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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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A gunman has opened fire on an unmarked government vehicle carrying detainees to an ICE facility in Dallas, Texas. Initial reports are two detainees killed, one injured, no casualties among the officers. The gunman committed suicide, but left behind bullets with the phrase "ANTI ICE" written on them.

The online left has been openly calling for and encouraging violence against ICE agents for some time now, as well as attempting to facilitate that violence through doxing of agents and their families. These efforts have lead to a massive increase on assaults on ICE agents and threats to their families. Democratic leadership has refused to address these calls for and encouragement to violence from their base, and instead has joined in with calls for all agents to be unmasked and identified, as well as efforts to compel such identification through law.

This pattern of the blue grassroots engaging in lawless violence while the leadership offers encouragements of varying levels of plausible deniability, has been the norm for some time now. When the Blue Tribe grassroots engaged in a sustained vandalism and arson campaign against Tesla owners and dealers, recent Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz mocked the company's declining stock price and reassured Tesla owners that "we're not blaming you, you can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off". His subsequent non-apology is likewise a notable example of the form. Nor did it start there; as Blues unanimously maintain, Antifa is just an idea, not anything resembling an organization.

In any case, the ICE shooting in Dallas follows Sinclair Broadcasting abruptly reversing their plans to air Charlie Kirk's memorial service, after their local affiliates received numerous violent threats, and a teacher's union lawyer actually shot up the lobby of his local channel's offices.

Jimmy Kimmel is now back on the air, having been briefly suspended for blamed the murder of one of the most prominent right-wing activists in the nation on the right, an accusation repeated enthusiastically by numerous Blue Tribe influencers, activists and leaders. Polling shows that only 10% of Democrats believe Kirk's killer was left-wing. A third of Democrats believing that the man who wrote "catch this, fascist" on his bullets was right-wing, and a further 57% believe the motive for the shooting was either unknowable or apolitical.

Investigators are still looking into motive for what is being reported as a targeted killing at a country club in New Hampshire, where a gunman shouting "Free Palestine" and "The children are safe" killed one man and wounded two others. Likewise for the attempted bombing of a FOX news affiliate's van on the 14th.

We've had a fair amount of discussion over the last week about whether the left has a violence problem. It seems to me that not only does the left have a very serious violence problem, but that there is no one on the left capable of engaging with that problem in anything approaching a constructive way. Simply put, the American left has invested too much and too broadly into creating this problem to ever seriously attempt to resolve it. There is no way for them to disengage from the one-two punch of "The right are all Nazis/Nazis should be gotten rid of by any means necessary"; too much of what they have built over the last decade is predicated on this syllogism for their movement to survive even attempting to walk it back. The vast majority on the left cannot even bring themselves to admit the nature of the problem. But at the same time, at least some of them do seem to recognize that this is getting out of hand in a way that may not be survivable. Destiny's recent comments seem indicative of the mentality at play:

"If you wanted Charlie Kirk to be alive, Donald Trump shouldn't have been President for the second term."

He appeared to elaborate on this train of thought in a recent stream:

“You need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events so that they look to their leadership to turn down the temperature. Right now, they don't feel like there's any fear!"

...and the core point behind his somewhat incoherent further elaboration seems to be that the left must lean on the right to "lower the temperature", because otherwise the left itself will be forced to accept considerable losses.

The problem, of course, is that he is fundamentally correct. The Right is not particularly scared at the moment. We have had a long time to acclimate to the idea of leftist violence targeting us, and wile we are very angry about our political champions being murdered by leftist scum, with their actions cheered on by the grassroots left as a whole, many of us have long accepted the idea that this was going to come down to an actual fight in the end. We do not believe we created this situation; certainly, we did not bend the entire journalism, academia, and entertainment classes to normalizing the idea that our political opponents were isomorphic to subhuman monsters sneakily concealing themselves among the general population, whose violent deaths should always be enthusiastically celebrated. I've contemplated a post on simply cataloguing the number of TV shows and movies dedicated to one or both of the "The right are all Nazis/Nazis should be gotten rid of by any means necessary" paired statements. Suffice to say, we are quite aware that most of the left holds us in absolute contempt, and a large plurality wishes for our violent death. We are aware that any pushback on these sentiments will be framed as an offensive act on our part. We told the left this was a bad idea. We told them why it was a bad idea. They did it anyway. And now: consequences.

In parting, I've written and then deleted several posts about "conversations we can have in advance." This is, yet again, a conversation we can have in advance. At some point, someone on the left is going to get shot by someone on the right, and not in a legally justifiable way but as an actual ideological murder. And when that happens, all the people mocking the idea of online violent radicalization, after screaming about the dangers of online violent radicalization for the last decade, are going to flop back to being performatively worried about online violent radicalization. When this happens, they will be met with stone-faced negation from Red Tribe, and will then weep and moan about how the extremists of the right just refuse to engage with this obvious problem. This will not deliver the results they hope for, but they'll do it anyway, and we'll move another step closer to chaos.

as well as efforts to compel such identification through law.

This is a way of addressing the problem. If ICE stopped being masked goons who look like they came straight out of a bad YA dystopia movie, and became normal accountable government officials who behave kindly and civilly, I think this would reduce the violent sentiments against them tremendously. Don't turn your guys into Stormtroopers if you don't want people to start fancying themselves Jedi rebels.

(I'm not saying the Left's "thinking everyone is a Nazi" problem is unilaterally the Right's fault or anything. But in practical terms, that problem is not going to go away until the Right stops leaning into it.)

became normal accountable government officials who behave kindly and civilly

Behaving kindly and civilly would be counter to their purposes. Looking at how the Trump admin presents its conduct and how Trump supporters react, it is quite clear the jackboot theater and terror tactics are the point.

This is a way of addressing the problem. If ICE stopped being masked goons who look like they came straight out of a bad YA dystopia movie, and became normal accountable government officials who behave kindly and civilly, I think this would reduce the violent sentiments against them tremendously. Don't turn your guys into Stormtroopers if you don't want people to start fancying themselves Jedi rebels.

Why would you think something demonstratably untrue?

A lack stormtroopers hardly impeded significant parts of the broader left from accusing anyone to their right of being fascists, something that has been in the political water for nearly a century since the first fascists diverged from their socialist influences. Just in the last decade, after convincing themselves that there were multiple orders of magnitudes more police shootings of unarmed black men than were actually occuring, efforts to reduce the 'goon' surface vector by reducing police presence and proactivity saw a substantial increase in violent sentiments carried out against fellow residents and citizens.

Nor did a lack of goons or stormtroopers hinder the political left from formalizing itself as the plucky underdog rebels of the anti-fascist or Jedi variety, and years of not-actually-oppressing the opposition, rather than decrease violent sentiment, led to the Democratic Party's political-media alliance championing the fiery but mostly peaceful protests that caused insurance market warping damages.

'Accountable' law enforcement, as framed by the Democratic officials and political left opposed to ICE, has repeatedly corresponded with more, not less, violent sentiments over time when political control has enabled the removal of police who were an obstacle to executing the violent sentiments. This is not exactly the first time this has happened either, hence the multi-decade cycle of in US politics of progressive advocacy to depolice various communities and issues, and then the subsequent issues leading to waves of re-enforcing laws, the enforcement of which becomes justification for new violent opposition.

Given that the perception of oppression can be based on lies, or even distortions taken magnitudes out of any bit of truth, there is no meaningful change in hostile sentiment to be had. The inclination is demonstratably not based on on truths, and so its level does not depend on irrelevant independent variables such as truth..

(I'm not saying the Left's "thinking everyone is a Nazi" problem is unilaterally the Right's fault or anything. But in practical terms, that problem is not going to go away until the Right stops leaning into it.)

What is practical about insinuating a standard global practice for police at risk of retaliation, by a law enforcement agency with a history even before the current administration of being subject to targeted attacks by international criminal groups and US domestic extremists, that is actively being targeted by doxing and harassment efforts after partisan media signal boosted social media apps for anonymously reporting and tracking ICE locations and movements to enable further actions, is 'leaning into' a Nazi accusation?

What is practical about insinuating a standard global practice for police at risk of retaliation,

Your link goes to the BBC, which does mention masked cops:

"The reason they're mostly wearing balaclavas is if they're acting undercover they would not want their identity to be easily known."

This does not apply to run-of-the-mill ICE agents. The BBC article does not talk about the need to be masked to avoid retaliation at all. You have provided zero evidence that your 'global standard' exists.

Statistically, I think that police operating masked is associated with autocratic regimes like Russia, where cops are widely seen as agents of oppression.

efforts to reduce the 'goon' surface vector by reducing police presence and proactivity

Well, that's not what I want. I would like more, but softer, policing. More local beat cops who know everyone by name, fewer Stormtroopers. I'll grant you that the mainstream Democratic messaging doesn't actively advocate for this, but for what it's worth, that's what I want; I don't think there's a binary switch between "defund the police" and "goons in balaclavas". (See also this post.)

You avoided the question regarding your own position.

What is practical about insinuating a standard global practice for police at risk of retaliation, by a law enforcement agency with a history even before the current administration of being subject to targeted attacks by international criminal groups and US domestic extremists, that is actively being targeted by doxing and harassment efforts after partisan media signal boosted social media apps for anonymously reporting and tracking ICE locations and movements to enable further actions, is 'leaning into' a Nazi accusation?

Your response of the practicality, please.

Well, that's not what I want. I would like more, but softer, policing.

Your desires are as irrelevant to the consequences of your proposed policies as they are irrelevant to the intended consequences of the partisans your are borrowing the arguments of.

More local beat cops who know everyone by name, fewer Stormtroopers.

Local beat cops in California are legally prohibited from conducting immigration enforcement by multiple legal obstacles, including accountability to the state of California whose politicians oppose enforcing immigration laws, and the policy engineering of that political leadership coalition to revoke that authority from even other, willing states.

Hence, your preferred policy would lead to less enforcement, and fewer actors legally authorized to enforce laws. This is, not coincidentally, the intent of the progressive anti-ICE coalition, for whom the 'stormtrooper' accusation is a useful lie to deflect blame for escalating tensions that are justified on the grounds of such lies.

That your preferred additional policy of demasking would make it even easier for malefactors to escalate targeting of those fewer authorized actors, thus creating a moral and pragmatic obligation on the part of those authorized actors to protect themselves, thus leading to further accusations of being totalitarian oppression used to advocate for even fewer people more easy to target, is a symbiotic feedbackloop coincidence.

I'll grant you that the mainstream Democratic messaging doesn't actively advocate for this, but for what it's worth, that's what I want; I don't think there's a binary switch between "defund the police" and "goons in balaclavas".

It is worth nothing when you perpetrate the false and accusatory framings that are used to justify the political violence of those who very much do advance such binary switches through political violence.

the 'stormtrooper' accusation is a useful lie

How is it a lie? They do in fact look like faceless Stormtroopers. You can argue that this is necessary, either because that's just how policing work or because the Left has left immigration enforcers no other options - but you can't argue it's a "lie". It's visibly just true, and several other people in the thread are in fact defending that yes, they are, but that's what you gotta do.

That your preferred additional policy of demasking would make it even easier for malefactors to escalate targetting of those fewer authorized actors,

I contend - as a matter of fact - that if ICE agents looked and acted like normal people instead of Stormtroopers, this would in fact lead to fewer attacks on them in the mid-to-long-term. There's a fringe of radicals who would still try to doxx/hurt/kill them, but they would look much worse in the eyes of the wider population than in the current status quo where the people they're fighting go around dressing and acting like supervillains. Violence against a normal-looking dude would seem shocking and generate more pushback.

