Nobody's talking about how "terrorism" has expanded to mean, in law, armed opposition the the government. Throw in terrorism and the sentence goes up dramatically.
Is it possible to oppose the government with arms yet not be a terrorist? I'd say, yes. But I never expect to see a prosecution acknowledge that. They're even making drug smugglers into terrorists and murdering them extrajudicially.
This is one of the great contradictions in American society. The right to bear arms is enshrined as a fundamental right in the Constitution, but the state will treat anybody who chooses to exercise this right as being an inherent threat. This is especially the case when it intersects with certain law enforcement practices, such as no-knock warrants. There have been multiple cases where police execute a no-knock warrant and kill someone who thinks they're being burglarized for holding a gun, or someone shoots at the police without knowing they're police and then gets charged with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer.
Two of those people were not involved in any of the planning and discussion of weapons via Signal and still got 30 year sentences, for the magazines bit. The shooter claimed he only shot because he saw the officer shooting at the back of fleeing unarmed protestors - this type of law enforcement is frowned upon in most other countries but regularly happens unopposed in the USA and officers will claim and most of the time get qualified immunity. The whole prosecution feels of a kind of the misuse of laddering and felony murder charges.
> The shooter claimed he only shot because he saw the officer shooting at the back of fleeing unarmed protestors
This is still not the right move. I think I remember people being convicted of shooting back at cops directly shooting at them. But shooting at cops because you think they are shooting at protestors is never going to end up properly.
The constitution is fine. The main issue is about definition of oppression that is shifted by Left. And can I point the dissonance here as you seem to not get it - you want to overthrow "oppression"... and AT THE SAME TIME complain that "opressive" government has unfair laws against you? If you do not succeed at overthrowing "oppression", expect to be punished like losers, as state has monopoly on violence and is free to punish harshly those that challenge that monopoly.
Armed opposition to the government seems like a pretty central definition of terrorism to me. Of course one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, but that's true in all armed conflicts between nations and aspiring nations.
If you're treating cops and guards at an immigration detention facility as "non-civilians" and "combatants", then this is a good sign that the thing you're doing is engaging in some kind of ideological rebellion against the state. Which is fair to call terrorism, unless you're in favor of it, in which case you'd call it freedom fighting or rebellion but with positive valence.
People who are above the law and shoot at other people with impunity are combatants. What the fuck are we even talking about? Ideological rebellion against the state alone does not terrorism make.
To oppose goverment, you need:
* Mass support of folks that recognize you as government and not the "oppressive" government.
Simply stating that government is oppressive does not qualify.
Do you actually recognize those people in this article? Are they opposing government on your behalf? Have you mandated them to oppose government... that you elected? Do you have judges that have different opinion on this case?
The whole discussion and article about this topic seems to be oblivious on these very basic legal issues.
Well, drug smuggling is a traditional part of inter empire warfare. Pump the population of the oppossing entity full with societal dissolvents then use the innet turmoil for an intervention
I don't think you've understood the story you're commenting on.
These people weren't "flagged" as terrorists, they were convicted and sentenced (extremely) harshly.
There’s literally no comparison between “flagging”, which has no legal requirement or no actual consequence without actual trial, and the results of an actual trial.
In Poland during the Soviet occupation (1945-1989) people were beaten and jailed for having a copier that would be used for copying magazines and brochures
I'd argue it was a vassal state, not occupied (per se) at least from the 1950's onwards. Yes, the soviet troops did station in Poland, but the beatings were administered by other Polish citizens.
This is what makes this different. There’s lots of gun clubs all over the place. But if a member shoots at the police (or anyone, really) they are going to get the book thrown at them and everyone associated with them who helped them, etc.
Because that changes your club from something normal to something that tried to shoot cops.
There’s a group in my town called the NFA club or something. They get their rifles out and march around neighborhoods. They stop cars. Quite scary. But they no the law and never brandish, directly threaten, etc. But if one of them ever shoots at a cop, I expext the whole group is going to jail.
The sentences are pretty crazy but what’s with the strange understatement.
> One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation)
The accurate statement is that he shot and wounded a police officer who he intentionally targeted according to his own testimony (where he claims he did so because he thought the cop was going to shoot his guys).
> Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines
The accurate statement is: “hiding zines that could be considered evidence of affiliation at the request of your arrested wife”.
Listen, the sentences seem politically motivated. They’re quite long. But if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.
This is pretty out there stuff. And I’m not going to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who yells “get to the rifles” then gets to the rifles and shoots a policeman that he could have been ‘potentially inciting violence’ by shooting. He committed violence. And hiding the facts here does not make me sympathetic.
> But if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.
30 years though? And for moving what material exactly?
I think you can have some kind of rationale for why these people should be prosecuted. I'm not sure that's the issue for many though — the issue is the proportionality of the sentence.
