Some Libertarians have turned into race-baiting leftists

[Anti Federalist]

Some?

LOL.

I'd say close to majority were never "libertarian" but rather contrarian or homeless leftarians, interested in nothing more than promoting weirdosexualism and weed.

The number that crossed over to the Bernie camp bears this out


Some Libertarians have turned into race-baiting leftists

https://libertyunyielding.com/2021/0...ting-leftists/

By John Wolfe February 12, 2021

Some Libertarians have turned into race-baiting leftists

One of the depressing trends of the last seven years has been the ideological transformation of some libertarians — especially those who work on criminal-justice issues — into leftists who condone rioting, and see racism everywhere, even in instances where it isn’t present.

Zach Weissmueller and Paul Detrick, both of whom contribute to the libertarian website “Reason,” peddled the false “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” narrative about Michael Brown’s death being a racist murder, even though Michael Brown never said those words, and he wasn’t murdered. Even the progressive black Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart has admitted that “‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ was built on a lie.” The progressive Washington Post fact-checker Michelle Ye Hee Lee has explained that “‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ did not happen in Ferguson.”

The Washington Post reported in 2015 that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson “was justified in shooting Brown,” according to the Obama Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “It was reasonable for police Officer Darren Wilson to be afraid of Michael Brown in their encounter last summer, a Justice Department investigation concluded, and thus he could not “be prosecuted for fatally shooting” Brown, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

An 86-page report by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division found that both physical evidence and “credible” witnesses supported Officer Wilson’s version of an incident that triggered looting and rioting in Ferguson. As the Civil Rights Division concluded on page 82 of that report, “the shots fired” by Wilson after Michael “Brown turned around were in self-defense.” Indeed, “several of” the mostly black “witnesses stated that they would have … responded” as the police officer did in shooting Brown.

But in 2020, the Libertarian Party depicted Officer Wilson as a murderer. It listed the death of “Michael Brown” as an example of “systemic” racism and “extrajudicial killings” by police.

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman condoned rioting after the death of George Floyd, in a column titled “If riots are not the answer, what is?,” which was posted on May 29, 2020. Many libertarian criminal-justice activists approvingly tweeted or retweeted this column. Chapman’s twitter account describes him as “vaguely libertarian,” and his writings were long reproduced by America’s leading libertarian magazine.

A libertarian think-tank employee approvingly retweeted the statement that riots are necessary to get people’s attention: “So it is not surprising that protests become riots where angry people loot and damage businesses. Destroying or stealing stuff is one of the only ways you can really get people’s attention. Telling them that people died won’t do it. Because so many folks care more about stuff.”

Libertarian criminal-justice activists have condoned Antifa attempts to blind federal police officers defending courthouses against attack, and the actions of a hostile Antifa mob chasing Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — an irony, given that Paul’s father, former Rep. Ron Paul, was the Libertarian Party’s 1988 presidential nominee.

The Washington Post’s “libertarian” criminal-justice writer, Radley Balko, approvingly retweeted a July 2020 article in “The Atlantic” defending “cancel culture.” That article defended the firing of the editor of a liberal newspaper for publishing a conservative op-ed that offended black staffers by endorsing a crackdown on rioters. Balko also approved the withdrawal under pressure of an academic study finding that police shootings weren’t usually racist. He did so even though another libertarian academic who is an expert on scientific evidence found nothing wrong with the study’s methodology.

As that professor observed, “It’s absurd to ask that a valid study be retracted [because] you think others are ‘misusing’ it. A study says what it says, and so long as it wasn’t actually flawed it shouldn’t be retracted for political reasons except perhaps under truly extreme circumstances, which this isn’t.” Critics objected to an “extrapolation” in the study, but it was a “perfectly reasonable one.” The study’s “retraction resulted from a sustained attempt to discredit politically unpopular research,” rather than anything being wrong with the research.”

On Twitter, Balko smeared an Asian-American college official who discussed that police-shooting study as a white supremacist, because that official talked to Ron Unz. Never mind that Unz is Jewish, and has been cited by the employees of libertarian think-tanks where Balko himself once worked. Balko has mocked people who oppose government funding for the Kennedy Center, even as he has called for reducing funding for the police. Since the Kennedy Center is funded by taxes, and “taxation is theft” according to libertarians like Murray Rothbard, endorsing spending on the Kennedy Center is akin to endorsing theft, from a traditional libertarian perspective. Perhaps Balko is actually a progressive, rather than a libertarian.

Libertarian criminal-justice “reformers” depict racial disparities in incarceration rates as being caused by racism. But in reality, racism in the criminal justice system reduces black arrest rates, because it makes black people trust the police less, and cooperate less in catching the criminals who victimize black people — criminals who are themselves overwhelmingly black. Ironically, racial disparities in incarceration rates aren’t caused by racism; they are reduced by them. As Balko himself once conceded, “After a 2004 police shooting in Milwaukee, calls to 911 dropped off in black neighborhoods. Crime soared.”

Crime is heavily black-on-black, and black victims of violence are usually attacked by other black people. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics has stated, most crimes are committed mostly between members of the same racial group, and this is true for “rape or sexual assault,” “simple assault,” “aggravated assault,” and indeed, “all types of violent crime except robbery,” which is disproportionately committed by blacks against non-blacks. PolitiFact reports that between 2010 and 2013, “92 percent of blacks who were murdered were killed by other blacks.”

