Racism Report

[king canary 7,607]

9 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Totally agree. Nobody say's there aren't other societal issues beyond race at work (and yes there are those that unduly champion them - so called identity politics) but only this report seems to of gone out its way to downplay the race issue by it appears selectively or wholesale misrepresenting many of the people who's so called evidence (cherry picked quotes) as 'stakeholders' it uses and who are now so thoroughly & publicly disassociating themselves from this work of political fiction.

It comes across as simply a piece of political theatre not a serious study of the problem.   

I agree- to be honest my post was more aimed at @BigFish's dismissal of some actually very thoughtful writers like Andrew Sullivan and Freddie DeBoer. I'm generally very left wing but I am concerned at the fact we're importing American politics more and more and part of that concern is based around the very 'woke' lefts obsession with identity politics to the exclusion of everything else.

There are some warnings from some of the more insane corners of American politics that get covered well by a group of journalists. I think its worth understanding it.

[king canary 7,607]

9 minutes ago, Orly said:

Would like this 1000 times if possible.

I started my 'political opinion holding' on the far left (anarcho communist) as a teenager, softened to just 'communist'  (lol), then found a comfortable political home in 'socially centre-left, and economically socialist' (i.e capitalism with a big - and fit for purpose - state support network for all disadvantaged people).

I spent plenty of time in my life arguing and advocating for radical political change from a far left perspective, but never considered that immutable characteristics would start being suggested as a criteria for legislation / treatment from the state (and god help us if the far right ever got in power, should it become socially-allowable to legislate via identity!).  

I would also like to encourage people to go and listen to some of the above speakers (am most familiar with John McWhorter & Coleman Hughes out of the above) with as open a mind as possible, and think about the similarities between far left identity politics and far right identity politics.   In terms of the mode of their operation from a logical perspective, they are identical and it terrifies me.  

And as I point out above, the far left have been concerning me for a number of years now with the increased emphasis on Critical Race Theory and by extension the concept of institutional & systemic racism, but it's not actually them I'm worried about in the long term, it's the far right authoritarian reaction.

However, my worry may well be misplaced - which I accept - but that doesn't make the CRT ideology (which is riddled with correlation / causation fallacies) correct, regardless.  
 

Brilliantly put.

While I didn't have a similar political journey to you (I never went full communist!) I sit in the exact same boat as you currently. CRT is an absurd theory that does far more to divide than it ever does to heal and it is worrying to see it catching on. I've been amazed to see progressive people actively suggesting policies that amount to segregation when looked at properly (LGBT or BAME only halls at university for instance) and it concerns me the direction this sends us in.

[Mr.Carrow 376]

18 minutes ago, king canary said:

Brilliantly put.

While I didn't have a similar political journey to you (I never went full communist!) I sit in the exact same boat as you currently. CRT is an absurd theory that does far more to divide than it ever does to heal and it is worrying to see it catching on. I've been amazed to see progressive people actively suggesting policies that amount to segregation when looked at properly (LGBT or BAME only halls at university for instance) and it concerns me the direction this sends us in.

One of the problems with this stuff is that to try to explain the propagandistic methods behind it generally requires an essay. They are not stupid, that's for sure. I have a feeling that the people behind Woke identity politics are essentially "accelerationists": they believe that liberal society is irredeemable therefore they may as well take a hammer and chisel to the cracks (which we all know exist to one extent or another) and help it all fall apart quicker to hasten in the inevitable (in their utopian minds) perfectly fair society which will spring up in its place. And they use the fact that every sane person acknowledges that the cracks exist as justification for their divisive and destructive propoaganda (in other words taking advantage of the liberal principle of charity). It's essentially weaponising the best elements of humanity- charity, humility, empathy, assumption of good faith, desire for fairness etc- for totalitarian ends.

[horsefly 4,300]

44 minutes ago, Mr.Carrow said:

Many people don't realise that Orwell wrote 1984 about the far Left rather than fascism. He was chillingly correct.

Sorry but I've never met anyone who thought otherwise, this is another example of you setting up straw man claim that nobody argues. And since you claim to be a student of Orwell do feel free to tell us what you think he would have to say about a government, the controlling media, and people who constantly use the term "Woke" as a catch-all phrase to denigrate and dismiss those opinions with which they happen to disagree. Seems to me "Woke" would fit perfectly into the language of 1984.