>if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.
Oh, tell that to the president of the United States and half of Congress and half of the Senate (and half of the country). Remind me what was their reaction and actions after the pardon of Jan 6 rioters?
30 years was the MINIMUM sentence given to this group. The MAXIMUM sentence given to J6 rioters was 22 years. Are you honestly still trying to conflate the two?
Well, if he did it and there was no opposition, it certainly makes it "valid". Where exactly has it been made invalid? Has anyone done anything to make it invalid? Aren't they free, and can they do it again?
And the slush fund for the Jan 6 rioters is just suspended, not canceled. It will come back.
Just because something happened doesn’t make it “valid”: it’s not moral, and your side doing it may not have the same effect (good people can’t use evil tools as effectively as evil people).
I don’t really care whether Jan 6 rioters are free, they’ve spent months-to-years in jail anyways. What’s important is preventing future crimes, which punishing deserved people broadly on your side helps.
> Can they do it again
In 2028 if a Dem wins? At best they’re looking at another few years. (Trump won’t successfully pardon a crime as egregious as this (before anyone serves time) unless the Dem is really ineffective, because of how similarly it can be used against his side.)
>Just because something happened doesn’t make it “valid”
If nothing happens to change it, it is valid just by being a fait accompli. Your words are just words, if they don't translate into a tangible reality. An hallucination.
>I don’t really care whether Jan 6 rioters are free, they’ve spent months-to-years in jail anyways. What’s important is preventing future crime
Enrique Tario has been harassing former capitol policemen. Any Jan 6 rioter is free to go after the police, or family or friends or anyone who denounced them.
No, in 2026. After the 2020 election, polling places and local state officials were threatened and attacked in dozen of places.
>Trump won’t successfully pardon a crime as egregious as this
It doesn't make sense, he's done far worse already, and he is preparing to do far, far worse. Hesgeth is more than ready to use the Army against the US population:
Honestly, I think both Jan 6 and these rioters deserve punishment, but not such long sentences. Prevention and deterrence - prevention by monitoring (at least to prevent them from going near “enemy territory”) and taking their guns, deterrence by at most a few years in prison, other penalties (like fines), and the social consequences. Anything more is unnecessarily harmful and wastes prison resources.
Since violence is never the answer, do you think any institutions or organizations whose primary arm is violence should be disbanded in favor of non-violent alternatives?
Careful, accurately portraying these people's crimes will likely get you downvoted and flagged, unfortunately. It's sad, but there's likely people here who support what happened.
This type of "you can't downvote me for valid reasons" style of intro to a comment is going to lead to many people downvoting you immediately.
Not many people are going to believe your appeal to "real discussion" when leading with that.
Ashli Babbitt received military funeral honors for what?
Discuss: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
What is the intent of the 2nd amendment? It allows citizens to beat arms, but for what purpose?
> It allows citizens to beat arms, but for what purpose?
To form state-level militia. It even starts with a sunset condition: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ..." — so arguably, since a well-maintained militia is universally considered in no way necessary (nor sufficient) for state security, the second amendment should have lost its power long time ago.
1. When the Second Amendment was written, there was already an active legal framework of "well-regulated militias" through the Articles of Confederation. [0] Every single state was required to run and fund their own militia.
2. The bill of rights was originally (pre-civil-war) purely a set of restrictions on the Federal government, nothing in it bound states. One of its explicit purposes was to preserve state autonomy from the (new, worrisome) federal layer being created.
3. Therefore Second Amendment was (originally) intended to prevent the federal government from sneakily disarming individual states by literally removing their pool of arms and volunteers.
Whether it should still mean the same after many years and other amendments is a much trickier problem, but the idea that it always meant an individual right to arms is a false mythology.
If we abstract ourselves from the politics, then yes, of course it should. I mean, the amendment could've simply been "The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" but it isn't, it contains an intentionally added clarification in it as well.
But the politics being what they are, some things got reinterpreted in rather baffling ways. The commerce clause is one of the most (in)famous examples; several (unchallenged) court judgements that declare that in some circumstances one has to actively invoke the fifth amendment, or else they'll lose its protections (?!) is another. The latter is personally the most baffling to me because not only it defies the very idea of such protections (you have them even if you don't have a decent lawyer) but it gives some marginal legitimacy to one of the insane juristic ideas of "sovereign citizens": if you say the right magic words, you'll get out of jail free, but you have to say them!
Beg to differ: to the purposes of the idealized free USA, a popular militia was, and still is, the only solution for a free territory of people. A modern organized army as understood today is all about ceding your right as an free individual to become subservient to a large authority.
> Let’s be clear: a few of the protesters were out of bounds. One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation). I would never condone that kind of activity.
