I'm not gonna lie: I find it very difficult to be upset by this when the site was a haven for people who want to mass executions for people like me. For me, the world is a little more complex than "privacy at all costs." It's hard to decide where to draw the line.
Should we still have due process in the external world? After all, the United States is a "safe haven" for people who talk about killing pretty much every minority group under the sun.
> the world is a little more complex than "privacy at all costs."
The line doesn't have to do with the infringement of privacy, it's about whether that infringement is being done by publicly sanctioned power, or the whim of the arbitrary, domineering power of private (tech) actors. Elizabeth Anderson has written quite well on this topic in "Private Government."
In the initial post about the Capitol being shut down,t here were people saying that everyone who broke into the capitol building needed to be tried for treason and executed, or saying that the police should have opened fire and killed anyone who broke in. The mods removed the comments, but HN isn't some paragon of virtue that isn't susceptible to the same calls for violence as any other site.
No, not really. It comes down to how you define "safe haven" - if violent groups are actively moderated and banned, then I don't think it can be called a safe haven. How does the rest of the internet equate to Parler in this respect?
I don't know what people think, we can't read their minds. All I know is if you wanted to find people who want mass executions in the US, Parler would be a safe place to find them, based on what we do know about them.
Facebook and Twitter have millions of people who want mass executions for all kinds of groups, a quick trip into Muslim areas of both services and you'll find moderate and right-wing versions that want execution for LGBTQ+ people. You can find the same desire for marginalization and extermination of other groups. Not every language and dialect has a huge team of moderators that review content and take the appropriate punitive action against malicious users.
I have a Parler account. I have a GAB account. I make accounts on all new social media platforms and communications services. Everyone should. Because you have no idea what platform might be the next Facebook, or which one is going to be the next MySpace.
I hear this a lot, but it makes no logical sense to me. I see a site that is (in)famous for being full of self-proclaimed right-wing "patriots" who are calling for violence against people due to political beliefs.
Someone then decide to associate with these people by joining the site. They may not personally post messages calling for violence, but are now associated with them. And the response is: well sure I'm in the group but I don't actually agree with any of this.
Then my question is: why did you join in the first place? If you don't agree with the most vocal 1% (I SERIOUSLY doubt that number after spending time perusing the site), and you don't denounce what they're saying, what do you expect others to think? We're supposed to read your mind that you're part of a "silent dissent" and just joined the site because...?
People were banned from facebook and twitter for calling for violence, if you switched sites specifically to follow that person I have a REAL tough time believing you don't support them.
Have to been on Reddit, specifically /r/politics? There are calls to violence all the time. Nobody bats an eye because it's calls to violence against the "bad guys."
I assume you've got some citations for that, right? I have been to r/politics and people get banned pretty quickly for calling for violence. I just went through the top 20 threads, and there isn't a single call for violence to be found.
Indeed. When evaluating reddit threads and content, its important to distinguish between highly upvoted and visible content, and content that was downvoted or deleted to oblivion. A -1000 call for violence in one subreddit is not equivalent to a +1000 call for violence in another.
But they aren't. You can go there right now and find posts calling for violence. They have no automated system and have no plans to implement one which is why they were kicked off AWS. From the AWS letter they were kind enough to post:
>Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. Your CEO recently stated publicly that he doesn’t “feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform.” This morning, you shared that you have a plan to more proactively moderate violent content, but plan to do so manually with volunteers. It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work in light of the rapidly growing number of violent posts. This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you. Given the unfortunate events that transpired this past week in Washington, D.C., there is serious risk that this type of content will further incite violence.
I am not going to go through and find some examples but there have been calls for violence there. I remember the entire Sandman period of time with many people saying he "what a punchable face"....
Edit to add: Also what happens behind doors on invite only subreddits?
There is a German saying that goes something like "if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you've got a table with 11 Nazis.”
Twitter had a policy against misgendering and had locked her out of her account several times before banning her. If this is something Meghan thinks is worth getting banned over, that's on her. Most people just don't care what pronoun somebody wants to be called, so the non-asshole thing to do is to just use their preferred pronoun.
> so the non-asshole thing to do is to just use their preferred pronoun.
I agree. I completely agree. I myself call the transgender people in my life by their preferred pronoun.
I also find compelling someone's speech by threat of banning them to be disgusting. Especially when there's a block button available. If you don't like what someone's saying, you can literally ignore everything they say.
