Fears mount over Kash Patel’s use of FBI to persecute leftwing protest groups
Fears mount over Kash Patel’s use of FBI to persecute leftwing protest groups
Concern over crackdown on anti-fascists and Black Lives Matter movement as Trump loyalist takes control of agency
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The solution is more left-wing protest groups. Especially now that their manpower is down. (Edit: they're their)
more left-wing protest groups
That can defend themselves. Not many will openly protest otherwise if the leaders get picked off like snacks at a buffet.
I don’t think that comes naturally to most USA leftists, most of whom only experienced how it used to be in the last 40 years.
It will take a while to learn again. Should look to see how the civil rights movements protected themselves and labor before that
That can defend themselves.
How?
I understand this is a "guns are the answer because MURICA" dogwhistle but even if you do brutality matches every single weekend and train with nothing but a tricked out ar-15 with green tip bullets constantly AND have 20 other people who do the exact same thing and spend your weekdays training like SAS?
America has drones and missiles. And if you actually are the kind of threat the FBI can't stop they won't hesitate to tell every news network in the country to villify you worse than Barack Saddam Bin Laden himself.
This is the real problem once you get past the larpers who play call of duty and think that makes them an activist. Increasingly, by protesting you are making yourself the enemy of a state with the largest military on the planet whose entire country is already mostly covered by surveillance equipment (and even twitter tech is sufficient for analyzing the gaps to figure out where you are hiding).
So the issue is that small groups are vulnerable. We need large movements. And we need those movements to get a foothold before they get mowed down by a fat white kid who wants to shoot some n****rs.
But the second amendment? That shit is worthless. If it ever had ANY utility in posing a threat to a government (rather than being a backdoor way to speed up drafts) it would have been repealed instantly. Rather than being the rallying cry of the fascists themselves.
And just another thing that REALLY pisses me off:
Everyone loves to talk about how The Black Panthers were heavily armed and heroes and are WHY we have gun control laws. And parts of that are true. But it also drastically undersells the various militant groups involved in the Civil Rights struggle and the Black Panthers in particular.
Because it wasn't guns that held off the government. It was genuine outreach programs like the People's Free Food Program. Their efforts weren't "Let's all live on a ranch with guns". It was about organizing the people so that any force coming after them would have to wipe out entire cities in the process. AND it was about making sure those cities would side with (among others) The Black Panthers.
The revisionist history about how it is all guns, at best, ignores the actual genius organizing that went on. And, tinfoil hat, it is a great narrative to play to the Call of Duty generation and to alienate those activist groups.
RIP Fred Hampton
It's not all about guns. But guns were definitely a part of it.
I've seen this same argument spouted over and over online. People like you apparently think that there are enough drones, drone operators, and assorted missiles to target every person who could dare resist. It shows a general misunderstanding of the concept of drones and their usage. Also if the US Military began launching missiles at protest groups then shit would be way beyond hitting the fan, that would be overt war on our own country.
Each drone mission requires quite a bit of careful planning and skilled operators. The USA had somewhere in the neighborhood of 11k drones held by the military as of 2023 reports. A large portion of those are likely deployed abroad, along with their pilots.
Basically the situation seems to be quite different in reality than the spooky idea that magical drones can instantly show up anywhere to kill anyone.
The 2A is there for a reason. This is the first time it's legitimately been needed.
The 2A is there for a reason.
That was to maintain a state-sponsored militia to put down slave insurrections and to catch escaped slaves.
Again, if the second amendment was ANY threat to the govenrment, it would have been repealed.
Again, what are your assault rifles, your NRA training, and your screaming of "WILDCATS" going to do against drones? Or a police force that literally have tanks?
Tanks need fuel, drivers, and ways to cross rivers, drones have limited range and don't see inside buildings. Roads, power, and water are pressure points. You don't stand up to a stronger military force, you make it too expensive to operate, never being there when sudden things happen. That's why IEDs were the biggest problem in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one to chase, everyone is a suspect, all enforcement has to operate at maximum alert, always.
Tanks need fuel, drivers, and ways to cross rivers,
So, in your heroic Call of Duty wet dream you are also going to use the AR-15 you bought at Walmart to destroy every single bridge in the continental US?
drones have limited range and don’t see inside buildings.
"We received reports that there were insurgents hiding inside of that hospital posing as doctors so we bombed the fuck out of them."
