Wall Street protesters: We're in for the long haul

[Sheilbh]

No.

To me, a reactionary is someone who almost always finds personal contentment in the status quo, for whom any situation could always be worse, and therefore, should never be contested. It would be someone who'd wish dissent to be silent, by pointing to salt mine slavery when faced with plantation slavery, to slavery when faced with apartheid, to apartheid when faced with segregation, and to segregation when faced with discrimination. It is someone for whom any sort of protest - if any -  should always be authorized, hushed, sanitized, intellectualized, rendered bland, and hopefully utterly meaningless; someone for whom the law is always right first, and wrong only after a lengthy, costly process which should hopefully lead to the castration of any sort of actual demand for change; someone for whom injustice, to the extent that it exists, should be fought, if they really must, politely, through careful application of money, and with an agenda which should span the next century or so. I distinguish it from conservatives, because conservatives usually have elaborated reasons to defend the values they feel are threatened.

And, of course, reactionary is - much like fascist - a polemical word which almost always necessitates an explanation.

I agree with this and like it a lot.  I think it's spot on.

I would consider Fascism a form of reactionary politics, (though not the only one.  I believe Hitler characterized his conservative enemies as reactionary).

I think you'd be wrong.  Fascism's basically modernism + kitsch.  The only reactionary Fascist governments I can think of would be, possibly, Spain and Portugal.  Everywhere else Fascism's resolutely about the future and sort-of smashing the past.

[Razgovory]

In Italy and Germany they were about bring back past glories.  For the Italians it was the Roman Empire.  For the Germans it was some mythical nonsense, but more immediately destroying the Republic, returning Germany to it's status as a great power, and taking the country back from Jews and Communists.

[Zoupa]

Oex, I guess you missed all the posts about the salutory effects of civil disobedience.

Languish is very much right-wing, stamp-on-the-hippies. Whenever you get the usual suspects trying to defend something perceived as leftist, he's rapidly surrounded by your clan (hi Berk!).

Also, it's salutary. 

[Sheilbh]

They're reactionary in that they're reacting against something.  The distinction I'd make is that reactionary's are about preserving the past and the status quo, whereas Fascism's about destroying. 

So in Italy and Germany this wasn't just a reaction against the Jews and the Communists but against a lot of the established churches, against the industrialists, the upper class and the old institutions.  They were all part of the establishment that'd failed Germany or Italy (as ideas) and allowed the soul-sapping self-indulgence of liberalism.  The destruction of that and ultimately the replacement of it all with the state and the leader as the core of the system was the goal of Fascism.

I think if you're calling for a return to a mythic Golden Age - whether it's the Roman Empire or some Tacitan ideal of Teutonicness - then you're not really 'reactionary' or 'conservative' in any meaningful sense.  You're as revolutionary and as addicted to the future as Communism. 

As I say I think the Iberian forms of Fascism are different.  But I'd say that pseudo-Fascist third world regimes also look a bit more like Italy than Spain in this respect.

[Sheilbh]

Languish is very much right-wing, stamp-on-the-hippies. Whenever you get the usual suspects trying to defend something perceived as leftist, he's rapidly surrounded by your clan (hi Berk!).

Also, it's salutary. 

I find it weird that Languish is generally anti-government.  Government should be controlled and viewed with deep suspicion and God help you if you think public pensions are a good idea.  Except, of course, for the coercive wing of the state where we should listen to experts, generally people are trying their best, it is better if you just do what your told and there's no real need for the state having to take too much responsibility.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I find it weird people like to shit on the arm of the government. We've all collectively, from stupidest leftist French idiot to farthest right wing nutjob living in Texas agreed that the government should have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. We've agreed to hire professionals to utilize this force.

By and large, from one country to the next, these people make a middling wage and they deal with the people we intentionally avoid in our day to day lives. Do they get shot at every day? No, not at all, the job isn't that dangerous in terms of deaths (less dangerous than others, like commercial fishing, logging, or mining.) But they do get more or less shit on every single day, lied to, yelled at by women for arresting their husbands (who just beat them halfway into a coma), mocked by teenagers, disdained by yuppies driving 70 mph in a school zone and etc.

