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It's the worst possible slogan if reform is the intent. Very 21st century though.

Wasn't Larssen also upset at the phrase Black Lives Matter? Is there a phrase he would be comfortable with? I don't think there is any phrase that will make mouth foaming republicans come around to police reform.

I was 'upset' at the exportation of a phrase used in a distinct, unique american context to all other parts of the globe, down to being painted on a metro in Brussels. If uzique is honest with himself, he will be able to acknowledge that in countries with divides along totally different social, cultural, economic, historical lines, the stupidly lazy copy paste of concepts from one culture to another will not exactly be a great starting point for public dialogue. It's americanisms and american history being imposed on everyone else. It has since evolved to a more ambiguous phrase that's adopting more or less its own meaning in different contexts but whatever, I still feel that piece of cultural encroachment isn't doing much good for anyone. I don't want the historical american divides to become truths in themselves elsewhere through the cultural fallout that occurs whenever you assholes decide to pelt stones at eachother once again.

Having said so, the 'defund the police' slogan is obviously more about controversy in the sense that it makes for fantastically enraging headlines to quite a few people. It's also a great rallying cry for a broad group of people from those who are genuinely reform minded to those who actually are more anarchist inclined because they'll all attach their own meaning to that little slogan. No I'm not about to side with your police either, fuck them. But I feel it's a terrible slogan for anything other than organising riots and pissing people off. (oh but it really gets the conversation going!!)

Last edited by Larssen (2021-06-17 10:55:42)

'organising riots'.

https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news- … arch-finds

Here is what we have found based on the 7,305 events we’ve collected. The overall levels of violence and property destruction were low, and most of the violence that did take place was, in fact, directed against the BLM protesters.

First, police made arrests in 5% of the protest events, with over 8,500 reported arrests (or possibly more). Police used tear gas or related chemical substances in 2.5% of these events.

Protesters or bystanders were reported injured in 1.6 percent of the protests. In total, at least three Black Lives Matter protesters and one other person were killed while protesting in Omaha, Austin and Kenosha, Wis. One anti-fascist protester killed a far-right group member during a confrontation in Portland, Ore.; law enforcement killed the alleged assailant several days later.

Police were reported injured in 1% of the protests. A law enforcement officer killed in California was allegedly shot by supporters of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, not anti-racism protesters.

The killings in the line of duty of other law enforcement officers during this period were not related to the protests.

Only 3.7% of the protests involved property damage or vandalism. Some portion of these involved neither police nor protesters, but people engaging in vandalism or looting alongside the protests.

In short, our data suggest that 96.3% of events involved no property damage or police injuries, and in 97.7% of events, no injuries were reported among participants, bystanders or police.

These figures should correct the narrative that the protests were overtaken by rioting and vandalism or violence.

it seems one of those terribly passé 'americanisms' you deplore is, you know, civil disobedience and democratic protest.

spoken like a true eurocrat.

but don't let figures and statistics get in the way of your passional defenses of the status quo!

Larssen wrote:

I was 'upset' at the exportation of a phrase used in a distinct, unique american context to all other parts of the globe, down to being painted on a metro in Brussels. If uzique is honest with himself, he will be able to acknowledge that in countries with divides along totally different social, cultural, economic, historical lines, the stupidly lazy copy paste of concepts from one culture to another will not exactly be a great starting point for public dialogue. It's americanisms and american history being imposed on everyone else. It has since evolved to a more ambiguous phrase that's adopting more or less its own meaning in different contexts but whatever, I still feel that piece of cultural encroachment isn't doing much good for anyone. I don't want the historical american divides to become truths in themselves elsewhere through the cultural fallout that occurs whenever you assholes decide to pelt stones at eachother once again.

Having said so, the 'defund the police' slogan is obviously more about controversy in the sense that it makes for fantastically enraging headlines to quite a few people. It's also a great rallying cry for a broad group of people from those who are genuinely reform minded to those who actually are more anarchist inclined because they'll all attach their own meaning to that little slogan. No I'm not about to side with your police either, fuck them. But I feel it's a terrible slogan for anything other than organising riots and pissing people off. (oh but it really gets the conversation going!!)