Roads, power, and water are pressure points
Transformers are definitely a thing that can be taken out by a few stray bullets... and increasingly have those microphone set ups to track who shot at them.
See above regarding how you are apparently going to engage in a mass bombing effort to take out all of the infrastructure and the implied mockery.
you make it too expensive to operate,
So... just to check. Your genius plan is that you will make it too expensive for the US government to operate in the United States and then expect said US government to pull out of the... US?
You are assuming a level of omniscience to our police and military that they only dream of actually having. And if you think the US population will put up with their own military, turning their own cities into Gaza, you would be very mistaken.
You are assuming a level of omniscience to our police and military that they only dream of actually having
They already have it. "AI powered surveillance" is already a thing offered by many companies. And anyone with a bit of python skills can rig up something similar using a laptop and publicly available traffic cameras (ten or so years back it took us an afternoon to hook a few packages together and "stalk" a friend's Toyota Camry over the course of a week)
The only thing holding back these efforts is that, in the past, the government tended to care about overreach (or, more specifically, negative press during reelection campaigns...) and orgs like the ACLU fought tooth and nail to limit stuff like this. But Enemy Of The State and Person of Interest are both a lot more true than anyone wants to admit. And trivially easy to automate these days so you don't even need Jack Black in a van to track someone carrying a green shopping bag to their car, look up the license plate registration, and guesstimate if that black guy is Big Willy Style.
And if you think the US population will put up with their own military, turning their own cities into Gaza, you would be very mistaken.
Oh, okay. Just so long as the US population says we don't like it that will stop the rapist in chief and his armies that have, historically, "just followed orders".
But, just to drill down on this
, turning their own cities into Gaza,
There is already a history of doing this. Not razed to the same degree as Gaza but the idea of using the media to push cities like Detroit or NYC/The Bronx as "dens of crime and danger". Hell, we saw it with Katrina and New Orleans where there was a strong media push to argue that the reason rescue efforts were increasingly half assed is because of roving gangs (and ignore stuff like cops unloading on innocent families because they were bored...). There was an increasing push to do this with the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle a few years back.
Hell, we had multiple people get away with murder because the BLM protests were clearly violent armies attacking our precious Targets.
This is why actual activists (as opposed to people who want to play real life Call of Duty) are so adamant about NOT bringing firearms to protests and focusing so heavily on defensive measures. Even something as simple as spraypainting a mountain bike helmet so it isn't black goes a long way toward making it clear this is a peaceful protest. Because the moment They see you have a gun? Suddenly this protest is an armed militia and the cops have no hesitation in unloading with lethal ammunition (rather than just causing permanent blindness and life threatening injuries with indiscriminate use of "less than lethal" rubber bullets). Or the national guard gets called in because of "riots". Oh, and don't worry. By the time the press is allowed to investigate there will be plenty of guns and fentanyl on all the protesters.
Or... if you DO require razing to the level of Gaza, maybe educate yourself on a little place called Tulsa.
Also: Congrats on ignoring every single point about why your fantasy wouldn't work anyway. Or are we back to needing the second amendment to get, still illegal, access to fertilizer bombs and having no resistance whatsoever to taking out every single bridge in the continental US AND attacking police garages so that you can safely run back to your house in the suburbs?
And then the US government will be so impressed by your chaditude that they will give up and send themselves into exile because it is just too hard to keep the national guard deployed.
i plan to sashay a little while screaming "WILDCATS" and hopefully the operator will die of embarrassment.
I mean, our government's track record fighting guerrilla insurgencies isnt spotless.
I'm not sure it'll happen, but civilians could absolutely be a significant threat to both LE and military regardless of the gap in arms/tech.
I mean, our government’s track record fighting guerrilla insurgencies isnt spotless.
Ah. I see. So you and your militia buddies are going to escape to the mountain caves of... Chicago?
Also, we hunted and murdered many terrorist cells based on something as simple as a magazine on a desk. There is an entire genre of Influencer built around playing "geo guesser" to track things to within a 5 meter radius based off a single picture.
And that all ignores just how many cameras there are in this country. They won't need to wait until a satelite is overhead to have Abby and McGee hack your location. They'll just run a simple algorithm that will track you via all the traffic cameras and then tell Ubiquiti and Google to give them doorbell cameras to track you back to your house in the suburbs. This is why basically anyone with half a brain is strongly opposed to police chases. All it does is escalate the situation and increase risk to civilians. Instead? Just track them and roll up on them when they go to sleep that night.