This is the crux of the issue - from the perspective of the government, this was a group of people who lead an armed terrorist attack on a government facility in order to disrupt the functioning of that facility because they held an ideological belief that the facility was immoral; and it's irrelevant that not every member of the group personally shot a cop with an AR-15, just as it wasn't relevant that Osama bin Laden didn't personally hijack any planes and crash them into buildings when the US government sent special forces to break into his compound and kill him.
> Instead, other “evidence” was used to infer that they planned violence, including this specific argument that should give everyone pause:
> “[…] including their decision to communicate and auto-delete messages on Signal, an encrypted messaging platform widely used among activists, journalists and other citizens wary of government surveillance.”
Given that the other evidence that they planned violence was that they set off fireworks outside the facility, vandalized it, and then shot a cop in the neck when the cop came to investigate the vandalism, I don't really care that the government prosecutors also considered their use of Signal as evidence that they planned violence. Frankly, if you're part of a group that is planning violence, it is a good idea to use an encrypted messaging platform like Signal that has an auto-delete feature to do that planning, the prosecutors are correct to note this.
I found the wording of "inciting violence" odd - surely firing a rifle at police officers is violence and not simply incitement for others to join in? It sounds like the author of the article is so obsessed with the social ramifications of acts they can't see the literal ones.
The use of private communications absolutely, fundamentally, positively, holistically cannot be allowed to be recognized as "evidence" for anything, including planned violence, or we have lost the final fight and society is doomed forever.
Do not let your apathy be the tool of another man's evil.
The country has changed massively through voting in the last 25 years. I would rather not change to a system where political groups attack others with guns and bombs to change things, because that's the alternative you're proposing.
Touch grass, find a significant other, and build a life.
> Let’s be clear: a few of the protesters were out of bounds.
"out of bounds" is a nice way of putting it. Terrorism is an accurate description.
> But these sentences far outstrip anything that’s been given to anyone on the right wing: the leader of the Proud Boys, as this article notes, was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
I think the difference here is the planned terrorist activity, and condolence of violence. If the Proud Boys were doing to same sort of thing, then fair - but I cannot find in a Google search that they did.
> One protester wasn’t even present, but was sentenced to 30 years for moving some zines
> The ninth defendant, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada was not at the protest, but was convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record after prosecutors said he moved leftwing zines and other materials at the request of Rueda, his wife, after she was arrested.
Clearly it was not just "moving some vines", it was knowingly concealing evidence and attempting to prevent the course of justice.
> Instead, other “evidence” was used to infer that they planned violence, including this specific argument that should give everyone pause
An argument can be made there, all are innocent unless proven guilty. But I suspect they admitted to being fully aware and supportive of the terrorist activities. The prosecution can claim all they like, the important thing is what ends up being considered.
Terrorism comes from word terror - it is use of violence to impose terrorist goals. Usually political.
The fact that they have chosen as a target police is just return to classical terrorism that existed 100+ years ago. Targeting innocents by taking hostages, 911 or blowing up cooker are quite recent developments for terrorist activities. What was your definition for terrorism?
My view is still relatively classical, significant unsanctioned violence used for political means. I would also be interested to see how other people are now defining this.
Even though I am commited to resisting "fascism" in all it's forms,the people convicted were definitly working themselves up to do something even worse.
For me there crime was to be undisaplined and they did not understand there responsibilitys while armed, which is unexcusable.
If they realy wanted to engage in armed struggle against fascists, then there are plenty of places where they could voulenteer
to fight irregular mercenary forces hired and equiped by companys and governments to destroy populations that have the missfortune to live on top of some oil or other extractable resource, but what they did was cosplay bieng a revolutionary in a suberban environment, and no doubt had plans to hook up for a few drinks at the club later.
These people made the classic, fascist, mistake of thinking in terms of a hiarchical
relationship of rights, and forgot , that everybody has rights, even a dumb ass junior cop who goes where he's told, while for all anyone knows is fielding texts from his wife ,promising that he will take the van in and get the brakes checked.
The ability of Texas to adhere so intensely to the idea of radical individualism while also being wholly committed to fascism at a policy level has always confused me.
When I studied Texas history in University, the textbook opened with a sentence along the lines of "Texas Government has always been characterized by incompetence and nepotism", and through that lens, I filed many of the absurdities (e.g. Greg Abbott's entire career and the "free speech area" on my university campus) under that bucket.
A couple decades haves since passed and my view has changed to see the openly racist institutions, targeted policing and zero-sum "satesmanship" at both local and state levels that forego core democratic values for "winning" (or at least lining the pockets of your donors) as something more jaded and sociopathic.
There are a lot of truly good, smart people in Texas, yet it's been an fairly openly fascist state for decades. Coming from the Bay Area and having lived in a lot of places, I've never felt like I lived in a police state more than in the DFW metroplex, although when visiting family in Northern CA, CAMP operations in Mendocino County come as a close second in terms of authoritarian vibes.
