The Giant Beastcast: Episode 294

@thej6m: Kyle Rittenhouse says hello.

@av_gamer: kiss on the cheek and a happy birthday to you. Couldn't have said it better myself.

By the way, if I don't see a post from staff here directly telling us that the accounts that are, for some reason, bringing up the protests about "police brutality" or complaining about "politics" have been banned entirely, I'm going to assume that they're welcome here. I know that you all are reading this. It's no longer and has never been enough to silently brush them aside. You need to actively curate. I've seen enough of this garbage on comments here over the years, and I'm always disgusted when I read them. Please step up. I don't mean to make you personally feel bad, because I genuinely do love you all, but enough is enough. Business is no longer a valid reason to keep these assholes around.

@thej6m: being a cry baby about an election you lost is absolutely the same thing as saying enough is enough to cops killing persons of color with impunity you're so right.

@av_gamer: @dannyglover: The amount of gross racist usernames I've seen in CoD Cold War is astonishing. Thanks Activision for your BLM support message for a couple of weeks. It looks like you really were serious about discrimination.

@thej6m:

Ok. Let’s see how they measure up:

-The Capitol riot was a violent event perpetrated by a group containing armed individuals who went to the Capitol building with the intent of disrupting by force the ratification of the next duly elected US President.

-The rioters were largely motivated by conspiracy theory's and political rhetoric that democracy is being undermined. This rhetoric is commonly repeated, directly encouraged or pointedly not denied by the sitting president.

-Many of the rioters genuinely believe the election was, by subterfuge stolen from the Republican candidate but they are categorically, demonstrably wrong: The courts and electoral apparatus of the United States repeatedly and thoroughly avow that the Democratic candidate won and that the incidence of fraud was far too low to change the result.

—-

-The Black Lives Matter movement is not a singular event but a continuing combination of activism, including protests (the vast majority of which are peaceful) with the intent of encouraging, pressuring or otherwise ushering in laws and systemic reforms to reduce the number of people of colour killed by police and to increase accountability for police violence in general.

-The US movement is largely motivated by the mistreatment of people of colour to a greater or lesser extent for the entire history of the United States continuing into the present day, often in the form of police violence.

- Many of the protesters genuinely believe that people of colour are arrested, killed by law enforcement, and incarcerated at a much higher rate than white people in the US (and other countries) as well as receiving more severe punishments for the same crimes and they are categorically, demonstrably right: Publicly available statistics from the USA’s own criminal justice system, independent studies, video evidence, press reporting and first hand accounts substantiate accusations of the racism inherent throughout American policing.

I believe comparisons are erroneous because BLM is a morally justified movement for the betterment of society and the Capitol riot was a morally corrupt attempt at insurrection.

Of course it can be argued that these events are comparable in that they are both groups of people who have banded together to stand up for what they believe in but that comparison strikes me as insultingly surface level. It’s akin to conflating being stabbed and having surgery because both involve being cut with a knife. Context is always vital when rendering moral judgements.

You, of course must decide for yourself.

@thej6m: There are at least three very clear differences.

1. As you point out, the protests for BLM had a good reason behind them, they were driven by a systemic attack on black people in this country by the police force. Contrast that with a bunch of people angry that they didn't get their way in an election, and were fed a bunch of lies about election fraud. Lashing out when people are routinely being killed because of the color of their skin is way more understandable than lashing out because an election didn't go the way you want. Just because both end up with violence doesn't mean they're equivalent at all.

2. Much (maybe most, but I don't have the research to prove that) of the violence at the BLM protests was instigated by police forces. If you'd like, I can link you to twitter threads with thousands of examples of the police attacking peacefully protesting people, thus turning a protest into something else. Yes, there were incidents of assholes in the protests doing things as well, but if you compare videos of yesterday's police interactions with those of the BLM protests, you'll find a world of difference. Most of the videos of violence from BLM start with police pushing crowds out of areas. That's not what happened yesterday. The insurrectionists pushed into the police and stormed the Capitol, and the police didn't really push back. (Police got more aggressive yesterday at night, but that was well after the violence had started).

3. There's a mile of difference between people breaking windows on storefronts in a downtown area and people storming the US Capitol. One we see happen many times a year, even just when a city wins a championship. The other hasn't happened on the scale it did yesterday for more than a hundred years. What was the goal of people yesterday? If they had gotten their hands on Pelosi or Schumer, what do you think would have happened? I'm not saying I love people breaking into stores and burning cars, but I understand how that can happen during a mass event. Storming the Capitol, though? That's in a completely different league.

