By David Futrelle
The protests over the police murder of George Floyd have gotten YouTube “philsopher” Stefan Molyneux all excited, in part because they have given him a fresh excuse to indulge in one of his favorite hobbies, racism.
Actually, that’s a little unfair to Mr Molyneux; racism is a huge part of the “philosophy” he spews on YouTube and Twitter, and thus his racism is something more than a hobby; it’s his bread and butter, part of how he makes his living.
In any case, let’s get on to the protests, which Molyneux sees as fundamentally illegitimate. First off, he’s not convinced that there even was a murder at the hands of the police, but rather a death due to preexsisting conditions that just happened to coincide with a police officer pressing his knee down hard on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes.
As Molyneux sees it, the protests are all Soros-funded communist plots first hatched long before Soros was even born:
Oh, and also they’re the fault of barbaric Somali immigrants.
And possibly some college professors as well:
Public schools are also somehow to blame:
And welfare, let’s not forget the insidious evil behind programs designed to keep poor children from starving to death:
He also tsk-tsks black protesters for allegedly playing into stereotypes by burning down a Wendy’s. (I’m not exactly sure what stereotypes he’s talking about — the stereotype of there being Wendy’s franchises in black neighborhoods?)
But don’t worry! Despite all of his posting about the protests, Mr Molyneux has managed to find time to post about the most important subject of all — that is, of course, Stefan Molyneux, MA.
It’s good to know that even in the midst of a dramatic crisis that Mr Molyneux can keep his eyes on the prize, himself.
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And the reason those children have no fathers couldn’t possibly be because their fathers left them or were abusive?
I think he’s referring to the stereotype of black people as violent and destructive, one which he clearly believes and is using confirmation bias on.
Get out of your bubble, join the real world.
Most people haven’t a clue who Stefan Molyneux is, the only people who know are Nazis and those who track or study them. Almost funny how important he thinks he is.
I have wondered on occasion what the people who were burning restaraunts and the like down were trying to accomplish. Rioting never works to establish justice unless it’s part of a full fledged revolution, and as much as many people would like that we’re not even close to that state yet…not to mention that they’re not the ones with access to military-grade weapons.
I keep thinking it’s just people who want to cause chaos for its own sake, but they can’t all be just rebels without a cause or opportunists… right?
Racists gonna racist
Stefan Molyneux: “Yes, the country is currently rioting against decades of oppression, but let’s talk about the real injustice here: someone doesn’t know who I am!”
Some of it is apparently Nazis trying to make the protesters look bad.
You missed one category: Some of them are (allegedly) agents provocateurs from the police.
@ anonymous
(*)
It isn’t necessarily trying to accomplish anything; it might just be as simple as a way of articulating the rage of frustration. And that, I think, is perfectly legitimate.
Yelling at your car when it won’t start or kicking a coffee table back when you stub your toe might not achieve anything; but sometimes it’s all we have.
And people may have looked at where decades of peaceful protest has got them and just decided on what they see as the only option left. What is there to lose?
(* This is only in relation to actual legitimate protestors. I exclude agent provocateurs and certain white kids living out their riot fantasies. They are accomplishing what they set out to do.)
@Ariblester
That occurred to me, but I doubt they’re nearly that common. I get the sense that a lot of them are definitely just viewing this as their teenage rebellion fantasies coming true, though.
@Alan Robertshaw
The vestiges of freedom they still possess, for one. I get that venting rage is satisfying in its own way, but here it takes a bad situation and makes it even worse by providing renewed justification for further “crackdowns” (for lack of a better euphemism).
@ anonymous
Perhaps I should have put an explicit “from their perspective” in there.
Who can say whether people will look back with satisfaction or regret; but at that particular moment those actions must have felt right and necessary. And, for me, it’s not my place to question that.
@Ariblester
Indeed, it seems that the autozone incident early on was done by a cop.
@Anonymous
When they protested peacefully, nothing changed. This is the last shot to make something change. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.”
@Naglfar
I mean, a lot of times the trope of black kids growing up without their fathers is because of high incarceration rates. That’s what’s so sickening about it; racists use the results of a racist policing system as a point against black people.