There's a fringe of radicals who would still try to doxx/hurt/kill them, but they would look much worse in the eyes of the wider population than in the current status quo where the people they're fighting go around dressing and acting like supervillains.

I lost this kind of hope in the common left-liberal when otherwise-sane people with good careers started attacking random peoples' cars because of comments by the car manufacturer's CEO.

You're either overestimating the goodness of "normies" or underestimating the frequency of the fringe.

Vandalizing unoccupied Teslas speaks ill of the culprits' maturity, but widespread tolerance for "heck yeah, let's mess up Bad Man supporters' stupid-looking hell-cars, that'll show them" does not make me despair of human nature in the same way "heck yeah, hang that father of three from a lamppost" would. Those seem to be in very different realms, and just because the former is disappointingly common, does not make me lose hope about the rarity of the latter sentiment.

I think the route from one to the other is shorter than you do, and the allowance of calling one's enemies Nazis (or cockroaches) makes it shorter still.

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A father of two was just murdered for his political views. A none insignificant number of leftists cheered his murder. You have members of Congress saying murder bad but “long diatribe about how awful the decedent was” effectively saying “that this murder wasn’t that bad.”

So I don’t have the faith you do.

How is it a lie? They do in fact look like faceless Stormtroopers

No, Stormtroopers have a gruesome white helmet, and if you took off the helmet it wouldn't matter because they all have the same face.

I contend - as a matter of fact - that if ICE agents looked and acted like normal people instead of Stormtroopers, this would in fact lead to fewer attacks on them in the mid-to-long-term.

While I don't like the masking, I do not believe there is any convincing evidence for this claim.

Stormtroopers were not clones and they didn't look very gruesome imo.

You avoided the question regarding your own position, again.

What is practical about insinuating a standard global practice for police at risk of retaliation, by a law enforcement agency with a history even before the current administration of being subject to targeted attacks by international criminal groups and US domestic extremists, that is actively being targeted by doxing and harassment efforts after partisan media signal boosted social media apps for anonymously reporting and tracking ICE locations and movements to enable further actions, is 'leaning into' a Nazi accusation?

Your response of the practicality, please.

How is it a lie? They do in fact look like faceless Stormtroopers.

Because they are not Stormtroopers. They are not stormtroopers in the military context (ICE are not dressed as the origin of the term of trench stormers), or in the fascist context (ICE is not fulfilling a fascist police state supression role), or the in the young adult novel dystopian government context (the demand of which is exceeding the supply).

You can argue that this is necessary, either because that's just how policing work or because the Left has left immigration enforcers no other options - but you can't argue it's a "lie". It's visibly just true, and several other people in the thread are in fact defending that yes, they are, but that's what you gotta do.

It is visibly not true, since vision allows people to observe actions, and even reasons for actions. Visibility also allows the comparisons, and contrasts, with other ascetic representations of things of a category (the variety of what Stormtroopers might be, which is too broad to be encapsulated by ICE), and things that are not of a category (the global examples of face-obscuring wear of not-Stormtroopers, to which a Stormtrooper accusation would be a lie).

I contend - as a matter of fact - that if ICE agents looked and acted like normal people instead of Stormtroopers, this would in fact lead to fewer attacks on them in the mid-to-long-term.

Aside from your contention of a fact being a non-falsifiable hypothesis rather than a fact, this claim entails a notable omission of the 'short-to-medium' term, which is when law enforcement activity would occur. It has no attempt to address the relevant possible hypothesis second-order consequences of current political violence trajectories both for enforcement over the mid-to-long term (such as trends to non-enforcement from successful terrorism), or compensation efforts (which would be accused of being authoritarian abuses).

There's a fringe of radicals who would still try to doxx/hurt/kill them, but they would look much worse in the eyes of the wider population than in the current status quo where the people they're fighting go around dressing and acting like supervillains. Violence against a normal-looking dude would seem shocking and generate more pushback.

The wider population already support immigration enforcement and standard force protection measures for police. In turn, the current enforcement wave is the pushback for years of systemic non-enforcement, which did lead to predictable and predicted consequences both in terms if migrant crimes and ideological blind eyes to migrant perpetrators of crimes against normal-looking dudes (and dudets).

You are already in the context of the pushback. You, specifically, are opposing the pushback.

Aside from your contention of a fact being a non-falsifiable hypothesis rather than a fact

Until demasking is attempted, so is the hypothesis that demasking would lead to further escalation of violence.

Because they are not Stormtroopers. They are not stormtroopers in the military context (ICE are not dressed as the origin of the term of trench stormers), or in the fascist context (ICE is not fulfilling a fascist police state supression role), or the in the young adult novel dystopian government context (the demand of which is exceeding the supply).

I am not saying that they "are" Stormtroopers, I am saying that they look like Stormtroopers - meant in its colloquial aesthetic sense of "identical, impersonal, threatening-looking armed goons". I think it is obviously true that they look like Stormtroopers, and fairly clear from Trump's own rhetoric and that of ICE supporters, that this is an aesthetic they deliberately cultivate as opposed to an innocent consequence of putting together optimally protective and effective uniforms. They want ICE to look intimidating. Are you really claiming that they don't?

You are already in the context of the pushback. You, specifically, are opposing the pushback.

You are talking about pushback from the Right; I am talking about pushback from within the Left (which Mottizens have been the first to notice has been lacking).

This is a way of addressing the problem. If ICE stopped being masked goons who look like they came straight out of a bad YA dystopia movie, and became normal accountable government officials who behave kindly and civilly

That would have been easier to believe, if I didn't just watch a kind a civil guy getting assassinated, half the Blue Tribe cheering for it, and the other half going "I don't get why this is such a big deal".

FWIW, I think that most high ranking Democrats were specifically disavowing political violence after the assassination. This is very different from just saying "I don't get why this is such a big deal".

If a member of party A is killed, it is clear that party A will milk that for all it is worth while party B will (hopefully) express condolences, disavow violence but otherwise try to downplay the incident. That is normal. Whenever a school gets shot up, you will see exactly the same, only with the parties swapped, and less fireworks during the memorial.

I guess it depends on what “most” means. AOC, Crockett, and Omar all effectively excused it.

Yes, AOC initially decried it. But AOC went on the House floor and basically spent most of her time talking about why Kirk was terrible and why the House shouldn’t vote yes on the non binding resolution.

By the way, a majority of house Dems voted not to pass the resolution.

most high ranking Democrats

Which is a much more selected and narrow grouping than Arjin's "Blue Tribe," even more so once you get into the issue of how to define high ranking.

Sure, Chuck Schumer has enough sense decency to not say "reaping the whirlwind" at that particular moment, but Ilhan Omar has less couth. Talking heads of various prominence, less still. The kinds of Blue Tribers that we might interact with online or in real life, less still again.

Whenever a school gets shot up

When a school gets shot up, there's no one that says "but they kinda deserved it." The downplaying is a totally different form.

Alex Jones? I mean I guess he didn't say "they deserved it" he said "they're faking it" (and in fact it was the factual claim that they were faking it that did him in, legally) but.

Yeah I considered adding that in as the closest example that doesn't quite fit.

Was it 50/50 of the Blue Tribe, or 50/50 of the fraction of the Blue Tribe that got promoted to your attention by social media?

In recent polls, 56% of "very liberal" and 73% of liberal respondents say it is "always or usually unacceptable" for a person to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose; 55% and 68% say that "violence is never justified" "in order to achieve political goals". Obama's initial response was to say that "this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy", with 1.1 million likes that probably aren't all from Red Tribe Obama fans, and he didn't soften on that, though he went "both sides" on calling out the Minnesota shootings and right-wing rhetoric too. Bernie Sanders also tried to call out more examples but foremost condemned Kirk's killing in particular as "political cowardice" which "must be condemned".

Just as a follow-up.

Obama's initial response was to say that "this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy", with 1.1 million likes that probably aren't all from Red Tribe Obama fans

Yeah, there's also bots and Indians. You don't find it odd that with so many likes all the replies are negative? Where are all the like-clicking blue-tribers voicing their agreement?

56% of "very liberal" and 73% of liberal respondents say it is "always or usually unacceptable" for a person to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose

90% and 91% for very conservative and conservative, respectively. Likewise,

55% and 68% say that "violence is never justified" "in order to achieve political goals".

88% and 83%.

You can quibble about the 50/50 comment, but man, I'd be bothered at just how much more acceptable being a ghoul and being a terrorist is among liberals; even if it's still less than half, it's twice as common as among conservatives.

Was it 50/50 of the Blue Tribe, or 50/50 of the fraction of the Blue Tribe that got promoted to your attention by social media?

Look, the most you'll get out of me in terms of concessions is that there probably was a decent chunk of people who just kept quiet, and the reason they kept quiet is that they were privately horrified by what happened, but didn't want to be seen attacking their own side, or risk being attacked by them.

Of the people who had relatively little to lose or gain by saying anything (so politicians don't count, sorry), those were the main reactions I saw. Even here on the Motte, where we are heavily filtered for the kind of Blue Triber that is capable of having symapthy for the Reds, we were mostly getting the "why is everybodt overreacting to this?" response. That, and silence, which as I said in another post, is actually something I took as an indicator of decency.

In recent polls, 56% of "very liberal" and 73% of liberal respondents say it is "always or usually unacceptable" for a person to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose; 55% and 68% say that "violence is never justified" "in order to achieve political goals"

And yet, in other recent polls:

Murder Justification: 31% and 38% of respondents stated it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively. These effects were driven by respondents that self-identified as left of center, with 50% and 56% at least somewhat justifying murder for Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively.

It's almost like polls are a tool for narrative control, not the accurate measurement of opinion, and should be discarded.

There are also lots of people on the left (e.g. Kelsey Piper) who posted condemning the Kirk murder without reservations. Those posts didn't get much engagement, and so didn't get amplified very much, so you likely didn't see them unless you were actively following these people. But they were posted.

That would also tend to mean that not many on the left are liking and sharing such content, which is to me a signal as well.

I don’t see many unequivocal comments that say the targeting of ICE or Charlie Kirk are wrong, I don’t see a ratcheting down of rhetoric, or even calls for such. That’s pretty darn bad. The only rhetorical blowback was the two-day cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel and a couple of stations still not wanting to air the show. Most of the left including mainstream professional broadcasters on the left seem to view any calls to tone it down, or to maybe just maybe not publish things that call Kirk evil White Christian Nationalist before he even gets a funeral (thus justifying the homicide) are widely seen as “censorship” and any company that does so is to expect liberals canceling their subscription (which is why Disney folded). That’s not “we don’t want anything like this to happen again.” That’s not even “we feel bad for our part of creating this environment.” It’s basically “we at best don’t care if people get shot.”

That would also tend to mean that not many on the left are liking and sharing such content.

Not necessarily. The twitter algorithm is semi-public, and what they do is they take a bunch of features of a tweet, feed them into some ML models that predict how likely you are to like, bookmark, look at for [8,15,25,30] seconds, follow the author, etc, and then choose which tweets to serve to you based on those that are predicted to get the largest amount of engagement of the type they like (which they don't publish but you can kind of infer based on which metrics have the most granular predictions, like dwell time, video watch time, whether you will share / reply / quote / retweet).

Tweets that make people angry get more replies and quotes and dwell time than uncontroversial ones. That means those are the ones the Twitter algo will choose to show to you. If the Twitter algo thinks you'll engage more with a fedposter than you will with a call for deescalation, it will show you a fedposter. This is true if the ratio of calls for deescalation to fedposters is 1:1, 100:1, or 1:100.

