Why? The concept of a "shootout" is well-understood; there's no particular to reason to believe that a cop shooting first is guaranteed to hit their target.
More visible to whom? To the well-functioning state? I don't follow. The whole premise of anarchism is that a truly free society is one without a state. The presumed benefit of the kind of visibility you're talking about also rests on the assumption that the state is aligned with the interests of the wider population, whereas anarchism proposes that the state is fundamentally misaligned with collective and personal freedom.
Maybe your point is that because crypto-anarchism appears to rest on this state-friendly assumption, it isn't "real" anarchism. I don't know too much about crypto-anarchism and haven't formed an opinion either way, but if it's as cozy with anarcho-capitalism as the quotes at the end make it out to be, I'd probably agree with you.
Detour: This thread has a lot of downvoted comments, but not a lot of replies. Further, a lot of the downvoted comments, like the above, are well argued. I, for one, would love to see more involved engagement.
Anyway. Anarchism is actually a broader concept than believing that state is fundamentally misaligned with the collective. That's a branch of anarchism if anything. A better definition of anarchism is the belief that every institution or authority has to be able to justify its presence and should be dismantled if it can't (quoting Noam Chomsky). Following that defintion, I'd say that crypto-anarchism is anarachism where redistribution of power is done via technological means, with an emphasis on technological solutions to privacy and trust.
You make a critical point, actually in light of the OP topic. The building of crypto-anarchist tools might lead to the insight that certain forms of state have little coercive power (because the tools restrict or redirect the actions the state can take), and so anarchists are okay with the state.
The only anarchistic definition of The State I've ever heard is some kind of body with a legal monopoly on violence. If you're going off that definition, you'd have a hard time justifying it to anyone, as it's pretty much fundamentally counter to self-determination. It's true that the state (and capitalism in general) are fundamentally technological, so successful anti-state victories (say, making it harder for the state to manufacture consent and bypassing the propaganda filter) would be significant. But that's only "certain forms," as you put it. At the end of the day, the state will at some point resort to its go-to tactic of violence. If crypto tools restrict or redirect state action, that doesn't mean the state is suddenly okay, it just means anarchists are winning.
You're right. I wasn't really trying to give a broad definition - I was making a narrower argument - and I agree that Chomsky's is a better definition. I guess my "whole premise" phrasing was a bit overly broad.
"Not an argument for this site I guess," hence the downvotes, heh. I agree though. And I'd take it a step further and say that the institution of policing in the US has historically always been on the side of systemic violence. Police forces literally started as night patrols to catch runaway slaves, which as about as racist as it gets. If there was a point in history where they somehow severed ties with their racist origins and underwent fundamental, institutional change, I've yet to learn about it.
>If there was a point in history where they somehow severed ties with their racist origins and underwent fundamental, institutional change, I've yet to learn about it.
The opposite, actually. The civil rights movement of the 60s was infiltrated, surveilled, and disrupted by secret police, and largely ended with it's greatest leaders being assassinated and mass riots.
Then Nixon launched the War on Drugs in the 70s and mass incarceration began.
In the 80s we saw Democrats and Republicans further ramping up the war on drugs, with the passage of laws such as the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986, while at the same time it was soon revealed that the CIA was helping their Nicaraguan Contra friends raise money by importing billions of dollars of cocaine into inner cities as a part of the Iran Contra conspiracy, initializing the crack epidemic. The investigations into these wrong doings was quickly shut down, the investigative journalist leading the charge was suicided, and the government officials responsible were pardoned.
Fast forward 30 years, and the mass incarceration levels have been holding steady and communities are even weaker by some metrics than they were before the civil rights movement, though perhaps we've made some marginal improvements in states where cannabis has been legalized, but we've still got a lot more to do: namely, ending the tyrannical and racist war on drugs at the Federal level.
How does nakedness justify escalating the situation to voilence? "The law is the law" is just an excuse.
When people talk about systemic racism they're talking about how the system operates as a whole. As I've commented elsewhere, people need to educate themselves about systemic racism in this country.
"So You Want to Talk about Race" by Ijeoma Oluo or "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla Saad are good places to start.
> How does nakedness justify escalating the situation to voilence? "The law is the law" is just an excuse.
Are you suggesting every person to decide what's allowed and what's not to the best of their judgment? I agree not all illegal activities are equal. If you use common sense then indeed you should try your best to avoid violence in illegal activities that don't put anyone in danger. But at the end of the day, when all fail and the person in front of you is not cooperating and refusing to put cloths on, then the police has no choice and arrest the person against their will. (If you disagree that nakedness should be illegal that's a different story and has nothing to do with the police)
So who gets to decide what "reasonable force required to arrest someone who is refusing arrest" is? You really think that repeatedly punching someone for being naked and on drugs is reasonable? Why? Why not just detain him and work on getting him to a safe place? Why does the situation warrant violence at all? Just because it's common in this country does not mean it's justified or ethical.
What if they had shot him, or knelt on his neck and killed him? Would that be "reasonable"? Where, then, is the line?
