Makes me think of the UK:
Extinction Rebellion and just stop oil did a load of stunts that didn’t do any real harm and the press treated like they burnt a city down.
Literal Nazis committed programs and riots in the streets and the press said they had “legitimate concerns”.
They only have an issue with disruption when it’s the left.
Always with the “liberals”.
Yeah, exactly which liberals are we talking about? Maga? This shit is beyond moronic.
maybe people who are really into Liberace?
Philosophical liberals. Right to private property and engage in commerce, individualist, idealist, legalist ethics liberals.
They keep forgetting to put “neo” in front.
They don’t learn that part during their tankie training
Where’s that tankie factory anyways? They must come from somewhere
.ml mostly
I dunno man, there are some who ONLY operate under the Marxist definition of “Liberal”. They don’t believe language evolves and that maybe to most people “Liberal” is the term used to describe anyone with progressive ideals.
The word “liberal” is useless because there is no consensus on what it means. Similarly useless are the words “left” and “right”. “Marxist” is still useful because nobody can deny that it denotes adherence to the ideas of Karl Marx. Similarly, even though people TRY to erode its meaning, “Christian” must ultimately mean adherence to the philosophies espoused by Christ. So for example anyone who identifies as “Christian” but makes no attempt to follow the principles he espoused, is simply lying.
Because the Marxist version of liberals still call themselves liberals and have intentionally erased the semantic existence of all ideologies left of them so that they can pretend to be the left.
Sure. But the bucket of people that term encapsulates doesn’t match that definition anymore.
That’s not how that works. That only makes sense if like liberal parties didn’t exist. Saying Social Democrats or Socialists or Greens are more liberal than Liberals on some issues doesn’t make any sense, it like implies that the Liberals are ontologically the most progressive.
Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK)
Is it democratic? Is it a Republic? Names don’t always represent their namesake.
There also is no party titled “Liberal” in the USA, which is what I’m specifically referencing since this post is about USA “liberals”.
Like no, just no, stop trying to make “liberal” synonymous with progressive, they are different things.
It’s a Tankie thing. They call everyone a liberal.
Nah it’s a leftist thing.
Liberals are centrists who maintain the status quo and at best ask for “reforms” without substantially wanting to change the underlying system.
They think improvements like ranked choice voting would make capitalism magically end poverty and inequality. That if a few more people benefit from social programs, that you can overlook the others still suffering because it’s “better”.
I am a leftist. I’m telling you they call everyone liberals. They even call Trump a liberal.
Liberals are moderate conservatives, a.k.a. Establishment Democrats. And then you have the GOP, which consists of extreme right Fascists, so far right they’re practically the antisis of liberal. There is no dominant centrist or leftist party in the United States. The closest we have in office are AOC and Bernie, and even they’re just barely to the left of center in my eyes.
Ranked choice voting won’t solve everything, but it’s a step in the right direction. It’s worth giving it a chance.
Leftists often call them liberal because many of them use the term to define one who believes in Liberalism.
“Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law.”
Thus anyone who is liberal believes in the right to private property. MAGA strongly believes in such. No leftist believes in such. Thus in their use, a leftist cannot be a liberal.
It’s just a different usage of a term based on cultural differences.
Liberals are moderate conservatives
What kind of brainrot is this?
This worked in some places with social market economy and such.
Social democracies in the West also benefit from being imperialist.
“liberal” here, smash that storefront for me I have to go to work thanks 👍
classical liberals maybe
Are we talking about Martínez de la Rosa-era liberals? (that was on the 30’s. The 1830’s)
Classical liberalism was an improvement over what came before it. Neoliberalism is when it morphed into anarcho-capitalist-esque “austerity for the poor; rights and subsidies for corporations”
There is no such thing as “anarcho-capitalist”
Anarchism is fundamentally oppositional to capitalism.
Confidently wrong. There are different kinds of anarchism, and yours might be fundamentally oppositional to capitalism. But to deny the existence of anarcho-capitalists is counterproductive, because they exist, and they’re a serious threat to be aware of.
