”.
And there was just as much support for not criticizing this perspective than there was criticism of it, perhaps because in that setting, it had the benefit of being wrapped in what appears to be a seemingly widely held belief here that white supremacists should not have freedom of speech, or freedom to publicly assemble. Cyberwulf was one of the biggest cheerleaders of this idea, and many agreed with them.
Well, I am not biting my tongue any more. The people who walked across the Edmund Pettus bridge and were savagely beaten and set upon by dogs were hardly “curling into a ball”. Nor were the white people who joined in the SCLC side of the Civil Rights movement, and who were killed alongside black activists by the KKK for their trouble, behaving in a racist manner. And I am not being racist by saying to a black person that it is absolutely my place to criticize Malcolm X, Ward Churchill, and the ideology of violence, and to prefer methods of nonviolence. Let it not be said that the people who walked across that bridge weren’t angry enough.
I will fully admit that, as a country, we didn’t deserve Martin Luther King. And we still have not paid the racial debts that are owed. In some ways, things have gotten worse. Right-wing media lump the violent bad actors in with the non-violent protestors. (See the TMOC who were chanting “What do we want! Dead cops!” that got lumped in with BLM during the protests in NYC after the Michael Brown shooting, even though Trayvon’s family condemned them.) Social media allows the most dedicated race supremacists to dominate the conversation, rather than the people who put the most thought into their words. It can be tempting to throw your hands up and say, “might as well be violent!” But it is important to see that this is, in fact, giving up. That decision is not an act of strength, but an act of surrender.
Virulent racists are gonna be racist. But it’s for everyone else in our society that we must be vigilant in condemning the calls to violence in stark language. The idea that MLK didn’t have harsh words for rioting and violence because he explained the depths of despair from which it came is a bad one. The latter does not imply the former. His entire philosophy was built around non-violence and the absolute rejection of responding to oppression with violent resistance. He preached it and lived it, unwaveringly, until the day he was killed. His life, and his death, were all the more powerful for it.
We criticize the right-wing all of the time for their rhetoric that seems like it could be written by ISIS itself, and rightly so. We need to be equally, unequivocally critical of rhetoric that suggests that non-violent protest is “siding with the oppressor”. And we need to call out the othering of police for what it is. It’s not okay to lump them all together as one monolithic block because there are problematic attitudes (sometimes outright racist) among police. There are also problematic attitudes in Muslim-majority countries and Muslim communities. The more othering the language used to describe the problem of terrorism, or the problem of racial bias in policing, the worse and more intrenched those attitudes get. And at the end of the day, most people of both groups are just ordinary people. (Are police othered as badly as Muslims? Generally, no. But at the same time, they have been the victims of indiscriminate, targeted violence in response to both Michael Brown, and now Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Moreover, they are called “pigs” by a not insignificant percentage of people just for putting on the uniform. That black woman cop in Ohio who was screaming mad about Sterling and Castile? She falls under that othering, too, just as much as my neighbor, who was a SWAT member, and who thinks immigrants and liberals are destroying the country.)
It is true that black people have to live with the reality that, before BLM, there was very little discussion about how their lives were treated as disposable by police. “The talk” is a real thing. The sense it gives black people that they are not full citizens is powerful, and “white” America needs to understand it better. There will not be a positive peace until America understands the point of Between the World and Me.
But make no mistake about it: pacifism, not violence, changed America’s course. “White” America woke up not because they were scared of being killed, but because they were becoming scared of who they were. Pacifism awoke the moral consciousness of the country. And it did so because there is an enormous gulf between being willing to die for something you believe in, and being willing to kill for it. The former takes courage; the latter does not.
I know this is long, and emotional. I guess I’m emotional because I’m scared. I’m scared because I have no faith that anyone on the right will take a step towards peace. I’m scared because it feels like the portion of the left that has said “fuck it” to non-violence is growing. Peace has always been the burden of those of us on the left. It isn’t fair. But it is the sad truth that we are the ones who must always be stronger, and who must condemn violence as a means to peace in the strongest possible language.
It falls on us to decide if we want to let the world burn on principle, or stand on an even higher principle, and walk across that bridge.
@littleknown
I think you are almost entirely correct. Thank you for that comment.
All the guns. Take away all the guns. No civilians, no militias. You want to murder each other? Use spoons.
Canada can send peacekeepers.
@Numerobis : while it will help, I don’t think it will be enough.
I mean, the number of gun alone don’t seem to explain the american problem. The culture itself need to change.
@littleknown, FWIW, I don’t think there’s as much support for the views of cyberwulf et al as you think. The person who made the “white boys” comment has only made a handful of comments here; I banned cyberwulf today for justifying violence; cyberwulf also got a lot of pushback from other commenters here.
