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Notes -
https://www.newsweek.com/video-appears-to-show-new-ice-shooting-in-minneapolis-11411971
Ice shooting round 2 has kicked off. Numerous rumors already flying around but will be a bit before we have facts I imagine.
EDIT: I've been asked to add some relevant points, I'll say: this comment has links to various angles: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405295?context=8#context This comment mentions the "Sig misfire" angle that I've seen a bit: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405451?context=8#context
Walz has activatedthe national guard: https://x.com/MnDPS_DPS/status/2012614253090619619 The NBA postponed the Minnesota/Golden State game tonight.
The video looks BAAAAD. Would like to see resident Trump supporters explain this one.
Resident partisan hack checking in (well sort of). I am making this comment in the spirit of “expressing a worldview” of “resident Trump supporters” as requested rather than to argue the point per se. But I do earnestly hold the following beliefs.
We (the right) now clearly understand that the purpose of this sort of protest is to create violent situations with “bad optics” for ICE or whatever other group. The protestors (from “our” point of view) want violence and want shootings, because they perceive this as a win condition.
We’re quite simply not going to give them the win anymore. They want death and violence, and are actively going out of their way to create situations that can cause escalation. That makes them, in my opinion which is shared by others with similar worldviews, the baddies. This guy was being a baddy, played a stupid game, and won a stupid prize.
I honestly haven’t watched the video and don’t care. We consider the instant replay era over. It really has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether illegal immigrants should be deported.
That is the main reason these protests are not really succeeding. The only reason these situations are happening is because of the protestors (who we really consider at this point, insurrectionists who are committing federal crimes). “ICE needs to stop deporting illegal immigrants from Minnesota because some protestors are getting hurt.” There is literally zero logic to this statement.
We also don’t consider them legitimate protestors. They don’t have a “right” to impede federal law enforcement from executing the legal and popular will simply because they lost an election in which they were fairly represented.
It was probably a good shoot if you slow it down to 10k frames per second. Like I said, we honestly don’t know or care.
That is the view of (at least my slice of) the overly online right currently.
Is this a typo? ICE just killed a man. Seems like, if that's what they want, then you did in, fact, just give it to them.
No I don't think that's really the logic at all. The logic is that they perceive some injustice and protesting is the only tool in many of these people's toolbox.
Note that you will not hear the right say this about Kyle Rittenhouse, Proud Boys, the guys who killed Ahmaud Arbery, George Zimmerman, the deploymentment of national guard units for transparently political purposes, or any of Trump's intentionally inflammatory rhetoric over the last decade.
Thanks for the additional insight on the MAGA-right. It mostly demonstrates an inability to model the worldview of your opponents ("they want death and violence" lol), and a lack of objective standards for conduct.
The people you mentioned for the most part were not fighting the state and its monopoly on violence. You could even make the argument that Rittenhouse, Zimmerman, and Arbery shooters were acting in alliance with state and helping the state deal with a temporary lack of resources.
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There is a significant difference between standing guard outside a car dealership (Rittenhouse) and the tactics of anti-ICE protestors.
The latter is being actively physically violent, using cars as weapons, and moving as close to the line that justified lethal force as possible.
Lemmings on a cliff, pushing each other forward. The ones who survive get smoky, exciting Instagram reels and likes on blue sky. The ones who fall off are catching bullets. It's an acceptable cost to the group.
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I think the logic goes something like this:
"The protestors want violence because they believe the optics will win over neutrals and moderate rightists and thus result in the end of the protested behaviour. However, there are not many neutrals anymore, and the moderate rightists have hardened their hearts and no longer feel for the protestors. The protestors believe it's a win condition, but we and the world have adapted so that it no longer is one."
This is not my personal view. My opinion of the Blue Tribe protest apparatus is actually considerably lower; I think that probably over 50% of them do not actually have a solid picture of what their wincon looks like and how their actions will achieve it, and are merely protesting because protesting is cool within Blue Tribe circles. I think that any in the USA that do hold to the worldview Sulla described - and I'll admit there are some - are making a mistake, but not the mistake Sulla claims (there are still a lot of neutrals); I think the mistake is in assuming that there will be free, fair and competitive elections in 2028 in which the currently-constituted Democratic Party will have a chance but not a certainty of victory, which is required for the lean of neutrals to be relevant and to backchain into present actions of the Trump administration. Civil war and WWIII would both cause that assumption to be violated, violent protests increase the risk of both, and we're getting quite close to crunch time.
These are organized protests. It is possible, even likely, that the protestors on the ground are not trying to get themselves injured or killed to make ICE look bad, while the overall strategy developed by others who are safely ensconced in their ivory towers somewhere, and used to instruct the protestors on the ground, does have that as an intentional part.