@Anonymous mainly
I don’t really think it’s any non-Black person’s place to tell a black justice movement what the appropriate tactics are, or speculate too wildly about how much of the rioting can be chalked up to outside agitators or whatever. They’re not rioting over a sports game, but out of desperation, and for many of them it probably can’t actually get much worse.
@Naglfar
Or, in the case of the black community, were enslaved by the carceral state.
@Anonymous
Just stop. Musing on the evils of property damage is the opposite of helpful. The problem here is that police are murdering people on camera for shits and giggles and getting away with it. There’s no further lever of crackdown than fucking killing people for looking at you funny. Cops are driving around shooting at people on their porches. Whatever happens now is 100% the fault and responsibility of the collective body of policing in the US and the elected officials who are supposed to oversee them. Every elected official in the US is more to blame for fires than anyone at the protests regardless of their political affiliations. Neither whining nor concern trolling is helpful, and before you say anything, yes, that is exactly what you are doing.
@Naglfar
I know, and I’m terrified that it’s going to become the catalyst for an outright genocide against the black community. If the last shot for change fails, what’s left to do?
@Dalillama
I had no intention of concern trolling. I just have a habit of thinking about these things, and when combined with my overly goal-directed way of looking at the issues it comes off as criticism. It’s my way of coping with these situations.
I can’t really do anything else than express grief over them (which is absolutely worthless for everyone involved) and acknowledge that I am powerless to change the underlying problems, which naturally makes me despair.
@Anonymous
Stonewall. The Yellow Vests. The Kerner comission.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lapd-nypd-community-policing-nypd_n_6446740
Now, aren’t you people being just a tad harsh on poor SM & Anonymous?
Because one does have to ask why black people do silly things like rioting & burning buildings.
When white people protest against injustice, they would never do violent & irrational stuff like:
– pelt the duly constituted authorities with rocks & garbage, thus provoking deadly retaliation (The Boston Massacre)
– destroy other people’s property (The Boston Tea Party)
– plot to blow up the offices of duly elected government officials, with the intent to kill as many people as possible (The Gunpowder Plot & The Oklahoma City bombing)
Burning a building is like a primal scream into the void. Weird how it gets people to pay attention to you after doing it “the right way” fails. Weirder still how burning a burger joint upsets some people more than a video of 4 men slowly choking a man to death…..
@Anonymous
Primus: The goal is quite obvious. It’s to hit the owning class where it hurts to encourage them to call off their dogs (i.e. the police).
Secundus: There’s also the entire matter of stores (chain or independent) in Black neighborhoods are very rarely owned by people in/from those neighborhoods and serve to extract capital from the said community without putting any back in (employees are also often not local, and where they are local wages are a joke, nevermind management practices. They are, in a real way, doing more harm than good.
Tertius: None of the above matters a damn bit, because when there are riots, there are fires. It’s as universal as soldiers in the field commiting atrocities. (Which is universal. Every army, every war, ever.) The only solution is to not set things up to guarantee riots in the first place. If any meaningful number of elected officials in the last sixty years had viewed their job as serving the public trust rather than enshrining white supremacy, we wouldn’t be in this situation. The solution is to make them stop, because otherwise the violence won’t.
Well, Mr Molyneux might be surprised to find out that actual academics do conduct studies rather than just proffering whatever bigoted semi-thought drops through their brain.
There have been countless, countless studies showing that reducing the levels of deprivation in a community reduces violence, it’s ridiculously basic. For a ready made list there’s the appendix to this: https://www.basw.co.uk/system/files/resources/15.32%20-%20Reducing%20family%20violence_03.pdf
@Ariblester
I do. Mostly I fear that even the pretense of a social contract will be dropped and the black community will find itself right in the middle of a modern Holocaust. And unlike the old one, it seems unlikely that there will be any Allies to save them.
Empathy does not come naturally to me, but I acknowledge that when peaceful protest fails the more violent approach becomes the most visible alternative. However, I find myself dwelling ( maybe more than I should) on what would happen if it fails- Trump has always seemed eager to declare martial law, and given his reactions to this whole mess I worry that he sees it as his golden opportunity to make himself President-for-Life.