You know I'm almost starting to think that living in the richest most powerful country in history but being structurally constrained from using that power to help anyone, fix any problem, or accomplish literally anything has gradually driven everyone in America insane.

Except for me of course, I have only become more and more powerfully sane

@thej6m: BLM was an attempt to make the public and the government pay attention to their message. This was a direct attack on the government itself to prevent it from functioning. It's not that difficult.

I don't have words to express stuff so I'm going to say thank you Beastcast for
having the guts to fight the good fight and address things without pulling punches,
and also voice my concern for Jeff's pinball machine problem.

@thej6m: BLM was an attempt to make the public and the government pay attention to their message. This was a direct attack on the government itself to prevent it from functioning.

Agreeing strongly that something needs to change with how things like this are handled.

About to start listening to this episode so I haven't heard what's said in it yet, but generally speaking I think the staff have made good steps forward when it comes to actually talking about these issues. That is a very welcome change because even if I trust the staff to be good people, there are plenty of others who will mindlessly think you believe in the same hateful rhetoric as them if you don't directly tell them otherwise. That may sound a bit ridiculous but I saw that happen constantly back when Gamergate was in full swing, and even before; always felt like people listened to the podcasts week after weeks for years and just assumed the staff were their buds who bought into the same shit. And that assumption that is now much less viable for them than it was years back, and I'm very thankful for that.

But.. that just means every time I click into the comments on something here and see absolute garbage mixed in it's just even more disappointing. People aren't going to agree on serious issues 100% of the time, sure, but it feels like there's some real basic stuff that the ball gets dropped on when it comes to what viewpoints are allowed here. I assume there's a lot more bad stuff that gets dealt with, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying nothing is done, I know effort goes into moderating and I don't doubt their intentions. But it still feels visibly lacking just about every time I look at comments and that's a bad sign.

We don't need people comparing what happened this week to BLM here. That should pretty obviously be the kind of person who isn't contributing anything to a conversation except discomfort, while wasting the time and effort of others who actually try to engage with them in good faith. There are good well thought out comments on this page that nobody should have needed to spend time typing, because the person they're explaining things to should not have been able to post what they did to begin with.

I really need a film and 40s for Dick Tracy.

Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and The Storming the Capitol Building.

One day a kid will read about these two events much like we all read through 19th and 20th Century history. Perhaps it will say something like, anarchic right wingers and left wingers pushed everyone's political patience to breaking point.

@thej6m: The insurrection was not a protest against election results. It was an attempt to toss Democracy out the window and keep their guy in power, and it was led and encouraged by our current President.

It's not remotely comparable to protests against police murdering innocent people.

Does Giant Bomb have such little faith in their community to be good citizens?

Hey Vinny, we love you too, man, and we definitely do give a shit about your guys’ inside baseball.

glad Alex is watching Serial Experiments: Lain, not many of those out there, but they exist. It was a tonal trend of that era. My favorite personally was Boogiepop Phantom. Since it was a slice of a bigger story released out of context, it was both interesting and undecipherable.

I know the topic on hand is very serious, but Alex's comment on Democracy Demolition Night had me snorting coffee out my nose hahahahahah keep up the great work, this kind of discussion is why I support Giant Bomb!

Still listening but appreciated both the intro and the inside baseball. Take care guys!

Oh I’m really excited about Vinny playing 13 sentinels I hope he finishes it, it is way longer than I thought it would be (35 hours) but it was all pretty good. I think he’s really gonna love to hate the ending.

To preface, I'm not American. I live in a country where your president elect would be considered right wing - you know, the rest of the world.

Thankyou for finally breaking the no politics rule - what happened was disgusting and shows how badly the insanity of conspiracy theories has spread in your country. The people who believe it need to be removed from society - your country is too broken for forgiveness. The forgiveness is what had led to them continouing to push the boundaries - punishment has to happen swiftly and aggressively if you ever want to recover democracy.

The anger and disappointment you gentlemen expressed is what I have been radiating in my department for the past few days. The curtain has been pulled back for the world to see just how broken our democracy is. Well said gentleman.

You guys rock! Thanks for speaking up about this because the situation is so heinous and dire. I don't have much to add since posting feels like the least productive thing to do about all this. It's maybe a sign that civility is failing us all. And yet even though it feels like our country is drowning in darkness like a damn Twilight Zone episode, you 3 managed to still give me some much needed laughter in this episode. Thank you and keep up the great work!