Herein lies the conundrum for me - for, what seems to be, an increasingly large group of people, its not enough to simply stop interaction with people they don't like, those people have to be removed from the landscape altogether. I just do not see this ending in any positive way.
Blocking does not scale if you interact with a lot of people (see many famous examples of celebrities quitting Twitter over harrassment), which is something Twitter would obviously want its users to do. To make it easier, it makes absolute sense to me for Twitter to enforce clearly defined civility rules.
> Blocking does not scale if you interact with a lot of people (see many famous examples of celebrities quitting Twitter over harrassment), which is something Twitter would obviously want its users to do.
This seems to be viewed as a sort of "bug" of scale; I see it as a feature. If you become extremely popular and your voice is amplified, you're going to have to contend with being criticized and scrutinized to a greater degree.
I fall into the Sam Harris & Joe Rogan Greater Internet Reply Theory: "Don't read the comments. You can't read the comments." Jamie Foxx said it best on why you don't need to read them, "Sometimes the comments'll get in that ass."
I will simply never agree with removing someone for the content of their speech. I do think that you eventually reach a point of harassment (for example, if you reply to every single tweet of someone you don't like with, "You're a cunt."), but by-and-large, a lot of the "problems" simply result in people not being able to ignore others, either by using a button on a website, or just by sheer willpower of not looking at a comment.
Her speech was not compelled. She was removed from twitter. She wasn't unpersoned. She isn't in a gulag. Stop hyperbolizing and your concerns get a lot less concerning.
That you're equating being removed from twitter with being physically threatened is telling. They aren't comparable. A physical I threat of violence is compelling, yes, in a way that being removed from a website isn't. She could post the same thing on HN, right now. So compelling!
Good. It should be telling. I'm all-in on free speech. I support the right of everyone, anywhere, to say whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as it adheres to the First Amendment.
Chomsky said it best: "If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
And you're welcome to hold that view. But conflating threats with 1st amendment protected action is dumb.
And yes, Twitter, under the first amendment, is free to associate with whomever they want (or to refuse to associate with them)! Twitter isn't compelling Meghan Murphy to do anything anymore than than twitter is, at this moment, compelling me to give them my wallet.
On the other hand, if you said "Give me your wallet, or me and my 9 associates here will punch you in the face," you'd be committing a crime.
That's the difference between being kicked off twitter and punching someone in the face. One of them is a crime. No matter how purely you uphold the principle of free speech, it doesn't make sense to compare someone who doesn't share those values to a criminal.
> A saying from a nation with collective psychological trauma of over 100 years. No thanks.
Well, they do know what happens when you let Nazis and their apologists/enablers get a toehold in public discourse, so maybe they actually have something useful to contribute to the discussion.
According to Wikipedia, there are 4,000,000 active Parler users.
You think you can assert with confidence that there are not 40,000 people with Parler accounts who want mass executions?
I'd like to think you're right, but I'm not as confident as you are.
Not after watching someone beat a Capitol Police officer to death with a flag pole flying the American Flag. People think they are defending their country against evil. Like me, apparently.
How many QAnon followers are there? How many believe the most outrageous claims? I would not be surprised if 40,000 do. Would you?
FWIW Wikipedia lists that number of users as of November 2020. It had a huge influx of users in December and obviously January, to the point that it was number 1 in the App Store before it got pulled. So the 4MM user number is probably very off.
Some of these are Verified users - Parler has their Drivers License and Social Security number, and yet they still felt secure in brazenly violating the law like this.
Hey, spoiler alert for people regarding that link -- there's some very strong, graphically violent language. Don't click if you're not in a good head space at the moment.
I pushed back in one direction, and now I'll push back in the other.
I do not think "literally millions" do. That is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
I am saddened by extremists like this, on all sides.
I want to win a tough but fair political fight, and I think that's what almost everyone in America wants, too. I'm sorry some people think 60 court cases were simultaneously wrongly decided, but I don't feel sympathy for anyone who thinks the next step is to storm the Capitol.
No, I do not accept that you are "clarifying." You are intentionally moving the goal-posts.
The question we were discussing was whether or not many of the USERS are calling for mass executions.
I provided ample evidence, despite your "find me a single post" challenge.
Now we might want to engage in a different discussion, about whether Parler was correctly moderating that content. But that is not a "clarification," that's a new topic.