I don’t see a ratcheting down of rhetoric, or even calls for such

In terms of what you see from Twitter randos, this is just a statement about what the algorithm thinks you'll engage with. As a rule of thumb, if you have not heard a person's name before reading a tweet of theirs, you shouldn't care what that tweet says no matter how many likes and replies it has. The number of likes a tweet has is more influenced by reach than by quality, and the twitter algorithm is out to get you.

mainstream professional broadcasters on the left

... seem to have pretty much universally condemned the attacks? It'd be nice if they also said "and also cheering for murder is bad, you ghouls" but I don't particularly expect it of them any more than I'd expect Rush Limbaugh to tell his listeners to stop saying the people who died in ICE custody deserved it. It's not really a thing professional broadcasters do. It'd be nice if it was a thing they did but it's not an unusual and surprising moral failure that they didn't.

It'd be nice if they also said "and also cheering for murder is bad, you ghouls" but I don't particularly expect it of them any more than I'd expect Rush Limbaugh to tell his listeners to stop saying the people who died in ICE custody deserved it.

You just take it for granted that mainstream broadcasters are arms of the left, like that's somehow acceptable. And yet in an environment where the people who are supposed to speak to the whole nation are only willing to tell one side to stop being ghouls, you want to blame the twitter algorithm for the lack of left wing sympathy in anyone's feeds?

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Look, the most you'll get out of me in terms of concessions is that there probably was a decent chunk of people who just kept quiet, and the reason they kept quiet is that they were privately horrified by what happened, but didn't want to be seen attacking their own side, or risk being attacked by them.

More like most of us don't have political brainrot. We don't post on social media. We touch grass, talk to our friends, coworkers, and communities and otherwise live out our lives not terminally online. Your algorithm isn't going to push our content because there isn't any. This is the only social media I use and it barely counts. Everyone I know from my far left friends to my right wing friends all found it horrifying. We all agreed its very bad, I have yet to know one person that was not terminally online already cheering for Kirk's murder.

Wasn't it Scott that said 90% of posts online are from insane people?

Probably for average people. But political leaders tend to know where the public is. If there were a large offline contingent of democratic voters who are shocked, angered, and horrified by political violence, you would have seen democratic leaders in Congress, in state and local politics, or who are political influencers taking a rather large step back, issuing actual condemnations of the acts (now plural btw) of violence against political opponents. So where is that? Where are people for whom politics and political science are their profession, whose job depends on getting it right with the public, or whose rating depend on not alienating the public who get the message of “normal people absolutely do not want political violence.?”

Are there not large continents of mainstream democrats calling for a conversation and a step back?

If you are expecting some sort of capitulation, i think you have a far worse model of human political behavior than is reality.

Also hot take, but i’d say that politicians have a pretty rocky relationship with what the average person wants. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. And activists are nothing if not squeaky with an incentive to play up how large of a congregation they purport to speak for.

Are there not large continents of mainstream democrats calling for a conversation and a step back?

No?

Or at least, most of the calls for a step back in mainstream democratic political media are for the political opponents to step back, while the calls for a conversation are opened on the framing that conversation being that the political opponents are uber-evil fascists with genocidal intent towards LGBTQ+ and where law enforcement is gestapo oppression. In so much that it is a call for a political settlement, it is a call to not challenge the current status quo, which is a result of the last couple of decades of culture war advances.

'The uber-evil outgroup needs to take a step back and stop its totalitarian abuse while preserving our culture war gains' is neither a call for a conversation, nor a call for a step back by the speaking faction in any sort of detente sense.

More like most of us don't have political brainrot.

I've heard that one before, but it makes no sense given the shape of the world we're in right now. Forget Kirk's murder, how do you explain the long stream of MeToo, BLM, lockdowns, TransWomenAreWomen (to the point of putting rapists in women's prisons). I'm sorry, but either the majority of the Blue Tribe wholeheartedly support it, don't care either way - which is political brainrot. The only way it's not is, like I said above, if you're just too terrified of going against your own side.

We don't post on social media

Are you posting from the 00's? The entire Boomer part of my family is online and on SocMeds, most of society is.

We touch grass, talk to our friends, coworkers, and communities and otherwise live out our lives not terminally online.

We have posters here recounting stories of their families, friends, and coworkers making fun of the murder.

Your algorithm isn't going to push our content because there isn't any.

Ok let's say it's my algorithm, link a mainstream left-wing forum, where the news broke, and everybody's aghast at what happened. Note: threads that happened days after the fact, when people had the chance to think about their messaging, don't count. Immediate reacts only.

Wasn't it Scott that said 90% of posts online are from insane people?

I see no reason to take Scott seriously, especially when he says something like this.

link a mainstream left-wing forum, where the news broke, and everybody's aghast at what happened

https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1ndmpmj/charlie_kirk_shot_at_utah_event/

https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1ndpw16/charlie_kirk_has_died/?sort=top

Almost every top comment is some form of "oh shit this is gonna get worse" and "this is bad"

Maybe if you scroll hard enough you'll find people crowing about it, but all the top comments I saw were unhappy he was shot.

Stupidpol is not a mainstream left-wing forum, it's a forum of left-wing rejects that are routinely called fascist, who were preparing for offsite emigration themselves at one point. I used to post there myself.

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Stupidpol is neither mainstream nor left

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I think you're using the term "political brainrot" to mean "has dumb political ideas" while YoungAchamian is using it to mean "spends a lot of mental energy on politics".

Not quite. Rent control is a dumb political idea, or affirmative action. I'm talking about causes that are supportable only if you whip yourself up into a fevered frenzy, I don't see how this could be doable without "spending a lot of mental energy on politics". I suppose it's possible to sleep through "your state put a rapist in a woman's prison", but I find it a bit harder to believe one did it for BLM or the Kavanaugh hearings, let alone the COVID mania.

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It's pretty obnoxious to come onto a political forum and argue that your opponents are wrong and insane because they spend too much mental energy on politics.

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I saw a decent amount of "I hate the guy but he didn't deserve to be shot" and "oh no, this is really going to piss the Republicans off".

The but negates the denunciation.

To be clear, these were both intended as demonstrating reactions other than @ArjinFerman's "half the Blue Tribe cheering for it, and the other half going 'I don't get why this is such a big deal'" - the people saying these things are Blue Tribers neither cheering nor minimising it.

(I did also see people cheering it, and people joking about wanting to take up witchcraft or hire the witches, but AF clearly already knows about the first and has probably guessed the second.)

If ICE stopped being masked goons who look like they came straight out of a bad YA dystopia movie,

Your terms are acceptable. This can be accomplished by arresting and punishing those on the left that are attempting to dox the ICE agents and use intimidation, violence and other tactics (even stochastically) against the agents and their families to demoralise them from their work. Once the doxxers are significantly deterred to the point the criminal behaviour is drastically reduced, and the doxing threat against ICE agents for doing their jobs is removed, then ICE agents can go maskless again.

and became normal accountable government officials who behave kindly and civilly

If this is not code for 'become ineffectual' and actually means that you wish them to hold the above demeanor as they effectively do their jobs then this is also acceptable. Effectively doing their jobs however includes an appropriate use of force against those they are arresting and also those attempting to disrupt law enforcement activities.

Once the doxxers are significantly deterred to the point the criminal behaviour is drastically reduced

This is not going to happen, and you know it. The doxxing can happen outside of the US. Trump is not going to do drone strikes on European cities to kill doxxers.

Also, anonymity is not a privilege we grant most state officials. There are no anonymous judges, or AGs.

For law enforcement, there is a practical side as well. To verify that you are dealing with law enforcement, you need to check the identity of the officers. Also, if you feel mistreated, this will give you someone to sue.

If Chauvin had been masked (and without an ID number) while he murdered Floyd, chances are that he would have gotten away with it due to reasonable doubt about who was who.

Also, anonymity is not a privilege we grant most state officials. There are no anonymous judges, or AGs.

You're correct, perhaps we should. I want anonymous courts stamping classified orders going after self identified antifa groups and other domestic-terrorism-lite groups. Hell the anonymous courts should rubber stamp drone strikes against coyotes and drug cartels. Can't retaliate when you don't know who gives out the orders.

Chauvin was completely railroaded by political vibes and is probably out within a year or two

If Chauvin had been masked (and without an ID number) while he murdered Floyd, chances are that he would have gotten away with it due to reasonable doubt about who was who.

This wouldn't have been possible. Even if all the officers involved refused to answer questions about who did what, the body camera footage would allow you to identify them because the police know who is wearing which camera. Chauvin's fell off while Floyd was resisting arrest around the squad car but the footage from the others would make it clear who was involved and how.

I generally agree that making it easy to identify law enforcement officers is a good thing but positive identifications can still be made after the fact if there's an incident.

Once the doxxers are significantly deterred to the point the criminal behaviour is drastically reduced, and the doxing threat against ICE agents for doing their jobs is removed, then ICE agents can go maskless again.

So there's a heckler's veto on good police procedure?

My philosophical problem with ICE agents masking, dressing plainly, and not providing identification is that I'm watching these videos of raids at stoplights and I'm thinking to myself: How do I go about making the decision to shoot or not to shoot a group of masked men attacking my car at a stoplight? Because the whole visual reads to me carjacking/kidnapping/robbery, and I'd be reaching for a weapon, and I'd feel that the entire history of American self-defense jurisprudence backs me up on this one.

Now am I vanishingly unlikely to be the target of an ICE raid? Sure. But procedurally the existence of a situation where the authorities are trying to arrest me, and the situation is such that I would be legally justified in shooting them, is anathema to law and order, even if the combination of events is rare.

If they're unmasked and you run into them attacking you at a stoplight, exactly how is seeing their faces going to help? Are you going to search their faces online, confirm that they're in some police database, and decide not to shoot them, all while they're attacking you?

Seeing their faces is useless until later, at which point you've already had to decide whether or not to shoot them.

Kidnappers are much more likely to wear masks, as they don't want to be seen and identified, so not wearing masks provides evidence that they're legit. Wearing uniforms and/or providing badges and names is more evidence against being miscreants. Obviously none of that is perfect, but the current videos provide zero evidence against the carjacking hypothesis, I just have to decide not to shoot.

Now am I vanishingly unlikely to be the target of an ICE raid? Sure.

As long as they're not working off of bad intel or a warrant or other paperwork with typos.

Or if I'm giving one of my Venezuelan teammates a ride after jiu jitsu, or one of my wife's law school classmates is at my house, or the guys who come with my drywall contractor who don't speak English and I don't ask questions about...

It's unlikely but it's bound to happen to somebody.

So there's a heckler's veto on good police procedure?

A hecklers veto has your heckler causing problems with X in order to prevent X. I don't think people opposed to ICE are trying to prevent ICE agents from exposing their faces.

In this case, a heckler's veto is being exercised on good police procedure. You're saying I can't advocate for the basic libertarian principle that agents of the state have to identify themselves until every single person in the united states agrees to treat them well.

Same issue. This is not a heckler's veto because the hecklers don't want to prevent them from identifying themselves.

A hecklers veto encourages hecklers by responding to their disruption by doing things that they want to happen. Responding to hecklers by doing things that they don't want to happen doesn't have similar problems, and is not a heckler's veto.

By your reasoning, having the police arrest a criminal is a heckler's veto on not arresting.

That's an unpleasant problem, but it's also a fully generalized one.

I'm against no knock raids for the same reason. There should never be a situation where the boundaries of acceptable self defense and the boundaries of acceptable law enforcement activity intersect. That venn diagram should be two circles.

That's a very strong point I hadn't considered in quite those terms.

I agree with most of this, yes.

