> Then when Biden said he wants to take Trump behind the bleachers and knock him out, we should construe that as a threat of violence against the President,right?
No, just like I never said Bannon's statement should be taken as a threat.
> People never, ever use hyperbole for effect
I never said that. What effect so you think Bannon was going for? I've explained what I think, and that that the statement was a neither literal nor hyperbolic.
If you want a productive dialog, you need to respond to what people actually say, rather than fantasies of what you'd like them to have said because it is convenient to argue against.
> The examples you provided are obviously not incitements to violence.
They are more obviously incitements to violence than a post saying they won't be attending the inauguration.
At this point it becomes mostly about what your model of the person speaking is. If you think they are evil you will interpret their intent and communication as evil and if you think they are good you will interpret it as good.
There is no possible methodology that can be used that will end up declaring Trump's comments incitement while declaring AOC's not to be that won't end up becoming become simple partisanship.
After a mob has killed a police officer, he said “we love you, you are patriots” ... half-hearted “go home” does not minimize a full throated “the election was stolen from us”.
If people are rioting over X, and you say “wow, X is really bad!” - is that not encouragement?
What, in your mind, is inciting violence? Iirc, he told supporters to punch protesters during the 2016 campaign, no?
Alright, so finally after a few seemingly innocuous arguments you took your mask off. A person who believes storming the Capitol was not organized by Trump at this point would be able to find a justification to anything he says or does.
He had repeatedly called for an ethnic cleansing of America. And now his buddy, Steve bannon is in the white house. The state has a monopoly on violence, and they aren't on our side
> There is a spectrum there, obviously, and I could argue for specific instance of him using "fight" as being sketchy, but really that he used the term over a dozen times is striking to me.
You called out using that term as the strongest indicator of his intent to incite yet you continue to refuse to pick out a specific example of it.
> Connecting patriotism and fighting alongside the election being stolen from them had a message that more action than usual was necessary. That was the underlying message.
None of that is inciting violence. There are millions of Americans that believe there were actions during the recent election that were fraudulent. There’s nothing violent about voicing such concerns.
It’s been done in just about every election since the dawn of Democracy. Nancy Pelosi herself is on the record, on video, rejecting the outcome of a Presidential election. And she has just as much right to voice her concerns as Trump or anyone else.
> He used a lot of euphemisms, and I think there is some evidence there that he knew the message he was sending to the crowd.
That’s totally subjective and totally conjecture. If that’s going to be the standard for banishing someone from the internet then the kangaroo court of the Facebook Oversight Board is perfectly fitting.
>> He explicitly reused a racist phrase to suggest the black protesters should be shot down.
He said "When the looting starts, the shooting starts". This is obviously not a serious, literal statement and it doesn't even say who would be doing the shooting - Merely that the situation could escalate into shooting. Also, I don't see any trace of racism in that sentence.
If this statement leads to a reduction of actual on-the-ground violence, then this is a net positive and is why freedom of speech is important.
Talking about violence is much better than actually carrying out violence. Trump is likely one of the least violent presidents when you actually count the injured and the dead. Yet he has repeatedly made all sorts of verbal threats in the past... None of which he actually implemented.
> ...not attending the inauguration was a call for violence. I don't buy it.
It's a soft signal, one that really you should be looking at the wider context of the last 4 years and especially the last few months, rather than just in isolation.
And to the mind of someone willing to use violence (such as say, those involved in the capitol riot), it becomes "hey guys, I still believe the election was stolen by those dirty libs and I won't be at this location, so if anything bad happens there, I won't be hurt. Wink Wink, nudge nudge."
We have seen what his base will do. There is no longer a time to discuss hypotheticals, they will storm a goverment office with weapons, they will kill people, they will use IEDs, and they will put the Trump cult ahead of America; because that is what they did, in a Western capital of all places.
> Obviously Biden threatened to nuke insurrectionists.
That is an insane takeaway from the clip you shared. No reasonable person would listen to those words and take it as a direct threat to bomb insurrectionists.
I think you are a troll.
Regress in social norms doesn't require actual time travel, and that happening through normalization of political violence is a real thing, which has happened lots of places, and which Bannon is overtly calling for here, pointing to the mere firing he expects from the President as inadequate. (Making it clear that the call was not a metaphor for firing.)
> your argument that we ought to condemn the actions of the trump supporters because the rest of society has done so is not a rational argument.
I’m not arguing that at all, I’m just telling you what the rest of the society is doing; that pressure you feel to change your opinion is coming entirely from within yourself.
> was it immoral when the women’s March protesters took the capitol?
I’m not sure, let me check: did they break windows and doors to gain entry into the capitol building? Did they break into representatives’ offices? Were there weapons and detaining tools found on their persons?
> You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers.
Please explain what about Trump's history suggests that he will be convinced?
