At what point does it become accurate to say the social order has snapped beyond repair and that we are officially in a state of civil war? If all of these headline-grabbing shootings of the past month or so were ideologically motivated I would say we were in civil war without hesitation, it's only the fact that a lot of it seems to be less "motivated" if you will that keeps me from that conclusion. But really, is it the ideology that matters? Or the violence itself? Because we have the violence.
The problem I see with this is that these shootings are primarily suicides with a bang. Their primary motivation isn't their ideology in my opinion, it's their own giving up on life.
I would change that opinion if they start being venerated as martyrs like islamic extremist suicide bombers are/were.
There's always going to be small groups on the fringes. I think Awoo is thinking more along the lines of having statues erected by and venerated by large swaths of the public.
I think we could find a few attempts but maybe they haven't be super successful so far.
if these people constitute a faction in a civil war, inter-faction veneration of martyrs is sufficient, and that is clearly the case. The only reason why i'm not viewing mass shootings in the US as a form of civil war (yet) is scale - there is a subset of mass shooters that constitutes a distinct faction, and that faction is fascists. It's just that the number of people murdered by these fascists is (for now) below the number of casualties that are usually considered the cutoff where something goes from "very widespread terrorism campaign" to "small-scale civil war". Such cutoffs are arbitrary, they usually do not take population size into consideration, PoliSci is quackery to begin with etc., so take all of this with a grain of salt, but the usual definition of war i'm familiar with is "armed conflict with at least one organized faction that causes upwards of 1000 deaths per year". Gun violence in the US itself does not fall under that definition, as most deaths are either suicides or accidents, but it's noteworthy that when you strictly apply that definition, cops in the USA are already waging an actual war against their own populace.
We definitely have had some ideologically based shootings but a decent amount of the shootings over the last month have also just been arguments popping off and escalating to violence, like the ones in houston and Phoenix.
But I do think there’s something to the idea that stochastic terrorism has been increasingly the go to for white supremacist/far right people over the past 5-7 years and it’s probably only going to get more mainstream as we go
At what point does it become accurate to say the social order has snapped beyond repair and that we are officially in a state of civil war? If all of these headline-grabbing shootings of the past month or so were ideologically motivated I would say we were in civil war without hesitation, it's only the fact that a lot of it seems to be less "motivated" if you will that keeps me from that conclusion. But really, is it the ideology that matters? Or the violence itself? Because we have the violence.
The problem I see with this is that these shootings are primarily suicides with a bang. Their primary motivation isn't their ideology in my opinion, it's their own giving up on life.
I would change that opinion if they start being venerated as martyrs like islamic extremist suicide bombers are/were.
Have you seen how 4chan edgelords treat these guys?
There's always going to be small groups on the fringes. I think Awoo is thinking more along the lines of having statues erected by and venerated by large swaths of the public.
I think we could find a few attempts but maybe they haven't be super successful so far.
if these people constitute a faction in a civil war, inter-faction veneration of martyrs is sufficient, and that is clearly the case. The only reason why i'm not viewing mass shootings in the US as a form of civil war (yet) is scale - there is a subset of mass shooters that constitutes a distinct faction, and that faction is fascists. It's just that the number of people murdered by these fascists is (for now) below the number of casualties that are usually considered the cutoff where something goes from "very widespread terrorism campaign" to "small-scale civil war". Such cutoffs are arbitrary, they usually do not take population size into consideration, PoliSci is quackery to begin with etc., so take all of this with a grain of salt, but the usual definition of war i'm familiar with is "armed conflict with at least one organized faction that causes upwards of 1000 deaths per year". Gun violence in the US itself does not fall under that definition, as most deaths are either suicides or accidents, but it's noteworthy that when you strictly apply that definition, cops in the USA are already waging an actual war against their own populace.
I think for a civil war there needs to be factions.
Everyone in the US is part of the death cult faction.
Not me! I am ascending into the astro plane!
We definitely have had some ideologically based shootings but a decent amount of the shootings over the last month have also just been arguments popping off and escalating to violence, like the ones in houston and Phoenix.
But I do think there’s something to the idea that stochastic terrorism has been increasingly the go to for white supremacist/far right people over the past 5-7 years and it’s probably only going to get more mainstream as we go