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1061 points danso | 17 comments | | HN request time: 0.42s | source | bottom
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paganel ◴[] No.23347256[source]
I said it yesterday and got downvotes, Twitter’s CEO decided to pick sides in the political battle so they should expect what’s coming to them.
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1. gentaro ◴[] No.23347316[source]
Sounds like maybe you should take the hint. It's not "taking sides" to point out that you're glorifying violence if you as the president are threatening to deploy military force against protestors.
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2. 101404 ◴[] No.23347398[source]
Sending police to stop violence is "glorifying violence"? How exactly?
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3. ryanobjc ◴[] No.23347426[source]
Sigh. Really.

The tweets didn’t offer “sending in the police” it threatened to send the military in. Which isn’t the police.

Word matter. The fact I’m m reading this comment here is sad.

4. mrighele ◴[] No.23347460[source]
Sending police to shoot at protester is "glorifying violence". As a reference, that's the approach that Assad took in Syria back in 2011.
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5. paganel ◴[] No.23347557[source]
I've done my own share of protesting (living in Eastern Europe forces you to do that sometimes) and we never resorted to looting. If we had done so I would have expected the powers that be to take some counter-measures that would have involved more than strong verbal reprimands, yes.
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6. Traster ◴[] No.23347564[source]
No, see you've immediately moved the goals posts. He didn't say "I'm sending the police to stop violence".
7. fzeroracer ◴[] No.23347625[source]
If by 'we' you're referring to the entirety of Eastern Europe, Russia has a well known history of employing agent provocateurs in order to affect protests or other movements. This isn't isolated to just Eastern Europe either, considering Italy has a history of this as well.

Needless to say there's also been some reporting and concerns of provocateurs among the protesters here as well using it as an excuse to inflame riots or start looting.

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8. celticninja ◴[] No.23347656[source]
he said he was sending the army to start shooting, not sending the police to stop violence.
9. paganel ◴[] No.23347671{3}[source]
I live in Romania, not Russia, and you're correct, the powers that we protested against also employed agent provocateurs. They were easy to spot though (youngish, like 17-18, looked like they belonged to some football ultra movements) and the other protesters took almost immediate action against them (isolating them, mostly).
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10. pnako ◴[] No.23347744{3}[source]
He mentioned shooting at looters, not protesters.

Maybe you didn't see that part because Twitter has hidden the tweet?

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11. anigbrowl ◴[] No.23347752{4}[source]
You may find this thread interesting, as it concerns the allegation that the property destruction taking place yesterday (edit: Wednesday - I just remembered it's already Friday) was initiated by a police officer. https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1266196890649088000

The looting in Minneapolis is a) rather ancillary to the larger protests against the police, b) an American tradition going back to colonial times, and c) a mix of opportunism and antipathy to US hypercapitalism. A few small stores have been damaged but the destruction has mainly been targeted against corporate retail outlets.

12. totalZero ◴[] No.23347883[source]
Different places have different forms of political outcry. Protest by destruction of commercial property was a well-known component of American colonial resistance to Britain. (Consider the Boston Tea Party, for example.)

Personally I have never been part of a riotous protest, but in an academic sense I believe that destruction of commercial property does more to force a change in police activity than destruction of police cars and other public property (things that ultimately belong to the people themselves).

You can bet that there are more powerful people in the business community there, than on the police force.

I don't believe this is actively in the mind of most rioters, but I think it is part of the reason that rioting has a major impact on American politics.

13. totalZero ◴[] No.23347903{4}[source]
Shooting at looters instead of arresting them and taking them before a judge?

That's reminiscent of the very brutal police practices that sparked this chaos in the first place.

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14. pnako ◴[] No.23348024{5}[source]
In which country do you live?

Shooting rubber bullets at rioters and looters is standard practice pretty much everywhere in democracies, and in non-democracies they tend to go straight to lethal ammo.

15. mrighele ◴[] No.23348131{4}[source]
You're right, I mixed the two. In any case I think my point still stands; in most European countries both would be addressed with police batons and in case of violence rubber bullets and tear gas. From his tweet I don't think he was thinking about rubber bullets.
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16. skocznymroczny ◴[] No.23349596{5}[source]
No it wouldn't. Most cases of looting in Europe are just forgotten about because it's done by minorities in countries like France or UK and it's a controversial topic to talk about so police and governments would rather just pretend it doesn't happen.
17. username90 ◴[] No.23349790{5}[source]
Mobs in Europe are usually not armed with guns, mobs in USA are.