From what I understand there is basically an entire playbook or script on nonviolent civil disobedience – people have figured out how to get their point across (and get the "cops arrest peaceful mom" pictures) while at the same time minimizing the odds that things turn actually violent by peacefully surrendering to the cops, not resisting arrest, possibly even notifying the police of their intentions ahead of time, etc.
I have not followed the protests in Minnesota closely but from what I have seen I do not think that playbook is being followed. Whether that's due to untrained "normies" turning out or the instructions of protest coordinators I do not know but if these are being coordinated (which does seem to be true to a significant degree) and the coordinators are deliberately choosing more escalatory tactics that's very telling in my mind.
One of the underlying problems reflect a large-scale normalization of 'de-arrest' tactics, where protesters work to free arrestees or prevent police from detaining them. It started being used seriously in 2020, but in those contexts it was largely recognized as a legally risky maneuver only really available when protesters vastly outnumbered police. The recent protests have mainstreamed it thanks to political advocates claiming (afaict, wrongly) that ICE has no arrest powers involving any action by a US citizen, and local police being actively instructed to not support ICE in any way and that being interpreted (afaict, not wrongly) as permitting widespread violations of local laws so long as ICE are the targets.
So you get a lot of people doing things that look like directly impeding federal law at best, and more often look extremely dangerous, and convinced that they're totally in the free and clear.
What's interesting to me is that de-arresting someone is a crime (obviously) that can be made to stick if you catch the people doing the de-arresting, but conspiring to de-arrest someone is also presumably a crime, and given that the laws being enforced in this context are federal laws, I imagine there's a federal conspiracy statute that can be leveraged, possibly against the coordinators even if they aren't actually participating in the "de-arrests."
I wonder if part of the goal of running these ICE operations publicly is precisely to invite this sort of behavior and then roll up as many people as possible.
Interesting link, thank you for dropping it.
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You really want to start your list with the kid who was running away from the people who chased, and who didn't shoot first, and who didn't create the situation of the fiery but mostly peaceful protests in general that led to escalation?
Not a particularly good list in general, but that one in particular is a weak foot to start off on if you intend to leave off with contempt. However low you think the MAGA-right is, you are at eye level.
Kyle Rittenhouse was the guy who decided it would be a good idea to open carry at a protest, as if that would help anything. The results were predictable.
You might think thats justified behavior given the circumstances but so do most people who escalate. It's not very convincing in and of itself. If there's a thing that makes the left "the baddies" and the right not, it can't be because only the left ever "creates situations that cause escalation" because that's false.
I'd agree to be less contemptuous if I saw anyone take their own side to task in this area.
The results, and the protest, and the chase that led to his self defense, were also not situations he created, let alone went out of his ways to create.
Then you haven't looked well enough, possibly because you are contemptuously looking down on people you are actually at the same level as.
Incorrect. I lurk more than I post and the motte has been in a downward turn towards low effort partisan bickering. What you are describing is few and far between. I will trust my own judgment on this.
I'm not really attempting to "rise above" anyone. Im comporting myself in manner which is well within the standards of decorum here.
When's the last time you spent any time tone policing your tribal fellows? Or are you subjecting me to a selective demand for rigor?
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Open Carrying at a protest where there's another party that has ostensibly been committing violence and vandalism is probably more logical than open carrying when dealing solely with US law enforcement. Both in that Rittenhouse had a significantly greater likelihood of running into random unapproved violence and in that generally trying to escalate things with law enforcement as a civilian results in you losing spectacularly.
I believe Rittenhouse, functioning in a fundamentally more lawless setting, had a better justification for carrying a weapon than the people currently in Minneapolis who are bringing weapons whilst interfering with law enforcement operatives. I feel that for the latter category of individual the vast majority of cases where their weapons are going to impact events are going to be increasing the likelihood of shit escalating off the rails like this most recent shooting
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Has someone hit the reset button, and it's year zero again?
There were at least two armed attacks on ICE prior to that, they were just executed incompetently, and the only people that ended up dead were the illegal immigrants (at the hands of the shooter), and the shooters themselves.
Apparently someone also bit off an agent's finger.
Don't see that widely reported outside of Fox.
I'm sure when Snopes gets to this claim they'll say "PANTS ON FIRE" because it was only the distal phalanx (there's pics, and they're disgusting) and not the whole finger.
I wonder similarly about pants on fire if it gets reattached - I gotta imagine that they'd be very aggressive in um, reappropriating, but last I saw they had "suspects" so it might have gotten torn off and then thrown somewhere.
The finger end was recovered, that was in the pics. I don't know they attempted re-attachement.
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I think that the question of whether the protests are succeeding will not really be answered until the results of this year and 2028's elections come in.
The protests are not stopping deportations. However, whether or not these shootings were justified, the optics are bad - and that may have important political consequences which might possibly stop deportations a couple of years from now.