Pleased to see that some of the recent contributions on this thread have dropped using "woke" as if it has any intellectual or meaningful content, as there is indeed a great deal of work to be done in engaging with the specific issues society confronts. As KC rightly says, it is entirely compatible to be concerned about aspects of "identity politics" while still acknowledging that there is a real problem with institutionalised racism. Personally,  I find myself as vociferous in the defence of free speech as much as I am in denouncing racism. Hence, I find myself in opposition to those who "no-platform" people like Jenny Murray and Germaine Greer, just as I find myself in opposition to racists. It really doesn't require much stretch of the imagination to recognise that there is nothing particularly difficult in holding such a position. What is crucial here is to attend to the specific arguments in each case, and one thing for sure in this respect is that using the term "woke" to lump together all and any "progressive" views only serves to obscure the detailed critical analysis required.

[Mr.Carrow 376]

22 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Sorry but I've never met anyone who thought otherwise, this is another example of you setting up straw man claim that nobody argues. And since you claim to be a student of Orwell do feel free to tell us what you think he would have to say about a government, the controlling media, and people who constantly use the term "Woke" as a catch-all phrase to denigrate and dismiss those opinions with which they happen to disagree. Seems to me "Woke" would fit perfectly into the language of 1984.

Pleased to see that some of the recent contributions on this thread have dropped using "woke" as if it has any intellectual or meaningful content, as there is indeed a great deal of work to be done in engaging with the specific issues society confronts. As KC rightly says, it is entirely compatible to be concerned about aspects of "identity politics" while still acknowledging that there is a real problem with institutionalised racism. Personally,  I find myself as vociferous in the defence of free speech as much as I am in denouncing racism. Hence, I find myself in opposition to those who "no-platform" people like Jenny Murray and Germaine Greer, just as I find myself in opposition to racists. It really doesn't require much stretch of the imagination to recognise that there is nothing particularly difficult in holding such a position. What is crucial here is to attend to the specific arguments in each case, and one thing for sure in this respect is that using the term "woke" to lump together all and any "progressive" views only serves to obscure the detailed critical analysis required.

Well that's encouraging as you're clearly a liberal and the main point of my argument is that if you are a liberal it needs to be understood that Woke is not just illiberal but expressly and openly anti-liberal. As for the Woke term, I've already listed the rather clumsy terms it encompasses and,as with most linguistic shorthand, it is just used for convenience. "Using the term Woke to lump together all and any progressive views". Jesus........ By that logic I am lumping all the liberals I've linked on this thread plus disaffected Lefties such as myself (I joined Labour to back Corbyn when he was first up for leadership) and Orly under the banner of "Woke"! Can you please stop assuming you know what I'm talking about and actually do some research?

[horsefly 4,300]

27 minutes ago, Mr.Carrow said:

Well that's encouraging as you're clearly a liberal and the main point of my argument is that if you are a liberal it needs to be understood that Woke is not just illiberal but expressly and openly anti-liberal. As for the Woke term, I've already listed the rather clumsy terms it encompasses and,as with most linguistic shorthand, it is just used for convenience. "Using the term Woke to lump together all and any progressive views". Jesus........ By that logic I am lumping all the liberals I've linked on this thread plus disaffected Lefties such as myself (I joined Labour to back Corbyn when he was first up for leadership) and Orly under the banner of "Woke"! Can you please stop assuming you know what I'm talking about and actually do some research?

No surprise you have still not made the slightest attempt to define "woke" in any meaningful way. To describe "woke" as "just a convenient term to group together clumsy terms" shows astonishing levels of ignorance and lack of self-awareness. You are clearly using it as a general pejorative slur against any views you happen to find disagreeable. This is exactly the way it is used by the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, and the Tory Government. It must be a proud moment in your life to find yourself a mouthpiece for these right-wing bastions of the reactionary ruling class. I'm sure Corbyn would be very proud to read the tripe you have written on this thread.

