Right-Wing Racist Protests

Was the violence sponsored / supported by BLM?

I'm not sure how you've managed to come to this conclusion based on the titles of those articles.

The far right protest was far more violent overall (in terms of the percentage of people fighting) than the BLM protest. Based on that, it seems fair to address it as violent from the get-go.

It's really hard to understand why there is so much casual racism and organised racism in this country.

I'm not convinced you read the articles. We know that more people were hurt in the BLM protests than the protests today. To say that they were 'overwhelmingly peaceful' but had more injuries is disingenuous.

I can freely say that the protesters in London who hurt the police were in the wrong on both the left and right, because I'm not an ideologue. I would rather know the truth than win an argument on the internet.

Are you so unable to admit to problems on 'your team' that you can't admit that the BLM protests in London hurt more people?

Were they rioting before the BLM protest? I don't think so. Therefore my answer is yes.

I did read both articles. Do you think it's wrong to describe the BLM protests as overwhelmingly peaceful? How about "mostly peaceful"? There have been dozens of BLM protests and almost all of them have been peaceful and without violence. Even among the violent ones, most of the protesters were peaceful. Compare that to just one far right protest in which many, if not most, of the participants were being violent (to both the police and public).

I'm more than happy to admit that there is a problem on 'my team'. I'm also happy to say that more police officers were hurt in the BLM protest than in the far right one. What I'm more interested in is your claim of media bias.

You think there isn't a media bias?

Do you think the majority of the London protesters were violent? Because a brief search on YouTube for video of the protest shows this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMHrGi2O-Ys

I don't see the majority committing acts of violence. I'm sure you can point to specific videos of violence, but I'm also willing to bet I would find more video evidence of violence in the BLM protests.

By saying that the BLM protests were 'Overwhelmingly peaceful', the news was correct. The majority were peaceful. They could also have said the same thing about the statue protesters, but they did not.

And the media did not. They applied a separate standard to one. For the BLM protests, there were excuses about how peaceful means didn't work and this was bubbling over frustration. The same could be said of the right wing protesters, but they were not given the benefit of the doubt.

I love how the far right sympathizers on TSR are using far right violence to argue the far right are being victimised.

Do I think there is a media bias? No. I've recently found out that a counter protest also occurred in Bristol on the same day. It was entirely peaceful and the BBC accurately reported it as such.

Do I think the majority of the London protesters were violent? I wouldn't know for sure, but based on the footage I've seen it wouldn't surprise me if a majority of it was. That said, even if we assume it was just as violent as the BLM London protest, overall the BLM protests would still be more peaceful.

But we know it wasn't. Fewer people were hurt. Far fewer.Less than a quarter. We also know that almost 3 times the arrests were made.

What you have is cognitive dissonance. You think you're right even though anybody outside of your ideology can clearly see it's not true. I think I can prove it to you, too.

I'm going to say a series of sentences. Each one will be completely devoid of context and with no judgment. I want you to think about how it makes you feel.

1) Mustard is a condiment.

How does that make you feel? Completely neutral? Mildly irritated that I'm wasting your time? Either is fine and should be a baseline for the other sentences.

2) America's founding fathers were all white males, many of whom owned slaves.

3) The British Empire has a history where it has enabled the slave trade in other nations.

4) Blacks represent 12.5% of the population in the US, but make up more than 50% of the population of all murder suspects as described by witnesses.

5) In the 2015-2016 New Years Eve celebrations in Cologne, Germany, roving gangs of up to 1000 men robbed and sexually assaulted women for hours on end in public places, the ethnicity of the men almost exclusively being North African.

All of those are facts. All of them are easily verified and matters of public record. All of them have nuance to them and none of them provide enough information to have any real emotions about one way or the other. If you read facts 2 and 3 and felt the need to explain the nuance, that should tell you a bit about your bias. If it was 4 and 5, that should tell you more.

But more importantly, think about how it made you feel. If reading any of those made you feel like you had a tightness in your chest, or irritated, or that I was a liar or racist or hated Britain or the US, then that is a strong bias you have and you should be aware of it.

You don't have to tell me what you've discovered, because most people with strong biases don't recognize them. It might even take a few hours for you to realize that you did, in fact, have a strong emotional response to any of the statements of fact. Once you do realize, though, it can be very helpful in identifying real positive change.

There is a kind of wariness to the right at the moment due to poor media portrayals. Take the BBC.

The BBC wrote that there were 100 arrests in 'Violent clashes with the police', and that 6 police were hurt:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53037767

Contrast that with the 'Largely peaceful' protests a week ago, where 27 police officers were hurt and where 38 people were arrested:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52954899

The BLM protest had a much larger turnout than the far right protest. Even if they were equally violent (in terms of the percentage of participants being violent), more people would have been hurt and arrested at the BLM protest simply because more people turned up. From what I have seen the police were also not wearing the same gear that they were wearing in the far right protest (which was more protective).

As for the rest of your post, I understand why you're trying to make this point but it doesn't affect anything I've said. I could say you have cognitive dissonance as well.

If the exact same percentage of participants had been violent, then the exact same verbiage should have been used. It was not. The wording used by the media to describe the right-wing protest was overwhelmingly negative, using words like 'Violence' and 'Thug' - Words that the BBC did not use in its articles to describe the BLM movement.

Lovely to see one of the defenders of trusty British right wing statues urinating on PC Keith Palmer's memorial.

I don't believe the same percentage of participants had been violent. It makes sense to describe the far right protest as violent since violence was the most prominent part of it.

The only usage of the word "thug" in the article you is in a quotation from Boris Johnson. As far as I can tell the BBC themselves do not describe the protesters as thugs.