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one trivial observation, which I don't think invalidates his larger points:

I have seen footage, and the cops who handed out water bottles to militia members (including Kyle Rittenhouse, ISTR), did not seem to me to have a "mocking" tone. also, why would you hand out water bottles to people you disliked?

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Nov 24, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

different groups of police could have been doing different stuff at different times in different places.

tribalistic regression is rampant as a result of the collapse of the national unity myth and postmodern social conditions (relativist values, deconstruction of meaning) which cause social fragmentation and atomization

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Nov 24, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Or you could watch a video and see them getting tear gas around aid station and later on police offering water on the same aid station

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incoherent drivel

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Nov 22, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Great article. The part about faction alliances varying by geographic region was really interesting. I'm in Portland and I can also confirm BLM & Antifa are in close alliance. BLM/Antifa vs. Proud Boys street theater sessions are a semi-regular occurrence here. What do you know of the Proud Boys, what do you make of them?

I can say that in the local media, the Proud Boys are a subject of much pearl-clutching. Now every time there's any sort of left-wing protest, or school board meeting or whatever, any dissenters present are labeled "Proud Boys", although I doubt most or any of them are actually affiliated with the group. I have also observed that the PB rallies are more racially diverse than the local antifa.

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Nov 22, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

It has always puzzled me how the Proud Boys -- led by a dark-skinned Afro-Cubana American, Enrique Tarrio -- could be considered a "white supremacist" organization. But thanks to Google, I now know the answer -- Multiracial Whiteness! (Or at least, that's what the lefties are claiming). Oy!

(Of course, I guess it is no crazier than leftists and progressives wearing Che Gueverra tee shirts, celebrating a racist, homophobic murderer).

https://www.afrocubaweb.com/enrique-tarrio.html

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author

I don't have a good bead on Proud Boys because I haven't seen any action from them locally. My impression of them is that they tend to focus all their efforts on areas with a high Antifa quotient. The Scott Adams take on that seems reasonable to me. Antifa is just a fight club. They're a bunch of liberals who have been told their whole lives that fighting is bad, but they want to fight, and when someone says "punching Nazis is ok" they say "NAZIS! WHERE?!@?" And the Proud Boys are just the antithesis fight club.

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Scott Adams has it wrong. during the late 1990s to early 2000s, I hung out with members of Antifa. I participated in the Battle of Seattle and I even took part in an Antifa action in early 2001. then, some years ago, I saw modern Antifa in action in Boston. I helped to get two young men not get beaten up by a mob of them.

Antifa members do differ in their ideology. usually revolutionary Marxist and anarchist or both, namely self-described Anarcho-Communism, a faction which during the same time period as mentioned above, gained power, until Anarcho-Communism attained dominance in anarchism.

as far as Proud Boys go, maybe. but I know far less about them.

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author

Would you be interested in sharing your perspectives from within about them in more detail? Perhaps anonymously?

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sure. e-mail me at ryubyss@yahoo.com. I have "meant to" write up a full-length account but not "gotten around to it". (insecurity about my writing.)

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Nov 22, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

I don't know what this means, but the Southern Poverty Law Center has at least two articles on Mr. Balch. In the second he responds to the first and disavows the Boogaloos. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/09/15/far-right-kyle-rittenhouse-propaganda-not-factually-based-says-kenosha-militia-participant

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SPLC is garbage and has been embroiled in a number of scandals for years.

That particular report is ridiculous clickbait combined with bizarre propaganda distortions.

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Nov 22, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Thanks for setting the record somewhat straight on the Boogaloo crowd. I have a friend that knows much of that community and he taught me about what it was a good six months before Oakland. Then, six months later, all the media accounts about Boogaloo = White Nationalist extremists.

The national media had so frequently beclowned itself by that point -- for well over a decade -- that I knew this was nonsense. Still, it was one of the earlier instances where rank-and-file FBI got in on the act. I have my doubts that any of the folks who used to hang in Boogaloo circles could legitimately be characterized as White Nationalist. But, the media (and now the government) runs with it, knowing that no one can ever "prove" the negative.

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To be fair, there was in fact some use of the phrase "boogaloo" within the white nationalist movement, and apparently there has been for a while. I personally never even knew about that because I have zero exposure to the white nationalist movement.

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