[Mr.Carrow 376]

14 minutes ago, horsefly said:

No surprise you have still not made the slightest attempt to define "woke" in any meaningful way. To describe "woke" as "just a convenient term to group together clumsy terms" shows astonishing levels of ignorance and lack of self-awareness. You are clearly using it as a general pejorative slur against any views you happen to find disagreeable. This is exactly the way it is used by the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, and the Tory Government. It must be a proud moment in your life to find yourself a mouthpiece for these right-wing bastions of the reactionary ruling class. I'm sure Corbyn would be very proud to read the tripe you have written on this thread.

This from an earlier post of mine: "intersectionality/identity politics/grievance culture/cancel culture/reified postmodernism (all come under the general banner of "Woke")". Your comprehension skills are at about the same level as your political knowledge.

[horsefly 4,300]

1 minute ago, Mr.Carrow said:

This from an earlier post of mine: "intersectionality/identity politics/grievance culture/cancel culture/reified postmodernism (all come under the general banner of "Woke")". Your comprehension skills are at about the same level as your political knowledge.

Well I really needn't add anything more, thanks for posting this utterly absurd quote. What a way to prove how intellectually impoverished you are. Lump in all these diverse theories and claims under one pejorative flabby term used by the far right to dismiss anything "disagreeable" that you can't be bothered to address.  And then, without the slightest sense of irony you had the unashamed audacity to claim that debate requires "nuance" and "complexity". Truly risible levels of contradiction and ignorance. Frankly I refuse to waste any more time responding to your ridiculous nonsense; time to mark some students' essays where I can at least guarantee not one of them will be foolish enough to drop in the word "woke" as if it carried any intellectual value whatsoever.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

3 hours ago, Mr.Carrow said:

What does that sand taste like BF? The culture war is here whether you like it or not and at some point in the next few years you will have an "aha" moment. It's what has happened to the thousands of liberals now speaking out. Most didn't particularly want to but once you've seen something, you can't unsee it. Many people don't realise that Orwell wrote 1984 about the far Left rather than fascism. He was chillingly correct.

Orwell wrote the book against Stalinism rather than the far left.

He had no concept of what the Soviet Union would look like in 1980 when he wrote it.

And the Soviet Union was more Conservative than any Government the UK has ever had.

[Mr.Carrow 376]

30 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Well I really needn't add anything more, thanks for posting this utterly absurd quote. What a way to prove how intellectually impoverished you are. Lump in all these diverse theories and claims under one pejorative flabby term used by the far right to dismiss anything "disagreeable" that you can't be bothered to address.  And then, without the slightest sense of irony you had the unashamed audacity to claim that debate requires "nuance" and "complexity". Truly risible levels of contradiction and ignorance. Frankly I refuse to waste any more time responding to your ridiculous nonsense; time to mark some students' essays where I can at least guarantee not one of them will be foolish enough to drop in the word "woke" as if it carried any intellectual value whatsoever.

I actually agree with you that it's regrettably clumsy. Unfortunately, like most people I don't have the time to pompously define  every single nuance of my position when most people who are even vaguely informed know exactly what I mean by Woke. It's actually a well known debating trick to obfuscate over obtuse definitional points to deflect from the fact that you are floundering in your argument. That you refuse to leave your echo chamber is your problem not mine. And I have no idea what those outlets are saying because I've never read them, however it is probably a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day. If you think that anything talked about on "the right" is automatically wrong then I think that defines your ideological blinkers rather nicely. 

[Badger 2,405]

4 hours ago, Mr.Carrow said:

Many people don't realise that Orwell wrote 1984 about the far Left rather than fascism. He was chillingly correct.

I think that you are misinformed. Orwell did not write 1984 about the the far Left (nor Animal Farm for that matter: it was a critique of totalitarianism, particularly that of Stalin, who was essentially a Fascist. It was a critique of the power of the state and totalitarianism.

I think that you have fallen  for the old cliches that the right circulate about this, just as they argue that Hitler was a socialist because "the Nazis" was short form for "national socialists." 

[Van wink 2,994]

4 hours ago, king canary said:

Brilliantly put.

While I didn't have a similar political journey to you (I never went full communist!) I sit in the exact same boat as you currently. CRT is an absurd theory that does far more to divide than it ever does to heal and it is worrying to see it catching on. I've been amazed to see progressive people actively suggesting policies that amount to segregation when looked at properly (LGBT or BAME only halls at university for instance) and it concerns me the direction this sends us in.