A disproportionate number of murderers and other violent criminals are black. As the American Journal of Preventive Medicine once pointed out, “Homicide rates have consistently been at least ten times higher for blacks aged 10-34 years compared with whites in the same age group between 1995 and 2015.” Yet black are arrested for murder at no more than eight times the white rate, not ten times the white rate.

A black killer is actually less likely to be arrested than a similarly-situated white killer, because black killers tend to kill other black people, and crimes involving black victims are less likely to be solved. For example, Chicago solves 47 percent of cases when a murder victim is white, but only 22 percent of cases when the victim is black, according to NPR.

The obvious reality that the crime rate is higher among black people is rejected by some libertarian criminal-justice activists, who claim that the only reason blacks are arrested at a higher rate is due to racism. This claim is at odds with a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that recognized that crime rates vary by race.

They may have succeeded in convincing some other libertarians to believe this false claim. In 2016, the libertarian presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, inaccurately suggested that black people were four times more likely to be arrested than whites, for committing the very “same” crime. Even progressive “fact-checkers” took issue with this extreme claim.

Johnson may have been talking just about drug cases, where people have raised concerns about racist application of the drug laws. But most incarceration is not due to drugs, but rather due to violence. Only 16% of people in state prisons in 2013 were there for drugs (either drug dealing or possession). 54% were there for violent felonies, and 19% were there for property crimes.

Today, an even smaller percentage of inmates are in prison for drugs than in 2013. Some states have decriminalized marijuana. Other states have released many non-violent drug offenders through early-release programs or expanded good-behavior sentence credits for non-violent offenders.

[Contumacious]

Some?

LOL.

I'd say close to majority were never "libertarian" but rather contrarian or homeless leftarians, interested in nothing more than promoting weirdosexualism and weed.

The number that crossed over to the Bernie camp bears this out


Some Libertarians have turned into race-baiting leftists

https://libertyunyielding.com/2021/0...ting-leftists/

By John Wolfe February 12, 2021

Some Libertarians have turned into race-baiting leftists

One of the depressing trends of the last seven years has been the ideological transformation of some libertarians — especially those who work on criminal-justice issues — into leftists who condone rioting, and see racism everywhere, even in instances where it isn’t present.

Zach Weissmueller and Paul Detrick, both of whom contribute to the libertarian website “Reason,” peddled the false “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” narrative about Michael Brown’s death being a racist murder, even though Michael Brown never said those words, and he wasn’t murdered. Even the progressive black Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart has admitted that “‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ was built on a lie.” The progressive Washington Post fact-checker Michelle Ye Hee Lee has explained that “‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ did not happen in Ferguson.”

The Washington Post reported in 2015 that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson “was justified in shooting Brown,” according to the Obama Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “It was reasonable for police Officer Darren Wilson to be afraid of Michael Brown in their encounter last summer, a Justice Department investigation concluded, and thus he could not “be prosecuted for fatally shooting” Brown, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

An 86-page report by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division found that both physical evidence and “credible” witnesses supported Officer Wilson’s version of an incident that triggered looting and rioting in Ferguson. As the Civil Rights Division concluded on page 82 of that report, “the shots fired” by Wilson after Michael “Brown turned around were in self-defense.” Indeed, “several of” the mostly black “witnesses stated that they would have … responded” as the police officer did in shooting Brown.

But in 2020, the Libertarian Party depicted Officer Wilson as a murderer. It listed the death of “Michael Brown” as an example of “systemic” racism and “extrajudicial killings” by police.

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman condoned rioting after the death of George Floyd, in a column titled “If riots are not the answer, what is?,” which was posted on May 29, 2020. Many libertarian criminal-justice activists approvingly tweeted or retweeted this column. Chapman’s twitter account describes him as “vaguely libertarian,” and his writings were long reproduced by America’s leading libertarian magazine.

A libertarian think-tank employee approvingly retweeted the statement that riots are necessary to get people’s attention: “So it is not surprising that protests become riots where angry people loot and damage businesses. Destroying or stealing stuff is one of the only ways you can really get people’s attention. Telling them that people died won’t do it. Because so many folks care more about stuff.”

Libertarian criminal-justice activists have condoned Antifa attempts to blind federal police officers defending courthouses against attack, and the actions of a hostile Antifa mob chasing Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — an irony, given that Paul’s father, former Rep. Ron Paul, was the Libertarian Party’s 1988 presidential nominee.

The Washington Post’s “libertarian” criminal-justice writer, Radley Balko, approvingly retweeted a July 2020 article in “The Atlantic” defending “cancel culture.” That article defended the firing of the editor of a liberal newspaper for publishing a conservative op-ed that offended black staffers by endorsing a crackdown on rioters. Balko also approved the withdrawal under pressure of an academic study finding that police shootings weren’t usually racist. He did so even though another libertarian academic who is an expert on scientific evidence found nothing wrong with the study’s methodology.

As that professor observed, “It’s absurd to ask that a valid study be retracted [because] you think others are ‘misusing’ it. A study says what it says, and so long as it wasn’t actually flawed it shouldn’t be retracted for political reasons except perhaps under truly extreme circumstances, which this isn’t.” Critics objected to an “extrapolation” in the study, but it was a “perfectly reasonable one.” The study’s “retraction resulted from a sustained attempt to discredit politically unpopular research,” rather than anything being wrong with the research.”

