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"If you tell a lie big enough and tell it frequently enough, people will eventually come to believe it". What is an example of this happening today? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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I would really rather that these were actual examples, and not conspiracy theories. We all have our own unsubstantiated ideas about what shadowy no-gooders are doing, but I'd rather hear about things that are actually happening.

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[+] -128 points 2 years ago (12 children)

Sounds exactly like CNN's headline "fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting" after the George Floyd protests where like, 30 people died.

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  • [–] 133 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Do you not think it’s relevant to point out that:

    • Only 3.7% of the protests involved vandalism or property damage
    • Only 2.3% of the protests involved any sort of violence (excluding vandalism or property damage)
    • Much of the violence was directed against the BLM protesters
    • Much of the violence was begun or escalated by police (who are supposed to be trained to de-escalate)
    • Much of the property damage and property damage was not linked to protesters

    If 5% of the people involved at violent BLM protests were violent and if the numbers above reflected only protester initiated violence, then that would mean roughly 0.12% of BLM protesters (or 1 in a thousand) were violent. But since, as we know, most of the violence was directed against them, that number is probably more like 0.05%, or 5 in 10,000. Obviously that number would be much worse for the actual instigators of most of the violence (police and far-right Trump supporters).

    Main source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/

    Also weird that you say “like 30 people” died when it was more like 10:

    • 8 BLM protesters
    • 1 far-right, pro-Trump protester, who was shot by a self-identified anti-fascist protester who said he had been acting in self-defense
    • the above anti-fascist protester, who was shot by police

    Yes, there were like 25 deaths related to political unrest in 2020, but most of those were not at BLM protests. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled

    But hey, keep telling yourself that an active, intentionally orchestrated attempt by Trump and his supporters to violently overturn the results of our Presidential election was “basically the same thing lol” as a bunch of people who were protesting police violence and racism.

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  • [+] -62 points 2 years ago

    an active, intentionally orchestrated attempt by Trump and his supporters to violently overturn the results of our Presidential election was “basically the same thing lol” as a bunch of people who were protesting police violence and racism.

    Yes, that's exactly what I said. -_-

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Across the country? Damn that’s like less than a person per major city and I saw how brutally the police attacked protestors. If it hadn’t been mostly peaceful it’d’ve been in the hundreds dead.

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  • [+] -24 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I get your /s but I don't think anyone should be dying in a protest, regardless of how small that number is relatively speaking.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago

    I fully agree. That said these raw numbers are often used to condemn nationwide protests over legitimate grievances of police brutality and extrajudicial killings in which the police often initiated violence against the protesters. 30 people. 30 too many, but not nearly enough to condemn the protests as violent given their scale. 15,000,000-26,000,000 Americans participated in protests that summer knowing full well that they’d face tear gas, rubber bullets, and whatever else the cops felt like using. And 30 people died in the largest protests the country has ever seen.

    All this to try to do whataboutism against an attempted coup in which people marched into the capitol building, some carrying weapons, chanting to hang the vice president for daring to certify an election

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    I'm not so sure you do get it because it seems like you want to hold protesters to the exact same moral judgment, despite agreeing with a factual analysis of how infrequent the most egregious behaviors were.

    If you understand that, and, more importantly comprehend it, then that needs to cash out in your moral assessment of what happened, otherwise you have no business saying you agree or that you understand.

    If the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, then the opposite of "I understand" is not "I don't understand", it's "I understand, but still..."

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