I was so confused with how many people from the valley openly aligned and invested in such a deeply corrupt state in the 2000s. Elon was unsurprising given his fashy incel leanings, but Apple's choice to build the Austin campus floored me. An office in a state where your female employees don't have reproductive rights? How do you endorse that?
You can't just look past the political rot that has defined Texas for generations with the excuse that you can buy a "Keep Austin Weird" sticker at H.E.B. The people in Austin and across the state advocating for a better future and an accountable government deserve a shoutout, but man, if you wanted to see the writing on the wall for American Democracy, all you needed to do was look at Texas anytime between 1996 and now.
It's sad because it really is beautiful country full of decent people, but it's blatantly and unjustifiably corrupt, and diametrically opposed to the core American values that it attaches to it's lifted, 9-tom, 1/2"-longer-than-the-same-model-sold-in-every-other-state pick 'em up truck, and it's gamed so hard that the people in the state will never undo it.
Texas is where a large section of the founders of the Confederacy fled to once it was clear the war was lost. It’s harbored their bigotry and ideology.
You’re right about it being the test case. Having one of the largest state populations meant that it helped drive textbook curation for elementary/HS education. Smaller red states that didn’t have the population or budget to define their own textbooks would use Texas’.
It's not confusing. It's a state that pretends to adhere to an idea of radical individualism that is just a vehicle for fascism. The individualism practiced is just 'the right to abuse/oppress others without state interference, so long as 'others' means groups the state culturally doesn't like'.
It's really a failure of reconstruction that we ended up with the South remaining basically an anti-democratic apartheid state. Even though Jim Crow stopped being legal for a while, the political elites running the states didn't really change. Slavery was really America's original sin and its legacy still poison the american experiment; that southern planter mentality never left.
Democracy also has a 'tyranny of the majority' vulnerability in which it can enforce policies onto minorities that could be just as harsh compared to policies imposed by autocracies. For example - Japanese American internment in WWII.
If there is a large group of people who use a term like "anti-fascist" as a tag line it no longer is a literal representation of the words. Just like how you wouldn't say that a guy rolling coal in a lifted pickup with a confederate flag and an AR mounted in the window who calls himself a "freedom fighter" is literally fighting for freedom.
Otherwise you will just be talking past people who are interpreting it to mean something else. Which of course you are free to do if you don't think what you are trying to say has enough value to be worth avoiding the miscommunication.
I'd argue that most, if not all clandestine cells that call themselves themselves "Antifa" are as anti-Fascist as the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" were socialist.
Labelling (all?) American (Allied?) personnel as "antifa" or even "anti-fascist" is an interesting move. The article doesn't seem to demonstrate what you suggest it does nor does it seem particularly relevant in general.
What are you trying to say?
That, if we accept that logic, we must either say the Allies who fought in WWII didn't value democracy, or we must accept a definition of anti-fascist that is so broad, it easily includes people even many on the right would call Nazis.
Nobody's talking about how "terrorism" has expanded to mean, in law, armed opposition the the government. Throw in terrorism and the sentence goes up dramatically.
Is it possible to oppose the government with arms yet not be a terrorist? I'd say, yes. But I never expect to see a prosecution acknowledge that. They're even making drug smugglers into terrorists and murdering them extrajudicially.
This is one of the great contradictions in American society. The right to bear arms is enshrined as a fundamental right in the Constitution, but the state will treat anybody who chooses to exercise this right as being an inherent threat. This is especially the case when it intersects with certain law enforcement practices, such as no-knock warrants. There have been multiple cases where police execute a no-knock warrant and kill someone who thinks they're being burglarized for holding a gun, or someone shoots at the police without knowing they're police and then gets charged with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer.
Two of those people were not involved in any of the planning and discussion of weapons via Signal and still got 30 year sentences, for the magazines bit. The shooter claimed he only shot because he saw the officer shooting at the back of fleeing unarmed protestors - this type of law enforcement is frowned upon in most other countries but regularly happens unopposed in the USA and officers will claim and most of the time get qualified immunity. The whole prosecution feels of a kind of the misuse of laddering and felony murder charges.
> The shooter claimed he only shot because he saw the officer shooting at the back of fleeing unarmed protestors
This is still not the right move. I think I remember people being convicted of shooting back at cops directly shooting at them. But shooting at cops because you think they are shooting at protestors is never going to end up properly.
Then what's the right to it doing in the constitution?
The constitution is fine. The main issue is about definition of oppression that is shifted by Left. And can I point the dissonance here as you seem to not get it - you want to overthrow "oppression"... and AT THE SAME TIME complain that "opressive" government has unfair laws against you? If you do not succeed at overthrowing "oppression", expect to be punished like losers, as state has monopoly on violence and is free to punish harshly those that challenge that monopoly.