They deal with basically the biggest assholes most of us will meet in a year, except they deal with 20 of them a day. Sometimes they mess up on the job, too.

Given the setting for that tale, I'll almost always be pro-LEO when it's them versus someone who doesn't have to be there because it's their job to be there. Hippie shits at UC-Davis aren't serving any damn purpose in the world.

I'm not going to defend New Orleans cops that randomly killed people in the aftermath of Katrina "just because." But I'm also not going to be the guy tying the hangman's knot anytime a cop steps over the line.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Each time I forget how reactionary Languish is, I find a thread to remind me.

Otto's just drunk again.

I posted that from work, you fat basement troll. Unlike you I don't have the luxury of getting drunk on a Wedsnesday before noon.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Oex's definition of reactionary is fancy but totally divorced from how the word has ever been used, in the history of the world. Reactionary is almost universally understood to mean people who are reacting against a change in the status quo in order to revert back to an older status quo. That's how the word has been used for like 200 years.

Oex is basically saying "if you think various obnoxious and mostly ineffective forms of protesting aren't awesome, and advocate more restrained much more effective ones, that don't involve 20 year olds screaming and smoking pot, you're a reactionary." FWIW all those old hippie white dudes who are filing court cases and doing the "polite" stuff that Oex calls reactionary are the ones who have mostly gotten any real change for their cause since the 60s. The people making noise in the street have done no favors to the left in this country in over a generation.

[Sheilbh]

I find it weird people like to shit on the arm of the government. We've all collectively, from stupidest leftist French idiot to farthest right wing nutjob living in Texas agreed that the government should have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. We've agreed to hire professionals to utilize this force.

...

They deal with basically the biggest assholes most of us will meet in a year, except they deal with 20 of them a day. Sometimes they mess up on the job, too.

We hire people and let them wear uniforms and have the right to use force on their fellow citizens.  But it's absolutely for that reason that we've got to hold them to high standards and regulate how they behave.  Otherwise you don't end up with professionals, you've got guys who like wearing uniforms and using force.

[OttoVonBismarck]

We hire people and let them wear uniforms and have the right to use force on their fellow citizens.  But it's absolutely for that reason that we've got to hold them to high standards and regulate how they behave.  Otherwise you don't end up with professionals, you've got guys who like wearing uniforms and using force.

That's the thing, holding someone to standards means you actually hold them to standards. And the standard isn't "that looks fucked up, fire/arrest the guy!" Legitimate, legal police action is sometimes ugly. Which is why you don't send in riot police unless you really need to do so.

The dude that pepper sprayed the people sitting at UC Davis? That's not a good thing, and he deserves punishment. However Zoupa is acting as though we're always hyper-defensive of the police here. Well, that's because the vast majority of these "police use of TASER" incidents like "don't tase me bro!" and et cetera, ultimately end up, after an analysis of the fact, being legitimate and by the book uses of force. People just don't like seeing it, and they don't like the ugliness of it, or some other such reason.

No one anywhere is saying police shouldn't be held to standards, but holding someone to standards involves having a process where you actually look to see what happened and if standards were followed. So many of these internet videos show very deceptive views of police on citizen activity. Hell, at Occupy Seattle there is word that a woman miscarried because of being brutalized by police. Now there is word she's homeless and mentally ill and may have not miscarried at all. She may not even have been pregnant. Basically her whole store has come out as fraudulent. But you know what I saw going around the libsphere the moment that shit hit the blogosphere? "Stay classy Seattle PD" "Seattle PD are murderers" and all that shit. Well, it looks like the whole story may have been a fabrication from a mentally ill homeless woman looking to profiteer off of a situation.

Further and here's the thing, you don't pay people who you know may get the shit kicked out of them by criminals and fire them the moment they use a bit more force than is necessary. Because you can't create robots and you won't have robots doing police work, sometimes a cop who has just been kicked in the nuts is going to deliver a few more blows than necessary to subdue someone. I think for situations like that you go through some low level discipline, write the guy up, but people who are paid and hired with the expectation they may get beat up on the job should be given some leeway in how they respond to physical situations, mainly because there is no method for totally divorcing naturally human reaction to getting hit or hit on from someone just because they're wearing a uniform. You can't totally train away a natural fight response. (Again, irrelevant to the UC Davis thing, but in many cases of "YouTube brutality" you have cops using a bit too much force on someone who has already hit a cop.)

