AP FACT CHECK: NRA SPEAKERS DISTORT GUN and CRIME STATISTICS

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AP FACT CHECK: NRA speakers distort gun and crime statistics
By AMANDA SEITZ

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speakers at the National Rifle Association annual meeting assailed a Chicago gun ban that doesn’t exist, ignored security upgrades at the Texas school where children were slaughtered and roundly distorted national gun and crime statistics as they pushed back against any tightening of gun laws.
A look at some of the claims:

TEXAS SEN. TED CRUZ: “Gun bans do not work. Look at Chicago. If they worked, Chicago wouldn’t be the murder hellhole that it has been for far too long.

THE FACTS: Chicago hasn’t had a ban on handguns for over a decade . And in 2014, a federal judge overturned the city’s ban on gun shops. Big supporters of the NRA, like Cruz, may well know this, given that it was the NRA that sued Chicago over its old handgun ban and argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the ban unconstitutional in 2010.
___
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “Classroom doors should be hardened to make them lockable from the inside and closed to intruders from the outside.”

THE FACTS: As commonsensical as that might sound, it could backfire in a horrific way, experts warn.  A lock on the classroom door is one of the most basic and widely recommended school safety measures. But in Uvalde, it kept victims in and police out.

Nearly 20 officers stood in a hallway outside of the classrooms school for more than 45 minutes before agents used a master key to open the classroom’s locked door.

And Trump’s proposal doesn’t take into account what would happen if class members were trapped behind a locked door and one of the students was the aggressor in future attacks.
___
CRUZ: “The rate of gun ownership hasn’t changed.

THE FACTS: This is misleading. The percentage of U.S. households with at least one gun in the home hasn’t significantly changed over the past 50 years. But the number of assault-type rifles, like the one used in the Uvalde school shooting and dozens of other school shootings, has skyrocketed since legislators let a 1994 ban on such weapons expire in 2004.

In the years leading up to and following that ban, an estimated 8.5 million AR-platform rifles were in circulation in the United States. Since the ban was lifted, the rifles — called “modern sporting rifles” by the industry — have surged in popularity. The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated there were nearly 20 million in circulation in 2020.
___
CRUZ: “Had Uvalde gotten a grant to upgrade school security, they might have made changes that would have stopped the shooter and killed him there on the ground, before he hurt any of these innocent kids and teachers.”

THE FACTS: This claim overlooks the fact that Uvalde had doubled its school-security budget and spent years upgrading the protections for schoolchildren. None of that stopped the gunman who killed 19 pupils and two teachers.

Annual district budgets show the school system went from spending $204,000 in 2017 to $435,000 for this year . The district had developed a safety plan back in 2019 that included staffing the schools with four officers and four counselors. It had installed a fence and invested in a program that monitors social media for threats and purchased software to screen school visitors.

The grant that Cruz claims would have been life-saving was from a failed 2013 bill that planned to help schools hire more armed officers and install bulletproof doors. Uvalde’s school did have an officer but the person wasn’t on the campus at the time the shooter entered the building. And, Cruz’s call for bulletproof doors might not have worked in this case, given that police were unable to breech the locked door of the classroom where the shooter murdered children and teachers.
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@oromagi
Trump and Cruz are liars. In other news, water, wet.
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When people make the claim that Ted Cruz is a liar, it seems incredibly poorly judged. It appears quite evidently that Joe Biden is a significantly bigger liar in any respect than the Texas senator. As a referencial judgement, if people aren't willing to say Joe Biden is a signficiantly worse liar, then the claim that Ted Cruz is a liar becomes an extension of the special pleading logical fallacy. 
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I agree that Joe Biden is a liar. Which one is a bigger liar, I don't know. However, I don't see how Joe Biden being a liar makes Ted Cruz any more or less dishonest.
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"We need somebody with experience and there are a lot of good candidates - I like nearly all of them. Except Cruz."