There's no dissonance in saying that the oppression is oppressive and the oppressors violate their own laws.
Armed opposition to the government seems like a pretty central definition of terrorism to me. Of course one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, but that's true in all armed conflicts between nations and aspiring nations.
Isn't terrorism typically carried out against civilians and non-combatants? Surely not all violence is terrorism or it ceases to have any meaning.
If you're treating cops and guards at an immigration detention facility as "non-civilians" and "combatants", then this is a good sign that the thing you're doing is engaging in some kind of ideological rebellion against the state. Which is fair to call terrorism, unless you're in favor of it, in which case you'd call it freedom fighting or rebellion but with positive valence.
People who are above the law and shoot at other people with impunity are combatants. What the fuck are we even talking about? Ideological rebellion against the state alone does not terrorism make.
Yes. That's the defining difference to guerrilla warfare.
In that case America's founding would be rooted in terrorism. Against the British monarchy, of course.
Yes; if they had lost the British government would've executed most of the American founding fathers.
To oppose goverment, you need: * Mass support of folks that recognize you as government and not the "oppressive" government.
Simply stating that government is oppressive does not qualify. Do you actually recognize those people in this article? Are they opposing government on your behalf? Have you mandated them to oppose government... that you elected? Do you have judges that have different opinion on this case?
The whole discussion and article about this topic seems to be oblivious on these very basic legal issues.
What do you mean, the boomerang and expansion are the most common criticisms of all that "war on terror"?
Well, drug smuggling is a traditional part of inter empire warfare. Pump the population of the oppossing entity full with societal dissolvents then use the innet turmoil for an intervention
This is hardly a new approach or development.
A decade ago, reading Linux Journal would get you flagged as being an extremist : https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4rp5l6/nsa_classifie...
Were they giving people 50 years in prison for it back then too?
I don't think you've understood the story you're commenting on. These people weren't "flagged" as terrorists, they were convicted and sentenced (extremely) harshly.
There’s literally no comparison between “flagging”, which has no legal requirement or no actual consequence without actual trial, and the results of an actual trial.
In Poland during the Soviet occupation (1945-1989) people were beaten and jailed for having a copier that would be used for copying magazines and brochures
I'd argue it was a vassal state, not occupied (per se) at least from the 1950's onwards. Yes, the soviet troops did station in Poland, but the beatings were administered by other Polish citizens.
It still is, it just changed owners.
And who would be the owners? Give names.
Nowadays your printer puts secret markings into everything, and Microsoft and Apple can link those to your account and IP address.
> during the Soviet occupation
Yep, things were waaay better in 1938, right?
NB: I like how [0] just ignores everything between 1918 and 2007.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic%E2%80%93Poland_...
> One fired an AR-15 at the police
This is what makes this different. There’s lots of gun clubs all over the place. But if a member shoots at the police (or anyone, really) they are going to get the book thrown at them and everyone associated with them who helped them, etc.
Because that changes your club from something normal to something that tried to shoot cops.
There’s a group in my town called the NFA club or something. They get their rifles out and march around neighborhoods. They stop cars. Quite scary. But they no the law and never brandish, directly threaten, etc. But if one of them ever shoots at a cop, I expext the whole group is going to jail.
It would be nice if cops could start following the law, in this case not firing at non-combatants would have sufficed.
The sentences are pretty crazy but what’s with the strange understatement.
> One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation)
The accurate statement is that he shot and wounded a police officer who he intentionally targeted according to his own testimony (where he claims he did so because he thought the cop was going to shoot his guys).
> Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines
The accurate statement is: “hiding zines that could be considered evidence of affiliation at the request of your arrested wife”.
Listen, the sentences seem politically motivated. They’re quite long. But if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.
This is pretty out there stuff. And I’m not going to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who yells “get to the rifles” then gets to the rifles and shoots a policeman that he could have been ‘potentially inciting violence’ by shooting. He committed violence. And hiding the facts here does not make me sympathetic.
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/sentencing-for-8-accused-o...
> But if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.
30 years though? And for moving what material exactly?
I think you can have some kind of rationale for why these people should be prosecuted. I'm not sure that's the issue for many though — the issue is the proportionality of the sentence.
> One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation)
Sounds like attempted murder for a start rather than incitement or provocation. Or worse, given there was a crowd.
>if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.
Oh, tell that to the president of the United States and half of Congress and half of the Senate (and half of the country). Remind me what was their reaction and actions after the pardon of Jan 6 rioters?
The Jan 6 rioters were convicted and given similarly long sentences. Certainly Trump doing something doesn’t make it valid.
> similarly long sentences
Enrique Tarrio got 22 years for masterminding an attempt to violently overturn the results of a Presidential election.
Daniel Sanchez-Estrada got 30 years for moving some magazines.