Complaints about cultural diffusion is comical when it comes from someone who talks up globalization and the free exchange of ideas. If you don't like foreign concepts taking hold in your country, advocate for Soviet style censorship.

uziq wrote:

it seems one of those terribly passé 'americanisms' you deplore is, you know, civil disobedience and democratic protest.

spoken like a true eurocrat.

but don't let figures and statistics get in the way of your passional defenses of the status quo!

Riots, protests, whatever the commoners get up to these days. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche hon hon hon

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

it seems one of those terribly passé 'americanisms' you deplore is, you know, civil disobedience and democratic protest.

spoken like a true eurocrat.

but don't let figures and statistics get in the way of your passional defenses of the status quo!

Riots, protests, whatever the commoners get up to these days. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche hon hon hon

you are a commoner. your pretences of being some elevated bureaucrat are badly undone when you start talking like a small-town belgian grocer.

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

uziq wrote:

it seems one of those terribly passé 'americanisms' you deplore is, you know, civil disobedience and democratic protest.

spoken like a true eurocrat.

but don't let figures and statistics get in the way of your passional defenses of the status quo!

Riots, protests, whatever the commoners get up to these days. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche hon hon hon

you are a commoner. your pretences of being some elevated bureaucrat are badly undone when you start talking like a small-town belgian grocer.

eurocrats are about as elevated a bureaucrat you can be, checkmate

No macbeth. Not every instance of domino theory in action is immediately illegitimate. Stop thinking only in absolutes pls. There's barely any way to even directly compare BLM to the Arab spring, god.

imagine trying to make out BLM is a bunch of rioters, still, in 2021. imagine pointing out, tediously, that every country has its own context and dynamics. someone get this guy a nobel prize!

non-white people still experience life across this multiplicity of unique, ‘incomparable’ nations (ex-empires) in a subaltern position. they all come up against historically racist institutions and structures. they all experience racism, on the daily, in affect. the statistics plainly give a picture in which they, pretty much across the board, experience the rough end of the policing and justice systems in comparison to their majority-white denizens. death in custody or extra-judicial killings are overwhelmingly meted out to people of colour or minority-status, at the very same time as official media and right-wing popular culture minimises their suffering or perpetuates racist narratives. or does something as visceral as murder need to be ‘culturally relativised’ by fine and discerning minds such as yourself?

isn’t that all a bit, i don’t know … postmodern? (look at how emotive and invested dilbert is in his family psychodrama with the corrupt police: he’s permitted anger, suspicion, hatred towards the police because it’s of course ‘rational’; but BLM’s wide-ranging and structural critique of the police in the face of similar widespread injustices is somehow self-defeating, anti-social, a looming threat to ‘peace-and-order?’) and if we’re being postmodern and clever little relativists … it’s weird how you’re never self-reflexive and nuanced about your own subject position, and mimic the rather non-relative, absolute, dogmatic judgments and dismissals of dilbert when it suits you, isn’t it?

is this how you write your history term papers? by saying that nothing can ever be compared to anything because the U.K. had a different history to belgium who had a different history to france? are you being for real? wow, the finest mind of a generation … bending spoons with nuance over here!

has it ever occurred to you that the deeper economic and cultural structures which undergirded the world-system through the modern era, might have something to do with it? that maybe this is systemic? to empire? to capitalism? a lacunae in the foundation of the modern liberal democratic state, even? whoosh! where’s your analytical mind now? the ability to compare, synthesise and analogise is just as important as endless deconstruction, don’t you know. i thought you were rather against endless, arid and ultimately fruitless deconstruction? pointing out that neighbouring european states have ‘histories of their own’ is a bit sophistical when they were all mutually engaged in the slave trade for hundreds of years, isn’t it, don’t you think? what is the end behind all of your constant hemming and hawing?