-Bob Dole
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"I just don't like the guy"

-George W. Bush
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"You know, it's always the wacko birds ... that get the media megaphone"

-John McCain
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"My fellow Senator Ted Cruz and the co-signers of his statement argue that rejection of electors or an election audit directed by Congress would restore trust in the election. Nonsense. I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world. Has ambition so eclipsed principle?"

-Mitt Romney
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"This guy Ted Cruz is the single biggest liar I have ever dealt with in my life. I mean it. ... He will lie about anything. I've met much tougher people than Ted Cruz. He's like a baby. ... He's like a little baby. Soft, weak, little baby by comparison. But for lying, he's the best I've ever seen. ... A guy like Ted Cruz, he has no clue. He never employed anybody. He's a nasty, nasty guy."

-Donald Trump
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"I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book."

-Ted Cruz's college roommate
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"I hate Ted Cruz, and I think I'll take cyanide if he ever got the nomination."

-Peter King
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"If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you."

-Lindsey Graham
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An examination by The Washington Post of Ted Cruz’s actions between Election Day and Jan. 6, 2021, shows just how deeply he was involved, working directly with Trump to concoct a plan that came closer than widely realized to keeping him in power. As Cruz went to extraordinary lengths to court Trump’s base and lay the groundwork for his own potential 2024 presidential bid, he also alienated close allies and longtime friends who accused him of abandoning his principles.
Now, Cruz’s efforts are of interest to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, in particular whether Cruz was in contact with Trump lawyer John Eastman, a conservative attorney who has been his friend for decades and who wrote key legal memos aimed at denying Biden’s victory.
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"When Congress reconvened that evening to continue the count, Cruz voted to object to Arizona's and Pennsylvania's electoral votes.  The Senate rejected these objections by 93–6 and 92–7, respectively.  The Texas Democratic Party called on Cruz to resign, saying that his efforts to block Biden's lawful victory empowered the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol.  The Texas Democratic Party also called on the U.S. Department of Justice to open an official investigation into Cruz for inciting sedition and treason. The Houston Chronicle called for Cruz to resign.  The San Antonio Express News called for Cruz to be expelled from the Senate. 

Thousands of lawyers and law students called for him to be disbarred for inciting the insurrection.[200] President-elect Biden and Republican senator Pat Toomey both said Cruz was complicit in the "big lie" of Trump's allegations of voter fraud.   Republican operative Chad Sweet, the chair of Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign, denounced Cruz for "assault on our democracy."  Several corporations halted donations to Cruz and other Republicans who voted to overturn the election based on Trump's false claims.   Lauren Blair Bianchi, Cruz′s communications director, resigned."

Cruz has also referred to his supporters on Jan 6th as "a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol, where we saw the men and women of law enforcement demonstrate incredible courage."


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@FLRW
Now, Cruz’s efforts are of interest to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capit
  • If only we had a more dedicated response to other significantly worse atrocities and actions of domestic terrorism such as the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots during the pandemic, especially in areas like Portland, Oregon. 
  • We should have taken a larger and more focused role in arresting many of these rogue barbaric animals

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@Novice
"During the nationwide George Floyd protests against police brutality and racism in May and June 2020, false claims of impending antifa activity circulated through social media platforms, causing alarm in at least 41 towns and cities.   On May 31, 2020, @ANTIFA_US, a newly created Twitter account, attempted to incite violence relating to the protests. The next day, after determining that it was linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, Twitter suspended the fake account.   The FBI's Washington Field Office report stated that members of a far-right group on social media had "called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents, use automatic weapons against protesters" during the D.C.-area protests over Floyd's murder on May 31, 2020.