Right now, cops basically have 100% discretion to decide where that line is. Because they are not actually accountable to anyone but themselves, they just act and draw the line after the fact. The only difference between this and the murder of George Floyd is degree. That's what I meant.
> If you use common sense then indeed you should try your best to avoid violence in illegal activities that don't put anyone in danger
I agree in the abstract, but unfortunately there's a racial element to this "common sense." In the US, black people especially must use a different kind of common sense, and must always remember that any kind of transgression - up to and including "looking suspicious" - is grounds for detention, which can escalate arbitrarily to execution on the spot. So there's really no "avoiding violence" when your mere existence is grounds for murder with no consequences.
And again, just because you can have a "reasonable" expectation of violence from the cops does not mean that violence is justified.
> the police has no choice
Well, they had a choice to not become cops in the first place, to not enter a system that lacks accountability. They have a choice to not enforce unjust laws, especially in situations where no one's in danger. They have a choice to challenge their colleagues to justify their actions, whether that's kneeling on someone's neck or punching them in the stomach. They have a choice between violence and deescalation.
But they choose violence and escalation with alarming frequency in this country. And the system protects them.
You make valid points but it's clear you never had to deal with such situations. When you ask why not just detain him and move him to a safe place. Did you ever try to detain someone who is not cooperating? If you're dealing with someone strong, even 3-4 people can have a very hard time. You have to be physical and it can turn to some levels of violence. The key again is using common sense. The police system should educate their people and also change their hiring process so that people who lack good common sense don't become police officers. Saying that police officers had the choice not to join the police is not serious. Don't also forget that many minorities join the police.
You seem to think that violence is the only option. You obviously think it's justified, but you still haven't stated a reason why being naked in public justifies bodily harm, maybe because you think the need to physically subdue this person was self-evident, by whatever means necessary? I disagree with that premise. This is why one of the central demands of the movement for black lives is "counselors not cops."
I'm 100% serious. Your mistake is in thinking it's a few bad apples. Certainly there are varying degrees of prejudice operating on the police force, but that's not the same thing as racism. The more you learn about the police force as it exists in America, the more you come to find that its roots are embedded in systemic racism. Cops may not realize it, but that doesn't mean it's not on them to decide to what degree they support the system. "Common sense" isn't enough because the system doesn't reward common sense, it rewards blind loyalty to the force. This is America's banality of evil.
Well, if a counselor could help resolve such situations quickly I'm all for it. But I'm doubtful based on my previous experience with troubled people. People have many opinions and ideas until one of those people become their own personal problem.
There has been systematic racism everywhere. Did we close academia because of systematic racism? The system will need to change. But there are no alternatives like some people here try to suggest. I think we will need to agree to disagree...
Depends on your definition of racism. If you just mean "atomized, individual prejudice," you might be correct.
But this is textbook systemic racism, even if the cops aren't acting on a conscious bias. Even if their chief gave them clear orders explaining why, and the reasons ostensibly had nothing to do with race, it is still systemic racism because it falls into a pattern of systematic, nationwide discrimination which is irrefutable and that disproportionately affects people of color.
Recommend you read "So You Want to Talk about Race" by Ijeoma Oluo or "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla Saad to learn more about racism as actual experts on the subject understand it.
So, your defense of these actions is that the cops can't discern the difference between press and rioters, so best just arrest them all "one by one"? What part of that is reasonable? Just because it's "standard procedure" does not mean it's justified.
You may have misread me. I'm not justfying their actions - I'm just saying it's not clear they were targeting solely the reporter. It's possible that the plan was to take everyone in custody, one-by-one. You have to start with someone and the reporter seems like the natural choice.
There are police departments that are an organizational mess and there are departments that are even corrupt. There was a case here in Illinois in Cicero 20 years ago where the State Police were brought in to take over the force until the leadership could be replaced because of corruption.
I can't say anything about the situation with the Minneapolis PD, but it seems like it has a major training problem, there was also the case a couple of years ago of the cop that shot and killed a (white) woman in her PJs who was reporting a possible crime out of the window of their patrol vehicle.
This. I was at Deconstruct too, and Nabil's talk got a standing ovation. It ran way over time, and I didn't notice. Tech people need to hear this. Tom's talk is also amazing in its own right.
Let's Program a Banjo Grammar was also one of my favorites. :D
Gary Bernhardt had a creative concept for selecting speakers. Half were invited, internet famous people like Tom 7 and Julia Evans. Half were people who'd never spoke at a conference before, like Nabil and I. For the call for proposals, we submitted 2 minute videos instead of abstracts. Gary invested a lot of time mentoring the new speakers, which I'm so grateful for!
The topic and ideas were good, probably better than my Deconstruct talk. But my execution and presentation were uneven and unpolished, so I'd like to try it again at another conference. I'm submitting to PyCon — we'll see!
Hey, that's great! Even if the execution wasn't up to your standards, I'm looking forward to watching! I heard from someone at the conference (maybe it was you even?) about how Gary curated the talks. I'm really glad he did that, because all around it was my favorite tech conference I've been to and I'll definitely be back. :)