The median Jan 6 sentence was 10 months. The shortest sentence for a protestor here was 30 years.
Ok, that guy’s sentence is egregious (they all are, as were the Jan 6 ones, but I think he shouldn’t even have jail time).
I have less sympathy towards those who vandalized and the one who shot at police. 100 years is insane, but those acts are blatantly illegal.
> as were the Jan 6 ones
30 years was the MINIMUM sentence given to this group. The MAXIMUM sentence given to J6 rioters was 22 years. Are you honestly still trying to conflate the two?
30 is way way too long
22 is still way too long
Well, if he did it and there was no opposition, it certainly makes it "valid". Where exactly has it been made invalid? Has anyone done anything to make it invalid? Aren't they free, and can they do it again?
And the slush fund for the Jan 6 rioters is just suspended, not canceled. It will come back.
Just because something happened doesn’t make it “valid”: it’s not moral, and your side doing it may not have the same effect (good people can’t use evil tools as effectively as evil people).
I don’t really care whether Jan 6 rioters are free, they’ve spent months-to-years in jail anyways. What’s important is preventing future crimes, which punishing deserved people broadly on your side helps.
> Can they do it again
In 2028 if a Dem wins? At best they’re looking at another few years. (Trump won’t successfully pardon a crime as egregious as this (before anyone serves time) unless the Dem is really ineffective, because of how similarly it can be used against his side.)
>Just because something happened doesn’t make it “valid”
If nothing happens to change it, it is valid just by being a fait accompli. Your words are just words, if they don't translate into a tangible reality. An hallucination.
>I don’t really care whether Jan 6 rioters are free, they’ve spent months-to-years in jail anyways. What’s important is preventing future crime
Enrique Tario has been harassing former capitol policemen. Any Jan 6 rioter is free to go after the police, or family or friends or anyone who denounced them.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/22/enrique-tarr...
>In 2028 if a Dem wins?
No, in 2026. After the 2020 election, polling places and local state officials were threatened and attacked in dozen of places.
>Trump won’t successfully pardon a crime as egregious as this
It doesn't make sense, he's done far worse already, and he is preparing to do far, far worse. Hesgeth is more than ready to use the Army against the US population:
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/30/nx-s1-5557232/hegseth-general...
VP Vance is ready to invoke the insurrection act:
https://archive.is/85Zmd
They were given similarly long sentences, despite shooting zero people.
Honestly, I think both Jan 6 and these rioters deserve punishment, but not such long sentences. Prevention and deterrence - prevention by monitoring (at least to prevent them from going near “enemy territory”) and taking their guns, deterrence by at most a few years in prison, other penalties (like fines), and the social consequences. Anything more is unnecessarily harmful and wastes prison resources.
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Since violence is never the answer, do you think any institutions or organizations whose primary arm is violence should be disbanded in favor of non-violent alternatives?
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Careful, accurately portraying these people's crimes will likely get you downvoted and flagged, unfortunately. It's sad, but there's likely people here who support what happened.
This type of "you can't downvote me for valid reasons" style of intro to a comment is going to lead to many people downvoting you immediately.
Not many people are going to believe your appeal to "real discussion" when leading with that.
If you want a discussion, here it is:
>this kind of behavior can't be normalized
What happened to the Jan 6 rioters?
Ashli Babbitt received military funeral honors for what?
Discuss: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
What is the intent of the 2nd amendment? It allows citizens to beat arms, but for what purpose?
> It allows citizens to beat arms, but for what purpose?
To form state-level militia. It even starts with a sunset condition: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ..." — so arguably, since a well-maintained militia is universally considered in no way necessary (nor sufficient) for state security, the second amendment should have lost its power long time ago.
> To form state-level militia.
Right, to expand on that a bit:
1. When the Second Amendment was written, there was already an active legal framework of "well-regulated militias" through the Articles of Confederation. [0] Every single state was required to run and fund their own militia.
2. The bill of rights was originally (pre-civil-war) purely a set of restrictions on the Federal government, nothing in it bound states. One of its explicit purposes was to preserve state autonomy from the (new, worrisome) federal layer being created.
3. Therefore Second Amendment was (originally) intended to prevent the federal government from sneakily disarming individual states by literally removing their pool of arms and volunteers.
Whether it should still mean the same after many years and other amendments is a much trickier problem, but the idea that it always meant an individual right to arms is a false mythology.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
> Whether it should still mean the same
If we abstract ourselves from the politics, then yes, of course it should. I mean, the amendment could've simply been "The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" but it isn't, it contains an intentionally added clarification in it as well.
But the politics being what they are, some things got reinterpreted in rather baffling ways. The commerce clause is one of the most (in)famous examples; several (unchallenged) court judgements that declare that in some circumstances one has to actively invoke the fifth amendment, or else they'll lose its protections (?!) is another. The latter is personally the most baffling to me because not only it defies the very idea of such protections (you have them even if you don't have a decent lawyer) but it gives some marginal legitimacy to one of the insane juristic ideas of "sovereign citizens": if you say the right magic words, you'll get out of jail free, but you have to say them!