Americans need to stop referring to "third-world" countries in this denigrating way. I'm from Bangladesh and we've in our ~50 year history (granted that's pretty short) never had an act of domestic terrorism where people stormed the Parliament. I'm not saying we don't have problems because we absolutely do, but this idea of American exceptionalism needs to die in a fire. You could say maybe this "we are better than them" attitude led you here in the first place.

Again, I know it was not said with malicious intent. In the heat of the moment, you sometimes say some shit. This is more of about being cognizant of these attitudes and pointing them out when it comes up.

Anyone trying to compare or defend the events of the attempted insurrection on the 6th in any way shape or form can fuck right off. GET HELP.

<3 GB Thank you

This is the only thing I'd like to point out that bothered me (especially when Alex just acknowledged that the US has done plenty of this to "third world countries") -- other than that, I'm very happy that the crew is able to speak out about their feelings on what's going on.

Loved the inside baseball and fuck fascists

Lifelong American here, you are 100% correct to call this out.

@vinny I for one cant get enough of the personal/BTS shit. If anything u guys dont do enough of it.

Absolutely disgusted by some of the opinions expressed in this podcast. Vinny how many times do we have to tell you we love inside baseball talk. Stop denigrating inside baseball talk! The Hotspot revival is massively popular for a reason!

Everything else, fully on board with.

Hugs, guys. It's crazy bullshit going on. You can't change these people's minds. My solution is to eject these garbage humans into space.

@thej6m:I'm right there with you. Both displays of rioting were not good for the country. We have to deescalate everything that is happening. Stop the hyper partisan rhetoric on both sides. That being said I appreciate all the GB crew and thank you for everything you do.

@trailnix: Thanks for speaking up, that definitely stood out to me as well.

@darknimesis: peace out, good riddance

@dannyglover: Did you miss the second round of riots that were caused by a man committing suicide, after committing a murder, and social media trolls then lying and saying the cops shot him and telling people to take to the streets? Apparently so. And I wouldnt blame you, because it was barely reported.

And thats the point. Violent extremism leads to more violent extremism. The supposed righteousness of the cause is irrelevant, because it takes a few hours for the cause to disappear and for rage to take over.

But continue to defend violence if it fits your ideology, if that makes you happy. I'll continue to condemn all violence.

Love you Beastcast! Thank you! <3

Chickenshit heel, the Miz, and the biggest bullshitter in wrestling, Stephanie McMahon, claim their intergender tag team championship loss to "dog-shit cheaters" Charlottekane last week was a bunch of horseshit; vowing never to allow that batshit GM Mick Foley to turn a blind eye to the pyromaniacal Demon's ape shit antics ever again.

Nothing like the impassioned and much needed venting of the Beastcast crew to bring out the absolute trash in the comments. To anyone saying their comments complaining about BLM, or defending the terrorists at the capitol, are falling on deaf ears, naw. We hear you and it's good to know who you are, and that you're leaving the site.

Otherwise, I don't comment much, if ever, but this episode brought it out of me. I'm glad the crew vents when they can. I'm glad the crew debates. I'm more glad the crew let us know where they stand, too.

Damn. Bakalar is mad. I've never seen him this angry, and he has all the reason to be angry. What happened on the 6th was atrocious, seditious and never before seen on american soil. I'm not american but I got angry, sad and confused about what was happening. Never thought they would be able to do this (where were the police?). Comparing it to BLM-protest are purely stupid and false I think. This was a coup they were disrupting the democratic process and they should all go to jail for a long time.'

And for metal fans (Bakalar and Alex I don't know i you read this) Jon Schaffer of Iced Earth was there. He is in one of the pictures that has been going around so much. Shameful.

Looking at yesterday from an outsiders perspective, Non N America, as Alex alluded to, isn't this a bit of just rewards after a century of imperialism

"Excuse me, did you say 12 pinball tables?"

I really didn't want to comment on the statement done at the beginning as I feel they are free to say whatever they want about the place they live in and I completely understand their frustration, but comparing anything happening in America with a third world country completely undermines their argument. That's punching down on other countries unnecessarily, in an American way of believing their country is dominant above all else on the planet. It's honestly almost downright offensive to the rest of the world.

Fuck fascism and stay home - to paraphrase an old friend of the site...

Keep up the fine work Beast Crew!