Conservative news organizations, pro-Trump individuals using social media, and impostor social media accounts propagated false rumors that antifa groups were traveling to small cities, suburbs, and rural communities to instigate unrest during the protests.  In May and June 2020, Lara Logan repeatedly promoted hoaxes as part of Fox News' coverage of antifa, including publishing a false document she described as an antifa battle plan and claiming that a joke about juggalos was evidence of a clandestine antifa hierarchy.  In an appearance on Fox News's The Ingraham Angle in June 2020, Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed that "Antifa" as well as "Black Lives Matter" and unspecified communists were working together to "do away with our system of courts" and "take your property away and give it to other people", asserting without evidence that they receive significant funding from an outside source. Giuliani had previously criticized George Soros, who has been a frequent target of conspiracy theories, claiming he funded such groups and demonstrations.

In June, 2020, the California Highway Patrol's air unit launched a search for "antifa buses" in response to Instagram and Facebook posts showing a van with the slogan "Black Lives Matter" written on it.   Later in June 2020, a multiracial family on a camping trip in Forks, Washington, were accused of being antifa activists, harassed and trapped in their campsite when trees were felled to block the road.  In Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, groups of armed right-wing vigilantes occupied streets in response to false rumors that antifa activists were planning to travel to the city while similar rumors led to threats being made against activists planning peaceful protests in Sonora, California.  In Klamath Falls, Oregon, hundreds of people, most of whom were armed, assembled in response to false rumors that antifa activists would target the city, spread by a commander in the Oregon Air National Guard.

In an August 2020 interview, Trump spread a similar conspiracy theory, claiming that "thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that" had boarded a plane to Washington, D.C. to disrupt the 2020 Republican National Convention.  Also in August 2020, a fake antifa website began to redirect users to the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign website.  Although this has been described as "clearly a ploy to associate the Democratic Party with antifa", those on the right seized upon it. 

A 2021 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) internal report found that senior DHS officials had sought to portray the 2020 protests in Portland, Oregon, without evidence, as an organized effort by antifa to attack government institutions, and had ordered staff to characterize protests as "Violent Antifa Anarchist Inspired". 

A study by Zignal Labs found that unsubstantiated claims of antifa involvement were one of three dominant themes in misinformation and conspiracy theories around the protests, alongside claims that Floyd's murder had been faked and claims of involvement by George Soros. Some of the opposition to antifa activism has also been artificial in nature. Nafeesa Syeed of Bloomberg News reported that "[t]he most-tweeted link in the Russian-linked network followed by the researchers was a petition to declare Antifa a terrorist group".
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A December 2020 poll found 47% of Americans believed that the majority of the protests were violent, and 16% were unsure.  According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, an estimated 93%–96.3% of demonstrations were peaceful and nondestructive, involving no injuries or no property damage.

Police made arrests in about 5% of protest events (deploying chemical irritants in 2.5% of events); 3.7% of protest events were associated with property damage or vandalism (including damages by persons not involved in the actual demonstration); and protesters or bystanders were injured or killed in 1.6% of events.


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@oromagi
false claims of impending antifa activity...
  • Antifa was undoubtedly involved in many of the BLM riots, and nothing you have presented even counters this idea, so I don't see the purpose of even posting it. One can easily observe this and it is quite uncontroversial to say so, so I assume you are either misguided, or you just don't know the facts. Thankfully, many of these ruthless animals of the radical left are being arrested. As the New York Times reports: 
    1. More than two dozen suspected Antifa rioters have been charged in Portland in the past two weeks, signaling an escalation by both local and federal prosecutors following a full year of riots in the besieged Oregon city.
      On Thursday, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office announced charges against 10 suspects following several grand jury indictments.
      Maximilian Ryan Jennings, 23, James Walker Prettyman, 25, and Thomas Moll-Rocek, 34, are charged with one count each of felony riot, felony first-degree criminal mischief and second-degree criminal mischief.
      The three were indicted over accusations they were part of a black-clad mob that broke most of the windows on the Multnomah County Democrats’ headquarters on Nov. 8, 2020. At the time, Antifa accounts on social media promoted the “direct action” to oppose the presidential election.
  • Simply one piece of evidence is sufficient to disprove your implication that these radical street thugs are simply innocent little boys and girls.