Beg to differ: to the purposes of the idealized free USA, a popular militia was, and still is, the only solution for a free territory of people. A modern organized army as understood today is all about ceding your right as an free individual to become subservient to a large authority.
> Let’s be clear: a few of the protesters were out of bounds. One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation). I would never condone that kind of activity.
This is the crux of the issue - from the perspective of the government, this was a group of people who lead an armed terrorist attack on a government facility in order to disrupt the functioning of that facility because they held an ideological belief that the facility was immoral; and it's irrelevant that not every member of the group personally shot a cop with an AR-15, just as it wasn't relevant that Osama bin Laden didn't personally hijack any planes and crash them into buildings when the US government sent special forces to break into his compound and kill him.
> Instead, other “evidence” was used to infer that they planned violence, including this specific argument that should give everyone pause:
> “[…] including their decision to communicate and auto-delete messages on Signal, an encrypted messaging platform widely used among activists, journalists and other citizens wary of government surveillance.”
Given that the other evidence that they planned violence was that they set off fireworks outside the facility, vandalized it, and then shot a cop in the neck when the cop came to investigate the vandalism, I don't really care that the government prosecutors also considered their use of Signal as evidence that they planned violence. Frankly, if you're part of a group that is planning violence, it is a good idea to use an encrypted messaging platform like Signal that has an auto-delete feature to do that planning, the prosecutors are correct to note this.
I found the wording of "inciting violence" odd - surely firing a rifle at police officers is violence and not simply incitement for others to join in? It sounds like the author of the article is so obsessed with the social ramifications of acts they can't see the literal ones.
The use of private communications absolutely, fundamentally, positively, holistically cannot be allowed to be recognized as "evidence" for anything, including planned violence, or we have lost the final fight and society is doomed forever.
Do not let your apathy be the tool of another man's evil.
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The country has changed massively through voting in the last 25 years. I would rather not change to a system where political groups attack others with guns and bombs to change things, because that's the alternative you're proposing.
Touch grass, find a significant other, and build a life.
This article is quite dishonest.
> Let’s be clear: a few of the protesters were out of bounds.
"out of bounds" is a nice way of putting it. Terrorism is an accurate description.
> But these sentences far outstrip anything that’s been given to anyone on the right wing: the leader of the Proud Boys, as this article notes, was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
I think the difference here is the planned terrorist activity, and condolence of violence. If the Proud Boys were doing to same sort of thing, then fair - but I cannot find in a Google search that they did.
> One protester wasn’t even present, but was sentenced to 30 years for moving some zines
> The ninth defendant, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada was not at the protest, but was convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record after prosecutors said he moved leftwing zines and other materials at the request of Rueda, his wife, after she was arrested.
Clearly it was not just "moving some vines", it was knowingly concealing evidence and attempting to prevent the course of justice.
> Instead, other “evidence” was used to infer that they planned violence, including this specific argument that should give everyone pause
An argument can be made there, all are innocent unless proven guilty. But I suspect they admitted to being fully aware and supportive of the terrorist activities. The prosecution can claim all they like, the important thing is what ends up being considered.
> "out of bounds" is a nice way of putting it.
This I agree with.
> it was knowingly concealing evidence
The article does not misrepresent this. The issue being raised is about how they were tried/convicted/sentenced. The part you quoted shows this.
> Terrorism is an accurate description.
> ... the difference here is the planned terrorist activity, ... If the Proud Boys were doing [the] same sort of thing ...
I'm genuinely interested in what "terrorism" means to you.
Terrorism comes from word terror - it is use of violence to impose terrorist goals. Usually political. The fact that they have chosen as a target police is just return to classical terrorism that existed 100+ years ago. Targeting innocents by taking hostages, 911 or blowing up cooker are quite recent developments for terrorist activities. What was your definition for terrorism?
My view is still relatively classical, significant unsanctioned violence used for political means. I would also be interested to see how other people are now defining this.
Don’t forget shipping people to foreign concentration camps for having tattoos.
A reminder that the current administration was running military operations on Signal.
Even though I am commited to resisting "fascism" in all it's forms,the people convicted were definitly working themselves up to do something even worse. For me there crime was to be undisaplined and they did not understand there responsibilitys while armed, which is unexcusable. If they realy wanted to engage in armed struggle against fascists, then there are plenty of places where they could voulenteer to fight irregular mercenary forces hired and equiped by companys and governments to destroy populations that have the missfortune to live on top of some oil or other extractable resource, but what they did was cosplay bieng a revolutionary in a suberban environment, and no doubt had plans to hook up for a few drinks at the club later. These people made the classic, fascist, mistake of thinking in terms of a hiarchical relationship of rights, and forgot , that everybody has rights, even a dumb ass junior cop who goes where he's told, while for all anyone knows is fielding texts from his wife ,promising that he will take the van in and get the brakes checked.
