Yes, a violent group of psychos that led an armed insurrection in an attempt to overthrow the government in the name of a flatulent con man is the same as non-violent individuals protesting violence and murder
Sort of a good example of how staying on twitter can boil normal-ish people towards extreme views. There's pretty obvious differences between attempting to prevent Congress certifying the election and, well, pretty much anything else
What drives me nuts is you do not need to agree with the protestors' aims, intentions, or methods to see the response as plainly, wildly disproportionate
You can also think that storming Hamilton Hall went pretty obviously beyond the bounds of any sort of rightful conduct and not think that there's a parallel to J6???
Like
Framing J6 as being about trespassing is what its defenders/minimizers do, that was really, REALLY not the point?!
I think it's not only possible, but also ... my basic position, that storming Hamilton Hall is plainly trespass and against university policy, does not meaningfully benefit anyone in Gaza, should nevertheless be met with grace rather than punitive sanction and administrative sanction if it escalates
Even if you assume his premise is correct, the J6 mob was allowed to peacefully walk out of the Capitol and authorities are still trying to track them all down for prosecution. I don't see that happening here.
It is crazy-making to see people say, in essence, "well, if these kids don't get their teeth kicked in for breaking and entering they will never face consequences and January 6 will retroactively work"
I think you’re very accurate in that assessment — virtually every political commentator I followed on Twitter who didn’t migrate here seems to be inhabiting a completely different infosphere tilted in the opposite direction. Weird when Josh Marshall is cheering on sending in the cops to bust heads.
He’s been mocking student protesters over on his account there, even changed his avi to ridicule a specific one, which doesn’t seem particularly in character.
I also feel that there’s a lot of folks who are having trouble reconciling their personal support for Israel and their opposition to the war on Gaza with the fact that there’s zero meaningful opposition to the war on the ground in Israel, and hippie-punching gives them some psychological comfort /
I follow him here and there, and I’m not seeing what you’re perceiving. And that’s despite my opinion that he’s been too pro-Israel for too long during the conflict there.
Probably worth updating this, since Josh finally published an update explicitly addressing the on-campus violence, in which I don't find much to quibble about (though surprised he hasn't discussed WUSTL specifically).
It's incredibly out of touch with how the public feels. Even on MSNBC, out of the weekday hosts only Chris Hayes and Joy Reid are really willing to let the protest side speak.
Were heads busted? Considering that if it bleeds it leads I’m unaware of any brutality porn. As for Mr. Marshall. Maybe you don’t understand what Josh understands. He’s a very thoughtful man. I think he sources information from lots of venues.
even if the Columbia kids had burned down the entire building there would still be no reasonable comparison to *trying to overthrow the fucking government*
smh what’s wrong with people
I don’t even agree with them. I think they did something dangerous, stupid, and counterproductive. But no, not every gathering of people breaking windows is the same as a coup against the United States government
I mean, it's a lot. All of this is a lot. It's a whole lot of a lot. In a lot of directions. But nothing that is happening right now is comparable by any useful metric to preventing the actual hand-over of power in a presidential election
I like Brad. He's a smart guy. He's decent enough. He's not always right, but he's not an idiot. And, yes, I haven't really seen much of him since I left Twitter, but also ... this is just a terrible, terrible take
I even think there's a way to make the comparison, reasonably but acknowledging the huge differences, without doing the indefensibly false total equivalency.
It's still a false equivalency often used to equivocate and minimize Jan 6., but I can at least see how the 2020 riots were much bigger in scale than a few dozen students, however stupidly and objectionably, occupying a campus administration building.
counterpoint: a take as asinine as the one he just posted probably merits a reconsideration of whether his observations can be trusted to not be afflicted by brain worms
I noped out of Twitter a few days after Oct 7th. Too many accounts I followed, and generally agreed with, just had the worst takes and it felt like what you are saying- Twitter is rotting people, they aren’t immune just because they aren’t MAGA/Elon simps