As I said elsewhere in the thread, I am leery of the "other tactics (even stochastically)" bit, which I think can too easily be used as a bludgeon against free speech expressing what the bludgeon-wielding side deems to be wrongthink. If it is appropriate for non-violent pro-life activists to refer to abortion doctors as murderers - and it must be appropriate, because that is their legitimate moral belief and freedom of speech means nothing if they cannot express it - then it must remain appropriate for non-violent pro-immigration extremists to refer to ICE agents as Nazis.

But that's only one part of your post, and really a whole other conversation from the core issue here.

I see little problem with censoring content creators to not use fighting words (which due to mass media propaganda, terms like Nazi and Fascism and similar are) that basically dehumanize those you oppose. There’s a shift in context simply because of the March of technology that enables people to marinate in content like that, and creates vortexes that people fall into and come out ready to commit violence against their “enemies”. This isn’t 1980 where exposure to political content was time and space limited by technology and people had to in the famous words of William Shatner “get a life”. The content is ever present and available every time you open your phone. And if the person on that end sees “X is a [fighting word]” especially heavily upvoted, liked, and shared, with the filterbubble hiding contrary opinions, it’s seen as social proof that this person or group of people are profoundly wrong and evil, and deserve to be destroyed. That’s how you get people to be okay with killing, and a nonzero number of people actually willing to kill.

This is how propaganda works. OG Nazis wanted radios in homes so they could send audio of speeches and the sound of wild applause at the threats against political enemies or in that case Jews could be heard by every German who would see this as social proof that most Germans are on board with those ideas. The reason to have video of thousands of ordinary people cheering to show before every movie is again to create the illusion of social proof so that Germans seeing those newsreels believe that this is what Germans want. We have much tge same thing in our media especially social media, where lots of people are being given tge impression that most Americans think that they live under a fascist dictatorship with ICE as the Gestapo rounding up Jews immigrants. And that’s breeding violence.

Just because you don’t like something doesn’t make it “fighting words,” and it definitely doesn’t supersede the 1st Amendment.

How about it causing actual real life shootings? We’ve had 9 months of crying about Nazis, Fascists, White Christian Nationalists, and Gestapo, and we’ve now had within that same time frame dozens of incidents of Teslas being destroyed, several incident of people showing up to the homes of government officials, an assassination, two incidents where ICE officers are shot at (and detainees died), and several riots in Los Angeles. Exactly how many incidents need to be tied to the “MAGA = White Christian Nationalist = Nazi” do we need before anyone that isn’t on the right can say “yeah maybe calling everyone who doesn’t agree with us fascist and calling ICE tge Gestapo is a bridge too far?” Like are we waiting for something bigger? As I see it, if the words are causing actual violence, then it’s not all that hard to make a case for those words being “fighting words”. And this is where we are — stochastic terrorism inspired by claims that MAGA is fascism and therefore must be stopped at all costs.

I don’t see any other option. Either the Nazi and Fascist talk is banned from social media and media figures or influencers lose their jobs because they’re comparing MAGA to Fascists and Trump to Hitler, or we simply allow the current media atmosphere to remain until the next assassination. But I can’t understand how people cannot make that connection and I hope it doesn’t mean that those spreading these messages want more terrorism.

"Stochastic terrorism" is a bogeyman made up to justify suppression of right-wing speech; it is not an actual exception to the First Amendment, not even when the right flips the script. Nor is it "fighting words"; "fighting words" are an insult offered in the moment which provoke a violent reaction (and in the landmark case, was used to justify a conviction for calling a cop a "fascist"). The doctrine is fortunately mostly dead.

Is 'punch a Nazi' fighting words?

Sorry, that was too much of a hot take.

How about 'helicopter rides?'

I find it hard to think that a person wouldn't take a threat of violence or death seriously, no matter how jaded with irony and self-referential internet culture. If Nazis are irredeemable cannon fodder that can be slaughtered without scruple of conscience, then no one should be called a Nazi unless they actually are. Same goes for pedophile, or any other group that is convenient to other.

No and no. The courts have routinely protected far more aggressive speech, as in Brandenburg.

True threats can be legally prohibited, but “mere advocacy” is not enough.

content creators

fighting words

People really, really, really seem to misunderstand what "fighting words" are. Even if we ignore that the Supreme Court has been backing away from treating fighting words as a real thing for several decades now, even in the cases where they are treated as a real thing they require the person saying the words and the person hearing the words to be in each other's physical presence. They're called "fighting words" because they're words that will likely lead to an actual fight, then and there.

then it must remain appropriate for non-violent pro-immigration extremists to refer to ICE agents as Nazis.

No, because the Nazis were a real and defined party, of which there are approximately zero surviving members. Referring to them that way is way more biased and way more loaded.

It’s not polite, and it’s not good epistemics; weak men are superweapons. But public discourse is never held to that standard. People insult and insinuate by analogy all the time. Technical usage of the term “bitch” does not prevent me from using it as a shorthand.

This seems like a needlessly pedantic hill to die on. Substitute "Nazis" for "murderous white supremacists", or however you want to phrase the combination of immorality and ideology which Leftists are clearly pointing to when they call people "Nazis". But I don't think anyone is honestly confused about this. It's only technically wrong in the same sense that "Senator McExample is a fucking asshole" would be inaccurate insofar as McExample is not literally an ambulatory anus.

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But I don't think anyone is honestly confused about this.

Nazis have replaced the concept of Satan and demons as the "ultimate evil" in secularized Western culture. I do not think this is merely a pedantic issue when it's not merely in accurate in the way of an ambulatory anus, but as an effort to mark one's enemies as not just bad, not just evil, but THE ULTIMATE EVIL beyond any and all redemption.

a needlessly pedantic hill to die on

New flair inspiration, thank you.

This seems like a needlessly pedantic hill to die on

No, this is actually an important issue. Being marked as a nazi is something that broad swathes of society agree means that it is perfectly acceptable to ruin your life and kill you - and there are at the very least people out there attacking people they consider nazis and getting away with it (see Bikelock dude). What counts as a nazi is something that is actually pretty important... and also extremely nebulous.

While the literal meaning obviously isn't being used anymore, we can't just use "murderous white supremacists" anymore because the term has clearly expanded far beyond that - to say nothing of what the Israeli/Gaza conflict has done to destroy any remaining shared meaning of the word. Given that this is an appelation which makes you fair game for political violence I think establishing exactly who is and isn't a nazi is pretty important.

The people this label is routinely applied to pretty clearly aren't white supremacists, or often even white, and certainly aren't murderous.

Well, no, but I don't believe abortion doctors are murderers, either. Or indeed that pro-lifers are just patriarchal oppressors obsessed with Controlling Women's Bodies™. That's not in question. It's just that inaccurately ascribing evil motives to the opposition is still the bread and butter of politics, and you don't meaningfully have freedom of speech if you start banning individual instances for being especially untrue or incendiary.

Believing that abortion doctors are murderers is not a statement about their state of mind, it's a claim about how to characterize the actions that they are uncontroversially known as doing. In theory you could use "white supremacist" the same way, but that doesn't happen in practice; it pretty much always means attributing motives that you can't know or actions that they did not do.

"Controlling women's bodies" goes along with "white supremacist" and should be condemned for the same reason.

It's not just the literal words, it's the surrounding context. If pro-lifers started talking about punching murderers, and calling people murderers, then calling people murderers would contribute to stochastic terrorism a lot more.

Also, calling them Nazis specifically is not a "legitimate moral belief" anyway. Pro-lifers think abortionists are literally murderers. Nobody thinks ICE agents are literally members of the Nazi party, and probably not even that they want to kill millions of people.

Pro-lifers absolutely should be allowed to talk in general terms about how they think murderers should be punched, and also allowed to say that they think abortion is murder, and also allowed to say "you had an abortion so in my book you're a murderer". The current standard for where speech stops being lawful is when it is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action. I think that's a good standard.

The current standard for where speech stops being lawful is when it is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action.

Hate speech is another exception to lawful speech and doesn't require incitement. technically wrong, mea culpa

I think you mean "whence" ("from where"), not "whither" ("to where").

Do you have a source on otherwise lawful (i.e. not threats or incitement) hate speech being unlawful in the US?

Hate speech is used as evidence in prosecuting hate crimes, but technically that's just an enhancement charge and I don't really want to fight about this or dig for sources. Statement redacted.

The current standard for where speech stops being lawful is when it is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action. I think that's a good standard.

I generally agree with this, but the zeitgeist on the ground has an awful lot of lawless action (political assassinations and attempts thereof) these days. It's obviously hard to tie specific actions there to specific speech, but the big picture is normalizing the idea of lawless action, not a single clear call for it. How much can I complain about "turbulent priests" before I'm responsible to the state when Thomas Becket gets murdered?

And I've never gotten a good answer on how "imminent" applies: can I promote a planned riot as long as it's more than, say, 12 months from now?

Not “turbulent priests.” “This turbulent priest.” It wasn’t ambiguous in the slightest.

And I think you’re overstating the amount of violence on the ground. One murder is too many, but it’s simultaneous not an awful lot. It represents less of an ongoing threat than, say, Summer 2020.

And I've never gotten a good answer on how "imminent" applies: can I promote a planned riot as long as it's more than, say, 12 months from now?

The rally in Brandenburg v. Ohio was on June 28, 1964. The march was planned for July 4, 1964.

Note that the "imminent lawless action" test is for mere advocacy; actually planning a riot in detail (e.g. "Charlie, you take group B up on the hill with the bottles; Jim, take group A with the Molotovs) would probably not be protected.

And I've never gotten a good answer on how "imminent" applies: can I promote a planned riot as long as it's more than, say, 12 months from now?

IANAL but my understanding is that, as long as your speech does not constitute a threat, and as long as you are not actively conspiring with others, that's protected speech. If you are planning the detailed logistics of a riot a year from now that might not be protected. But for a silly example, the whole area 51 raid thing a few years back - saying "that's based and I fully support this. everyone should go, they can't stop all of us" a month before is, under my understanding of the law, in the clear.

How much can I complain about "turbulent priests" before I'm responsible to the state when Thomas Becket gets murdered?

I think that one falls under criminal solicitation (intent that the crime occurs + request/order that some specific person commit the crime), because it was said to specific people who would be expected to take it as an order. The state would have to prove intent, but in the Thomas Beckett case that seems not too difficult.

And I've never gotten a good answer on how "imminent" applies: can I promote a planned riot as long as it's more than, say, 12 months from now?

Didn't the Supreme Court rule that Trump's speech on j6 didn't count?

It depends on the judge you get and how many appeals you want to suffer through, but my understanding of the Supreme Court precedent on incitement is something like "My fellow activists, let's go right now to burn down the courthouse!" and then you all go right then to burn down the courthouse. If instead you all go to lunch, and some of the the people you talked to burn it down tomorrow but you didn't repeat your speech before they did, that wasn't incitement.

Didn't the Supreme Court rule that Trump's speech on j6 didn't count?

I don't believe any such case reached the Supreme Court. Or any court, for that matter. There were a lot of cases against Trump, but incitement to riot was not one of them.

Nobody thinks people have to literally be members of the defunct German political party NSDAP to be called Nazis, not any more than you have to specifically commit an unlawful killing to be called a murderer.

Er... I certainly think that. It is really toxic how people apply "Nazi" to mean "someone I think is authoritarian" and I think it should be reserved for actual Nazis. I also think you shouldn't be called a murderer unless you deliberately take someone's life.

I would defend calling Hitler-admiring Jew-exclusive white supremacists in favour of violent action "neo-Nazis" or, colloquially, "Nazis", despite their lack of membership of the NSDAP.