I do not have access to information about how long content was allowed to remain before it was removed. Do you?
Since a "single post" has been provided by someone now, it would be nice to see you give them the decency and acknowledge it. There are so many comments here, and they all read in the same way, "well, what about..." and "show me proof" — only for someone to actually go and spend the time to respond, and then be ignored quietly. Discussions here (political ones) feel so childish, I wish we'd be better as a community on those.
Personally, when I discuss politics online I don't expect the other person to acknowledge anything. My audience is all the people on the fence lurking and reading and forming opinions on the topic.
As one (non-American) lurker who is reading this thread to try and get a handle on just what the hell is going on over there, thank you for putting the energy in, and please don't give up.
It's clear that you are arguing in good faith and the other person who keeps moving the goalposts and demanding more proof is not, and moreover it's very enlightening to see this scenarios played out nearly identically whenever I lurk and follow a discussion between the left and right in US politics.
Unfortunately, irrational behavior applies to both sides but on different issues. I saw it first hand in terms of COVID and my liberal friends. They took the most negative possible outlook and then called you an unscientific idiot if you didn't think it was the only possible outcome. COVID has a 5% mortality rate (even when reasonable data indicated 0.5%). A vaccine is impossible (even when multiple companies said they had promising candidates). Immunity doesn't exist (even when everything except a few reports said it did). And so on.
I still think these are not legit death threats by the content of it. Saying things like “a good commie is a dead a commie” might be tasteless but it’s far from being a serious thing. No one is killing communists in the US.
> “Will you and several hundred more go with me to D.C. and fight our way into the Congress and arrest every Democrat who has participated in this coup?” [Marshall, Arkansas Police] Chief Lang Holland posted Friday on Parler, a right-wing messaging site. “We may have to shoot and kill many of the Communist B.L.M. and ANTIFA Democrat foot soldiers to accomplish this!!!”
> “Death to all Marxist Democrats. Take no prisoners leave no survivors!!” Chief Holland added.
How would this have to be modified to become a "legitimate death threat"?
Data, evidence? The threat is in giving the fascist terrorist 1% a microphone not that the other 99% happen to be listening. Parler was lax in policing that 1%.
You just jumped to a conclusion. In another comment in this article I specifically said only messages that are related to the commission of a crime should be released and everything else should be deleted.
> The threat is in giving the fascist terrorist 1% a microphone
The problem with fascist terrorists is not their rhetoric, it's their violence. Allow them to speak their mind and you lower their need for violent action and everyone else gets to show that their ideas are horribly flawed.
It's amusing to think that people seriously believe there are huge swathes of people just ripe to become neo-nazis because someone gave a rousing speech or wrote some tweets - how do you manage not to succumb to these rhetorical titans?
>It's amusing to think that people seriously believe there are huge swathes of people just ripe to become neo-nazis because someone gave a rousing speech or wrote some tweets - how do you manage not to succumb to these rhetorical titans?
Given that exactly this happened 90 years ago and caused the deaths of tens of millions, people are needless to say cautious.
You can't have Hitler without the Treaty of Versailles. He was just a catalyst to an incredibly punitive and emasculating treaty that scarred the psychology of the German people.
If it hadn't been Hitler, it would have eventually been someone else.
I'm going to side with the interpretations of history that are a tad more complex than "he gave a rousing speech, hence, genocide", and there are plenty of them.
That's my opponent's position, not mine. When creating an opposing argument it's almost certain you will have to state their argument (in whole or in part) to produce a refutation.
You're purposefully being reductionist about this. People having their brains hit with racist or violent rhetoric over a long period of time will be changed by that. They human brain adapts to it's environment, expecting certain inputs and if it's receiving /pol light on Twitter then it starts to expect it.
On top of that, it's only a matter of time before they're linked to one of the many .win site that sprang up after Twitter purged the_donald and the Qanon people.
And again, people have been moved to violence and facism in human history, that's not difficult to find.
> You're purposefully being reductionist about this.
I'm really not, and I'd prefer if you started off responding to me by not (mis)characterising my intentions. I'm 100% sincere in my support of free speech and stand 100% behind my comment.
> People having their brains hit with racist or violent rhetoric over a long period of time will be changed by that
Yes, they will, which is why it's good to allow every voice and every kind of viewpoint a chance to be expressed and hence challenged. Unless you think that echo chambers are a good thing?