I understand a respect, even some degree of zeal, for principles such as freedom of speech. But these do not exist in a vacuum. And, practically, the degree of the president's ability to speak to an audience is unparalleled.
In short, there are larger concerns here besides the general principle of free speech in the abstract. We should be discussing the consequences of incitement, falsehood, provocation, threats, disinformation, insults, and so on.
Up until Trump, societal norms, by and large, kept presidential speech within sensible bounds. [1] Trump has ignored those norms.
[1] Of course, there was plenty of deceipt, lying, cover-ups, rhetoric, and so on. But by any measure, Trump has blown the door off civility and credibility.
>Has it occurred to you that perhaps Trump, his brand of populism and his supporters are worthy of that caricature?
No it hasn’t. The news shouldn’t be caricaturizing anyone. The reporting should be as faithful to reality as possible.
> My guess: because this is playing with fire. You might not be privy to it, but the calls for violence in their various echochambers if the crapshoot for overturning the election doesn't pan out(hint: it won't) are reaching audiences well armed and with nothing better to do than to engage in stochastic terrorism.
So because there exist some extremists with a particular viewpoint, nobody else should be allowed to entertain that viewpoint?
Funny because on the other side of the political spectrum there actually just recently were extremists that were not just hypothetical and they did actually go out and commit violence in order to “make their voices heard” and their viewpoint was not condemned by the media at all for doing so.
> that requires accountability for Trump and his enablers.
Absolutely not. It's words like that that truly frighten me. Have you lost your good sense?
What truly worries me is this part: "his enablers".... what exactly are you saying? That voting for Trump was a crime? That supporting Trump was a crime? That protesting for Trump (but not engaging in violence nor tresspass) was... what.. Terrorism (as the media is now trying to suggest)? No, no it was most definately not. It is very dangerous to use loose words like this which can be interpreted in too many ways, especially now. If you mean to say that Trump committed a specific crime and had co-conspirators, explain it that way and name the conspirators. Otherwise you are going to have a huge percentage of the population believe that you intend to "round them up into camps" or "line them up against the wall" or other things that other very dangerous people have tweeted. Trump supporters will defend themselves, potentially pre-emptively (just like how the war between the states started) and nobody wants that.
I don't associate with a political tribe, I didn't like Trump, and I left America long ago. But I've cautioned my mother who still lives there and who supported Trump all the way (she believes all the nutty theories, but isn't a bad person) that she needs to plan an escape route into Canada. Because I truly fear for her life at this point. Biden and the media keep wrongly using the word "Terrorism" in order to (I'm quite sure) invoke special governmental powers that allow them to suspend all civil and human rights from... who? ... all Trump supporters? And PATRIOT-ACT V2 has landed, all premeditated and prepared, ready for a huge draconian power grab.
Nobody has demonstrated that Trump has committed any crime (AFAIK). I'm sure there will be attempts. But nobody has even pointed to a credible suspected crime (AFAIK). Well respected constitutional lawyers like Alan Dershowitz have weighed in with clear opinion that Trump doesn't need to pardon himself because he has not committed any legally cognisable crime. And that his speeches were not incitement to violence... and Alan gives a long history of speeches that resulted in violence... and America has always punished the violence doers, not speakers, being extremely hesitant to invoke "incitement to violence." In this case it's laughably far from such.. he said walk, he urged peace, he only called for a protest.
But I'm positive many people will attempt to "require accountability for Trump." Go ahead, do so via the court system using the laws of the land. Both political tribes will support that.
> But he didn't call them terrorists (in a quote I could find) in an off the cuff statement, so you're entitled to telepathically divine another meaning from the statement?
Honestly, yes? He's never stopped himself from using the term earlier. So why isn't he now (or actually any time it's an extreme right/white nationalist terrorist)? This was clearly terrorism.
> Take another angle. When Trump said, "There will be a peaceful transition to a new administration", some of his supporters imagined that this meant that he isn't leaving the Whitehouse.
Funny example, seeing as that came after the capitol riots, and not say... when he lost the election. Which entirely proves my point.
> Trump never called for people to storm the capitol.
Did he do so literally and overtly, no.
Was his call to march to the Capitol and give courage to members allied with his cause and prevent a failure of courage taken that way, and intended to be? Certainly, quite a number of the people who engaged in the riot claimed to do so at his direction, and “will no one rid me of this troublesome priest” style direction from leaders is not exactly a novel concept.
No, just like I never said Bannon's statement should be taken as a threat.
> People never, ever use hyperbole for effect
I never said that. What effect so you think Bannon was going for? I've explained what I think, and that that the statement was a neither literal nor hyperbolic.
If you want a productive dialog, you need to respond to what people actually say, rather than fantasies of what you'd like them to have said because it is convenient to argue against.
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