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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32158 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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tyre nichols, a 29 year old black man in memphis, was beaten up by several cops on jan 7th and died three days later. all five of the cops, who are black, were fired, arrested, and charged; the police chief denounced their actions as 'inhumane'. the bodycam video will be released about 3 hours after this post at 7pm EST. hopefully we won't see a recurrence of the floyd riots, although several cities, including atlanta which is dealing with its own controversial cop shooting incident, are preparing for an eventful evening. the police reform movement, which has stalled, may also be pushed back into the forefront of public consciousness.

4 videos have been released on the city of memphis vimeo account: https://vimeo.com/cityofmemphis

An aside, but there was another video of police brutality released this week. I don’t know if the Memphis video will be worse, but it will be hard to top “flying a drone into your home, telling you to raise your hands, then shooting you several times while your hands are raised.”

This is the culture war, so there's one detail of supreme importance you haven't mentioned -- the victim in that case, Jason Harley Kloepfer, is white. The mainstream media is not interested. The article on the shooting on Wikipedia has already been proposed for deletion.

It's not so much the media doesn't care about white victims - it's that the African-American community is organized in such a way that if somebody gets shot by the police, somebody in that family knows a pastor or a community organizer who knows another pastor or a local politician who knows somebody reasonably famous or a prominent journalist to get it out there.

Meanwhile, probably half of the white victims' own family will back the cops over the victim.

Meanwhile, probably half of the white victims' own family will back the cops over the victim.

I think a crucial distinction between white people shot by police and black people shot by police is that a) white racial consciousness is relatively low and black racial consciousness is quite high b) white people are generally positively disposed towards the police while black people view the police quite negatively. The result is that white people don't see the police murdering a white person as an attack on white people the same way black people do and they're much more likely to accept the police's official story or write it off as an isolated incident.

It's not so much the media doesn't care about white victims

depends on the context. Pretty white girl goes missing or gets killed, national media attention. White man killed by the police, no big deal. Vice versa for blacks. One gets clicks, the other is for political violence on the ground.

it's that the African-American community is organized in such a way that if somebody gets shot by the police, somebody in that family knows a pastor or a community organizer who knows another pastor or a local politician who knows somebody reasonably famous or a prominent journalist to get it out there.

Be honest, do you really know this, or is this just your impression of the black community from seeing so many BLM shootings/riots. I wouldn't be surprised if their higher attendance rates for a common meeting place like church influenced the ability to pull a community together, but BLM started in ~2012. If that was the deciding factor these riots would have been much more frequent prior to the coordinated media attention and endorsements.

Pretty white girl goes missing or gets killed, national media attention.

It's actually a little more nuanced than that.

During summer there's a big drop in TV news viewership. News networks get desperate to keep middle aged white women watching the news while at work. So they run with a missing white girl story because it's the most relatable victim for their target viewers.

I think the deciding factor was widespread availability of smart phone cameras and social media sites to make incidents of police violence go viral. One of the biggest pre BLM riots was in response to a video recording of Rodney King being beaten. If camcorder footage of one guy getting beaten up causes LA to burn what is constant high res footage of police shootings going to do?

I'm not saying the traditional media is blameless, but my guess is black teenagers are much more influenced by their peers sharing viral videos of police brutality and leaving "ACAB" style comments than by NPR/MSNBC talking heads.

If camcorder footage

how does this explain Travon Martin 2012? How does this explain Michael Brown 2014? How does this explain Freddie gray 2015? The largest cases in this time had no footage. Treyvon martin was the start of BLM, Michael Brown is where "hands up don't shoot" came from. How can your theory of "camcorder footage" explain this?

smart phone cameras and social media

Motorola Razr sold 100 million units in the first 6 months of 2006 so video cameras existed. Twitter started 2006. Either way, as shown above, footage is not required for BLM riots.

my guess is black teenagers are much more influenced by their peers sharing viral videos of police brutality and leaving "ACAB" style comments than by NPR/MSNBC talking heads.

I don't mean this as an offence but you seem a bit new to everything going on with this topic. Perhaps hearing it from the horses mouth may change your opinion. that is if you are able to read between the lines. "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information" ..."inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital"... This is what they are willing to publish/exposes themselves. This, however is not a new phenomena.

In case you think it was just MSM, they were in talks with social media platforms to fight "disinformation" and "protect" the election

They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.

Quinn’s research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line.

Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home

who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others

ever wonder why BLM wasn't at the capital protests?

The conversation that followed was a difficult one, led by the activists charged with the protest strategy. “We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street,”

So the word went out: stand down. Protect the Results announced that it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.”

To preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was “strenuously discouraging counter activity,”

If camcorder footage of one guy getting beaten up causes LA to burn what is constant high res footage of police shootings going to do?

The Rodney King riots happened in response to the acquittal of the officers, not in response to the release of the video. Timeline is here

Something no one ever points out is that the person organizing all these news “events” is Ben Crump the civil rights attorney. He pretty much makes or breaks cases and whether they become national news. Pretty much every famous case including Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown etc have been represented by Ben Crump.

I particularly remember Ferguson because it was one of the first of these stories where the real-time coverage reached the UK. Initial press coverage focussed on the riots, the over-militarised response by Ferguson PD to the riots, and the fact that Ferguson PD lost control of the situation and State troopers had to be called in. The media coverage didn't start being about the personal qualities of "gentle giant" Michael Brown until Crump arrived.

It is also worth pointing out that the Tyre Nichols case happened two weeks ago, but is only hitting the news now because the PD realised that Crump was going to subpoena the surveillace video and wanted to get out in front of him.

Really? I've never even heard of him, that's crazy. The worst thing is that knowledge of this fact would probably dial down the heat of the culture war.

Yah it’s really crazy that even right-wing media doesn’t ever talk about him but he is basically the one of the most influential people in America since 2014.

Ranting about Soros hasn't turned down the heat anywhere else in the culture war.

You haven't? He's pretty well known.

The worst thing is that knowledge of this fact would probably dial down the heat of the culture war.

I doubt it. He isn't (just) some shadowy figure manipulating things from behind the scenes. He's front and center in the news conferences for all of these incidents.

He has only been mentioned once before in the entire history of the motte, and that was in relation to desantis and his ap course. Including when we were on reddit. This is the only place I read about those things because of toxoplasma. News conferences in particular are generally entirely substance free and more about emotional manipulation.

Not sure how you’re searching, but I’ve certainly mentioned him before on /r/TheMotte, e.g. here

He’s under-discussed, certainly. But it’s not accurate to say he’s never been mentioned

IIRC there were also discussions at some point of the indie documentary film The Trayvon Hoax which prominently features Crump (accusing him of witness tampering), a controversy regarding theaters backing out of airing it, and the resulting defamation suit against Mr. Crump by the filmmaker

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