[Berkut]

No one anywhere is saying police shouldn't be held to standards, but holding someone to standards involves having a process where you actually look to see what happened and if standards were followed.

Bingo. This thread is a fine example. I think I was labelled "reactionary" for the crime of asking what those standards are, whether they were actually violated, and if not, why are they the standard, and what ought they be otherwise.

Nobody in the thread had the slightest idea if pepper cop was in violation until Seedy came along, but that didn't stop them from complaining and saying how terrible it all is that some people got pepper sprayed. Which is my only point - people are complaining without bothering to even find out, which to me means they are just bitching to bitch. If not this, then something else will be held up as the example of the fascist state. And if you even deign to question the outrage, why, you must be some kind of "reactionary".

[Sheilbh]

Otto all of that's fine and I broadly agree.  But there are a few problems I have with it.

The guy probably deserves punishing, unfortunately.  But that shouldn't be an excuse to not actually see who ordered it, or ordered police in riot gear with paintball guns to clear a sit-in, and wonder how they got it so wrong.  The only degree that it matters whether this is SOP, for me, is that if it is then there needs to be a change in the procedures.

I think I've said earlier the tase me thing I find unsettling because of a different policing culture in the UK.  I disagree that it's legitimate in those circumstances on a fundamental level, but you know, if you guys are okay with that then fine.  But that it's by the book is, for me, just an excuse to change the book.  As I've said my view is that force should generally only be used when essential to restore public order or for the officer or public's safety (by force I mean taser, pepper spray, batons - not just shoving them against the wall and cuffing them or lifting them out of a demonstration).

I do divorce the normal human reaction from a policeman because, like a soldier, they're in uniform.  They've been trained and they represent the state.  I think they've got a far higher reponsibility.

I get what you're saying about people judging on these pictures and then later it turns out there was some justification.  Which I've done, I don't really care about the individual officer, I think the problem's more systemic because he's not the only guy who turned up ready to police an event where you need those sort of weapons and riot gear.  But in the UK I think we've the opposite experience and there's a few differences. 

First of all it's very difficult to sue the police for damages so there's not a great deal of litigation and I think it has to go through the Independent Police Complaints Commission (I think it used to be at the discretion of the Home Secretary, but I'm not sure).

Secondly as I said earlier the IPCC have found investigated over 400 deaths in police custody or from police shootings over the last decade.  Yet there's never once been a conviction, as the Economist's said that doesn't quite sound right and, with other problems, calls the independence of the IPCC into doubt.

Thirdly, the police lie.  I can't think of a single police brutality or wrongful death that hasn't involved the police making strong statements at the beginning that were, by the end, completely disproved or had considerable doubt thrown on it.  Whether it's Jean Charles de Menezes, Mark Duggan or Ian Tomlinson.  Now I think the police do reform and change and respond to these mistakes (or to the misuses of stop and search powers, or the institutional racism discussed in the MacPherson Report) but only if their feet are held to the fire.

For those reasons my initial response to a police explanation is scepticism until the independent inquiry that'll inevitably follow reports.

[Sheilbh]

Nobody in the thread had the slightest idea if pepper cop was in violation until Seedy came along, but that didn't stop them from complaining and saying how terrible it all is that some people got pepper sprayed.

That doesn't matter.  Based on that video it was wrong regardless of whether it was a violation or not.

[chipwich]

Otto you dont seem to be responding to how the guy in this instance was sitting passively and not threatening the officer in any way, yet the officer used a weapon on him.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It is not a simple divide between anti-police and pro-police factions. I have high expectations of the police and in return give them my support. In Lancashire we have a particularly good force and my support is more or less unqualified. My support was far more conditional when I lived in London, the metropolitan police force is simply not as good as the one we have here. If I had had the misfortune to live in Stalin's Russia then my support for the police would probably have been as little as I could have got away with.