Marilia Coutinho, Ph.D., the Baffled Immigrant 🇵 Profile picture
Independent scholar, strength coach, ☭☭☭, #sociology #LatinAmericanStudies 🍉

Sep 13, 2020, 18 tweets

1. About the "we hope they die" hashtag

IF there was a deliberate decision by a social movement to carry out the intended murder of two cops and IF there was an organized crowd chanting "we hope they die", some things would be true.

2. First, we would be immersed in an actual (not an euphemistic or "quasi") civil war. Horrible things happen in wars and the term collateral damage doesn't even apply: one group may be determined to eliminate the other.

3. This is not true. While there is a lot of tension in the country, there is no actual civil war.

Second, it would mean extremely well-organized, hierarchical structures commanding the group that no longer recognizes the government being challenged.

4. This is also not true.

I will share some things from the perspective of someone who has been a member of anti-government organizations in Latin America. More specifically, what Americans would call "hard left".

5. First, the murder of two cops simply doesn't make sense. There is no political gain, only loss. It hurts legitimacy. And one thing the leadership is responsible to defend and protect is the cause's legitimacy. It is fairly safe to say the offender (they guy who shot the cops)

6.
=> is not a member of any movement. If he is, it is fairly safe to assume that he is an infiltrated right wing asset. "Oh but he's black". So is Candace Owens. Being black (or latino, or Indigenous) doesn't mean that the INDIVIDUAL cannot be a right wing asset.

7. On the contrary, it means he or she is a very expensive and treasured asset for the right wing.

=> (the offender) did NOT act following the orders of the higher ranking members of the organization or movement.

8. Therefore, he and his act have NOTHING to do with BLM, antifa or whatever the right wing boogey man/scapegoat is at the moment.

Anyone who believes this is a leftist act is either stupid, naive, dishonest or another right wing asset, one

9. responsible for amplifying provocations, an extremely effective strategy to discredit, criminalize and persecute oppressed people's movements.

10. the video from the ER entrance claiming that "protesters" were "blocking" it and "chanting" "we hope they die" shows nothing of the sort. It is a bad quality and low resolution video showing 4 individuals who couldn't even repeat words together.

11. That is not a "chant". A chant is when everybody says or sings something together, in synchronized (therefore, organized) manner.

12. There is a concept in leftist organizations that goes back to the original bolshevik movement called "democratic centralism". For cultural reasons, it doesn't seem to work in the US.

13. Some variation of it will be used in critical decisions, though. That means critical acts are not only premeditated, but were decided and must be agreed upon by ALL members of the organization. That is obviously not the case.

14. There is a whole literature about stages of social tension in which we may or may not expect bursts of disorganized destructive action such as looting. Usually, research shows, they are initiated by infiltrated assets from the oppressor group.

15. Concluding remarks:
- the murder attempts are unrelated to police brutality protests in the US. It may be related to police itself or generic "powers that be", the only ones with something to gain from it.

16.
- there was not "crowd" "blocking the ER entrance". There were four random assholes crying stuff like "oinc, oinc", "die die" and other stupidity.

17. Any attempt to construe this as related to BLM, antifa or any other targeted movement by the right wing constitutes STOCHASTIC TERRORISM: it is the deliberate radicalization of the pro-fascist base to commit acts of terrorism against black people.

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