On Twitter, Balko smeared an Asian-American college official who discussed that police-shooting study as a white supremacist, because that official talked to Ron Unz. Never mind that Unz is Jewish, and has been cited by the employees of libertarian think-tanks where Balko himself once worked. Balko has mocked people who oppose government funding for the Kennedy Center, even as he has called for reducing funding for the police. Since the Kennedy Center is funded by taxes, and “taxation is theft” according to libertarians like Murray Rothbard, endorsing spending on the Kennedy Center is akin to endorsing theft, from a traditional libertarian perspective. Perhaps Balko is actually a progressive, rather than a libertarian.

Libertarian criminal-justice “reformers” depict racial disparities in incarceration rates as being caused by racism. But in reality, racism in the criminal justice system reduces black arrest rates, because it makes black people trust the police less, and cooperate less in catching the criminals who victimize black people — criminals who are themselves overwhelmingly black. Ironically, racial disparities in incarceration rates aren’t caused by racism; they are reduced by them. As Balko himself once conceded, “After a 2004 police shooting in Milwaukee, calls to 911 dropped off in black neighborhoods. Crime soared.”

Crime is heavily black-on-black, and black victims of violence are usually attacked by other black people. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics has stated, most crimes are committed mostly between members of the same racial group, and this is true for “rape or sexual assault,” “simple assault,” “aggravated assault,” and indeed, “all types of violent crime except robbery,” which is disproportionately committed by blacks against non-blacks. PolitiFact reports that between 2010 and 2013, “92 percent of blacks who were murdered were killed by other blacks.”

A disproportionate number of murderers and other violent criminals are black. As the American Journal of Preventive Medicine once pointed out, “Homicide rates have consistently been at least ten times higher for blacks aged 10-34 years compared with whites in the same age group between 1995 and 2015.” Yet black are arrested for murder at no more than eight times the white rate, not ten times the white rate.

A black killer is actually less likely to be arrested than a similarly-situated white killer, because black killers tend to kill other black people, and crimes involving black victims are less likely to be solved. For example, Chicago solves 47 percent of cases when a murder victim is white, but only 22 percent of cases when the victim is black, according to NPR.

The obvious reality that the crime rate is higher among black people is rejected by some libertarian criminal-justice activists, who claim that the only reason blacks are arrested at a higher rate is due to racism. This claim is at odds with a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that recognized that crime rates vary by race.

They may have succeeded in convincing some other libertarians to believe this false claim. In 2016, the libertarian presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, inaccurately suggested that black people were four times more likely to be arrested than whites, for committing the very “same” crime. Even progressive “fact-checkers” took issue with this extreme claim.

Johnson may have been talking just about drug cases, where people have raised concerns about racist application of the drug laws. But most incarceration is not due to drugs, but rather due to violence. Only 16% of people in state prisons in 2013 were there for drugs (either drug dealing or possession). 54% were there for violent felonies, and 19% were there for property crimes.

Today, an even smaller percentage of inmates are in prison for drugs than in 2013. Some states have decriminalized marijuana. Other states have released many non-violent drug offenders through early-release programs or expanded good-behavior sentence credits for non-violent offenders.

INDEED.

Let's add to the vocabulary

L-I-N-O-s

Libertarian in name only.

.

[kahless]

I would go as far as the LP is also not Libertarian and exists for the sole purpose to dissuade Libertarian beliefs from taking any foot hold in our society. Basically a firewall to protect the two party oligopoly to prevent the fire from spreading.

[phill4paul]

I'm all Libertarianed out.

[tod evans]

I'm all Libertarianed out.

Trying to define a libertarian is akin to defining an anarchist, everyone wants to pigeonhole you into some sub-category and then wail about impurity of philosophy.

[oyarde]

LOL , What if I told you most of them were always leftarians ? I have libertarian fatigue .Bring on the anarchists see if there is an improvement , LOL

[jkr]

It is the year 2021 and bul$#@! vomits from the internet in every direction... or is it 2007?

[Cleaner44]

Trying to define a libertarian is akin to defining an anarchist, everyone wants to pigeonhole you into some sub-category and then wail about impurity of philosophy.

For me, this definition still works...



Unfortunately I don't think many people in the Libertarian Party would agree with me.

[Anti Globalist]

Leftist libertarians are definitely an annoying bunch.

[Pauls' Revere]

Trying to define a libertarian is akin to defining an anarchist, everyone wants to pigeonhole you into some sub-category and then wail about impurity of philosophy.

Thanks for adding reputation to this user. May you be lucky enough to receive the same Reputation back in turn.

[JohnCifelli1]

The frustrating part is it feels like left-lib is the dominant "wing" right now. Big L sucks bad. The NJ Libertarian Party is the worst. left lib leaning organization that tries to meme on FB and sucks badly at it.

[DamianTV]

Trying to define a libertarian is akin to defining an anarchist, everyone wants to pigeonhole you into some sub-category and then wail about impurity of philosophy.

Lot of control through labels, then insisting that based upon those labels, Libertarians believe something they dont really believe.

Lot of Doublethink and Cognitive Dissonance tho. Sure all for as few laws as possible, and existing laws need to be reasonable and applied equally. Like the ideas of Free Speech on the heavily censored social media platforms. Should it be regulated or not? One side says we have Free Speech vs Private Property. Whats gonna happen in the outcome of this is that when we end up in a state of Lawlessness, then you will not be allowed to be connected to the power grid, have a job, get gas, food, pay bills, because you believe something you have been ordered to not believe. Why? Libertarian Terrorists is an adjustment to the perceived Label.

Divide and Conquer? How? Label people, and get them to endorse their assigned labels. Better if choose from a list of Approved Labels, but dont you dare choose to buck the system and define yourself. You must fit a Template.