I don’t think yelling “pig!” at cops necessarily accomplishes anything, but I’m not about to tone police people for having that anger either. People have damn good reason to be angry. Of course there are good police officers, but they all too often close ranks around the bad ones. I abhor the attack in Dallas, of course and would never condone any kind of violent retaliation, but I can’t say I have any spare fucks to give about cops being called pigs either. Maybe if the criminal justice system (at all levels, not just the law enforcement side) had done something about all the systemic racism, classism, and ableism sooner, people wouldn’t be this angry.
I’m sure any day now we’ll be hearing about how this lone wolf had mental problems.
@David
I think I could have worded it better — in that thread, it just seemed like there was a lot of “well, I don’t totally agree, but I can see how it’s not my place to criticize violence from marginalized groups”. I might have read it wrong.
I also think it’s important that if we lay a portion of the blame for the Orlando shooting on America’s problem with homophobia and othering queer people (and absolutely, we are correct to do so), then we must also be vigilant in correcting othering language when it comes to police.
@IP
Thanks for the cross-section of opinions from Sweden.
I have to say that after a little more scanning of various reactions, I have more hope that the ghoulish people David covered in the DOTR post are more disconnected from conservative America than they realize.
When I saw Lea’s mention of another shooting in Tennessee, and Googled it, I was surprised by what I found at the website Redstate.
The following article is currently their most popular: The Uncomfortable Reason Why It Came To This In Dallas Yesterday
It includes statements like this:
The whole essay is really quite decent, and surprising. The comments section is what it is, but the article is nonetheless the most popular on the site.
Then there’s this article, currently #3: Trevor Noah Makes a Valid Point About Police Brutality
It starts with an ugly comment, but it’s still not what I expected. What I saw at RedState was that they still have a pretty nasty hangup about gun control (the article “Paul Ryan’s Remarks are Everything Obama’s Weren’t” was disappointing), but just the existence and popularity of those other two articles gave me some hope.
I’m sure the folks at Breitbart would call them cuckservatives, though. (Sigh.)
@wwth
But it’s not all cops that close ranks. And the ones who do speak out put a lot at risk. The closing rank problem is exacerbated by the pressure of police unions, but I will absolutely agree that it is a problem.
Even still, the fact remains that “pigs” is really dehumanizing. That kind of language has a good deal to do with someone deciding that any cop can legitimately be killed. You won’t condone violent retaliation, but you will condone the language that legitimizes it?
I’m not talking about a family member who has just lost somebody, and is referring to the person who killed them. Any media outlet that latches on to the comments of someone directly affected by police violence, and holds that up as evidence of hatred of police, is disgusting.
I’m talking about the use of “pigs” to refer to all police, any time there is a police shooting that looks to be murder, by people unrelated to the victim. I’m talking about the use of “pigs” because all police are held responsible for not solving the problem of racism in policing. That black mother of five in Ohio, screaming at her fellow officers to take off their uniforms and put on a hood if they can’t do the job, whose voice was breaking as she described the reason she decided to work in the poor black community rather than the rich, mostly white suburbs? If “pigs” is okay as a means of protest (not a means of expressing grief in the heat of the moment), then that label falls on her, too. And her kids could be just as motherless as the kids in Dallas are fatherless, for just as bad of a reason.
If a Muslim commits an act of terrorism, we quite rightly “tone police” anyone who isn’t a direct victim who lays the blame at the feet of all Muslims. We quite rightly would be appalled if someone called all Muslims *insert dehumanizing slur here* in response.
I don’t use that example to suggest they are the same. The problem of police brutality is more systemic. But the affect of dehumanizing language is no less deadly. The fact that it is deadly for police, and the fact that it exacerbates the problem for the victims of police brutality, are both reasons to criticize it, in and of themselves.
Littleknown,
The difference between the police and Muslims is that the police are a group that has power and privilege and uphold systems of oppression. Muslims are a group that is marginalized in countries where Islam is not the dominant religion. Your argument is a little bit like when MRAs say that a woman fearing violence from men is like white people believing black people are dangerous.
My argument is that calling humans beings animals, whether it’s pigs, cockroaches, or anything else, takes away their humanity and encourages violence against them.
It is wrong whether they are a marginalized group, or not. Violent language leads to violence. It is wrong for that reason alone; but it is doubly wrong because violence supports systems of oppression and the powerful.
Good police; police that get things; police that care — they will become an evermore diminishing population the more we lump all police as one, and the more we consent to dehumanizing language as valid.
That is all I am trying to get across. That is where the similarities lie. You want to do ISIS’s work for them? Treat all Muslims as if they are responsible for the sins of the few. Treat the ones who try to explain why very few Muslims are terrorists as if they are simply apologists who don’t care about the victims of terrorism. Use dehumanizing language to take away the gray zone.