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@Novice
  • Simply one piece of evidence is sufficient to disprove your implication that these radical street thugs are simply innocent little boys and girls.
Okay, let's examine the quality of your evidence. You are trying to prove that Antifa committed "atrocities of domestic terrorism" during the George Floyd protests but your one example was not a George Floyd protest at all.  Rather, you cite a protest that explicitly targeted the results of the 2020 election.  I'll assume that you tried to find a legitimate example of Antifa participation in the George Floyd protests, failed, and so moved on to a different set of protests.  Since you are attempting to disprove  credible reports that the Trump administration and Russian networks had manufactured false evidence of Antifa participation in the George Floyd protests and none of your evidence describes any George Floyd protest, you argument is toast on arrival.

Let's note that the "reporter" of your single source of evidence is entirely discredited as a reliable source of information.  The Columbia Journalism Review describes him as a"discredited provocateur."  The LA Times characterized his book on Antifa as "supremely dishonest" and "the very kind of propaganda that keeps authoritarians in power."  300 reporters at the Wall St. Journal signed a letter protesting his "lack of fact-checking and transparency."  He's been fired from two news organizations in two years for misquoting his sources and doxxing victims of violence.   Soon after filing your citation, he quit the business of Journalism and moved to another country.   Assuming that if you could have found a credible source to back your claim, you would have used that instead, this demonstrates awareness that your claims are based on fake news sources.

Also, you claimed you were citing the New York Times, the paper of record, when you were in fact citing the New York Post, as sensational FOX News tabloid that recently ran the headline "Newly Discovered Planet Could Destroy Earth Any Day Now"   

As far as the credibility of the actual claim goes, the Multnomah County Democratic HQ certainly had its windows smashed on the evening of Nov 8th, but the political provenance of the suspects should be viewed with extreme skepticism.  

Consider-

  • No police department, District Attorney's office, or other government agency has characterized the attack as committed by Antifa.
  • No local news report characterized the attack as Antifa.  Oregonlive.com reported that the few signs they carried suggested left-wing dissatisfaction with the Democratic party.
  • Rose City Antifa, the Portland based chapter and the original Antifa  group in the US condemned the attack, saying that while some of the participants may consider themselves anti-fascist in ideology, Antifa itself limits its activities to countering right-wing violence and that those hundred or so rioters would be more properly characterized as anarchists.
  • Strategically, the action only benefited the Right wing and seems calculated to alienate the Left.
  • Tactically, organized and experienced Antifa members don't wear Antifa brand swag when protesting or advertise their plans on social media.
    • If somebody on Twitter or Facebook is claiming to be Antifa, they are most likely fake and motivated to discredit Antifa.

As evidence of Antifa complicity in George Floyd riots, your one rebuttal is a miserable fail.  It seems likely that everything you think you understand about Antifa has been constructed for you by FOX News and QAnon to make you feel frightened.  Making you feel frightened is simply how the right operates.


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@Greyparrot
So who’s fact checking AP? 
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Look Fat look, here's the deal:

