LukeS26 (He/They)
(He/They)
I know the Daily Mail is a British publication so they need to be more careful about libel, but it’s kinda crazy that the fucking Daily Mail is being so careful not to explicitly call him a nazi or white supremacist when he had a full on tatoo of Hitler on his chest, but so many actual generally respected papers here in the US have basically straight up called Mangione guilty. When the Daily Mail is doing a better job than you at something you should probably reflect lol.
join-lemmy.org has a list of instances you can join. If you just want to look through a list that’s a great place to browse.
If you’re looking for specific recommendations I’d say lemm.ee is great in terms of moderation, they don’t overmoderate and tend not to defederate from many places so users can kinda choose themselves whether or not to block an instance. Dbzer0 is similar, it’s the instance with the big piracy community which .world blocked, and the admin is also great.
Both of those are in the top 10 communities in terms of size though iirc, which ideally people would avoid the biggest instances and join smaller ones to try and prevent centralization like what happened with .world communities.
Lemmy.zip is also great from what I’ve heard, and while it’s not small, it’s top 20 instead of top 10 at least.
I’ve said this a few places now, but I’m pretty sure everyone has situations where they believe killing someone is justified. It could be the death penalty, or removing a dictator, self defence, whatever. And everyone will have some they think are wrong that others don’t. I’d obviously want to avoid it as often as possible, and in instances where there is another viable alternative I’d prefer that to be taken, but there are plenty of situations where unfortunately there is no other method. I think relying on any rigid set of rules to definitively say something is wrong or right in all contexts is flawed. Laws shouldn’t be some ultimate measure of morality, and things that should generally be unacceptable can still have exceptions, because nothing exists in a vacuum and the judgement of an action can’t be done without understanding that context.
I mean .world 100% sucks lol, and people should definitely move off it, but I’d also like people to move off .ml or any other general purpose instance since centralization on any one instance can cause issues imo. I’m considering switching off of .ee for the same reason. I think it makes more sense to have specific instances for specific things, so that the admins of one instance can have more domain specific knowledge ideally.
.world specifically does seem like they can’t go more than a few weeks without some kind of drama though lol.
I think he’s just kinda an ordinary person who grew up privileged. He has fairly standard techbro style libertarian beliefs, but he also has criticisms of some of the influencers he watches, and didn’t seem to like Peterson very much. He also seems to be an environmentalist, and I think he seemed to have become more anti-corporation based on the manifesto released (obviously assuming he did it).
Him being a privileged but ordinary guy who still got radicalized reflects a lot more strongly on the plight of everyone who isn’t one of the owner class. It doesn’t matter that he was relatively wealthy, he still wasn’t one of them.
Like I said in another thread too, every state (as in nation, not US states), uses violence as an answer all the time. Police violence against criminals or protesters, military violence against other states, death penalties against those deemed too dangerous to live, prisons in general. So what is it about state sanctioned violence that is considered moral by most people who would also decry individual violence as immoral? Even Brian Thompson oversaw an increase in claim denials from ~10% to ~30%. How many people did that kill, or torture, or cause suffering? Obviously a lot of people have already talked about social murder, but again, why is social murder more justified? Just because it’s legal and allowed by the state?
Laws aren’t some inherent measure of morality, and states don’t have some inherent sense of justice that is superior to that of their people. Just look at slavery, it was fully legal and rescuing slaves was a crime. That didn’t make it moral, or the abolitionists who ran the underground railroad immoral. Or look at prohibition, or the current version we have with the war on drugs. What makes someone indulging in a vice like weed, or mushrooms, or honestly even something more addictive like cocaine be guilty of a crime, when someone indulging in alcohol, or cigarettes, or caffeine, or sugar isn’t? And what makes someone doing that on their own, assuming they don’t harm others because of it, worse in the eyes of the law than someone who gambles?
In order to see the imbalance of power and violence, you only need to look at the recourse each party has for violence by the other. Look at what happened when an individual committed violence against UHC by killing the CEO. There was a national manhunt, tens of thousands of dollars offered in rewards for finding them, and once a suspect was arrested they were humiliated by the police, put in jail to be held until trial, and are likely facing life in prison if they are convicted. None of that would happen to any of those responsible for a wrongful death due to an illegally denied claim. In that case, in order to get recourse, the family would need to sue the company, which takes a crazy amount of time, money, and effort. And if by the end of it they win, what punishment would UHC face? The CEO wouldn’t be given jail time for murder or manslaughter. The company wouldn’t be broken up or shut down. At most you’d get some money, and they’d maybe have to pay a fine to the government. During the lawsuit the CEO and board would be free to continue business as normal, killing or hurting who knows how many people while doing so.
So obviously the government, corporations, politicians, and billionaires will denounce this as a “tragedy”, a “horrible act of violence”. Those celebrating in it are “advocating violence” or simply the minority, existing in “dark corners of the internet”. Because admitting that violence is an acceptable strategy means they’d accept it turned upon them, instead of being the sole group allowed to use it as they see fit.
This isn’t necessarily me advocating for violence either, as I think in general neither one should be accepted, no matter if it’s done by an individual or a state. But the legality of that violence is also not what should determine its morality, and there are exceptions to every rule. Personally I consider myself a pacifist. I’m vegan, I would go to jail before being drafted because I would never want to serve in a war, and obviously like most people I would always prefer a non violent answer to a conflict if possible. But things don’t always work out that way, and it’s nonsensical that anyone would consider Brian Thompson, or any other CEO of a major company, better or more morally acceptable than the one who killed him. State approved violence, legal violence, is not and should not be seen as any more acceptable or moral.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto
Klippenstein is an independent journalist who has been really good at reporting on this whole story, so I trust that this is the actual manifesto the police have.
With Mangione’s action having the “capability to inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence,” the NYPD encouraged companies to increase precautions and security for executives.
Isn’t this straight up saying that Mangione is the assassin? Obviously innocent until proven guilty has always been bullshit, but where’s the bare minimum “alleged” at?