You want to do the bad cops’ and the bad politicians’ work for them, drown out the voices of reform, and uphold the status quo? Treat all cops as if they are responsible for the sins of the few. Treat any who try to explain where progress is being made, or why it is not being made as fast as we would like, as if they are just apologists for the bad actors. Use dehumanizing language to make any cop who does take a stand for justice look like a fool in the eyes of their peers. Take away the gray zone for the voices who are our best hope for change.
That woman officer from Ohio? She’s more common than we think. Still a minority, yes. But forever a minority, and her voice forever silent, if we decide that “pigs” is acceptable, because of anger.
The anger is legitimate. That doesn’t mean that the dehumanizing language, and lumping all cops together, are okay.
@ Imaginary Petal
That was an interesting collection of outsider observations. I can’t speak for anyone else, but hearing diverse opinions from outside the US is welcome. Often it seems that other countries may have to care a great deal about the US and its politics, but many Americans don’t believe they have to think or care too much about other nations.
@ Leah
Where in TN?
@ Thread
The cycle of violence is disturbing: racist cops murder black people, a few black people lash out at the cops by killing them, which puts the cops on edge, meanwhile the oppression of black people continues. Plus, everyone in the minority group is treated with suspicion, BLM is further demonized, and the distrust between the public and cops increases. Sometimes it appears as if everyone in the US who’s paying attention is living in fear.
Tangent to the events in Dallas: the lies and disinformation out there spread faster than they can disproved.
I’m sure users of this site know about the killing of Alton Sterling. Anti-BLM folks, who are having a field day with the horrific events in Dallas, are trying to make his arrest record relevant, but it’s not. How ever it might or might not complicate his character, the cops only did what they did to Sterling because he was black. He was unarmed. Meanwhile, here are 8 examples of white people pointing guns at cops and not getting shot. Oh! But did you know that Sterling maybe did or maybe didn’t pose with guns with his kids? Sure, white parents do the same, but that’s wholesome white people! /s
In other anti-BLM news, there’s (another) conspiracy theory around Deray McKesson. Despite what Twitter right wingers are saying, he is not planning a “summer of chaos” with Loretta Lynch.
The cops killed and wounded in Dallas didn’t deserve to be shot. All the shooters achieved is making people trust BLM less and become much more likely to believe the lies and conspiracies.
@littleknown
I knew I was giving you the side eye for a reason…
^This shit right here? That’s some old bullshit. That bullshit is so old, it has a name: ‘the Ferguson Effect’. It’s bullshit. Cops don’t become bad cops cos people say bad things about them. And if they did, you can’t really say they ever cared. Fuck em, they don’t deserve the badge anyway
Here’s the deal, littleknown. You’re not very good at this. Ya know, communicating ideas. I’m not either, so I’m cutting you some slack I normally wouldn’t. You’re trying to do some good here. Commendable! And you’re not wrong, per se…
How the fuck ever, here’s some things you might wanna keep in mind when discussing these kinda issues
1)Quit comparing an ethnoreligious identity to a job title. It ain’t the same, it ain’t even remotely the same
2)Focus on what people are actually saying to you. WWTH had a problem with your false equivalency, and you just repeated your same spiel as if her part of the conversation meant nothing to you
3)Refrain from being condescending and generally shitty. At what point did anyone say they wanted to “uphold the status quo”? Also, nobody misunderstood your argument. It’s wasn’t that confusing. We got it perfectly clear the 1st time
4)Chill. Just chill. However important you think what you have to say is, it’s not that important. Half as important, max. Say ‘mea culpa’ and back the fuck out. Discretion and valor and whatnot
http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-all-lives-matter-show-them-these-5-paragraphs/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=beingliberal
Here is a good link about black lives matter.
A bit more info about TN shooting:
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2016/07/08/tbi-tennessee-highway-gunman-motivated-police-shootings/86867842/
Somewhere around Bristol.
At least there might finally be some movement on gun control. Predictably the perpetrators have to be a certain colour for this to happen (assuming the other suspects are black here), but nonetheless it may jolt Congress into the realization that the ability for just about anyone to own an assault rifle makes society a damn site less safe overall.
All it took in Australia was one mass shooting for wide ranging gun control laws to be enacted, banning all but the most rudimentary firearms. And this from the right-wing conservative Howard Government.
Society still needs a legitimate body to enforce its laws. So how else is that going to happen? Stigmatizing everyone in the police force will deter better people from joining, then you’re left with the shitty types who couldn’t care less what the public thinks.
Having been through this so many times before I don’t expect to see much change for the better.
However, I did hear someone on a radio program remind listeners that even though police facing charges for shooting civilians is rare and convictions almost nonexistent that one thing has changed: police chiefs are resigning or otherwise losing their positions in many recent high profile cases.
So the protests and grassroots community work is having an effect.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the speaker, or what exact program he was on – I did hear it on KBOO (a progressive radio station out of Portland OR). Sorry no links!