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@oromagi
During the George Floyd protests but your one example was not a George Floyd protest at all. 
  • Moving the goalposts, essentially an admission that I was right.
  • Based on this message you have directly admitted that antifa was involved in riots during the pandemic. 
  • As I stated of course: "Atrocities and actions of domestic terrorism such as the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots during the pandemic, especially in areas like Portland, Oregon" 
  • You have essentially conceded to me. There is nothing left to argue on. Wow. As I recall, these street thugs were in fact involved in riots during the pandemic:"More than two dozen suspected Antifa rioters have been charged in Portland in the past two weeks, signaling an escalation by both local and federal prosecutors following a full year of riots in the besieged Oregon city."  
Also, you claimed you were citing the New York Times, the paper of record, when you were in fact citing the New York Post, as sensational FOX News tabloid...
  • Well it seems I have made an extremely minor mistake with "post," and "times." No issue there. The rest is an extension of the Genetic fallacy. What specifically in the extremely honest and factual report on the prosecution of these street thugs do you disagree with. I suspect the answer will simply be obfuscation (I don't think you have anything to say after an implicit admission) but"facts don't care about your feelings" as the phrase goes. 
 It seems likely that everything you think you understand about Antifa has been constructed for you by FOX News and QAnon to make you feel frightened.  Making you feel frightened is simply how the right operates.
  • While Fox news is entirely irrelevant to this, if Fox has simply reported that Antifa as we have experinced it is a radical gang of street thugs that cause harm to  people and communities, then sure, thats reasonable. I don't watch Fox so I just don't know. 
  • QAnon is irrelevant to this. I have made a basic factual claim that you have yourself admitted. Your statements are simply immaterial. 
  • I am not scared of Antifa or BLM barbarrric animals. Thankfully I don't live in an area they operate heavily. I think it's better to just remain confident in the police and law enforcement to deal with them.
  • So far, you have admitted to me being correct, so I assume that invalidates your entire write up. Not surprised that you have simply jumped to the most trending talking points. 

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Greyparrot is the Amber Heard of debating:  takes a dump in your bed and reports you as the bully.
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-->@Greyparrot
So who’s fact checking AP? 
AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, as a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members, it can maintain its single-minded focus on newsgathering and its commitment to the highest standards of objective, accurate journalism.

So 1300 news organizations, including Murdoch's.
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@Novice
DROPPED ARGUMENTS:

  • No police department, District Attorney's office, or other government agency has characterized the attack as committed by Antifa.
  • No local news report characterized the attack as Antifa.  Oregonlive.com reported that the few signs they carried suggested left-wing dissatisfaction with the Democratic party.
  • Rose City Antifa, the Portland based chapter and the original Antifa  group in the US condemned the attack, saying that while some of the participants may consider themselves anti-fascist in ideology, Antifa itself limits its activities to countering right-wing violence and that those hundred or so rioters would be more properly characterized as anarchists.
  • Strategically, the action only benefited the Right wing and seems calculated to alienate the Left.
  • Tactically, organized and experienced Antifa members don't wear Antifa brand swag when protesting or advertise their plans on social media.
  • Your one source lacks any credibility within even conservative leaning media.
  • You are citing evidence from a notoriously unreliable sensationalist tabloid.
Moving the goalposts, essentially an admission that I was right.
  • You said "Antifa was undoubtedly involved in many of the BLM riots"
      • And then cited the NY Post as evidence.  I interpreted to BLM riots to mean George Floyd Protests since the BLM doesn't organize riots (BLM doesn't organize much at all, in fact).  BLM  was quite satisfied with the election of Biden as was Rose City Antifa.  The point is that if this is your only example of an Antifa organized action then its important to note that there is no evidence that either group participated and the vandalism did not conform in any way with either group's methods or principles.  The example also seems way off the mark because they were protesting Biden's election.  Your one (discredited) example seems entirely non-representative of what we were talking about.
  • Well it seems I have made an extremely minor mistake with "post," and "times."
  • LOL.  Oops so what if I said it was the Washington Post when in fact it was the Washington Times?   So what if I said it was Reuters when in fact it was RT? So what if I said it was the Economist when in fact it was Infowars?  What's the big deal?  All news sources are equal in objectivity and credibility, right?
While Fox news is entirely irrelevant to this,
  • The New York Post and FOX News are the same thing- they are owned by the same family, their reporters are interchangeable, they coordinate their stories:  If it's not credible enough for the WSJ to break, they give it to FOX, if it's not credible enough for FOX to break they give it to the Post.  Whether you understand it or not, the disinformation you believe was manufactured for you in a FOX News content meeting.  The reporter you cite got his paycheck from FOX News.
QAnon is irrelevant to this.
  • In fact, FOX, QANon, and Russia are the three main distribution nodes for the Antifa disinformation you believe.