Also, a minor note about:
I agree that for the protestors this is a good strategy. If law enforcement full-out massacres a dozen or two protestors in a big shooting, this might be one of the best things that could possibly happen "for the cause" of the protestors. However, I don't think that any more than a tiny handful of protestors are actually driven by a desire to pursue this strategy. Some of the organizers might be, but even then I think it's a very rare motivation. I think most of them are genuinely just trying to interfere with ICE, to impede ICE activities. But they are in part following, because it is easier to do what has been done before, the well-worn tracks of decades of leftist tactics - and those tactics have evolved in part in order to create sympathetic media footage in which leftists have violence used against them.
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Ok now consider if appealing to only people with the exact same worldview as you, up to just straight up killing people without care because they're a "baddie" in your eyes is going to be a great strategy for 2026 and 2028 elections.
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I had a similar response. It’s hard to see anything in the video. But even if the officer technically made a mistake, there was enough confusion there (due to the hysterical protesters) that I believe he is blameless.
There is no situation where Trump admin should give a single inch on this. No situation where the man should be subject to the hostile MN government apparatus.
Federal agents cannot be prosecuted by the state for actions that occur during their duties. They can only be prosecuted at the federal level. He'll be fine, or at least safe from the MN government apparatus.
Just out of curiosity, does that include traffic violations? (E. g., an ICE agent going through a red light at 60 mph in a 25 mph zone.)
At least ignoring a stop sign and killing a bicyclist, yeah.
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Yeah, that's politics. Why are you surprised ? The adversary baits you, but do you need to bite ? The protests are getting more heated, because Trump is biting onto the bait.
The US is maximally polarized, but it has been for a while. The other party does everything it can to block their adversary. It's Mitch blocking Garland's confirmation. It's red governors banning blue city policies. It's business as usual.
In Canada, the farmers protests were clearly a conservative bait that Trudeau bit into, and it caused his downfall. The farmer's protest is another example of a political torpedo that would have brought Modi down in India. He avoided a few baits, primary among them was Sikhs replacing the Indian flag on the red fort. But no. No anti-protest rubber guns, no tear gas, nothing. He held his nerve, and IMO, it saved his govt. He eventually reformed the bill to involve state-by-state adoption and had to take an L. But, it could have been worse.
Look, as a kid, when I made fun of my sibling, he'd eventually snap and break something. I'd get punished for instigating, but he'd get a bigger punishment for giving in and breaking something (I promise we are very tight now, and I believe I have been a good brother on the balance). Point is, it doesn't matter what the bait is. The individual is still responsible for how they respond. Humans have an intuitive smell for this. Govts, laws or individuals, it doesn't matter. Biting onto to bait makes you a sucker. You may call them reasons, but the people will always view them as excuses.
Maximal polarisation is the state wherein everyone's picked a side and will stick to it. This is rarely achieved even in civil wars, and is definitely well beyond the threshold at which one will start (notice that massacres of political enemies become an effective tactic for winning elections when there are few neutrals who will change sides against the perpetrator).
The USA is highly polarised. Not maximally.
You're right. I have a bad habit of using hyperbole to introduce the dynamism of speech into my writing. Been working on it.
It is highly polarized. And that's bad enough.
Agreed.
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You understand this thing where someone does something wrong which is ignored by authorities, then the person wronged responds, and then is punished by said authorities, is generally considered a failure mode, do you not?
I mean, you pretty much described the American school system-
ba dum tss
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I dont think this is true. The nature of these riots makes it impossible for ICE agents to utilize public roads without provoking violence. If ICE does anything other than a complete withdrawal, these incidents will continue to happen, and they will continue to escalate into deadly use of force scenarios. We were actually getting close to the same point in the Chicago area a few months ago, but then some backroom deal was struck with the Johnson, Pritzker, and Homan (which they will all deny happened, but clearly did) and now random people aren't tailing ICE vehicles, ICE facilities aren't under siege as CPD watches paint cans fly at officers heads, and ICE aren't picking abuelas up out of taco stands, but they are being allowed to casually pick people up from the jails even though they aren't being officially "notified" when ICE warrants pop.
This. The problem here is Tim Walz.
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See also: any sports flag for unsportsman like conduct. It's almost always the retaliation the refs notice and flag, not the instigation.
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It's not about biting. It's about not backing down, because just packing up and going home is even worse then what's happening now. A surrender like that will only make the next round of protesting 10x bigger.
Trump and ICE didn't do anything in response to the protests except keep trying to do their jobs. The enemy forced this by making simply running a country impossible.
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I second this almost completely.
As soon as I heard the whistling that was going on - I mean, what are we doing?
I want ICE to deport illegals … if you want to protest that than ok but you can’t stop this - it’s what I voted for!
Unfortunately they aren’t going after the business owners so it’s mostly optics but good damn at least they’re doing something about an issue.
Let’s see if I can walk the streets at night in the cities within my lifetime like you can in Poland.
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