The idea is that in an anarchist society, there’s no governing body to regulate businesses, and so they get to do whatever they want. It results in a neofeudal corporate oligarchy, a la Curtis Yarvin. You can argue that it’s not really anarchistic if it results in oppressive systems. They might argue that it’s only anarchy if there’s nothing stopping them from oppressing you.
The point is, anarchy is a big umbrella, and just because you might be anarcho-syndicalist or something else doesn’t mean that your version of anarchy is the only version of anarchy.
Arguing over what constitutes “the true anarchy” is pointless. Critique anarcho-capitalism to your heart’s desire, but to deny that it exists implies that there’s nothing to critique.
It results in a neofeudal corporate oligarchy
Yes, because it is neo-feudalism trying to wear the label of Anarchism. That doesn’t mean it is Anarchism.
By your logic, “National Socialism” is a socialist philosophy because it calls itself socialism. Which is an utterly stupid thing to claim.
I never said what it calls itself is an accurate description, only that there are people who claim it
These tend to be libertarians from Texas or something. You are right though
I wish people would realize that the ability to protest is directly tied to social safety net.
You get beaten by a cop, you will get free healthcare that is not directly tied to your job. In the US, if you do have healthcare, it is tied to your job and your job can fire you for protesting if they want (unlike France we have no protection for being fired for political opinion).
Not just that, but US police are extraordinarily different from police in most of the world. They trace their roots back to organizations first formed to hunt escaped slaves. They are heavily militarized, almost never face any consequences for abusing their power, and are usually encouraged to use violence against left-wing protestors.
At points during the BLM protests, Trump called in the National Guard, who proceeded shoot and kill both protestors and bystanders.
they still do that. if they accuse you of drug abuse, and you are too poor to hire a lawyer you get sent to a forced labor camp (private prison)
There is also the gun factor. Self defense is not generally accepted as a reason to own a gun in France, so there is no self defense carry. That automatically makes the cops less likely to react suddenly and violently.
the cops less likely to react suddenly and violently.
Truly spoken like someone who knows nothing of European policing. CRS resort to violence as the priority solution to all of their problems, the French just understand that fighting the cops is an inherent part of fighting for your rights.
Are they this quick to resort to lethal violence though?
Nineteen seconds elapsed from when Stillman got out of his squad car to when he shot Toledo.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/video-shows-chicago-teen-wasnt-holding-a-gun-when-shot-by-cop
French police trace their roots to sending Jews to Germany, just fyi
And drowning north Africans and such
Isn’t that why some of you guys worship the 2nd amendment? in case you have to deal with a tyrannical government?
So it is true. Americans can’t protest like the French. You just interpreted it wrongly
Nationality isn’t the issue, location is. You can’t protest in America like you can in France.
Tell that to the entire American working-class movement of the early 1900s that gave us our right to unionize. They had those same problems but it didn’t stop them. Why? Because they fucking organized their communities to provide that safety net for each other without relying on a third party entity to do it for them.
The problem with America these days is no one knows how or wants to be part of a community with each other. We are so fucking endeared to the capitalist system that people can’t fucking imagine doing anything without it.
A century of dedicated propaganda and class division will do that. And our police are better armed now, and the federal government is very openly on their side.
The federal government has always openly been on their side. That’s nothing new. The state has always been the enemy of the working class.
Them being armed isn’t an excuse to not take action. It just means we have to take precautions and adapt our tactics to deal with it. They aren’t invincible.
Tell that to the Nepalese.
JK the French know how to protest
Because they’re terrible at war, and that’s sorta okay.
Oh no, not this trope again.
Education at its finest.
Are the liberals in the room with us now
Yes, almost certainly
Hate to break it to you but the same is true in France. Media coverage here has focused almost exclusively on small shops being looted. The human brain has a much easier time focusing on individual tragedies rather than systemic issues, and the government and its cronies (and the local versions of fox news) are taking full advantage of that bias.
Less a “human brain” focus than a main media focus
Liberals didn’t lose their minds.
However, the media are owned and controlled by the billionaires. This allows them a lot of control of the narrative and your perception of events.
This is like Orwell shit. The party was never at war with East Asia. We never denounced the George Floyd protests. We were always anti-billionaire.