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@oromagi
"DROPPED ARGUMENTS"
  • Nothing has been dropped so I shall ignore such a silly tangent
And then cited the NY Post as evidence.
  • So? Unless you have a specific disagreement with anything within in, this is simply the genetic fallacy. I don't care what you think about the post. 
  • As I suspected, you have mentioned nothing and obfuscated, meaning the rest of the rambling here has no relevant meaning. 
  • Going back to your own previous admission, given that you have conceded that many violent  Antifa rouge dogs were involved in and arrested in protests I am quite intrigued with the optics here. You have not mentioned a single issue with the source information.
In fact, FOX, QANon, and Russia are the three main distribution nodes for the Antifa disinformation you believe.
  • I think most sensible people who know basic facts can observe the dangerous actions of BLM animals and Antifa thugs. 
  • Even if QA non asserts this, although they are irrelevant, this is an incredibly reasonable position to hold and is beneficial to our nation, our schools, our communities and people.  BLM rioters and Antifa rioters are quite close to terrorists. Anyone should recognize this. 
You said "Antifa was undoubtedly involved in many of the BLM riots"
  • Oh? Interesting. I did not even feel the need to provide anything for this seeing at it is essentially a fact. Seeing as you have conceded to my previous claim, I see no issue with entertaining the doubt. 
  • Here is clear documentation of Antifa's wild savages calling for violence.
    • An antifa activist group disseminated a message in a Telegram channel on Saturday that encouraged people to consider Minnesota National Guard troops “easy targets,” two Defense Department officials said. The message encouraged activists to steal “kit,” meaning the weapons and body armor used by the soldiers. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity [1]. 
  • Here are more Antifa terrorists openly admitting to organizing and using violence during the Portland George Floyd protest turmoil 
    • Rose City Antifa is one of the nation's oldest active antifa groups. Members rarely give interviews, but two who say they are part of antifa agreed to speak to "Nightline" as the situation in their city of Portland, Oregon, has become a prolonged and destructive stalemate.
      Rose City Antifa members "Milo" and "Ace" use pseudonyms and they asked that their faces and voices be obscured for this report.
      "The use of violence is a tactic of how we keep our communities safe," Milo said. 
      [2].
  • ABC further states:
    • Much of the blame for the chaos, property damage and violence over the last year have landed on the self-described anti-racist, anti-facist far left organizers. The black-clad coterie entrenched in the city's protest movement now find themselves in a tense showdown with city officials [2]. 
  • As it seems, not only was Antifa extremely prominent during these riots, they also openly admit to it and call for violence against police. Given that one pf the most credible news sources in the world asserts this, it appears to be a matter of fact. 
  • Lastly, from the Washington Post:
    • Antifa’s presence contributed significantly to protest violence
      When antifa did attend protests, the incidence of violence was extremely high compared to the level at protests it did not attend. Of the 37 racial justice protests where antifa appeared, 11 — or 30 percent — involved injuries to the crowd; when antifa did not appear, only 2 percent of the protests involved crowd injuries. With antifa present, 14 percent of protests involved injuries to police; without antifa, only 2 percent did. When antifa showed up, 27 percent of protests involved property damage; without antifa, only 4 percent did. And when antifa appeared, 30 percent of protests involved arrests, while only 7 percent of the antifa-free protests did. In other words, Antifa appearances at racial justice protests greatly increased the risk of violence 
      [3]. 