> people have been moved to violence and facism in human history, that's not difficult to find
Did they occur in places with high amounts of censorship or free speech? The Holocaust wasn't caused simply by one of Hitler's speeches, for example, it was also (among other things) primed by the rampant anti-semitic prejudice that came from the pulpit every Sunday for hundreds of years - which was unchallengable due to blasphemy laws.
Another "win" for the repression of speech someone in power doesn't like, eh?
> There's basically no support for this claim in any literature I can find. Care to cite a historian?
Tell me the literature you looked in first, because I want to know which books can miss such basic facts, and hence what I should avoid. The history of Europe is soaked in blood provoked by differences over what can be said by religious people, to religious people, and of them and their views. Entire wars have been fought over it - are you going to tell me there are historians that are credible who'll claim Europe was a land of toleration? Locke wrote his letter of toleration specifically because of the widespread intolerance and bloodshed.
If you use the word heresy instead of blasphemy and your search may prove more fruitful. It was effect in Europe from the Edict of Thessalonica, which brought the first execution, and in some countries hasn't been repealed from law. If you look up the last people executed under these laws you may even find what they said to deserve execution.
You appear to no longer be claiming that blasphemy laws were a direct contributor to the holocaust.
Yes, widespread antisemitism was a contributor to the holocaust, but that wasn't primarily or even really particularly due to blasphemy laws. Taking anti-Semitism in pre WWII Europe and blaming it, in any significant part, on a lack of free speech, is not something that has any mainstream historic support. It's weird historical revisionism that's honestly a bit uncomfortable. (for example, Germany blasphemy laws pre-WWII, as written, actually protected Judaism)
> You appear to no longer be claiming that blasphemy laws were a direct contributor to the holocaust.
I'm claiming that they were a necessary condition. Am I changing my position? No. I've no idea how you came to that.
> Yes, widespread antisemitism was a contributor to the holocaust
We agree.
> but that wasn't primarily or even really particularly due to blasphemy laws
In which free speech zone did a similar situation occur? Your statement is pure speculation. At least try attribute things to conditions that are present or have something to compare with to show the contrast.
> blaming it, in any significant part, on a lack of free speech, is not something that has any mainstream historic support.
I'd like to know what these mysterious "mainstream" historians think was behind the anti-semitism that was so rife in Christian Europe for so long. Where did Nazis get the idea of blood libel from? What ever could be the reason…?
On a less sarcastic note, I hope they don't blame the Jews for their predicament, as the only other explanation would be that the hatred arose from nothing but some rousing speeches by Hitler. That to me would seem incredibly childish a notion and not in the slightest supported by the accounts of prominent Nazi party members of the time but at least it's better than victim blaming.
Of course, we could rely again on looking at the conditions present and what effects correlate - what happens when blasphemy laws are present, and what happens when freedom of conscience (free speech + freedom of religion) is present - does support for Christianity go down? Does anti-semitism rise or fall? Is this consistent across the world? Is the same true for Europe?
> for example, Germany blasphemy laws pre-WWII, as written, actually protected Judaism
On the one hand there are the hate speech laws that were in place for a few years, and on the other is the rampant anti-semitism for at least hundreds of years prior (supported by blasphemy laws), and to top it all off the hate speech laws didn't even work! On the contrary, they contributed to the rise of the National Socialists.
In both cases a lack of free speech resulted in a negative outcome. Yet, you seem to be against free speech. Maybe it's your comfort levels, and I agree, that really is a problem with free speech.
We got damn close here in the US with the Japanese internment. So speech suppression it clearly isn't necessary to imprison an entire ethnic group for political reasons.
> Your statement is pure speculation.
So is yours.
> and to top it all off the hate speech laws didn't even work!
I'm not talking about hate speech laws. I'm talking about blasphemy laws. Like I said you seem to not have a particularly strong knowledge of the actual history here, hence my request for a historian who supports your position.
> blood libel from
Funny you bring that up. Guess who propogates blood libel conspiracies today? Q-anon, a conspiracy theory group that overlaps with the people who stormed the capitol building. So you see, even with free speech you can have large groups of people believing absolute nonsense.
> for example, Germany blasphemy laws pre-WWII, as written, actually protected Judaism
You'll have to forgive my assumption that you were referring to hate speech laws, though I'm not sure what else you would be referring to in the context of this debate. I'm sure you're also clear that the Weimar's hate speech laws protected Judaism and were used against prominent National Socialists.[1]
> > Your statement is pure speculation.