What else? The Democrats never supported Israel? I’ve heard that one recently.
I think your conflating Democrats with liberals.
Democrats are centrist, at best. This is also why it’s so silly when democrats are referred to as being radically left.
Bruh, I live in a place where the liberal party is called the Liberal Party and they’re functionally identical to the Democrats just without the same responsibilities of being the #1 state sponsor of war.
Bruh, it sounds like your “Liberal party” and the Democrats serve the same function, which is to be just left enough of the conservative party to capture the votes of liberals, while never affecting (or even advocating for) any actual progressive, liberal societal change.
Liberals aren’t left wing, this is like B-tier trolling.
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sorry but that’s an amazing photo. i hope it’s a photo, i ain’t look too close
I’m pretty sure I remember that actually happening, because my shithead dad was angry about it.
They should make him eat there
The 2020 BLM protests were hardly some small, isolated incident involving a little property damage. The unrest caused more than $2 billion in insured property losses across the United States, making it the costliest civil-disorder event in U.S. insurance history at the time. The unrest spread across more than 20 states and affected communities nationwide. Whatever your political position, pretending the damage was trivial or that this was some minor, localized event is simply ignoring the facts. That doesn’t mean every protester was violent or that every demonstration was destructive, but the scale and financial cost of the unrest were substantial.
Despite the scale of the 2020 BLM protests, the long-term results were mixed at best. They generated enormous public attention and prompted some policy changes, but they did not fundamentally transform the American political system or eliminate the racial inequalities that motivated the movement. In many respects, the country remains deeply divided, and racial hostility has become increasingly visible in our political discourse. Under the current administration, rhetoric surrounding race and immigration has only intensified those divisions. For all the protests, all the disruption, and all the money lost to property damage, the question remains: how much has actually changed for the better?
This is exactly why memes like this are counterproductive. Rather than encourage an honest discussion about what happened, what it cost, and what the consequences were, they reduce complicated events to simplistic narratives designed to provoke anger and deepen divisions. Presenting misleading information to reinforce an existing political bias is propaganda, regardless of which side does it. It is the same kind of divisive political messaging that the current administration routinely uses to mobilize its supporters and discredit its opponents. When we substitute outrage and misinformation for facts, we make meaningful discussion impossible. That is a significant part of how we arrived at our current political climate, and continuing to circulate this material without questioning its accuracy only makes the problem worse.
Measuring BLM in terms of insured property damage is probably a poor way to approach a movement addressing systemic bias and social awareness. It at least runs afoul of something to:
reduce complicated events to simplistic narratives
The impacts of BLM have been met with counteraction, which is neither new or unexpected, and no meme is going to be able to fully address a complicated anything.
I love how there are multiple comments downplaying the $2 billion number.
It just goes to show how brainwashed people really are when it comes to numbers like $2 billion.
Of course, compare that number to Elon Musk’s wealth, and $2 billion doesn’t seem like all that much. Compare it to what I have, however, and the difference is almost incomprehensible. I make $80,000 a year. Even if I saved every single dollar I earned, it would take me 25,000 years to accumulate $2 billion. Let that sink in for a moment.
$2 billion in insured property damage is an absolutely massive amount of damage caused by the BLM riots. However, that still doesn’t change the point I’m making, which is that the meme is misinformation.
Your argument is that memes don’t tell the whole story and never can. That’s a completely different argument, and it doesn’t address my point.
My point is that the meme is deliberately presenting a misleading picture of what happened. The fact that the damage amounted to $2 billion is directly relevant to that discussion.
The meme implies that the BLM riots caused relatively little property damage. They did not. The estimated insured property damage was approximately $2 billion.
Downplaying that figure to make the damage appear insignificant is textbook misinformation, particularly when it’s being used to push a very specific political narrative.
And let’s be clear about something: my personal opinions on BLM and the riots are probably very different from what most people here assume. In fact, the person I originally responded to would probably disagree with a good deal of what I have to say about both BLM and the riots themselves.
But that’s beside the point.
I am specifically and intentionally calling out the propaganda and misinformation presented in this meme. Nothing more, nothing less.