Perhaps this makes me seem like a coward, but the only other solution I can think of is simply to flee the country before it is too late- but even if the travel ban wasn’t a factor, where would they go to? My first thought is “anywhere else”, but even in my own head it sounds asinine.
@Dalillama
It always seems like that only makes them more likely to let those dogs run wild. In the short term at least. In the long term? I don’t know but I expect very little given the course of history thus far.
It’s worse than that, it’s that those elected officials want to enshrine themselves specifically and couldn’t care less about the people they allegedly represent. I sometimes wonder if a reform could be started simply by making it so elected officials gain no salary for their positions, so they might be less able to profit off them. Or maybe we should replace them with robots, I don’t know.
@An Impish Pepper, Dalillama
Of course, that is another reason a father might be absent. It’s yet another case in which an oppressor fucks things up for a minority, then blames the minority.
Something I’ve noticed that clearly delineates the dirtbag left and other wannabe revolutionaries from the protestors now is that the former sits around and refuses to fix anything in the here and now because their magical revolution will supposedly fix everything, while the protestors have actually taken matters into their own hands to make a difference however possible. It’s readily apparent which group has a chance of actually accomplishing anything.
@Anonymous
The way I see it is: 35% of the country will vote for him no matter what. They’re a lost cause. The other 65% is most of the population, but much of the left needs to be mobilized and to actually get out and vote to remove him from office. An event like this may convince far more of how bad things truly are and convince more people to vote him out of office. We don’t really have much to lose at this point.
That’s only a solution for those with money and resources. Many of those most in danger don’t have those things. Getting millions of people out would be extremely difficult.
My view from outside is that the vast majority of violent rioters are wearing black clothing that says POLICE on it. A few don’t, but have white armbands on instead.
I’m not sure what their voiceless desperation is all about.
As I said in the other thread, my place of employment was broken into and set on fire on Friday night. I don’t think there was any real thought behind this – from the reports I’ve gotten, it was white people who were being mindlessly destructive in that protest. The people of color who came out to protest were being peaceful, and in one case even formed a line around a cop who had gotten separated from the group to protect him from other, less reasonable protesters.
When civil unrest happens, it attracts all kinds of people, and some small percentage of people are going to be jackasses who like to destroy for the sake of destruction, and there is zero political motivation behind that. You get people out breaking windows and setting fires for shits and giggles just because they think they can get away with it, and no deeper reason than that. The people who are politically motivated, who are actually thinking about what they do and the reasons behind it and the potential consequences, are not the ones who are setting fires. “The mob” is not a single superorganism with a singular purpose that can be explained in one sentence. We are not ants.
The thing I know Socrates best for is for having drank hemlock. I wish Stefan Molyneux all the best in following in his role model’s footsteps.
@Anonymous
You know how when Precinct 3 burned, all the cops were allowed to leave? The demonstrators in Ferguson brought a guillotine, but it was probably a prop this time. What I’m getting at here is that burning buildings until they call off their dogs is the easy way. Escalation will add a lot of bloodshed, but it’s not a plan that’s going to end well for either the cops or their ostensible bosses.
Sir, this was a Wendy’s.
@Naglfar
I seem to see myself now as someone who might have been a protestor in another life, but as I am I find myself too fearful and despondent to think I could contribute in any but the most petty of ways. Does that make me part of the “despairing left” or just plain despairing?
An arduous task, given that Biden is hardly the most appealing of candidates to the left beyond not being Trump. I’m still hoping for some miracle that lets Sanders get the nomination, but it’s looking increasingly likely we’ll be stuck with another fucking centrist who can’t see that the status quo he wants to preserve is a festering carcass.
If only it were possible to start a second Underground Railroad, but sadly the logistics would be a nightmare to achieve.
@Dalillama
When have their bosses ever cared about bloodshed? The police are all just a bunch of expendable pawns as far as they care, and they’re too busy fixating on the letter of the law to realize how often they ignore its spirit. Even if the police do abandon the rich, they’ll simply call in their own “private security” (known as “mercenaries” to everyone else) to pick up where they left off.
(The comment from myself that Anonymous was replying to in this comment was probably eaten by the spam filter because I tried to edit it too many times to get a YouTube embed to work. The video I was trying to embed was this one, from Trevor Noah. Apologies if it’s been posted on another thread before.)