The ability of Texas to adhere so intensely to the idea of radical individualism while also being wholly committed to fascism at a policy level has always confused me.
When I studied Texas history in University, the textbook opened with a sentence along the lines of "Texas Government has always been characterized by incompetence and nepotism", and through that lens, I filed many of the absurdities (e.g. Greg Abbott's entire career and the "free speech area" on my university campus) under that bucket.
A couple decades haves since passed and my view has changed to see the openly racist institutions, targeted policing and zero-sum "satesmanship" at both local and state levels that forego core democratic values for "winning" (or at least lining the pockets of your donors) as something more jaded and sociopathic.
There are a lot of truly good, smart people in Texas, yet it's been an fairly openly fascist state for decades. Coming from the Bay Area and having lived in a lot of places, I've never felt like I lived in a police state more than in the DFW metroplex, although when visiting family in Northern CA, CAMP operations in Mendocino County come as a close second in terms of authoritarian vibes.
I was so confused with how many people from the valley openly aligned and invested in such a deeply corrupt state in the 2000s. Elon was unsurprising given his fashy incel leanings, but Apple's choice to build the Austin campus floored me. An office in a state where your female employees don't have reproductive rights? How do you endorse that?
You can't just look past the political rot that has defined Texas for generations with the excuse that you can buy a "Keep Austin Weird" sticker at H.E.B. The people in Austin and across the state advocating for a better future and an accountable government deserve a shoutout, but man, if you wanted to see the writing on the wall for American Democracy, all you needed to do was look at Texas anytime between 1996 and now.
It's sad because it really is beautiful country full of decent people, but it's blatantly and unjustifiably corrupt, and diametrically opposed to the core American values that it attaches to it's lifted, 9-tom, 1/2"-longer-than-the-same-model-sold-in-every-other-state pick 'em up truck, and it's gamed so hard that the people in the state will never undo it.
Texas was the test case.
Texas is where a large section of the founders of the Confederacy fled to once it was clear the war was lost. It’s harbored their bigotry and ideology.
You’re right about it being the test case. Having one of the largest state populations meant that it helped drive textbook curation for elementary/HS education. Smaller red states that didn’t have the population or budget to define their own textbooks would use Texas’.
It's not confusing. It's a state that pretends to adhere to an idea of radical individualism that is just a vehicle for fascism. The individualism practiced is just 'the right to abuse/oppress others without state interference, so long as 'others' means groups the state culturally doesn't like'.
It's really a failure of reconstruction that we ended up with the South remaining basically an anti-democratic apartheid state. Even though Jim Crow stopped being legal for a while, the political elites running the states didn't really change. Slavery was really America's original sin and its legacy still poison the american experiment; that southern planter mentality never left.
Anyone who values democracy is automatically an anti-fascist.
Democracy is _inherently_ anti-fascist.
Democracy also has a 'tyranny of the majority' vulnerability in which it can enforce policies onto minorities that could be just as harsh compared to policies imposed by autocracies. For example - Japanese American internment in WWII.
If there is a large group of people who use a term like "anti-fascist" as a tag line it no longer is a literal representation of the words. Just like how you wouldn't say that a guy rolling coal in a lifted pickup with a confederate flag and an AR mounted in the window who calls himself a "freedom fighter" is literally fighting for freedom.
Otherwise you will just be talking past people who are interpreting it to mean something else. Which of course you are free to do if you don't think what you are trying to say has enough value to be worth avoiding the miscommunication.
>Anyone who values democracy is automatically an anti-fascist.
Sure. None of that has anything to do with Antifa. You can't claim popular support for thuggish behavior by claiming dibs on a name.
I'd argue that most, if not all clandestine cells that call themselves themselves "Antifa" are as anti-Fascist as the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" were socialist.
Mussolini had majority vote in Democratic elections. Fascism can not rise without Democracy.
A lot of people desire their own oppression, so I don't think democracy is inherently anti-fascist.
These are the values of the original antifa that killed and died for democracy by the way: https://web.archive.org/web/20211222183606/https://www.washi...
Labelling (all?) American (Allied?) personnel as "antifa" or even "anti-fascist" is an interesting move. The article doesn't seem to demonstrate what you suggest it does nor does it seem particularly relevant in general. What are you trying to say?
That, if we accept that logic, we must either say the Allies who fought in WWII didn't value democracy, or we must accept a definition of anti-fascist that is so broad, it easily includes people even many on the right would call Nazis.
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Well. It's a signal. What did you expect?
Would you mind elaborating?