You don’t have to agree with my opinions about BLM to acknowledge that a meme misrepresenting the scale of property damage is misleading. Those are two entirely separate issues, and conflating them is exactly how political misinformation gets a free pass.
It’s a $32 trillion economy, so I wouldn’t consider it a stretch to say that BLM caused the slightest amount of property damage in a meme. The $2 billion figure doesn’t seem significant or as relevant.
You’re comparing a $2 billion insurance loss to the entire American GDP?
Jesus. Way to lose all context.
Yes, of course. What’s $2 billion compared to $32 TRILLION-ILLION-ILLION? Are you kidding me?!
What exactly were you expecting from the protests? For people to scoop up the entire country and toss it in the fucking bin?
I even made a point of comparing that $2 billion to Elon Musk’s net worth. Compared to that, it’s a tiny loss.
But comparing a $2 billion loss from the BLM protests to the entire American economy is a completely useless comparison. It’s like saying the distance to the Sun is tiny compared to the distance to the next galaxy. Technically true, but utterly meaningless without context.
The American economy generates trillions of dollars in economic activity every year. Of course $2 billion is going to look insignificant when you compare it to a number that massive. That doesn’t tell us anything meaningful about the actual scale of the losses.
Christ. Calling a $2 billion loss negligible because it’s a tiny fraction of America’s GDP doesn’t prove your point. It just demonstrates that you know how to divide two numbers without understanding what the comparison actually tells you.
Context matters. Scale matters. And a loss doesn’t stop being significant just because you can find a bigger number to compare it to.
The context being: insured property damage is probably not a good way to measure the influence of BLM protests when emotionally reacting to a meme.
It is actually and you don’t understand the context. It’s the largest loss in insurance history. How do you find that to be a meaningless metric.
And again. The point of my response was to illustrate the misinformation. As much as you want to downplay it 2 billion is a noteworthy and significant loss.
Insured property damage just wasn’t the purpose or intent of BLM. Illustrating it as such works just as much towards misinformation as the offending meme, if not more.
Two billion across the whole country isn’t all that much, especially considering how bonkers property evaluations are.
Compared to anual damages caused by climate change 2 billion is relatively small too. And the gap will widen every passing year, but that doesn’t bother the majority.
“won’t someone please think of the property values!”
Thank you and spot on. There was zero change, hell its honestly worse now than it was because Republicans regained power.
What did we get? Hundreds if not thousands of wounded, and frankly tortured people from police brutality and zero change for the better.
The media and politicians are bought by billionaires and prevent any real change no matter how much you protest.
Vote them out.
I think other replies describe why this is a terrible approach to looking at a movement, but you mentioned insured property loses and I couldnt help but wonder if the protests actually did any damage to insurance companies (unfortunately they didnt take even a dime).
Private U.S. property/casualty insurers’ made more in 2020 than 2019 in net underwriting gains (difference between net premiums and any claims and other insurance-related expenses)
$5.1 billion of net underwriting gains in 2020 compare to $3.7 billion of net underwriting gains a year earlier
https://www.verisk.com/490445/siteassets/media/downloads/insuranceresultsreport2020fullyear.pdf
“Safe” protests won’t accomplish a damn thing.
I love the No Kings protests in Portland… congratulations, you’re protesting for an audience who already 99% agrees with you.
But that’s protests in Portland in general, BLM, Occupy Wall Street, etc. etc.
Want to make a real difference? Take that shit to D.C. and shut the city down for a month. That might move the needle.
Preaching to the pre-converted? Pointless.
Burn one billionaire or politician and you’ll see some movement.
Look at Luigi Maggione.
We don’t have a central figure or identity that can pull that kind of movement together. Single-day marches? Sure. Moving hundreds of thousands of people two thousand miles and then feeding them for a month? That’s military logistics.
Yup, which is why nobody has done it since 1/6. 😉
i mean they only charged 1.5k-ish people. i was watching from california, there were obviously more but nowhere near 100k. i think official counts were somewhere closer to 5k.
Like I think Protests like No Kings and 50501 were great protests to get over the first hump of organization. Still is I suppose for those late to the party. However when they didn’t evolve to armed protestors, then evolve further when people like Pretti made the news dying in broad daylight, documented from multiple angles. It ultimately became a resting place that misdirected our energy into pointless busy work.