The Double Think really rears its ugly head when the values typically associated with Labels are systematically replaced with Leftist Ideologies. For example, "Right" no longer means "Right to" do anything and it starts in Schools and MSM. They would have you believe that Right means the exact opposite of the previous definition. Rights come from government, temporarily, and can be revoked at any time. That really means "Permission" but its that Inversion that tricks the subconscious into accepting the narrative of the Left.

Funny how Left and Right and "Right" become such confusing terms. How about this. On the Left, you have NO RIGHTS.

[Okie RP fan]

Sound advice: Do. Not. Ever. Go. To. The. Libertarian. Subreddit.
The only "libertarian" thing about it is its name.

[A Son of Liberty]

Libertarian in name only.

Plenty of ways to fall into that camp...

[A Son of Liberty]

For me, this definition still works...



Unfortunately I don't think many people in the Libertarian Party would agree with me.

+ rep, sir. This short, 8 minute video changed my life... along with Atlas Shrugged and Ron Paul.

[A Son of Liberty]

The frustrating part is it feels like left-lib is the dominant "wing" right now. Big L sucks bad. The NJ Libertarian Party is the worst. left lib leaning organization that tries to meme on FB and sucks badly at it.

Dave Smith and Tom Woods are trying to change that, via the Mises Caucus.

[Pericles]

"Libertarian" Party of Texas, I'm looking at you.

[Occam's Banana]

Dave Smith and Tom Woods are trying to change that, via the Mises Caucus.

Recent video (two days ago) from the LP Mises Caucus:
- Michael Heise is a co-founder of the Mises Caucus
- Caryn Ann Harlos is secretary of the LP national committee
- Dave Smith is part of the problem

Video proper starts @ 3:15

On "The Takeover"
"Oh No! The Mises Caucus is taking over! They must be stopped!". The topic of the takeover has become a hot button issue both in an out of the Mises Caucus. Whats it all about? Why are so many people entering the party off of that message? Is it the best idea to message this way? Talk about it with us with Michael Heise, Dave Smith and Caryn Ann Harlos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjUZ5aOwJZw

[devil21]

Trying to define a libertarian is akin to defining an anarchist, everyone wants to pigeonhole you into some sub-category and then wail about impurity of philosophy.

Especially when the OP article cherry-picks a handful of Beltway types as the standard bearer example, as if anything wafting out of the swamp isn't fully tainted and co-opted by the swamp already.

After reading the OP, I'm not even sure what message is attempting to be conveyed. Police good? Black people bad? I don't get it.

[Brian4Liberty]

Especially when the OP article cherry-picks a handful of Beltway types as the standard bearer example, as if anything wafting out of the swamp isn't fully tainted and co-opted by the swamp already.

After reading the OP, I'm not even sure what message is attempting to be conveyed. Police good? Black people bad? I don't get it.

Yeah, that article kind of wanders. It seems that the main point is stated in this paragraph:

The obvious reality that the crime rate is higher among black people is rejected by some libertarian criminal-justice activists, who claim that the only reason blacks are arrested at a higher rate is due to racism. This claim is at odds with a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that recognized that crime rates vary by race.

Once one becomes a social justice warrior, it is no longer about logic or reality. Some facts must be denied. Some falsehoods must be believed with a religious fervor.

There are some libertarians who have either become SJWs, or pander to them.

I find the latest MSM outrage of hate crimes against Asians being a prime example of SJW insanity. The media never identifies the perpetrators of these crimes, although they sometimes play video which reveals that the attackers are always black. They have the gall to include in stories on the subject that it’s Trump’s fault because he said COVID came from China. They may also mention white nationalism in the story. It’s complete denial of reality by the SJW propagandists and activists.

[jmdrake]

Yeah, that article kind of wanders. It seems that the main point is stated in this paragraph:



Once one becomes a social justice warrior, it is no longer about logic or reality. Some facts must be denied. Some falsehoods must be believed with a religious fervor.

There are some libertarians who have either become SJWs, or pander to them.

The obvious reality that the crime rate is higher among black people is rejected by some libertarian criminal-justice activists, who claim that the only reason blacks are arrested at a higher rate is due to racism. This claim is at odds with a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that recognized that crime rates vary by race.

I find the latest MSM outrage of hate crimes against Asians being a prime example of SJW insanity. The media never identifies the perpetrators of these crimes, although they sometimes play video which reveals that the attackers are always black. They have the gall to include in stories on the subject that it’s Trump’s fault because he said COVID came from China. They may also mention white nationalism in the story. It’s complete denial of reality by the SJW propagandists and activists.

How do you square the circle that Ron Paul himself cited studies showing that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are more likely to be arrested, when arrested more likely to be prosecuted, when prosecuted more likely to be convicted, and when convicted serve more time in prison? Are we now going to to dismiss Ron Paul as a "leftitarian SJW?" And yes I know that drug crimes are not the only kind of crime. But I doubt that racial injustice in the the criminal justice system is limited to only one type of crime. There are also a lot of Supreme Court rulings that are at odds with reality.

Also as @Anti Federalist and I have discussed numerous times, not only are there cases of police brutality against whites that go under-reported but there are also cases of police brutality against obviously innocent blacks that go under-reported. There is no explanation why Michael Brown is a household name but Aiyana Jones (shamefully I always have to look her name up) is not. Both were black. Both were killed by police. Aiyana was only 7 and sleeping in her bed. It's unfortunate that some libertarians with large platforms jumped on the "police victim of the month" bandwagon without looking into the cases that get little attention. And yes, cases like Kelly Thomas (white) deserve MUCH more attention as well.