Nobody thinks people have to literally be members of the defunct German political party NSDAP to be called Nazis

I would also accept members of other contemporary Nazi parties, or a member of Rockwell's American Nazi Party.

I'll trade you "only calling people cultural Marxists/communists/bioleninists if they are actual members of Socialist parties".

I'd make the trade, if this means people that had a che shirt or hammer and sickle poster in college are treated the same as if they'd had a swastika poster- that is, completely excluded from polite society.

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Why would I trade you three labels for one?

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I can't imagine every ICE agent not being doxed immediately if the Democrats win in 2028. That names list is leaking within one month.

No, see, this week the doxing is just crazy right-wing paranoia. Democrats would never endanger law enforcement personnel for partisan advantage, or in this case revenge. The violence is really rare and just fringe wackos after all. C'mon now.

Yeah, we're still only at Step 1. I thought the memo was out about this.

That's not how this is going to play out.

At best, you're going to have the ICE data used by megacorps from Apple to Zillow to blacklist these people from ever being employed again; at worst, you're going to have Nuremburg trials for many of the more prominent ICE members (don't worry, they'll be super humane -- no deaths by hanging; that's crass and right-coded. Just prison and felony charges, to make sure you're maximally unemployable).

Porque no los dos?

As far as democrats go they're the Gestapo and will probably be tried if the MAGA coalition fractures badly enough post Trump. Either that of Vance holds it together and starts imprisoning "Antifa" in mass. Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose in the next 8 years.

No they won't. A bunch of them will probably get fired, a few senior members will get indicted on charges that may or may not make sense. The vast bulk of ICE will not be.

The Democrats are not going to throw the criminal law at federal agents unless they clearly exceeded their political authorization in an egregious manner. As a baseline, consider the fallout of Abu Ghraib, when random US soldiers cosplayed gitmo. Most got away with a demotion and a maybe a token prison sentence. By contrast, a civilian psychopath who tortured his neighbors that way would likely rot in prison for decades. And of course, nobody went after the CIA torturers, because they kinda had government authorization.

"Government goons are shielded from facing the consequences of crimes they commit" is a principle which helps whomever likes a powerful government, which includes both Democrats and Republicans.

I also do not think that Vance or anyone will imprison the broader ideological antifa movement. They will certainly go after people for conspiracy to commit a crime, but they will not succeed in imprisoning people just for celebrating political murders.

The Kirk assassination and ICE clashes might look like things are heading for a climax, but in the great scheme of things this still seems a tempest in the teapot, rather than Troubles-level of violence. When in doubt, default to "nothing ever happens, politically".

Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose in the next 8 years.

You badly underestimate how long things can drag out in a muddled form.

Your terms are acceptable. Doxing which is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action is already unlawful. We do not need new laws here, we need to enforce the ones we already have.

Effectively doing their jobs however includes an appropriate use of force against those they are arresting and also those attempting to disrupt law enforcement activities.

Yes. Emphasis on "appropriate" of course.

Once the doxxers are significantly deterred to the point the criminal behaviour is drastically reduced, and the doxing threat against ICE agents for doing their jobs is removed, then ICE agents can go maskless again.

Sure. I support efforts to prosecute people who are actively trying to incite violence against ICE agents who plausibly could succeed at inciting said violence. I don't think I'm unusual in that opinion, even for people on the left.

I don't see much evidence that anyone is even attempting to prosecute the people breaking those laws, though. It feels like one of those "we've tried nothing and now we're all out of ideas" situations.

I don't support ICE intentionally saying "well, normal legal channels didn't work so we have to go full stormtrooper" when they haven't even tried normal legal channels. Having masked people in unmarked vehicles who refuse to identify themselves snatching people off the street should not be the first resort.

That's not how this works. The heightened threat against ICE is removed and then their legal risk mitigation strategies can be stood down.

But yes, they absolutely should be cracking down on and arresting the doxxers if the legal means allow them to do so. If they can't for whatever reason, then the protective strategies remain. Then federal laws should be passed against stochastic support of crime.

It shouldn't be 'law enforcement personnel must accept the exposure of themselves and their families to physical harm while they're alone and exposed at their homes because they decided to work for ICE'. Clearly this will lead to intimidating people into not working for ICE. Which means border enforcement ceases to exist and Antifa achieve their political ends through the threat and use of violence (eg domestic terrorism).

It shouldn't be 'law enforcement personnel must accept the exposure of themselves and their families to physical harm while they're alone and exposed at their homes because they decided to work for ICE'.

I think this is a case of "if your risk tolerance is literally zero you can't do anything".

We should take reasonable efforts to ensure the security of federal employees like those at ICE. Such as prosecuting people who actually break existing laws of the land in ways that endanger those employees.

There are limits, though. If the risks are higher than people are willing to deal with for the $50k / year we pay ICE agents, we should first try paying more. There are quite a few jobs that expose you to more risk than ICE agents face, and we are able to find people for those jobs. We're a rich country, we can afford to pay people. For a baseline, cops in San Francisco make $115 - $165k / year in base salary, often much more with overtime. If we're not paying at least that much for the apparently 4 digit number of people securing our borders, we shouldn't complain that we can't find people who will tolerate the risk.

What we should not do, before we have seriously attempted "prosecute people who break the law" and "pay people what they're worth", is shred the constitution. And "pass federal laws against stochastic support of crime", if I'm understanding your proposal correctly, amounts to shredding the constitution.

There are quite a few jobs that expose you to more risk than ICE agents face

And if you ask the HSE people responsible for those jobs what this risk of injury should be, they will say "zero", and do absolutely everything in their power to reduce it to that level in terms of procedures that they can identify/control. I strongly doubt that OH&S sees ICE much differently than other employers in this regard.

Considering that there are literally targeted hit attempts happening on ICE agents right now, I must say that the risk of being shot for an ICE field agent seems much higher than that of them dying of COVID, given that they trend young and healthy -- and yet...

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How much risk is reasonable risk. This idea is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but there’s just no definitive answer to “when does the risk get bad enough that cops or ICE or political figures are allowed to feel scared enough to protect themselves from said risk?” ICE is subject to serious doxxing and real-time tracking, they’re being shot at, their home addresses and thus their families’ locations are publicized thus meaning that a radicalized idiot with a gun could show up at their house, their kids’ school, or anywhere else they go. Police might get a guy they tried to arrest mad enough to try something, but it’s actually pretty rare and there are no databases or tracking apps telling people where law enforcement is at every moment. There are no public figures that refer to cops as Gestapo or quote Anne Frank every time the local beat officer arrests someone.

If ICE were treated like local cops and given the support given to cops, sure, I get the idea that you should accept risk, and that you should be able to be identified. In tge current circumstances, asking for that means that you want these agents and their families dead. Because in this particular environment, that’s tge clear and obvious result of demasking agents while they’re being shot at, doxxed with public databases, the rhetoric compares their work to Nazis rounding up Jews, and there are apps to real time track them still available for download.

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If the risks are higher than people are willing to deal with for the $50k / year we pay ICE agents, we should first try paying more

The thing is that you need lots of ICE agents to deal with all the illegal immigration. Making them so expensive that there aren’t enough of them to scale to immigration is effectively an amnesty by the back door.

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This is, of course, why no one ever compared Mitt Romney or George Bush to Nazis.

Or Bill Clinton.

Really I just think it's funny that this crazy letter to the editor from 1996 is even digitized to find.

I think this would reduce the violent sentiments against them tremendously

Sadly, I don't think that's realistic. First, because no matter how nice a face you try to put on it, deporting an illegal immigrant, especially if it seems like the border is going to be significantly harder to cross next time, is potentially a life ruining event for them. They are unlikely to ever have a life as nice as what they had in the US, whoever they were sending money to abroad loses out on life changing revenue as well. Even if the agent doing it is very nice and apologizes a lot, if the illegal immigrant thinks that maybe he/she could get out of it through violence and intimidation, then that will be on the table, especially if the timeline is extended because that's nicer. Or the enforcement can also be ineffective, because grabbing them and putting them in a holding facility is Stormtrooper-ish, so letting them out with a court date gives them more opportunity to disappear again. So anyway, if we assume that in either case, the illegal will consider anything to try and avoid deportation, at least shock and awe method doesn't give them time to talk themselves into or prepare themselves for those extremities.

And also, there's the problem that ICE is also opposed to organized criminal elements, like human smugglers, that are aligned with cartels. Cartels are be perfectly willing and able to terrorize ICE agents and their families.

Or the enforcement can also be ineffective, because grabbing them and putting them in a holding facility is Stormtrooper-ish, so letting them out with a court date gives them more opportunity to disappear again.

I think if I were Immigration Czar I would try a scheme with ankle monitors. ICE agents identify you as illegal, you get tagged and a reasonable timeline to put your affairs in order and leave the country. If that time elapses, or the monitor mysteriously turns off - then you get detained.

And also, there's the problem that ICE is also opposed to organized criminal elements, like human smugglers, that are aligned with cartels. Cartels are be perfectly willing and able to terrorize ICE agents and their families.

This is true but seems like a very good argument for separating ICE into two different corps, one that fights organized crime and one that enforces immigration laws. Outside of Trump's rhetorical interest in acting like all illegals are violent gang members, it doesn't seem especially rational for them to have both jobs, precisely because very different approaches and MOs are proportionate when dealing with one group vs the other.

Your belief in the compliance of illegal immigrants with the law is hilariously naive. What makes you think they will not just run away and not show up to their deportation? Saw off their monitor bracelets and go into hiding? What is their incentive to not do so?

I've been very rough on self-proclaimed liberals and leftists on the Motte, but what you are stating here would be, in my view, a mean-spirited parody of what I believe my ideological opponents to believe: a policy proposal so ivory tower that they're pulling it off the elephant as we speak. How could you believe for one moment that this could ever work in real life?

I don't think even a five year old would think it would work, and if you're failing the Evil Overlord test on something you consider to be a good thing you should reconsider your political priors.

What makes you think they will not just run away and not show up to their deportation? Saw off their monitor bracelets and go into hiding?

As I mentioned in another reply further down the chain, my ideal regime of policing would also be such that this just wouldn't be possible. There would always be a cop close enough that they can get notified as soon as a bracelet detects funny business, and zoom to its last recorded location before the alert.

In any event, you know, the ankle bracelets are only a shot in the dark. I don't claim they're the miracle cure-all. I only bring them up as an example of a middle-of-the-road policy that's neither maximally repressive nor maximally permissive with regards to what to do with illegals once detected. I just don't think "reliably expel illegal immigrants, without ruining their lives more than is necessary to do so" is an impossible ask for a well-run machinery of state in the modern world. There's gotta be a way, we just haven't found it yet, mostly for lack of looking (because the Left doesn't want the illegals expelled, and the Right wants to be cruel about it).

A huge chunk of the issue here is that no enforcement for literal decades have vastly increased the stakes for illegal immigrants and their ability to embed.

I think the current Right approach is a combination of wanting to score points with their base by passing a vibe check, and also believing that intimidation is the best way to facilitate meaningful self deportation.

the monitor mysteriously turns off - then you get detained.

I'm missing some details, I'm sure, but this sounds flawed. Attempting to detain them after they made themselves significantly harder to track...I dunno, smells like self-sabotage to me.

As I said elsewhere in the thread my ideal mode of policing would involve a lot more low-scale police presence. The way I imagine it, as soon as something screwy is detected with someone's monitor, the nearest beat cop gets an alert and takes a look at the last known coordinates. Very different from "if you miss a court date then maybe possibly something gets done within seven business days".