Well said KC

[Mr.Carrow 376]

7 hours ago, Badger said:

I think that you are misinformed. Orwell did not write 1984 about the the far Left (nor Animal Farm for that matter: it was a critique of totalitarianism, particularly that of Stalin, who was essentially a Fascist. It was a critique of the power of the state and totalitarianism.

I think that you have fallen  for the old cliches that the right circulate about this, just as they argue that Hitler was a socialist because "the Nazis" was short form for "national socialists." 

Large sections of the far Left (including the current Woke Left) are Totalitarian. Conflating Stalin (and I presume Mao, Pol Pot etc) with Fascism is as dumb as conflating Hitler with Socialism although there are certainly some points of similarity to both, largely top down totalitarian coercion. I'm sure you know of Horseshoe theory and whilst it isn't perfect I think it's pretty accurate.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Mr.Carrow

[Herman 9,767]

Without using the word "woke", what did you think of the report Mr C?

[Badger 2,405]

4 hours ago, Mr.Carrow said:

Large sections of the far Left (including the current Woke Left) are Totalitarian. Conflating Stalin (and I presume Mao, Pol Pot etc) with Fascism is as dumb as conflating Hitler with Socialism although there are certainly some points of similarity to both, largely top down totalitarian coercion. I'm sure you know of Horseshoe theory and whilst it isn't perfect I think it's pretty accurate.

1. In what ways are Stalin, Mao etc NOT fascist?

2. Horseshoe theory is a new name to an old theory. The older version of the theory was discredited as long ago as the 1980s.

3. Logic, Mr C, Logic! One the one hand you say conflating Stalin with fascism is "dumb," but in the next breadth describe Horseshoe theory as "pretty accurate!" Given that the Horseshoe theory suggests that the far left and far right resemble each other closely, it is difficult to see why pointing out similarities is dumb? Perhaps you don't understand the theory and just parrot out what you have been encouraged to believe?

The truth of the matter is quite simple: Stalin, like Hitler, was a fascist. It is failure to recognise this simple truth that encourages platitudinous thinking like "horseshoe theory." 

Getting back to the point, Orwell was not criticising the left in Animal Farm, as you say, he was a socialist himself. Orwell's point was that a party originating on the left had been taken over by and had been fundamentally changed using techniques such as "double-speak." The  parallels with Hitler again, are striking who, in effect took over the German Workers party for his own, very different, ends. Orwell was part of a general movement of the left away from Stalin, which gathered huge momentum during the 1950s, when many left the communist party as the truth about what it had become emerged.

It is lack of understanding of history that gives credence to some, at least, of shallow theories like the "horseshoe."

[Badger 2,405]

13 hours ago, keelansgrandad said:

Orwell wrote the book against Stalinism rather than the far left.

He had no concept of what the Soviet Union would look like in 1980 when he wrote it.

And the Soviet Union was more Conservative than any Government the UK has ever had.

Stalin was a fascist: pure and simple. I have not seen any definition of fascism into which he does not fit. 

[king canary 7,607]

Stalin was a fascist and also a communist which rather suggests horseshoe theory might have something going for it.

[king canary 7,607]

23 minutes ago, Badger said:

1. In what ways are Stalin, Mao etc NOT fascist?

2. Horseshoe theory is a new name to an old theory. The older version of the theory was discredited as long ago as the 1980s.

3. Logic, Mr C, Logic! One the one hand you say conflating Stalin with fascism is "dumb," but in the next breadth describe Horseshoe theory as "pretty accurate!" Given that the Horseshoe theory suggests that the far left and far right resemble each other closely, it is difficult to see why pointing out similarities is dumb? Perhaps you don't understand the theory and just parrot out what you have been encouraged to believe?

The truth of the matter is quite simple: Stalin, like Hitler, was a fascist. It is failure to recognise this simple truth that encourages platitudinous thinking like "horseshoe theory." 

Getting back to the point, Orwell was not criticising the left in Animal Farm, as you say, he was a socialist himself. Orwell's point was that a party originating on the left had been taken over by and had been fundamentally changed using techniques such as "double-speak." The  parallels with Hitler again, are striking who, in effect took over the German Workers party for his own, very different, ends. Orwell was part of a general movement of the left away from Stalin, which gathered huge momentum during the 1950s, when many left the communist party as the truth about what it had become emerged.