  1. apnews.com/article/violence-social-media-ny-state-wire-new-york-virus-outbreak-32bc90566697388645f01675359dcad1
  2. abcnews.go.com/US/year-protests-portland-residents-waning-patience-antifa/story?id=77511470
  3. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/08/antifa-blm-extremism-violence/

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@Novice
Nothing has been dropped so I shall ignore such a silly tangent
READERS will note that Novice has deceptively evaded the following arguments:

  • No police department, District Attorney's office, or other government agency has characterized the attack as committed by Antifa.
  • No local news report characterized the attack as Antifa.  Oregonlive.com reported that the few signs they carried suggested left-wing dissatisfaction with the Democratic party.
  • Rose City Antifa, the Portland based chapter and the original Antifa  group in the US condemned the attack, saying that while some of the participants may consider themselves anti-fascist in ideology, Antifa itself limits its activities to countering right-wing violence and that those hundred or so rioters would be more properly characterized as anarchists.
  • Strategically, the action only benefited the Right wing and seems calculated to alienate the Left.
  • Tactically, organized and experienced Antifa members don't wear Antifa brand swag when protesting or advertise their plans on social media.
  • Your one source lacks any credibility within even conservative leaning media.
  • You are citing evidence from a notoriously unreliable sensationalist tabloid.
I think most sensible people...
  • "most people think" is not a reasoned argument.
QANon....is beneficial to our nation, our schools, our communities and people. 
  • Fake news death cults are the enemy of democracy, civilization, and reason.
  • The core QAnon theory is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children operating a global child sex trafficking ring conspired against former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office.  QAnon has direct roots in Pizzagate, an internet conspiracy theory that appeared one year earlier; it also incorporates elements of many other theories. Some experts have described QAnon as a cult.
BLM rioters and Antifa rioters are quite close to terrorists.
  • Let's recall your original assertion was: "other significantly worse [than Jan 6th] atrocities and actions of domestic terrorism such as the Black Lives Matter and Antifa."
    • But now you are backtracking "close to terrorists" rather than worse terrorists than Trumpists on Jan 6th.
    • The Dept of Justice, DHS, FBI list Jan 6th as an act of domestic terrorism but have never labelled Antifa or BLM as terrorist organizations or any attributed any act of terrorism to either.
I did not even feel the need to provide anything for this seeing at it is essentially a fact.
  • Your feelings are not evidence.
Here is clear documentation of Antifa's wild savages calling for violence.An antifa activist group disseminated a message in a Telegram channel on Saturday that encouraged people to consider Minnesota National Guard troops “easy targets,” two Defense Department officials said. The message encouraged activists to steal “kit,” meaning the weapons and body armor used by the soldiers. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity .
  • Anonymous threats that came to nothing is not really evidence for terrorism, is it?  Every high school in American fields a couple of similar empty threats a year- is that all  much worse than a Right-wing coup in your estimation?
Here are more Antifa terrorists openly admitting to organizing and using violence

  • Anonymous is not "openly."  Rumours of violence are not acts of violence although Rose City Antifa does state that they endorse the use of violence in response to right wing violence but only in response to right wing violence.
Much of the blame for the chaos, property damage and violence over the last year have landed on the self-described anti-racist, anti-facist far left
  • But that's a different attribution than Antifa.  If we are counting every anti-Fascist as Antifa than most loyal Americans are Antifa by that definition.
Lastly, from the Washington Post:
  • You quote selectively from this article but apparently don't believe most of this article's findings, including
    • YOUR SOURCE:  "Out of nearly 14,000 racial justice protests in 2020, antifa was identified in just 37, or 0.2 percent. That would not qualify as an infiltration of the Black Lives Matter movement.
    • YOUR SOURCE:  "Antifa groups use a variety of nonviolent tactics such as “doxing” and other forms of public shaming. They also use violence to oppose fascist organizing, often responding to right-wing violence with similar tactics."
    • YOUR SOURCE: "Most of the 2020 racial justice protests were locally organized. Even if protesters chanted or carried signs supporting Black Lives Matter, BLM-affiliated groups were rarely involved. In fact, reports found only about 3 percent of the summer’s 14,000 protests were coordinated by BLM-affiliated groups."
    • YOUR SOURCE:  "We checked to see whether formal BLM appearances made any difference in a protest’s violence and found no evidence to suggest that it did. When BLM organizations showed up, protests were no more or less violent than when they did not. Both types of events had low levels of violence on every measure."
    • YOUR SOURCE: "Extremism is a concern, and right-wing extremism may pose a greater threat, but maligning BLM through association with antifa clearly misses the mark."
Now that you have shifted to more reliable sources, all you have to do is first read and then comprehend those reliable sources you quote here for your thesis to be reduced to ashes.