I don't claim this system is foolproof, this isn't my job and it's only a sketch of an idea that I've kicked around in the back of my mind. But I'd be surprised if cleverer minds than me couldn't expand it into a functional system. I think there's a lot of untapped potential in this sort of system, due to the stigma associated with putting tags on minorities' bodies.

That would be unconstitutional. Local police can't be used for feral law enforcement.

Certainly they can. They can't be commandeered for it, but states can use police to enforce Federal law within their jurisdiction.

This all sounds overcomplicated for something that is essentially a very simple issue.

They already broke the law by coming in illegally, and the right thing to do is to make them go away. Letting them go free, monitored or not, especially after they've already been picked up by law enforcement, is just plain wrong. Your proposal would simply create more busywork and more opportunities for law enforcement failures and more incentives to immigrate illegally compared to holding on to them and shipping them off at the first opportunity.

No offense, but I get the feeling that you effectively want more immigration.

No offense, but I get the feeling that you effectively want more immigration.

No, I want human beings to be as happy and comfortable as humanly possible. Open borders in a society that is not yet post-scarcity does not lead to that, therefore excess immigration must be stopped, but if we're going to regretfully turn people away we should try to be decent about it, because in an ideal world they should be able to stay if they want. Giving people time to collect their belongings and say goodbye to any acquaintances they might have made during their stay seems like basic decency.

I think of this in Rawlsian and golden-rule terms - were I in the position of an illegal immigrant who's been discovered, I would acknowledge that exiling me is within the rights, and in the best interests, of the body politic, but I would still regard a few weeks' grace period to put my affairs in order as something to which I would feel entitled regardless as a human being, being that two weeks more or less are not imposing a meaningful economic burden on the country the way my continued lifelong presence might (while they make a great difference to my own happiness). If defectors abusing that grace period to escape make it impossible to extend this basic kindness to arrestees who cooperate, then we need a system to crack down and disincentivize such abuse, so as to be able to once again extend that basic kindness to people who cooperate.

No, I want human beings to be as happy and comfortable as humanly possible.

How do you square that with Murderers and Thieves that derive enjoyment from their actions?

because in an ideal world they should be able to stay if they want.

In this hypothetical, your Ideal World is post-scarcity?. If yes and you would be comfortable with open borders for a post-scarcity USA, how important is the local culture to you?

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Sure. Alright. I can agree to that much.

But for the love of basic sanity, don't let them loose! Give them the bare minimum of time to do those things - maybe a day or two - and keep them under constant watch by at least one law enforcement officer at all times!

Edit: You sneak, you edited your post! Two days or two weeks, that's a question of economics to me - can the relevant law enforcement agencies afford to commit manpower for that long without neglecting their duties elsewhere? But in any event, I have alarm bells going off in my mind when immigrants are just let off the hook, even if just temporarily.

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This post resonates with me, mainly because I also don't like the aesthetics of masked officers -- especially balaclava-style masks. This is despite the fact that I largely support ICE's activities.

While I share the ideal that law enforcement should strive to be so "kind and civil" as possible, I also recognize that this is just an aspirational sentiment. Ultimately, the laws need to be enforced, and that enforcement is often going to require violence -- sometimes deadly violence. So be it.

But balaclavas really rub me the wrong way -- and in a Chesterton's fence sort of way. Maybe it's just Western cultural chauvinism on my part, but it looks like what the bad guys wear. I associate the balaclava aesthetic with Eastern despotisms and the forces of Mordor. It's arguably something that you would wear when you are ashamed of your actions.

If I had to choose, I would rather see enforcement increase in harshness by several multiples without concealing the faces of the enforcers rather than undermine that norm.

How about motorcycle helmets? Full riot gear?

The gear doesn’t bother me very much. Officers who are particularly likely to be in dangerous situations should be armed and armored appropriately. I'd prefer that beat cops in peaceful neighborhoods not be stomping around with plate carriers and full-auto rifles, but I don't see anything like that on the near horizon.

Covering of the face and concealing of identity is what bothers me. I realize that this could make things personally more dangerous for the officers, either as a result of doxxing or in the form of retaliation from future administrations, but I don’t think it is too much to ask for us to demand that law enforcers be personally courageous and willing to face such threats (nor inappropriate to compensate them accordingly).

Concealing one’s face makes it easier to commit shameful or dishonorable actions, ranging from “arrest these men with no probable cause” all the way up to “shoot these men without a trial.” It makes it easier for cowards (who lack either physical or moral courage) to be enforcers. And it’s a genie that’s likely to be very difficult to stuff back into the bottle once it should become normalized.

Probably everyone will agree that the bulk of brave and righteous men belong to their own tribe, and that the enemy tribe disproportionately comprises cowardly snivelers and bootlickers who benefit from anonymity for accomplishing their evil deeds, and thereby conclude that agreeing to such a norm is advantageous for their tribe. That makes it a norm that we can probably all agree on — just as we can likely agree that in a dystopian totalitarian hellscape, the bad cops are probably wearing balaclavas.

I'd prefer that beat cops in peaceful neighborhoods not be stomping around with plate carriers and full-auto rifles, but I don't see anything like that on the near horizon.

You know, for all the common talk about how American cops are so militarized, I've been surprised on a few occasions in Europe, where just having the gendarmes or sometimes even actual troops standing around in public spaces (airports, tourist hotspots) in full kit with long guns is a weird vibe. Although we recently had national guardsmen on the NYC subways, didn't we?

Although we recently had national guardsmen on the NYC subways, didn't we?

Still there, that's "Empire Shield"

I would rather see enforcement increase in harshness by several multiples without concealing the faces of the enforcers rather than undermine that norm.

Meh, they’re protecting themselves from the unvaccinated.

Joking aside, it’s also in response to another norm, which is “technological bookkeepers can unperson you at any time now or in the future if you are ever caught enforcing laws they don’t like”.

This wasn’t as much a problem 50 years ago, for obvious reasons, but it is today. And we can write legislation so that that doesn’t happen, but we haven’t done that yet, and we want to start enforcing the law right now.

So yeah, they need the masks.

Come on. Nobody will put ICE agents in jail for simply having acted as Trumps goons. That is a benefit of having a working legal system. If Trump used them as a death squad, things would look different.

They are simply wearing masks for the same reason some amateur porn actors wear masks, i.e. that they are aware that a significant fraction of the population consider the job they are doing broadly unethical, and would prefer to be still be treated as polite society by people with such sentiments.

There are plenty of occupations which are not well regarded. Factory farmer, international arms trader, yellow press journalist, gang member, health insurance executive. Working hard to fill Trump's deportation quotas is kinda similar. Some people will think you are scum, just like some people think that people who make a living from sex work are scum. But unlike the latter, the ICE goons will not even get debanked.

That is a benefit of having a working legal system

And a failure state of that system is "ceases to function because those who enforce the law are prevented from doing so by the mob". The Mexicans, and residents of other Latin American countries, are very well acquainted with this concept. So are the Italians, the Russians, and other Europeans from countries east of Germany to varying degrees.

But unlike the latter, the ICE goons will not even get debanked.

The anti-ICE faction/mob has already done that for causes far more anodyne than "enforced the law", and this unites that cause far more than factory farmers. (International arms traders are sanctioned by both sides, yellow press journalists and gang members are core Blue tribe constituencies so they'll never be sanctioned, and health insurance executives are too lucrative to debank.)

Seems like the root problem is the "technological bookkeepers can unperson you at any time" bit. Perhaps this admin should be focusing a little bit more on fixing the thing where the financial industry is secretly an unaccountable fourth branch of government.

They already fancied themselves Jedi rebels and Dumbledore's Army before the ICE masks. I've seen the bumper stickers and reddit comments. ICE agents could wear rainbow tracksuits and helicopter beanies and they would still get called stormtroopers.

Making ICE scary definitely seems to be freaking out illegals judging by the empty Walmarts and Home Depots we saw earlier, so it seems like an effective way to encourage self-deportation. And if my brother or son were an ICE agent, I would definitely want his face covered and his name hidden while doing his job given the now-regular leftist violence against right-wingers. The extreme left is going to hate his guts regardless.

Making ICE scary definitely seems to be freaking out illegals judging by the empty Walmarts and Home Depots we saw earlier

They scare the illegals by deporting them back to their country of origin. For most illegals, that is a very scary thing. If you have payed your life savings to some smuggler to get out of some shithole, journeyed far in shitty conditions, perhaps risked your life when crossing the border, and then get ripped out of the existence you build for yourself and instead land right back in the shithole you started from, that is a fucking scary thing. Compared to that, it matters little if you dress up ICE as teletubbies or in Hugo Boss uniforms.

Personally, if I was an illegal, I would try to slave away for some American farm or hotel owner, because that will mean I will not get deported, and hope things will blow over in a few years.

so it seems like an effective way to encourage self-deportation.

The people who you presumably want gone are not going to self-deport. Likely, even if ICE shot them in the street on discovery half of them would rather risk hiding in the US than going back.

The people you are deterring are the ones who have other options, and are mostly legally in the US. Koreans, Europeans. They see that the US is very bent on kicking out foreigners, and for them a few weeks of imprisonment between their visa being invalidated and them getting deported would actually matter.

slave away

Relative to citizens they are slaves.

Problem is, [relative] slavery to Americans is preferable to living in the countries they come from.

Blue tribe technically could make that argument, but because their ur-grievance and founding myth is built with around slave labor, they would never in a million years do that.

They see that the US is very bent on kicking out foreigners, and for them a few weeks of imprisonment between their visa being invalidated and them getting deported would actually matter.

The US is in an anti-slavery mood, and is now more critically examining visas for evidence of slavery. (And sure, one could hold the Korean example of misused B visas up as a standard of "they didn't necessarily know at the time their duties would require them to violate US anti-slavery law"... but that's the textbook definition of human trafficking.)

Funny, I do not see Trump caring about the slavery-like aspect of illegal immigration at all. His refusal to go after illegals who keep the farm and hotel industry running means that he has placed these people in more slave-like conditions, if anything.

Before, a farm worker had the option to go to Home Depot instead and try his luck as a day laborer. Under Trump, he will get rounded up by ICE if he does this. So his employer is not only giving him his meager paycheck, but also legal security.

In general, I see the relationship between an illegal and their employer a bit like the relationship of a 16yo runaway living in the apartment of her 20-something boyfriend: while it might be positive sum for both participants compared to the next best alternative, and I can certainly imagine instances of such a relationship with zero abuse going on, there is also the fact that the intrinsic power imbalance makes such a relationship very ripe for abuse.

Of course, the blue tribe does not talk about it because that would mean acknowledging illegals, and the red tribe is mostly fine with brown people coming into the US as long as they know their place (working on the orchards, far away from the citizens).

I have heard anecdotal accounts of illegal immigrants effectively forced to pay back those that got them across the border (cartels, I assume) from their under-the-table earnings in the States, presumably under threats to themselves or their families back home. I'd bet at least some have been forced to work in prostitution this way. Is it okay that I'm uncomfortable with Biden's effectively open-borders policies because an entire class of outside-of-the law persons tacitly legalizes indentured servitude?

I'm sure some are effectively indentured to their employers, too.

If they wanted accountability they would just requires id numbers to be visible but keep those ids separate from their personal identity so they can be held accountable without also risking lynch mobs. Newsom clearly is just engaging in stochastic terrorism.

The "accountable" is only part of it. The main part of it, as I said, is that the masked look (and ICE's overall vibe) is clearly meant to be threatening, and we would like the government to cool it with the scary goons immediately. If it was just a matter of protecting agents' identities there would be many ways for them to present themselves that didn't make them look like video game mooks. Unfortunately, Trump thinks having scary-looking Stormtroopers looks badass.