It is lack of understanding of history that gives credence to some, at least, of shallow theories like the "horseshoe."

Sounds like we're getting a bit close to 'no true scotsmanning' communism to be honest.

[kick it off 1,952]

20 minutes ago, Badger said:

Stalin was a fascist: pure and simple. I have not seen any definition of fascism into which he does not fit. 

100%. Anybody disagreeing with that needs to take themselves on a little trip to Gdansk once the pandemic is over, and have a look at the Solidarność museum. Watch the video of the tanks literally crushing protestors and striking workers to death, and then tell me that Stalin and the wider Soviet Union wasn't fascist.

Fascinating place situated near the site of the shipyard that Lech Walesa famously leapt over the wall and set the wheels in motion for the eventual fall of the Iron Curtain. He's one of my absolute heroes for the courage he showed over the years. One of history's often overlooked but critically important figures.

Edited April 13, 2021 by kick it off

[Badger 2,405]

25 minutes ago, king canary said:

Stalin was a fascist and also a communist which rather suggests horseshoe theory might have something going for it.

In what ways was Stalin a communist? He eliminated the communists in the party as part of his rise to power, in the same way that Hitler got rid of the left-wing elements in the German Workers Party. You must have heard of Stalin's purges in the 20s and 30s when he got rid of the communists in the USSR?

e.g. One of the fundamentals of communism is that it replaces the nation state a largely capitalist creation with class-based politics of the pressed against the oppressor. Yet, Stalin fought the "Great Patriotic War" against Hitler + behaved as an ultra-nationalist after his power was secure.

e.g. The workers in the USSR were as oppressed under Stalin as they had been under the Tsars - hardly consistent with communism.

e.g. A  central premise of Marxism is that the state "withers away and dies" yet under Stalin, the state in the USSR was stronger than it had ever been.

Etc, etc.

 

[Badger 2,405]

33 minutes ago, king canary said:

Sounds like we're getting a bit close to 'no true scotsmanning' communism to be honest.

Not really. You look at what something is and then you match those characteristics to what exists to see if it fits.

Soviet "communism" was political pragmatism but as I imagine you are aware, Russia was expected to be the last place where you would expect to find communism: they had barely started their capitalist phase.

[king canary 7,607]

3 hours ago, kick it off said:

100%. Anybody disagreeing with that needs to take themselves on a little trip to Gdansk once the pandemic is over, and have a look at the Solidarność museum. Watch the video of the tanks literally crushing protestors and striking workers to death, and then tell me that Stalin and the wider Soviet Union wasn't fascist.

Fascinating place situated near the site of the shipyard that Lech Walesa famously leapt over the wall and set the wheels in motion for the eventual fall of the Iron Curtain. He's one of my absolute heroes for the courage he showed over the years. One of history's often overlooked but critically important figures.

So if you start killing protestors that stops you being a communist? 

[PurpleCanary 5,562]

The thing about the Horseshoe notion ('theory' is too big a word for it) is that I have only ever seen it used by the right to 'prove' that communism is as bad as fascism. I have never seen it used by those same people to admit fascism is as bad as communism.

The other point, which was made by the not-leftwing French philosopher and writer Raymond Aron decades ago, is that at least in theory there is a fundamental difference between those two extremes. Communism, however nasty it turns out in practice (as with Stalin), is fundamentally a utopian creed, and there is the usually forlorn hope that some good will come of it in practice.

Whereas fascism is fundamentally an autocratic and brutal creed, and the whole point of it is to turn out exactly like that in practice. Which is why it always does and always will do.

[king canary 7,607]

15 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

The thing about the Horseshoe notion ('theory' is too big a word for it) is that I have only ever seen it used by the right to 'prove' that communism is as bad as fascism. I have never seen it used by those same people to admit fascism is as bad as communism.

The other point, which was made by the not-leftwing French philosopher and writer Raymond Aron decades ago, is that at least in theory there is a fundamental difference between those two extremes. Communism, however nasty it turns out in practice (as with Stalin), is fundamentally a utopian creed, and there is the usually forlorn hope that some good will come of it in practice.