As for Michael Brown, yes there were black witnesses who said his hands were down. There were also white witnesses, construction workers as I recall, who said his hands were up. Both could have been true. He could have had his hands up and then dropped them either before or after the first shot was fired. Eric Garner, the original "I can't breath" victim, was choked to death. His autopsy showed throat trauma. The Obama administration, the same one that cleared the shooter of Mike Brown, slow walked the investigation so that it continued 3 years later and spilled into the Trump administration. It shouldn't have been that hard. The killing happened on camera. While the initial hold was a legal "seatbelt" hold, it was a rear naked choke hold before Garner hit the ground. The fact that Eric Holder couldn't properly do that investigation calls into question his departments handling of the Michael Brown investigation. President George W. Bush, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee all expressed concern about the Garner killing. But whenever people on the right want to talk about the police killings of 2014, curiously they always talk about Michael Brown and never Eric Garner or Tamir Rice (kid with a toy gun who was gunned down by police within seconds of their police cruiser pulling up on him after a 911 operator who was also black mis-reported the call which said it might be a toy and called it an "active shooter") or John Crawford III (black man killed in Walmart when white customer lied and said he was an active shooter). Police brutality could be the issue that brings blacks and whites together. But that requires acknowledging that, despite SOME questionable reports, it's a very real issue.

[jmdrake]

This belongs here.

[Occam's Banana]

There is no explanation why Michael Brown is a household name but Aiyana Jones [...] is not.

Actually, there is. This is from a 2014 post at Slate Star Codex titled "The Toxoplasma of Rage" (the whole thing is well worth reading, but I will only reproduce the relevant third section here):

III.

Slate recently published an article about white people’s contrasting reactions to the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson versus the Eric Garner choking in NYC. And man, it is some contrast.

A Pew poll found that of white people who expressed an opinion about the Ferguson case, 73% sided with the officer. Of white people who expressed an opinion about the Eric Garner case, 63% sided with the black victim.

Media opinion follows much the same pattern. Arch-conservative Bill O’Reilly said he was “absolutely furious” about the way “the liberal media” and “race hustlers” had “twisted the story” about Ferguson in the service of “lynch mob justice” and “insulting the American police community, men and women risking their lives to protect us”. But when it came to Garner, O’Reilly said he was “extremely troubled” and that “there was a police overreaction that should have been adjudicated in a court of law.” His guest on FOX News, conservative commentator and fellow Ferguson-detractor Charles Krauthammer added that “From looking at the video, the grand jury’s decision [not to indict] is totally incomprehensible.” Saturday Night Live did a skit about Al Sharpton talking about the Garner case and getting increasingly upset because “For the first time in my life, everyone agrees with me.”

This follows about three months of most of America being at one another’s throats pretty much full-time about Ferguson. We got treated to a daily diet of articles like Ferguson Protester On White People: “Y’all The Devil” or Black People Had The Power To Fix The Problems In Ferguson Before The Brown Shooting – They Failed or Most White People In America Are Completely Oblivious and a whole bunch of people sending angry racist editorials and counter-editorials to each other for months. The damage done to race relations is difficult to overestimate – CBS reports that they dropped ten percentage points to the lowest point in twenty years, with over half of blacks now describing race relations as “bad”.

And people say it was all worth it, because it raised awareness of police brutality against black people, and if that rustles some people’s jimmies, well, all the worse for them.

But the Eric Garner case also would have raised awareness of police brutality against black people, and everybody would have agreed about it. It has become increasingly clear that, given sufficiently indisputable evidence of police being brutal to a black person, pretty much everyone in the world condemns it equally strongly.

And it’s not just that the Eric Garner case came around too late so we had to make do with the Mike Brown case. Garner was choked a month before Brown was shot, but the story was ignored, then dug back up later as a tie-in to the ballooning Ferguson narrative.

More important, unarmed black people are killed by police or other security officers about twice a week according to official statistics, and probably much more often than that. You’re saying none of these shootings, hundreds each year, made as good a flagship case as Michael Brown? In all this gigantic pile of bodies, you couldn’t find one of them who hadn’t just robbed a convenience store? Not a single one who didn’t have ten eyewitnesses and the forensic evidence all saying he started it?

I propose that the Michael Brown case went viral – rather than the Eric Garner case or any of the hundreds of others – because of the PETA Principle. It was controversial. A bunch of people said it was an outrage. A bunch of other people said Brown totally started it, and the officer involved was a victim of a liberal media that was hungry to paint his desperate self-defense as racist, and so the people calling it an outrage were themselves an outrage. Everyone got a great opportunity to signal allegiance to their own political tribe and discuss how the opposing political tribe were vile racists / evil race-hustlers. There was a steady stream of potentially triggering articles to share on Facebook to provoke your friends and enemies to counter-share articles that would trigger you.

The Ferguson protesters say they have a concrete policy proposal – they want cameras on police officers. There’s only spotty polling on public views of police body cameras before the Ferguson story took off, but what there is seems pretty unanimous. A UK poll showed that 90% of the population of that country wanted police to have body cameras in February. US polls are more of the form “crappy poll widget on a news site” (1, 2, 3) but they all hovered around 80% approval for the past few years. I also found a poll by Police Magazine in which a plurality of the police officers they surveyed wanted to wear body cameras, probably because of evidence that they cut down on false accusations. Even before Ferguson happened, you would have a really hard time finding anybody in or out of uniform who thought police cameras were a bad idea.