Novice
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READERS will note that Novice has deceptively evaded the following arguments:
  • Nothing has been evaded. 
Let's recall your original assertion was: "other significantly worse [than Jan 6th] atrocities and actions of domestic terrorism such as the Black Lives Matter and Antifa."
  • Yeah absolutely. The BLM riots were worse than the Jan 6 riots. 
Your feelings are not evidence.
  • Imagine if i stated that I don't feel or didn't feel I needed to provide evidence that most people sleep at night. Thats, if anything, a reasonable statment as this is a fact. Same with Antifa involvement in the BLM protests
But that's a different attribution than Antifa.  If we are counting every anti-Fascist as Antifa than most loyal Americans are Antifa by that definition.
  • Semantics. Seriously are you this desperate? Anti fascist is Antifa in clear reference. It appears you concede that one of the world's most reliable news sources openly states that significant levels of damage are attributed to them. 
QAnon?
  • Weird. You deliberately cut what I said in a certain way to make it seem as if I said QAnon is beneficial to society. Are you truly this desperate to cling onto anything after having admitted everything I said is true? 
  • Regardless, I think its beneficial to society, communities, schools, and children to recognize that BLM and ANtifa rioters are thugs and barbaric animals that should be in prison, absolutely. In the same way people should recognize that armbed robbers and gangsters are bad. 
Anonymous is not "openly."  Rumours of violence is not documentation of violence although Rose City Antifa does state that endorse the use of violence in response to right wing violence and only in response to right wing violence.
  • Sure it is. It is an anonymous interview where an Antifa member openly says, yes we used violence and feel justified in doing so? It is hard to be more open than this. 

  • You have simply bitten off more than you could chew with this one.
    • Perhaps this is your ego, or perhaps you just don't know the information, but you have admitted to all of my claims. This means
  • You admitted Antifa was involved in riots during the pandemic. 
  • You admitted Antifa was involved in the BLM riots, documented by one of the most reliable news sources in the world. 
  • You drop/concede that a source you call reliable has shown that antifa makes virtually every incident they are involved in more violent and dangerous.
  • As it stands now, you previously argued that Antifa had no involvement. You have conceded this. 
  • Having lost your entire case, we can get to you moving the goalpots to domestic terrorism.
  • The FBI defines it as: 
Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
  • Antifa has committed violent criminal acts in the form of protesting violence
  • They do this based on political ideological goals. 
  • This unquestioanbly fits the crteria for domestic terrorism 

ILikePie5
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@Greyparrot
AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, as a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members,
Must believe. Follow them. Everything they say must be right 
oromagi
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READERS will note that Novice has deceptively evaded the following arguments:

  • No police department, District Attorney's office, or other government agency has characterized the attack as committed by Antifa.
  • No local news report characterized the attack as Antifa.  Oregonlive.com reported that the few signs they carried suggested left-wing dissatisfaction with the Democratic party.
  • Rose City Antifa, the Portland based chapter and the original Antifa  group in the US condemned the attack, saying that while some of the participants may consider themselves anti-fascist in ideology, Antifa itself limits its activities to countering right-wing violence and that those hundred or so rioters would be more properly characterized as anarchists.
  • Strategically, the action only benefited the Right wing and seems calculated to alienate the Left.
  • Tactically, organized and experienced Antifa members don't wear Antifa brand swag when protesting or advertise their plans on social media.
  • Your one source lacks any credibility within even conservative leaning media.
  • You are citing evidence from a notoriously unreliable sensationalist tabloid.
  • The USFG, DOJ, FBI, DHS have declared  Jan 6th a terrorist attack but have not done the same regarding any act by Antifa or BLM
  • Novice's own sources falsify his thesis