Whereas fascism is fundamentally an autocratic and brutal creed, and the whole point of it is to turn out exactly like that in practice. Which is why it always does and always will do.

Really? I generally see it used by centrist types to point out the issues with both ends of the spectrum.

Also that difference you mention is often where the no true Scotsman thing comes in- everyone from China to the Soviet Union to North Korea are never actually 'really communists.' Coincidentally its always been the wrong people doing the communism that are the problem, not the ideology itself.

[Badger 2,405]

31 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Communism, however nasty it turns out in practice

Except for "primitive communism" it has never really existed on a significant scale. Some of the Israeli Kibbutz were partially organised upon Communist lines but never a whole society.

This is to be expected: it is fundamental to Marxism that it will emerge from the ashes of capitalism. Britain and the United States are likely to be amongst the areas where the first communist societies emerge.

[Badger 2,405]

4 minutes ago, king canary said:

everyone from China to the Soviet Union to North Korea are never actually 'really communists.'

Of course not - none of them could be Communist, they had never been through the capitalist phase. It was pure political pragmatism by Lenin and goes back to the split of the Russian Marxist party* in 1903.

*(Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party - social democracy had a different meaning back then, as did liberalism)

[horsefly 4,300]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/daunte-wright-shooting-how-air-fresheners-became-pretext-for-police-to-stop-black-drivers/ar-BB1fzX4D?ocid=msedgntp

Car air fresheners – scented cardboard, often in tree shapes, with a string to wrap around rear view mirrors – are cheap, efficient, and everywhere. They are at gas station counters, near the registers in grocery and hardware stores, and potentially illegal depending on the state.

The lack of clarity over state and local traffic laws for something so ubiquitous – deemed an “obstruction” in many jurisdictions – has created dozens of cases where police officers use air fresheners as a “pretext” to pull over drivers, regardless of the law, calcifying racial disparities in arrests and within the criminal justice system.

Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by an officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis, during a traffic stop on Monday.

His mother Katie Wright said her son called her to tell her he believed police had stopped him for an air freshener hanging in his rear-view mirror.

Brooklyn Center Police Department chief Tim Gannon told reporters on Monday that police stopped him for expired tags and an outstanding misdemeanour warrant.

More than 50,000 drivers are pulled over in a traffic stop every day in the US, according to the Stanford Open Policing Project.

The project has found that police disproportionately stop Black drivers at a higher rate compared to white drivers, and that Black drivers are 20 per cent more likely to get a ticket than white drivers.

In a peer-reviewed study in 2020 analysing 100 million traffic stops across the US, the project found that Black drivers are 1.5 to 2 times as likely to be searched during the stop, while they were less likely to be carrying drugs, guns or other illegal materials compared to white drivers.

Traffic stops in neighbouring Minneapolis have also revealed stark racial disparities.

From 1 June 2017 to 31 May 2019, 54 per cent of the nearly 7,000 traffic stops in Minneapolis for “equipment violations” involved Black drivers – despite Black residents making up roughly 19 per cent of the city’s population.

White residents, who constitute 65 per cent of the city’s population, accounted for only one third of all stops within that same time frame.

Of the 805 stops that included a search, 75 per cent involved Black drivers.

The ACLU of Minnesota said it has “deep concerns” in Mr Wright’s killing over “dangling air fresheners as an excuse for making a pretextual stop, something police do all too often to target Black people.”

The organisation has called for an immediate, transparent and independent investigation into the killing.

“While we are waiting to learn more, we must reiterate that police violence and killings of people of colour must end, as must the over-policing and racial profiling that are endemic to our white supremacist system of policing,” the ACLU said.

In 1996, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that pretextual stops are constitutional, as long as police officers can point to an actual violation of a traffic law – regardless of their motivation for the stop.

But in 2014, the Supreme Court went even further, appearing to undermine the axiom “ignorance of the law is no excuse” in the face of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure and requires law enforcement to issue a search warrant supported by probable cause.

The court determined that any “reasonable mistake” can justify a stop.