At which point, we are back to what the "right to bear arms" actually gets you. Time for a bit of a history lesson!
Back when the Constitution was written, muskets were the name of the game with the new hotness being rifled barrels that gave a bit more precision to those. And, as America learned first hand, a well trained military could borderline handle an order of magnitude more poorly trained farmers (the opening battles of the US Revolutionary War are actually really fascinating for how unstoppable the Redcoats were). So if a group got too uppety? Send in the military and they would break.
Fast forward to The Wild West where people had revolvers, lever actions, and even some semi auto weaponry. That was incredibly useful for letting law enforcement ignore large swathes of the country ("You have the right to bear arms. You defend yourself") and had the added benefit of giving Pinkertons and the like legal justification. And, again, when people got too uppety: Heavily armed "US Marshalls" and the military were called in to put them down.
There WAS a brief window where small groups of (generally military trained) individuals with Thompsons and BARs were a significant threat. But shortly thereafter the modern AR-15 style assault rifles were "invented" and trained military (and snipers) once again could dominate any actual clash.
Because people think this is going to be Die Hard where they walk up to the leader of the fascists and exchange quips before quick drawing, killing one guy, and winning the war. The reality is that we are looking at police tanks ramming through walls, buildings getting riddled with machine gun fire, and explosives raining down if things get too "risky".
People think of when those rednecks took over Malheur a few years back and think that is how it will play out. That only worked because it was white people that the cops like. What they SHOULD look at is things like Waco where the government decided "Fuck it, we ball" and unloaded and massacred dozens of children while showing just how little the second amendment matters.
I'm not sure if you know this, but the left looks the same as the right. And as Canadians. If you think they will be able to find all of us, let alone kidnap and kill us all, you're sorely mistaken. People can perform partisan actions and disappear into mist. Sure they find sole actors now after a while and a lot of concerted effort, but now imagine there are a few hundred of those events all over the country? If you think they would win or even be able to fight a true guerilla war on American soil, you're delusional. Even with the brown shirts who would be willing to help, you'd have just as many that refuse and possibly switch sides.
I am not familiar enough with Canadian surveillance to have an opinion there which is why I specifically did not mention that side. I also fully agree they will have a lot more civilian support (again, the part people forget about when masturbating over the idea of shooting someone with a gun) which would mean any actions would be closer to "wipe out the neighborhood" than rolling up because some white lady submitted a tip.
But once even the Canadian special forces (who are god damned terrifying) cross over to the US side? All the same surveillance is against them. Quick border strikes will likely work as they'll be back on the Canadian side fairly quickly. Any deeper attack involves navigating US streets which involves navigating US camera systems. And it is pretty trivial to automate the tracking of the group who shot up a military base until they "disappear" into the forest on the side of the interstate... and then wait with cameras in any place they are likely to return (while sending drones to sweep the area).
With a LOT of time spent evading? Yeah, people who are sufficiently trained (so not the weekend warriors on the gun range... which is also much less of a thing in Canada because of sane-ish gun control laws) can spend significant amounts of time evading and even bivvying. But that then means the "reign of terror" operations become few and far between.
There is an entire genre of Influencer built around playing “geo guesser” to track things to within a 5 meter radius based off a single picture.
And they're full of shit. Don't believe everything you see online. Not even this.
We can look to the French for how crowds surrounded individuals who physically fought back, preventing their capture by authorities. That was a vid I saw on the old site. Dude walloped some cops and then people pulled him into their ranks and made a wall.
Then the cops found out who it was days later and charged him
Wear a mask and don't post videos from protests with recognizable faces.
Good advice. But wearing a mask in public (dissimulating your face in general) is actually illegal in France (because of Sarkozy iirc). Not saying people stopped doing it at protests but it gives an excuse to the police to arrest you even if you are not being violent.
Edit : I just checked, the fine increases 10 to 20 fold for doing it at a protest...
COVID's still going strong and your mask "is for health protection". Crowds of people like that make for fertile ground for disease to spread which is all the more reason for people to mask up and for fellow protestors to hand out surgical masks.
An even better solution is a full face covering respirator to avoid eye exposure. From disease or chemical weapons used by police against their own citizens.