And now, after all is said and done, ninety percent of people are still in favor – given methodology issues, the extra ten percent may or may not represent a real increase. The difference between whites and blacks is a rounding error. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is barely worth talking about- 79% of Republicans are still in support. The people who think Officer Darren Wilson is completely innocent and the grand jury was right to release him, the people muttering under their breath about race hustlers and looters – eighty percent of those people still want cameras on their cops.

If the Ferguson protests didn’t do much to the public’s views on police body cameras, they sure changed its views on some other things. I wrote before about how preliminary polls say that hearing about Ferguson increased white people’s confidence in the way the police treat race. Now the less preliminary polls are out, and they show the effect was larger than even I expected.

[source]

White people’s confidence in the police being racially unbiased increased from 35% before the story took off to 52% today. Could even a deliberate PR campaign by the nation’s police forces have done better? I doubt it.

It’s possible that this is an artifact of the question’s wording – after all, it asks people about their local department, and maybe after seeing what happened in Ferguson, people’s local police forces look pretty good by comparison. But then why do black people show the opposite trend?

I think this is exactly what it looks like. Just as PETA’s outrageous controversial campaign to spread veganism make people want to eat more animals in order to spite them, so the controversial nature of this particular campaign against police brutality and racism made white people like their local police department even more to spite the people talking about how all whites were racist.

Once again, the tradeoff.

If campaigners against police brutality and racism were extremely responsible, and stuck to perfectly settled cases like Eric Garner, everybody would agree with them but nobody would talk about it.

If instead they bring up a very controversial case like Michael Brown, everybody will talk about it, but they will catalyze their own opposition and make people start supporting the police more just to spite them. More foot-shooting.

[jmdrake]

Thank you for posting this! So I'm not the only one who sees this trend. It's Rosa Parks in reverse. She wasn't the first black woman in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. But she was chosen to do it again because she had and unassailable character. These days the opposite is happening. Those with the most dubious backgrounds and circumstances are highlighted. That way we can get into our camps and duke it out. So that begs the question. How do we buck this trend?

Actually, there is. This is from a 2014 post at Slate Star Codex titled "The Toxoplasma of Rage" (the whole thing is well worth reading, but I will only reproduce the relevant third section here):

III.

Slate recently published an article about white people’s contrasting reactions to the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson versus the Eric Garner choking in NYC. And man, it is some contrast.

A Pew poll found that of white people who expressed an opinion about the Ferguson case, 73% sided with the officer. Of white people who expressed an opinion about the Eric Garner case, 63% sided with the black victim.

Media opinion follows much the same pattern. Arch-conservative Bill O’Reilly said he was “absolutely furious” about the way “the liberal media” and “race hustlers” had “twisted the story” about Ferguson in the service of “lynch mob justice” and “insulting the American police community, men and women risking their lives to protect us”. But when it came to Garner, O’Reilly said he was “extremely troubled” and that “there was a police overreaction that should have been adjudicated in a court of law.” His guest on FOX News, conservative commentator and fellow Ferguson-detractor Charles Krauthammer added that “From looking at the video, the grand jury’s decision [not to indict] is totally incomprehensible.” Saturday Night Live did a skit about Al Sharpton talking about the Garner case and getting increasingly upset because “For the first time in my life, everyone agrees with me.”

This follows about three months of most of America being at one another’s throats pretty much full-time about Ferguson. We got treated to a daily diet of articles like Ferguson Protester On White People: “Y’all The Devil” or Black People Had The Power To Fix The Problems In Ferguson Before The Brown Shooting – They Failed or Most White People In America Are Completely Oblivious and a whole bunch of people sending angry racist editorials and counter-editorials to each other for months. The damage done to race relations is difficult to overestimate – CBS reports that they dropped ten percentage points to the lowest point in twenty years, with over half of blacks now describing race relations as “bad”.

And people say it was all worth it, because it raised awareness of police brutality against black people, and if that rustles some people’s jimmies, well, all the worse for them.

But the Eric Garner case also would have raised awareness of police brutality against black people, and everybody would have agreed about it. It has become increasingly clear that, given sufficiently indisputable evidence of police being brutal to a black person, pretty much everyone in the world condemns it equally strongly.

And it’s not just that the Eric Garner case came around too late so we had to make do with the Mike Brown case. Garner was choked a month before Brown was shot, but the story was ignored, then dug back up later as a tie-in to the ballooning Ferguson narrative.

More important, unarmed black people are killed by police or other security officers about twice a week according to official statistics, and probably much more often than that. You’re saying none of these shootings, hundreds each year, made as good a flagship case as Michael Brown? In all this gigantic pile of bodies, you couldn’t find one of them who hadn’t just robbed a convenience store? Not a single one who didn’t have ten eyewitnesses and the forensic evidence all saying he started it?

I propose that the Michael Brown case went viral – rather than the Eric Garner case or any of the hundreds of others – because of the PETA Principle. It was controversial. A bunch of people said it was an outrage. A bunch of other people said Brown totally started it, and the officer involved was a victim of a liberal media that was hungry to paint his desperate self-defense as racist, and so the people calling it an outrage were themselves an outrage. Everyone got a great opportunity to signal allegiance to their own political tribe and discuss how the opposing political tribe were vile racists / evil race-hustlers. There was a steady stream of potentially triggering articles to share on Facebook to provoke your friends and enemies to counter-share articles that would trigger you.