> So is yours.
No, pure speculation occurs when you invoke an alternate timeline. I've speculated based on the existent timeline and factors therein. Yours is akin to fantasy, mine is a deduction. Mine is an answer to "how did that happen?" whereas yours is a "what would happen if…?"
There's no would in my speculation.
> We got damn close here in the US with the Japanese internment. So speech suppression it clearly isn't necessary to imprison an entire ethnic group for political reasons.
Speech was suppressed during wartime. From[2]:
> The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover emergency authority to censor all news and control all communications in and out of the country.
The Supreme Court also upheld the government's right to the internment (among other things) because SCOTUS has previously and consistently ruled that things are different at wartime, which I largely disagree with, along with the internment.
Not that free speech ultimately protects anyone like a magic amulet, it simply increases the likelihood of protection. You and I will no doubt both wear a seatbelt when driving but neither of us will claim it will definitely stop us flying out of our seats, there are more conditions to consider to make that claim.
Which makes this all the more amusing to me:
> Like I said you seem to not have a particularly strong knowledge of the actual history here, hence my request for a historian who supports your position.
Well, I guess I'll have to wait for you to bring forth the materials you say you checked, and perhaps for you to find out what was actually happening during WWII in the US.
> > blood libel from
> Funny you bring that up.
The only source of possible irony relies on misconception and tribalism so we'll have to disagree on its amusing quality. I brought up the blood libel because these are the consequence of competing Abrahamic religions that took hold over large areas and disallow speech that contradicts doctrine, doctrine that includes anti-semitism. Where's the Jew hatred in groups with no religious affiliation - do you find much anti-semitism among Buddhists and Hindus?
> So you see, even with free speech you can have large groups of people believing absolute nonsense.
When did I claim otherwise? Free speech only makes discernment of truth more likely, it does not guarantee it. Rather like having the best lab with the best scientists and best practice methods for your procedures, it will not guarantee you discoveries but it increases the likelihood versus a garage with a self taught scientist who is making it up as they go along, but some discoveries may still happen there too. To think that freedom of speech is the medicine for all ill would be to engage in fallacious thinking.[3]
There's a huge degree of just outright horseshit here.
I've been browsing /pol/ for years, hell almost decades. Its a great place to go to get an idea of just how fringe certain elements of society are becoming. I was actually actively browsing when QAnon was making his posts there.
I thought they were just as ridiculous and far-fetched then as I do now. People become radicalized largely because some condition in their life is lacking. For every single successful mechanical engineer that joins ISIS, there's 99 out-of-work coal miners and factory workers who storm the American capital.
Most people who have everything in their life going great don't end up extremists.
I doubt most of the people who stormed the Capitol were out of work coal miners and factory workers. Which is not to say they didn’t have things going badly in their lives, that describes a lot of people.
To quote a violent rioter screaming at the police on January 6th, "We're the business owners of America, and we don't have your back anymore!"
I watched lawyers, doctors and owners of IT companies attack the Capitol.
There are very few struggling coal miners who can afford to fly into DC during the week along with hundreds of dollars in riot gear in order to spend a few days rioting.
This is often brought up, mistakenly, as support for restricting speech based on speech alone when it says no such thing.
Popper draws a clear distinction between those who will have intolerant views but do not engage in violence, and those who do engage in violence. It is only the latter, in Popper's view, that must be restricted.
For what it's worth, I don't think that it is ok. I'm just acknowledging the conflict of feeling bad for innocents caught up in this and being glad that some real bad actors might be exposed.
My impressions is that everyone whinging about privacy with regards to giving seditionists and terrorists a space to coordinate and share misinformation after the biggest attack on the US since 9/11 are just being contrarian or are absolutist to a fault in their libertarian ideals (which I mostly share).
People minimizing this attack and not treating it like a legitimate 9/11 scale crisis for the US are not considering the propaganda win this is for extremist groups domestically and autocratic regimes internationally. Could this be a slippery slope? Sure, but it's not as slippery as the other side of the slope which goes right off a cliff.
There is still plenty of time/space to have debates about how to move forward from here with moderation and privacy on social networks, but for now we are in the middle of an insurrection that needs to be put down.