Being fair, it’s fairly clear that any connected with ICE who gets identified is being doxxed, and the officer as well as his family are being threatened, and now that we’re at the point of shooting at them, isolated calls for de masking ice agents may as well be stated as “please make it easier for random crazy people to identify you, find your home address and threaten or even kill you.” Theres perhaps reason for numbers, or some other unique ID to be visible, but a full face and a name in the era of the internet are enough that you may as well have them wear their name, address, phone number, and instagram account name.

If police officers manage to work without masks, why shouldn't ICE agents? Leftists have raged against police officers as much as they have raged against ICE agents.

The median cop is handing out traffic tickets, working security, running off trespassers, and taking reports of domestic violence and theft, not personally dealing with serious crime or those connected to it. He goes home to a suburb where his profession is high status among his neighbors and has strong union protections. There are far leftists on college campuses who dislike him but they’d just find some other excuse if he was an accountant or a plumber. There’s nothing personal about it.

Cops arresting gangsters and carrying out raids routinely wear masks.

If police officers manage to work without masks, why shouldn't ICE agents? Leftists have raged against police officers as much as they have raged against ICE agents.

Police officers who work in fields with a higher risk of targeted retaliation routinely wear masks.

Fair point, I did not know that.

The stakes are much higher in the average ICE raid over the average police intervention. The vast majority of interactions between police officers and citizens are not a life ruining event for the citizen. An ICE agent during a raid is going to be ruining or at least seriously affecting people's life; many of which if given the chance would do a lot to avoid that happening to them. Note that the police officers whose average interventions are also high stakes, like SWAT teams, often wear face coverings as well.

Sorry, I thought that the narrative was that they needed the masks to be safe from all the bloodthirsty antifa lefties, not from violent illegal immigrants.

I agree that arresting illegals who might prefer death to deportation is inherently risky. But I also think that this danger is largely situational. Illegals using facial recognition to figure out the home addresses of ICE agents and then taking revenge for them deporting their buddies looks rather far-fetched.

Few illegals prefer death to deportation; they expect they can just come back.

Getting deported is viewed as a serious inconvenience that sometimes happens at random, not a life-ruining one.

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I'm sorry, but Stormtroopers vs Rebels comparisons are not going to move me, or probably many people here. It makes me think the differences are irreconcilable, not in the sense of "the Left are so evil civil war is inevitable" but in the sense of "people who process the problems of the law through the lense of movies for children and adult children simply do not deserve input into the political process, and should be excluded in some peaceful way while the grown-ups sort things out." I feel similarly about such people on the right, but they are thankfully much less vocal than the reddit left.

I mean, when I think about it, I largely agree with Yarvin's take that this is counterproductive theatre to look tough for the plebs, but there's also the fact that the sort of guys ICE is gunning for are not exactly sophisticated ironists, they're largely coming from cultures where tough guys in masks with rifles is what power looks like. The westoid media-soaked response is just the main aspect that really seems too ridiculous to credit.

I think until the rhetoric ratchets down to even remotely sane levels, and people stop acting like Wolverines in Red Dawn in training or radicalized rhetoric, I don’t think it reasonable to assume that an eventual hot war (which will look like the Irish Troubles) is pretty safe as a bet. If anything, we’re moving toward more violence, not less, and those pushing the memes enabling all of this are more often celebrated than punished. Kimmel pretty much celebrated the assassination and freaking Disney is still paying for his show (on a positive note, affiliate stations are often refusing to air it). Where’s the evidence of people stepping back and saying “this is just plain unacceptable?”

I have some Moldbug sympathies, not that im completely opposed to some sort of self government, but that most people are so completely unsuited to the task that they must be told firmly to sit down and shut up so government actually works.

Oh I don't mean the violence, that's very real, I mean that going around in tacticool outfits v&ing guatemalans is theatre. Obviously arresting criminals is great but as a political spectacle it's not really something that builds power.

When I have seen this on the right among normies, it's usually in response to the left's own Manichaean worldview, not because they view the left fundamentally as enemies who cannot be reasoned with.

I mostly mean stuff like the movies about "BASED NOT-JOHN-WICK MURDERS THE SH*T OUT OF CHILD TRAFFICKERS", or whatever the Red Tribe equivalent to soyjacking over marvel/star wars/streamslop would be. I see occasional attempts to right-wing-code the same media as redditors but pretty rarely.

became normal accountable government officials who behave kindly and civilly

Normal government officials don't usually mask, but law enforcement has never behaved kindly and civilly towards the ordinary people they are arresting. If you're lucky it's "Turn around and put your hands on your head" followed by being slammed against a wall, a car, or the ground. If you're not it's "Don't move, freeze, BANG BANG BANG".

If you're lucky it's "Turn around and put your hands on your head" followed by being slammed against a wall, a car, or the ground. If you're not it's "Don't move, freeze, BANG BANG BANG"

According to the FBI's Crime Data Explorer there were ~7 million arrests in the United States in 2024. (https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/arrest and change the filters on the left to narrow the date range to 2024). It's difficult to get exact numbers on use of force, but the website Police Violence Report (https://policeviolencereport.org/) has 1,270 killings by police in 2024. They correctly note that there are gaps in the data collection so let's be real generous and more than double that number and call it 3,000.

It's possible that there's an epidemic of non-fatal police shootings during arrests that has somehow slipped society's notice despite the general atmosphere of anti-police news over the last several years, but that's possible in the same sense that it's possible that Jeff Bezos is about to knock on your door to give you a billion dollars. I doubt you're quitting your job over that possibility. But let's again be generous and say that there are an additional 7,000 non-fatal arrest related shootings, so let's just get crazy and say that there were 10,000 arrest related shootings.

If we were being fair we'd need to subtract the justified shootings. But we won't, despite only 10 officers being charged from the 2024 killings, we'll just say a flat 10,000 out of 7,000,000 arrests.

Even with our inflated anti-police numbers it's still a ludicrous exaggeration to say that the police are jumping to "BANG BANG BANG" during arrests. This is a BLM tier, fact free sneer that does not match reality.

Eh, 3000 in 7 million is still better than the odds for winning the lottery.

Eh, I don't think it's reasonable to claim that because something's more common than winning the actual lottery that it's an accurate description of police behavior to expect during arrests (and a reminder that the 3,000 includes justified shootings completely unlike your scenario). But reasonable isn't an objective standard and based on your reply in our other discussion on policing I think your negative experience(s?) with the police have left you unable to be reasonable about the subject.

but law enforcement has never behaved kindly and civilly towards the ordinary people they are arresting

Well, they ought to. It would reduce social tensions considerably.

By the nature of the job, police officers interact with dangerous, scary people who don't care about adhering to the laws of the country they live in or about hurting others. In order to do their jobs properly, police officers need to present a credible threat to criminals. If a criminal finds a police officer scary and intimidating, it stands to reason that a law-abiding citizen will too.

There's really no way out of this trade-off. Do you want a police force which is unfailingly polite and courteous to everyone, but impotent as a result and a laughingstock to hardened criminals? Or do you want a police force which hardened criminals find scary and intimidating, but which ordinary decent people also find intimidating as a side effect?

Of course you can dial this trade-off up and down a bit on the margins, depending on the concentration of hardened criminals in the community being policed. A cop in the Hamptons is bound to be significantly more mild-mannered than one in Compton, who in turn won't be anywhere near as scary as a cop in El Salvador. Probably no police officers are more scary and aggressive than the screws in maximum security prisons, in which "the community being policed" is made up entirely of violent criminals. But at the end of the day, there's no way around the trade-off. Police officers fight crime, which means they have to be intimidating to violent criminals, which means it's not reasonable to expect a police force to be as gentle and kind as your local pastor and still do their jobs effectively.

"No no, I'm saying that police officers should be tough and intimidating with actual criminals, but kind and civil to the ordinary people they're arresting."

If they're arresting you, it's because they don't know you're an ordinary, law-abiding citizen. As such they can't afford to give you the benefit of the doubt and must assume that you're a criminal.

Do you want a police force which is unfailingly polite and courteous to everyone, but impotent as a result and a laughingstock to hardened criminals?

It is perfectly possible to be polite and scary at the same time, and it works on both professional criminals and law-abiding citizens. (I agree it doesn't work on junkies who are as high as a kite at the point of arrest.) British police are trained how to do it, and American police could be. Old-style Italian mob bosses in gangster movies are probably the best on-screen example given the relative lack of non-comedy British cop shows.

The reason why ICE are instead acting like the secret police rounding up {disfavoured ethinc group of choice} is because that is the show that Trump wants to put on for his core supporters, not because it is the most effective way of achieving a policy goal.

British police are trained how to do it, and American police could be.

You know, I nodded in agreement when I first read this, my mind going back to old episodes of Taggart, Inspector Morse and Prime Suspect. And a great example immediately came to mind - DCI Schenk in Luther, in this scene, which is excellent. But all of those shows are from a different time. Luther is the newest, and even then Schenk's character arc through the series is he's a good cop who plays by the rules but along with Luther his style of policing is considered outdated by the establishment and discarded in favour of small black women who should be presenting children's shows. The British police don't know how to do it anymore either.

Edit: in fact I would guess there was some correlation between the decline of the British police force and relative lack of non-comedy British cop shows. Because there certainly wasn't a lack in the past.

British police are trained how to do it,

Are they? Every video I've seen of British police makes me understand a little better those guys who think a cop is a fight they can win and then walk away from. What are the Brits going to do, send more frail, unarmed women to engage in some mawkishly scolding?

British police are trained how to do it

British police are trained to scour Twitter for crimethink and turn a blind eye to child abuse if the abusers are Pakistani.

Old-style Italian mob bosses in gangster movies are probably the best on-screen example

You mean guys who could order a murder with zero due process and have it implemented immediately? Yes, giving police that power would make them incredibly scary.

It is perfectly possible to be polite and scary at the same time, and it works on both professional criminals and law-abiding citizens. (I agree it doesn't work on junkies who are as high as a kite at the point of arrest.) British police are trained how to do it, and American police could be

I wonder if there is any way to access this training?

But at the end of the day, there's no way around the trade-off. Police officers fight crime, which means they have to be intimidating to violent criminals

I disagree that there's no way around this so-called trade-off. You constantly equivocate between intimidation and actual effectivenesss. But the fact that police officers fight crime simply means that police officers have to be effective at fighting crime. Intimidation doesn't have to come into it. Even if you insist on viewing deterrence as a major role of the police, the promise of swift and reliable response to wrongdoing - leading to arrest and sentencing - could provide that all on its own, without the cops needing to individually come across as scary mofos who'll beat you to a pulp at their own discretion. If you know he's indestructible and omniscient, Superman can deter crime just as well as Batman.

The ideal police force, IMO, should aspire to work like a magic spell that teleports you before a judge as soon as you commit a crime. The process should be smooth, it should be quick, but it should be inescapable. Simple as that. The punishment that deters crime is what happens after you are brought before the judge and found guilty; the process that gets you to that point should be as painless as possible, for the sake of the innocent-until-proven-guilty.

(Before someone brings it up, I am aware that we're currently far away from this system partly because judges are too soft, not just because cops are too tough. This certainly needs to be fixed at both ends of the process. But the current vicious cycle, where cops get ever tougher to make up the deterrence deficit from slap-on-the-wrist-prone courts, while courts get softer and softer because how can you not sympathize with criminals abused by such needlessly violent cops?, has to be stopped.)

But the fact that police officers fight crime simply means that police officers have to be effective at fighting crime. Intimidation doesn't have to come into it.

No, sorry, it does.