The Ferguson protesters say they have a concrete policy proposal – they want cameras on police officers. There’s only spotty polling on public views of police body cameras before the Ferguson story took off, but what there is seems pretty unanimous. A UK poll showed that 90% of the population of that country wanted police to have body cameras in February. US polls are more of the form “crappy poll widget on a news site” (1, 2, 3) but they all hovered around 80% approval for the past few years. I also found a poll by Police Magazine in which a plurality of the police officers they surveyed wanted to wear body cameras, probably because of evidence that they cut down on false accusations. Even before Ferguson happened, you would have a really hard time finding anybody in or out of uniform who thought police cameras were a bad idea.

And now, after all is said and done, ninety percent of people are still in favor – given methodology issues, the extra ten percent may or may not represent a real increase. The difference between whites and blacks is a rounding error. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is barely worth talking about- 79% of Republicans are still in support. The people who think Officer Darren Wilson is completely innocent and the grand jury was right to release him, the people muttering under their breath about race hustlers and looters – eighty percent of those people still want cameras on their cops.

If the Ferguson protests didn’t do much to the public’s views on police body cameras, they sure changed its views on some other things. I wrote before about how preliminary polls say that hearing about Ferguson increased white people’s confidence in the way the police treat race. Now the less preliminary polls are out, and they show the effect was larger than even I expected.

[source]

White people’s confidence in the police being racially unbiased increased from 35% before the story took off to 52% today. Could even a deliberate PR campaign by the nation’s police forces have done better? I doubt it.

It’s possible that this is an artifact of the question’s wording – after all, it asks people about their local department, and maybe after seeing what happened in Ferguson, people’s local police forces look pretty good by comparison. But then why do black people show the opposite trend?

I think this is exactly what it looks like. Just as PETA’s outrageous controversial campaign to spread veganism make people want to eat more animals in order to spite them, so the controversial nature of this particular campaign against police brutality and racism made white people like their local police department even more to spite the people talking about how all whites were racist.

Once again, the tradeoff.

If campaigners against police brutality and racism were extremely responsible, and stuck to perfectly settled cases like Eric Garner, everybody would agree with them but nobody would talk about it.

If instead they bring up a very controversial case like Michael Brown, everybody will talk about it, but they will catalyze their own opposition and make people start supporting the police more just to spite them. More foot-shooting.

[Ender]

How do you square the circle that Ron Paul himself cited studies showing that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are more likely to be arrested, when arrested more likely to be prosecuted, when prosecuted more likely to be convicted, and when convicted serve more time in prison? Are we now going to to dismiss Ron Paul as a "leftitarian SJW?" And yes I know that drug crimes are not the only kind of crime. But I doubt that racial injustice in the the criminal justice system is limited to only one type of crime. There are also a lot of Supreme Court rulings that are at odds with reality.

Also as @Anti Federalist and I have discussed numerous times, not only are there cases of police brutality against whites that go under-reported but there are also cases of police brutality against obviously innocent blacks that go under-reported. There is no explanation why Michael Brown is a household name but Aiyana Jones (shamefully I always have to look her name up) is not. Both were black. Both were killed by police. Aiyana was only 7 and sleeping in her bed. It's unfortunate that some libertarians with large platforms jumped on the "police victim of the month" bandwagon without looking into the cases that get little attention. And yes, cases like Kelly Thomas (white) deserve MUCH more attention as well.

As for Michael Brown, yes there were black witnesses who said his hands were down. There were also white witnesses, construction workers as I recall, who said his hands were up. Both could have been true. He could have had his hands up and then dropped them either before or after the first shot was fired. Eric Garner, the original "I can't breath" victim, was choked to death. His autopsy showed throat trauma. The Obama administration, the same one that cleared the shooter of Mike Brown, slow walked the investigation so that it continued 3 years later and spilled into the Trump administration. It shouldn't have been that hard. The killing happened on camera. While the initial hold was a legal "seatbelt" hold, it was a rear naked choke hold before Garner hit the ground. The fact that Eric Holder couldn't properly do that investigation calls into question his departments handling of the Michael Brown investigation. President George W. Bush, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee all expressed concern about the Garner killing. But whenever people on the right want to talk about the police killings of 2014, curiously they always talk about Michael Brown and never Eric Garner or Tamir Rice (kid with a toy gun who was gunned down by police within seconds of their police cruiser pulling up on him after a 911 operator who was also black mis-reported the call which said it might be a toy and called it an "active shooter") or John Crawford III (black man killed in Walmart when white customer lied and said he was an active shooter). Police brutality could be the issue that brings blacks and whites together. But that requires acknowledging that, despite SOME questionable reports, it's a very real issue.

Pretty much my POV.

And, as far as the OP- Both Right & Left have turned into hate-baiting whatevers- doesn't matter what side they say their on.

[Occam's Banana]

Thank you for posting this! So I'm not the only one who sees this trend. It's Rosa Parks in reverse. She wasn't the first black woman in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. But she was chosen to do it again because she had and unassailable character. These days the opposite is happening. Those with the most dubious backgrounds and circumstances are highlighted. That way we can get into our camps and duke it out. So that begs the question. How do we buck this trend?

Unfortunately, I doubt that there is any definitive way to put a stop to it.

Human nature is just too susceptible to inflammatory "click bait" - a fact that politicians and the media exploit to the fullest.

One can only do what one can do - such as spread the word about the Aiyana Joneses of the world and hope that enough people - not necessarily most, but enough - will eventually end up putting two and two together and will be in a position to do something about it.