It was a great first couple of steps, but everybody started getting comfortable staying there even as the government, and namely The Republicans and ICE kept escalating. Always fearing their escalation, that inevitably kept happening even without The Insurrection Act.
Our due process was the social contract that stopped us from just taking power from them, letting them represent our country, earn a salary, without the need for citizen violence to enforce order. They broke that contract. And they keep breaking it everyday. They are no longer protected by the contract. They do not deserve to benefit from the same contract they wipe their ass with.
To put it bluntly, people should have already organized and prepped already. What happens as midterms head towards election day, and the aftermath is likely to be violent either way. I really do not see Republicans giving up power willingly. Though I hope to be wrong, and everything just gets better without the need for bloody violence. I just don’t see it happening currently. Even if The Dems win, there will be violence.
My problem with rioting is it often seems to be the working class shitting on their own doorstep… surely the most effective rioting would be to target parliament buildings, political party offices, banks and the properties of the very wealthy? Just my twopenn’orth.
This is why riots without organization are just as ignorable as nonviolent protests without organization. Neither threaten the power of the state because there is no power in individual acts.
The french have riots and gillotines. Americans have the 2A.
The fact there isn’t more Brian Thompsons is astounding. Crazy that some lib-cuck-fag (used ironically!) is America’s biggest patriot.
We need more tractors with slurry wagons spraying the houses of politicians.
Americana’s will only do shit that doesn’t inconvenience them. Which pretty much rules out any and all meaningful protest. They’ll gather in streets, sure. But the moment it comes at a cost- they’re far too busy.
This happens because they slept. And it got worse because they refused to wake up.
Americana’s will only do shit that doesn’t inconvenience them.
For some, sure. For others I think a good part of it is the fear of doing shit that will negatively impact others like them.
I am in a position of privilege and can afford the inconveniences, but what effective act could I take that wouldn’t result in making the lives of numerous other people tip out of balance and potentially cause them or their dependents to become unhoused or go without food or medicine?
For the average person, living has become more and more precarious. We have fewer and fewer safety nets and the rich are quick to make those they have power over feel the pain of resistance first. We have no guarantee of healthcare, less and less food assistance, unaffordable childcare, poor elder care. All purposely done by the capitalist class. This has created a human shield around them.
It’s like the only options are indirectly accelerationist. Cause unavoidable collateral damage, blame those at the top, and hope it inspires those at the bottom to act instead of turn on you? I don’t like that.
That happens because they are not low educated savages with open borders.
Americans are some of the most politically and historically ignorant people you’ll ever meet, and it’s mostly because they’re fed equal measures of treats and propaganda by their capitalist overlords.
Compared to who?
Not poking particularly at you, but there are a lot of people (including you) making pretty broad generalizations.
For one, compared to almost anyone in the global south who live the brutal reality of American politics.
Ok
I am not aware of a single “liberal” who got upset about that at all.
The problem might be that you either don’t know what a liberal is, or that you don’t know how people use the term in everyday life.
You saw a mildly critically post from a soccer mom. We get it, you think you’re morally righteous and anyone with a slightly different opinion is an evil LiBeRaL
There you go, now you can be aware. This article includes quotes from Biden, Clyburn, Lightfoot, Wheeler, and Pelosi condemning property destruction. (Pelosi’s quote is about the 2017 Berkeley protests though)
Here is a followup about Dems distancing themselves from the George Floyd protests more recently.
Seems to me if this was about politicians, the word Democrats would’ve been used. It never occurred to me at all that this was regarding politicians, since the party name is universally how they would be spoken about.
Sorry, took your comment about the ‘soccer mom’ as an indication you wanted to hear about party officials over lay people
No it was really just to illustrate that if they heard that it was some random one off case which wasn’t common. I was thinking of it as being some Facebook rando whose politics got assumed because of some signal that didn’t necessarily mean anything
Yeah, all this talk of violent protests right before an important election will DEFINITELY not help the fascists declare martial law and stay in power. /s
it ain’t the same guys saying both.
Goomba fallacy