Imagine you're a criminal who's just stabbed someone. A police officer shows up, levels his gun at you and tells you to drop the knife and put your hands on your head, or he'll shoot you. In order for this threat to be effective, you must believe that the police officer will do as he says - if you don't, you'll try to make a run for it, or even try and stab the police officer yourself. In order for the threat to be effective, the police officer must seem like the kind of person who would fulfil his threat, which means he must be at least scary and intimidating enough that a hardened criminal who's just stabbed someone will believe that he will act on his threat. (In game-theoretic terms, the police officer must pre-commit to a certain course of action if certain conditions are met.) This is true even if the police officer has never discharged his weapon in the line of duty, would greatly prefer not to, and actually would hesitate to fire if you decided to make a run for it.

All of this is equally true even for unarmed police forces: the police officer must seem like the kind of person who actually would Tase you, mace you, or smack you with a nightstick. If he doesn't seem like the kind of person who would follow through on his threat, no criminal will pay any attention to his instructions.

Imagine the alternate scenario, where you've just stabbed someone, a police officer shows up, and his response is to say "well, golly gosh, you've gotten yourself into a right pickle haven't you? Why don't you drop the weapon and come down with me to the station and we'll talk about this? But if you don't want to, that's alright with me too." All without so much as unholstering his weapon. Does that sound like a police officer who would be effective at fighting crime?

Even if you insist on viewing deterrence as a major role of the police, the promise of swift and reliable response to wrongdoing - leading to arrest and sentencing - could provide that all on its own, without the cops needing to individually come across as scary mofos who'll beat you to a pulp at their own discretion.

This has precisely nothing to do with deterrence. As argued above, if someone has committed a crime and is facing arrest, they would most likely prefer not to be arrested if they can help it. The worst-case scenario is getting shot dead by the police; the second-worst case scenario is getting arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced; the best-case scenario is getting away with it scot-free. In order to come quietly, the criminal must believe that if he doesn't, the police will shoot him dead - if he doesn't believe that, he'll ignore them and make a run for it. In order for the criminal to believe that the police will shoot him dead if he doesn't come quietly, the arresting officer does unfortunately have to be scarier and more intimidating than the average person.

The ideal police force, IMO, should aspire to work like a magic spell that teleports you before a judge as soon as you commit a crime... If you know he's indestructible and omniscient, Superman can deter crime just as well as Batman.

It's so telling that, when illustrating how you think police officers ought to behave, you keep falling back on examples from fictional escapist media aimed at teenagers, rather than, say, examples of real police officers in the real world. (Because the trade-off I'm discussing is equally true everywhere, not just in the US.) But even this example doesn't illustrate the point you're trying to make: comics depicting Superman as an intimidating figure who scares criminals shitless are so common there's a trope about them. You're right in one sense, though: Superman can afford to be polite and courteous to everyone he meets, up to and including violent criminals with sub-machine guns, because he's a superhuman alien who is functionally invulnerable to harm from virtually everyone he meets. This description, you'll note, is not true of police officers, who are only marginally less vulnerable to harm than anyone else (even if you're wearing a bulletproof vest, getting shot in the torso will probably break a rib or two, and getting shot in the head will probably kill you). Because they are vulnerable to harm and would prefer not to expose themselves to unnecessary risks, they must instead rely on threats and intimidation which, once again, means that violent criminals must find them intimidating.

"well, golly gosh, you've gotten yourself into a right pickle haven't you? Why don't you drop the weapon and come down with me to the station and we'll talk about this? But if you don't want to, that's alright with me too." Does that sound like a police officer who would be effective at fighting crime?

Well, no. But one who remains level-headed - who points the gun and without flinching, delivers the "you're under arrest. I don't want to hurt you, I will if I have to" spiel - seems like a better incarnation of justice, a better keeper of the peace, than one who cultivates the image of a capricious, violent bully. Not even just because that's better for the wrongfully-accused innocent. Consider that where black criminals are concerned, the perception is that cops won't give you a fair shake and will look for any excuse to beat you up or worse, however you behave. I think this incentivizes fight-or-flight over cooperation, while if cops took greater care to cultivate the image of reasonable authority figures who'll play fair if you play fair, petty criminals might be more inclined to surrender peacefully.

This description, you'll note, is not true of police officers, who are only marginally less vulnerable to harm than anyone else

It's not true of individual cops, but it's true of The State. Again, cops in my view should come across as gears in a machinery of justice which is transparent, reliable, and inescapable. You should know that shooting a police officer to escape is pointless, not because that particular cop is invulnerable, but because another cop will just get you instead one housing block away. (Though also because that cop will shoot you if he can and you give him reason to. Again, I just don't think that "hair-trigger-tempered bully" vs "ineffectual pussy" is a binary. There are other options here. Would it sound completely ridiculous to say I want cops to be chivalrous?)

But one who remains level-headed - who points the gun and without flinching, delivers the "you're under arrest. I don't want to hurt you, I will if I have to" spiel

But, once again, a police officer who can point his gun at someone and say "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to" is already at least a standard deviation more scary and intimidating than the average person. The "I will if I have to" part of the threat must seem credible - it must be spoken by someone who seems like the kind of person who actually will do what they say if their conditions aren't met. And while a law-abiding citizen might be more easily fooled - if the threat doesn't come off as credible to a hardened criminal who is himself no stranger to violence (and hence is intimately familiar with the difference between people who are actually willing to do violence and those who aren't), then it's useless. If hardened criminals don't consider police officers a credible threat, you might as well not bother having a police force at all.

All of this means that, once again, even a police officer who is polite and courteous and who clearly views violence as a matter of last resort must be found intimidating by hardened criminals to have any hope of doing his job properly. If a police officer says "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to", and a hardened criminal doesn't believe that he'll follow through on the threat, the hardened criminal will ignore the instructions. If hardened criminals, collectively, don't believe that police officers will collectively follow through on their threats, hardened criminals will ignore the police and act with impunity. I'm sorry, but this trade-off is unavoidable.

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Never going to happen; if they did that they'd never get enough law enforcement officers.

They just want the agents to be killed by lynch mobs, it's not complicated. It's really not about "accountability," that's just a dogwhistle. The Democrats calling for revealed identities fundamentally oppose ICE's mission and often support operations that impede ICE. They do not have the best interests of its officers in mind and nothing they ask for should be taken as an idea helpful to their missionp

They just want the agents to be killed by lynch mobs,

No, most of them aren't that bloodthirsty (obviously the lynch-mobs are, but AFAIK there haven't been Democratic legislators in the lynch-mobs). They do legitimately want the names for justified (and not-so-justified) lawsuits, and they probably want to employ the standard cancellation playbook as well.

Mostly, I think the identification laws should go through; it's a bad look for the government to hide from domestic terrorists rather than crushing them (and yes, retaliating against law enforcement in an effort to deter them from performing their duties is terrorism, or even insurrection).

You know i'd be fine with no mask laws for ice, if wearing a mask during a protest meant the police can just snipe you legally.

Masking is often de jure illegal but almost never enforced.

An argument can be made that the increase in risk of being killed for political reasons that any given ICE agent runs if ICE officers do not wear masks as opposed to wearing masks is so small that maybe an agent who isn't willing to run that small increase in risk just isn't very good law enforcement material.

Police officers are, I imagine, more likely to be targeted for their work than ICE agents are, and police officers do not wear masks.

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Police officers are, I imagine, more likely to be targeted for their work than ICE agents are, and police officers do not wear masks.

I've heard of two recent attacks on ICE, for a group of 6500 agents. There are about 850k police officers in the US, and I suppose there might have been 260 attacks on police officers that I haven't heard of in the same period, but that seems really high.

Even aside from those numbers, I'd suspect that ICE gets all the generic "fuck the police" in addition to the ICE-specific hate.

FBI claims 79091 assaults on police officers and 60 officers killed in 2023. I expect most of those "assaults" are highly noncentral examples of "assault" but I'd expect the median ICE agent is at less personal risk than the median police officer in Baltimore (but probably much more risk than the median police officer in Boise).

Were any of those assault victims targeted for their work, or was it simply because the perpetrators didn't want to get arrested? The July 4 ambush, the recent convoy attack, and the firebombing in LA all involve the perpetrators seeking out ICE and attacking them. The traffic-stops-turned-fights later in the linked article feel like a more typical story of assault on an officer.

Protecting your identity protects you from people who want to track you down and kill you. It won't help you against people who would rather not go to jail right now. I don't think those two categories of assaults are evenly split between ICE and regular police officers.

Do you know if there are a couple hundred examples of people going out of their way to attack police officers in that 79k, or are they ~all done by people fighting whoever happens to be right in front of them?

July 4 ambush, the recent convoy attack, and the firebombing in LA all involve the perpetrators seeking out ICE and attacking them.

None of these could have been prevented by masks or anonymity of the ICE officer; they weren't attacking particular people they knew to be ICE, they were attacking people known to be ICE (because they were attacking a detention facility, in the July 4 case).

But this is broadly what we would expect, in a world where ICE anonymizes themselves: when people want to attack ICE, they need to do it while they're on their official duties, because they don't know which people at home are ICE agents. Attacks that are prevented by anonymizing ICE don't happen, because ICE anonymized and thus the attacks were prevented.

We can't examine the counterfactual world where attacking ICE agents at home is easier, since we're not living in it. Conceivably some of these attacks could have been replaced by attacking agents at home, if it were easier to do so.

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Off the top of my head, thé Dallas police shootings indicate that violent attacks on police as police tend to be a major news article.

I expect most of those "assaults" are highly noncentral examples of "assault"

I expect the exact opposite, I just don't think they're political, at least beyond "I don't want to go to prison".

I vaguely expect that a central example of "assault" would have a >0.1% lethality rate, I could be wrong about that though. Humans are pretty resilient.

Not against an armed, trained officer, who's braced for a fight.

Of course it's not meant as an idea "helpful to their mission". What it's meant as, I argue, is a compromise - or at any rate an attempt at deescalation. Democratic lawmakers do not want ICE to succeed, but neither do they want civil war; unmasked, non-anonymous ICE agents would be a step away from the "Stormtroopers vs rebels" status quo and back towards a more stable situation.

unmasked, non-anonymous ICE agents would be a step away from the "Stormtroopers vs rebels" status quo and back towards a more stable situation.

Well, there's actually kind of a question there, which is why I said "mostly" above. There is the possibility that revealing all their identities would lead to mass attacks, and the resulting mass arrests as the counterterrorism apparatus moves in could escalate things even more. I kinda doubt it, because the limiting ingredient seems to be lunatics rather than targets, but it's possible.

(And no, you can't just not deploy the counterterrorism apparatus. You can't just let domestic terrorists operate unmolested and successfully deter people; that's partial state failure and drastically undermines the social contract.)

There is the possibility that revealing all their identities would lead to mass attack

Yes, it's a possibility. But like you, I find it less likely as an outcome than de-escalation. It is at the very least an uncertain practical question on which reasonable minds can disagree. By contrast, lots of Mottizens seem to take for granted that obviously demasking would lead to a spate of assassinations, and anyone who advocates it must secretly desire such an escalation - which I think is just farcical, boomer Democratic congressmen aren't secretly salivating for actual civil war even if some hotheads on Bluesky do.

The people attacking ICE aren't angry about the masks; that's just an excuse which resonates with part of the public. They are angry that ICE is doing their job. They will continue to do it if ICE drops the masks.

But the opposite, right? It is an escalation by hoping they get unmasked and personally targeted. As in them and their families getting payback for enforcing immigration law.

That’s the opposite of what needs to happen after a terrorist. Don’t legitimize terrorism. Pass a law that defunds any state that passes the mask law.

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