[acptulsa]

Thank you for posting this! So I'm not the only one who sees this trend. It's Rosa Parks in reverse. She wasn't the first black woman in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. But she was chosen to do it again because she had and unassailable character. These days the opposite is happening. Those with the most dubious backgrounds and circumstances are highlighted. That way we can get into our camps and duke it out. So that begs the question. How do we buck this trend?

Unfortunately, I doubt that there is any definitive way to put a stop to it.

Human nature is just too susceptible to inflammatory "click bait" - a fact that politicians and the media exploit to the fullest.

One can only do what one can do - such as spread the word about the Aiyana Joneses of the world and hope that enough people - not necessarily most, but enough - will eventually end up putting two and two together and will be in a position to do something about it.

I believe the high point of relations between blacks and whites in the U.S. was the months after 9/11/01. Americans had a common enemy, which wasn't necessarily positive from a race standpoint overall, but it did unite non-arabic factions.

The powers that be decided that just wouldn't do, and set out to fix it. Which, to an intelligent and rational person, means screw it up.



Is there something to be done about it? Discredit the MSM and Dept. of Ed. Wish us luck.

The good news they're insulting everyone's intelligence in a major way. The bad news is a great many people really, really want to think of the ability to regurgitate propaganda as intelligence.

[TheTexan]

How do you square the circle that Ron Paul himself cited studies showing that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are more likely to be arrested, when arrested more likely to be prosecuted, when prosecuted more likely to be convicted, and when convicted serve more time in prison? Are we now going to to dismiss Ron Paul as a "leftitarian SJW?" And yes I know that drug crimes are not the only kind of crime. But I doubt that racial injustice in the the criminal justice system is limited to only one type of crime. There are also a lot of Supreme Court rulings that are at odds with reality.

Also as @Anti Federalist and I have discussed numerous times, not only are there cases of police brutality against whites that go under-reported but there are also cases of police brutality against obviously innocent blacks that go under-reported. There is no explanation why Michael Brown is a household name but Aiyana Jones (shamefully I always have to look her name up) is not. Both were black. Both were killed by police. Aiyana was only 7 and sleeping in her bed. It's unfortunate that some libertarians with large platforms jumped on the "police victim of the month" bandwagon without looking into the cases that get little attention. And yes, cases like Kelly Thomas (white) deserve MUCH more attention as well.

As for Michael Brown, yes there were black witnesses who said his hands were down. There were also white witnesses, construction workers as I recall, who said his hands were up. Both could have been true. He could have had his hands up and then dropped them either before or after the first shot was fired. Eric Garner, the original "I can't breath" victim, was choked to death. His autopsy showed throat trauma. The Obama administration, the same one that cleared the shooter of Mike Brown, slow walked the investigation so that it continued 3 years later and spilled into the Trump administration. It shouldn't have been that hard. The killing happened on camera. While the initial hold was a legal "seatbelt" hold, it was a rear naked choke hold before Garner hit the ground. The fact that Eric Holder couldn't properly do that investigation calls into question his departments handling of the Michael Brown investigation. President George W. Bush, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee all expressed concern about the Garner killing. But whenever people on the right want to talk about the police killings of 2014, curiously they always talk about Michael Brown and never Eric Garner or Tamir Rice (kid with a toy gun who was gunned down by police within seconds of their police cruiser pulling up on him after a 911 operator who was also black mis-reported the call which said it might be a toy and called it an "active shooter") or John Crawford III (black man killed in Walmart when white customer lied and said he was an active shooter). Police brutality could be the issue that brings blacks and whites together. But that requires acknowledging that, despite SOME questionable reports, it's a very real issue.

I would posit that the vast majority of "racial injustice" is the result of income inequality, rather than racism.

Its not a secret that poor people get treated like $#@!. And poor people are disproportionately black.

In other words, if black lives matter so much, maybe they should do something with their lives. Or turn drug dealing into a respectable profession.

[acptulsa]

Or turn drug dealing into a respectable profession.

Drug dealing was a somewhat respectable profession until they started peddling a dangerous "vaccine" that doesn't prevent the disease.

[Brian4Liberty]

How do you square the circle that Ron Paul himself cited studies showing that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are more likely to be arrested, when arrested more likely to be prosecuted, when prosecuted more likely to be convicted, and when convicted serve more time in prison? Are we now going to to dismiss Ron Paul as a "leftitarian SJW?" And yes I know that drug crimes are not the only kind of crime. But I doubt that racial injustice in the the criminal justice system is limited to only one type of crime. There are also a lot of Supreme Court rulings that are at odds with reality.
...

I don't disagree with anything you wrote. I was specifically more interested in crimes other than drugs.

Unfortunately, there is a discrepancy in how and which people are harassed by Police for or arrested for drugs. IMHO, it’s ease of prosecution and arrest that causes this. Why try to investigate and prove a real crime when the suspect has some drugs on them? I fear that is the reason. Systemic laziness and path of least resistance. Al Capone was charged with tax evasion. Nothing new.

Thank you for posting this! So I'm not the only one who sees this trend. It's Rosa Parks in reverse. She wasn't the first black woman in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. But she was chosen to do it again because she had and unassailable character. These days the opposite is happening. Those with the most dubious backgrounds and circumstances are highlighted. That way we can get into our camps and duke it out. So that begs the question. How do we buck this trend?

I’ve been posting about this trend for a long time. AF can attest...

At 22:30, there is a good discussion about BLM and the left's tactics in which cases they promote and propagandize. It has been obvious for a long time that they like cases that are very murky and ambiguous, or are outright lies. They want division. A clear cut case of police killing an innocent person is not the kind of story they like.