In 2009, during a traffic stop for one broken tail light in North Carolina, an officer went on to search the car, finding cocaine. The driver and passenger pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking, a felony. But state law does not explicitly say that a broken tail light is a crime. Following appeals, the nation’s high court ruled that “the mistake of law was reasonable, there was reasonable suspicion justifying the stop under the Fourth Amendment”.

“While the maxim ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’ correctly implies that the state cannot impose punishment based on a mistake of law, it does not mean a reasonable mistake of law cannot justify an investigatory stop,” the court said.

But in case after case, air fresheners repeatedly wind up in courts.

In 2010, a federal judge in Arkansas ruled that a police officer had engaged in a pattern of racially profiling Latino drivers by pointing to their history of citing air fresheners in police reports as the basis for the stops.

In 2015, an officer in the Village of East Troy in Wisconsin pulled over a driver for an air freshener the officer believed was illegal. It was not.

A judge even admitted that “there must be a zillion cars driving around” with air fresheners on their rearview mirrors.

“Not very many of them would get stopped by the traffic officer,” the judge said. “They’ve got better things to do.”

Nevertheless, the state Supreme Court ruled that the charges stemming from the marijuana allegedly found in the car during the search were reasonable, despite the circumstances of their discovery.

In 2018, Napoleon Jackson was stopped by an officer while driving in Chicago. A search of the car allegedly discovered a loaded rifle and two handguns. But the officer did not know they were there until he had pulled him over for the “tree-shaped air freshener” on his rearview mirror.

Last year, a three-judge panel on a federal appeals court ruled that although a lower court “couched its analysis in terms of probable cause, all that is required for a traffic stop is reasonable suspicion”.

“Even so, because the officer had an articulable and objective basis for suspecting that the air freshener obstructed Jackson’s clear view in violation of the city municipal code, the stop was lawful,” according to the ruling.

Mr Jackson was sentenced to nine months in prison, and his passenger Kittrell Freeman was sentenced to five years.

Last year, La Paz County Sheriff’s Deputy Eli Max was fired from the Arizona agency after he was filmed during a 2019 traffic stop – after stopping a Black driver for a tree-shaped air freshener.

Mr Max pulled over 22-year-old Phillip Colbert for roughly 40 minutes, which Mr Colbert filmed on his phone.

The video shows Mr Max telling Mr Colbert to get out of the car, asking him eight times whether he smokes marijuana and if he had any cocaine or heroin in the car, and insisting Mr Colbert is being “deceptive”.

Mr Colbert eventually sued the sheriff’s department and settled for $15,000.

Obviously nothing is this article consitutes evidence for a problem with institutionalised racism, and I apologise profusely for being so "woke" as to think the statistics and experiences described here are anything other than coincidental events.

[king canary 7,607]

11 minutes ago, Badger said:

Of course not - none of them could be Communist, they had never been through the capitalist phase. It was pure political pragmatism by Lenin and goes back to the split of the Russian Marxist party* in 1903.

*(Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party - social democracy had a different meaning back then, as did liberalism)

So it is no true scotsman then.

Glad we got there eventually. 

[PurpleCanary 5,562]

12 minutes ago, king canary said:

Really? I generally see it used by centrist types to point out the issues with both ends of the spectrum.

Also that difference you mention is often where the no true Scotsman thing comes in- everyone from China to the Soviet Union to North Korea are never actually 'really communists.' Coincidentally its always been the wrong people doing the communism that are the problem, not the ideology itself.

Yes, sometimes it is just the wrong people, but there is also the scenario in which good people have found themselves forced by circumstances to water down or even abandon the theory, and act autocratically. Is it possible to create and run a truly communist society in the middle of a capitaist world, human nature being what it is?

The collapse of the Soviet bloc was in part caused by the entrancing glimpses of western capitalism people in the east got. Of course once they found themselves part of western capitalism they realised they had seen only the glamorous bits and not the unlovely underside.

[ricardo 7,395]

19 minutes ago, Badger said:

 

This is to be expected: it is fundamental to Marxism that it will emerge from the ashes of capitalism. Britain and the United States are likely to be amongst the areas where the first communist societies emerge.

That mere fact that it didn't  emerge from the more advanced capitalist economies ought to lead you to question basic Marxist theory. It seems to me to be a bit like a religion that is always awaiting the true Messiah.