‘white anxiety’ as a phrase gets at something rather succinctly in this performance of yours. your vacillation between two modes: disdainful, contemptuous, above-the-plebeian-mobs eurocrat and ‘speaking for my people’, telling-it-straight, sawdust and grit ‘authentic white person’. you can’t decide whether you’re a metternich or a poujade. ‘white anxiety’ is indeed a great diagnosis for this weird effect, whereby a person with a master’s degree and a finely tuned sense of public service (supposedly) looks at a year of 7,500 peaceful protests and talks hysterically about ‘organising riots and revolts’. it is the height of irrational ludicrousness. something about this topic gets you flustered in a way that rather gives the lie to all your well-oiled technocratic blague. and it’s because it’s capital-H History, structural history, and an historical movement which displaces you and your personal feelings as a white guy from the centre-ground of the debate.

Last edited by uziq (2021-06-17 15:27:07)

OCD-esque, a plebe … lol. the facade of the technocrat with a superior grasp on politics slips pretty quickly, doesn’t it? i’m pretty sure i’m from a higher-class social background than yourself. which is why i’m pointing out the interesting tensions in your reactionary nativism.

it’s not at all clear to me what you achieve by emphasising the differences between BLM-USA and BLM in western europe. all this talk of context and nuance: but why? why do you need to wield endless distinctions when the structures underneath have engendered, almost without variation, the same results? every liberal democratic state which was founded on conquest, capitalism and racist systems of perception can benefit from a bit of self-reckoning. stressing that the wisconsin police force aren’t related to the belgian police doesn’t exactly seem to drive at very much to me. you’re being post-structuralist rather than structuralist, which is rather what most ‘good’ history consists of. soon you’ll be telling us that everyone ‘has their own truth’ and ultimately we can’t form any verdicts on these histories…

you massively overstate the supposed ‘cultural differences’ between the US and EU on matters of race relations. you precisely deny structural similarities and shared system of exploitation and subjugation. it’s really very silly to emphasise that post-colonial subjects in europe have a different ‘cultural context’ to post-plantation citizens in the united states.

all of this is just a desperate strategy to assert yourself and your own experience/feelings into the centre of an issue. rather than admitting their point, and building a coalition or admitting to their reformist demands, you need to reassert control over the matter, first and foremost through this lame rhetorical display of your ‘nuanced’ mind. it’s really a sad performance. you are insisting still that BLM is pointless, poorly phrased, rallying behind empty slogans … a year and many thousands of protests later. lol.

the one who calls others plebs ends up echoing right-wing tabloid media in vain. ‘b-b-b-but they’re rioting and hate white people!!! that’s MY identity!!!’

BLM is very concerned with economic critique you dipshit. that’s why they want to DEFUND the police. it’s not merely finger-pointing at identity groups. they want previously racist, capitalist societies to be more fair! equitable! inclusive! jesus christ do you even listen to
your own arguments? do you really think a movement that protests the private prison industry is economically blind? Ffs go and read something.

Last edited by uziq (2021-06-17 15:58:54)

‘different perspectives are valuable maaaan’ = how do i insert my feelings as a white european into the centre of this debate. i must surely have something equally insightful and clever to say about the experience of racism!

turns out you add basically nothing. your posts are an almost wilful and dishonest exercise in mischaracterising BLM. climbing down and rolling back on your statements as ‘just jokes’ or ‘knowingly exaggerated language’ is pretty transparent.

time and time again you’ve expressed your basic discomfort at ‘black lives matter’ as a saying; you’ve spoken about being made uncomfortable by sweeping comparisons between the USA and europe, despite the very shared and entwined modern histories at play, despite them both being inventions of a modern world system, both being truly characteristic of an epoch. well too bad! maybe you could listen to someone else and learn a little rather than stroking yourself and talking about how ‘valuable’ your brand of analysis is to the debate. it is not.

Last edited by uziq (2021-06-17 15:51:48)