Also, should another attack take place couldn't platforms knowingly providing services to the capitol attackers find themselves liable for providing material support for terrorists? If I were managing risk at AWS that definitely be a major concern.
My POV, if we wouldn't have a problem doing it to ISIS after an attack on our Capitol, then we shouldn't have problem doing the same to QAnon and these "patriots".
>People minimizing this attack and not treating it like a legitimate 9/11 scale crisis
We're still getting groped by the TSA and wrapping up a war from the last time we had a 9/11 scale crisis. We were tricked into spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives invading a nation that had nothing to do with it and we gave some of the less savory government agencies a lot of power which they still have not returned.
I think the public is right to be hesitant to play the knee-jerk reaction game this time around considering how well it turned out last time.
I think there is a big difference between invading two countries and passing the PATRIOT act and the reaction we're seeing here.
All this "hold on and let's make sure we're not being too unfair to far-right extremists" while they actively recruit and plan more attacks sounds like an under-reaction from a fear of over-reacting.
> All this "hold on and let's make sure we're not being too unfair to far-right extremists" while they actively recruit and plan more attacks sounds like an under-reaction from a fear of over-reacting.
I think it is right to be worried about the ascendant tech industry being able to quash certain ideas before they have a chance to influence voters at the ballot box.
Just this past 3 months, we've seen true stories about Joe Biden's son banned from posting on social media, anti-Biden news outlets banned from posting, and now the president banned.
I vote straight democrat pretty much every time, so that is where my leanings lie, but I'm not going to shut my eyes as wealth inequality goes over the moon in the past 20 years and consolidated platforms owned by the hyper-wealthy increasingly control what news people even see.
To me, it is entirely inappropriate to be blasé about this point.
> This could have led to the public execution of the Vice President and speaker of the house. This came close to being a dramatically worse event.
I remain unconvinced about how close that actually was, nor have I seen a compelling case that it was that close actually made.
Further, before it becomes close to "executing the Vice President", you can bet shots are going to actually be fired. Crowds of rioters behave very differently when gunshots start ringing out.
A single, fatal shot was fired for precisely that reason. And even then, I don't think it was anywhere near "executing the VP" but more like getting too close to the area where the politicians were being kept safe.
> A single, fatal shot was fired for precisely that reason.
The people most imminently in danger in that case, as I understand it, were staff in the Speakers Lobby, not members or the Vice President, who were in the chambers.
But as I understand the timeline, the attack, with defenders just on the other side with guns drawn and prepared to fire, on the doors to at least one of the chambers also were ongoing before members had been evacuated from the floor by another exit, so the incident at the Speakers Lobby came very close to being repeated where members were more immediately at risk.
> the attack, with defenders just on the other side with guns drawn and prepared to fire, on the doors to at least one of the chambers also were ongoing before members had been evacuated from the floor by another exit,
Do you have a source for this? I understand you to be saying that the picture we all saw (of the guns being drawn at a door within one of the chambers) occurred while there were still elected representatives in that chamber?
I’ll try to dig up something; I’ve seen a couple accounts from people in the chamber or galleries that seemed to suggest that (I think specifically the House chamber).
No, it is factually correct. They said 'since', not larger than. In the meantime, since 9/11 there have as far as I know it not been any larger attacks within the US on the United States itself. If you know of any then please correct me.
The Pulse nightclub is not typically associated with being a seat of government, though I don't doubt that people in government have been seated there.
On 9/11 there was a plan set in motion to crash a plane in to the Capitol, which only failed because of the bravery of the passengers in that plane. Incidentally, the very same Capitol self described 'patriots' broke into and vandalized last week.
So what made 9/11 have large scale was the (thwarted) plot to crash into the Capitol and the successful attack on the Pentagon? Not the 2600 killed in the WTC?
This seems like a very twisted reading to compare two not-actually-that-similar events.
Around 4,000 people in the United States died prematurely yesterday due to COVID. 9/11 was a big deal because it attacked America's symbols. It altered the skyline of New York City, took down a side of the Pentagon and almost was able to crash into DC. The attack on January 6th acted in the same way. Yes, they killed fewer people but they attacked heart of America and the symbols of America.
The poster claimed this was a "9/11 scale crisis", I think it is not.
Rather than engaging in the reasons for why it might be, you choose to insult my reading comprehension. Take care, and hopefully you can be more charitable to those you encounter in-person.
