There have been several public library bomb threats this week

https://bookriot.com/there-have-been-several-public-library-bomb-threats-this-week/

by anigbrowl • 3 years ago

64 50 3 years ago

Makes me think of the 2 people (Bruce Friedman and Vicky Baggett) in Florida who have gotten hundreds of books removed from libraries. https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/08/24/florida-s...

I detest that so few people can hold the system in such terror, can have such outsized horrible impact on the world.

Then again, it's not always a small force. America has voted for a party that has promised again and again to do everything they can to outlaw abortion as broadly as possible. And now, in 2023, that age has come. At least it was heralded in with really great ads though! https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-twitter-bans-ad-201139304.h...

It's with great regret that I find it seem like civilization has to armor up, has to really defend it's tolerance & getting along against what feels like rabid anti-tolerant extremism. The fringe has just made itself so vocal, so petulant, and the question of how the world copes with these strident folks looms: it seems so confounding, so difficult. We dont have the spare capacity to be dealing with the worst, letting them suck up our energy & roadblock the governance & progress this world needs to be making some headway on.

tastyfreeze• 3 years ago

Like it or not, abortion is not a federal concern. It just isn't something the Constitution gives power over.

idontwantthis• 3 years ago

Last year, this statement would have been factually incorrect. This year, this statement is factually correct. Like it or not.

mikem170• 3 years ago

Tell that to the Republicans who want a federal ban.

p.s. It's a shame when so many people loose the right to their own bodies, despite the 13th amendment.

littlestymaar• 3 years ago

Not really. SCOTUS just ruled that constitution isn't responsible of enforcing that right, and noted that there's currently no federal law on the topic. But if congress passed a bill about guaranteeing abortion, it would become “federal concern”.

johnnyanmac2• 3 years ago

I detest that so few people can hold the system in such terror, can have such outsized horrible impact on the world.

People should remember this whenever they feel "voting doesn't work" or "government ignores us". Look at it in another light; these are government institutions and two seemingly normal people made a huge change by being persistent.

Now imagine if we had a dozen people that persistent defending that content. I know the ability to be that persistent is in itself a sign of priveledge (or simply age. being retired gives a lot of time to lobby), but it also suggests that a lot of people in a few meetings can fight back.

raverbashing2• 3 years ago

I could write pages and pages of all the dumb crap that progressives do, but I guess "not voting for their candidate because "they're not vegan enough" or "has a more centered position in some fringe topic" to be at the top items of the list

andrewstuart2• 3 years ago

So weird. Of all the important causes, all the things in this world to really genuinely be angry about, these lunatics are angry about public libraries - calm, quiet gentle places of peace and learning.

Absolute lunacy. If you are going to be a terrorist at least target something big and important.

anigbrowl5• 3 years ago

If you are going to be a terrorist at least target something big and important.

In the security space this sort of attack is referred to as 'resilience targeting', as it impacts a community resource and each such episode (even when it's a hoax) imposes a not-insignificant economic cost - shutdown of the facility, use of police resources to cordon off, sweep, and investigate the hoax threat. It's hard to assess exactly how much but I'd imagine it runs into the tens of thousands of $ per incident.

A similar phenomenon is the wave of computer-generated hoax active shooter calls against schools, a pattern which has prepeated in multiple states over the last year or two, eg https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/live-updates/police-acros...

gmerc• 3 years ago

If only there was a political party aligned with burning books appealing to increasingly unhinged followers that could explain it.

somsak2• 3 years ago

what are you implying?

Etrnl_President2• 3 years ago

In the U.S. there are at least two (colloquially known as the left/right uniparty), and several smaller radical unsupported parties, willing to burn books and delete websites.

2-718-281-828• 3 years ago

these lunatics

quite possibly only a single lunatic

esalman2• 3 years ago

How do you know?

anigbrowl5• 3 years ago

It's possible, but searching for news about bomb threat arrests turns up lots of people, so I think it unlikely that all those directed at libraries come from a single individual. Terroristic threats are depressing common nowadays.

hackermatic4• 3 years ago

At what point do outlets like Libs of TikTok become guilty of incitement? There's a documented history of that and other outlets turning the spotlight on a person, school, or hospital, consistently followed shortly after by bomb threats, doxxing, and other harassment. That would seem to meet the standard of "incitement to imminent lawless action" under US free speech law [0], especially since callouts-then-threats seems to have become a self-replicating meme in our society.

[0] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/970/incitement-to-i...

jauntywundrkind2• 3 years ago

There is no anti-memetics division... But lordy do we ever need one!

At some point containment & prosecution becomes necessary, yes. But I keep wanting some better civilizational defenses, some visible strategies to de-de-program. Advocacy for stability, concerted & highly visible cries against extremism.

It's such a difficult issue to deal with this propaganda because it's so eagerly received, is such a hyperreal system that's bought into & is so engrossing.

There's other points in history where dialectic broke down, where communication was impossible. I don't know a ton about the one, but the Know Nothing Party had similar characteristics: an inability to be engaged with, an unshakeable confidence by way of being utterly detached & non participatory.

seattle_spring• 3 years ago

It fascinates me that the "censorship" of "kiwi farms" drew more than 400 outraged comments yesterday lamenting the loss of free speech, while stuff like this barely gets any attention here at all.

johnnyanmac2• 3 years ago

It's no surprise in the tech circle to pay more attention to Hurricane because we know how very, very easily such IP blocks can spread. KiwiFarms and 8chan today, blogspaces that happen to be critical of [insert political topic here] tomorrow.

But of course, this current topic is abhorrent and I hope the authorities throw the book at the instigators. There's way too many school shootings in the US to play this off as "trolling".

duskwuff• 3 years ago

I have a feeling that part of the problem (i.e, why LoTT are allowed to continue doing their thing) is that there isn't any explicit incitement. It's just sort of implicitly understood by the audience that, if there's a post about some specific entity, that's an invitation to harass them. This isn't a situation which the law currently handles effectively.

mshroyer• 3 years ago

Simply calling attention to or criticizing people doesn't meet the standard for incitement to violence, and it only takes a moment's thought to understand why someone who isn't calling for violence cannot be held responsible for the actions of the violent fringe.

This is the same reason that people who criticized Brett Kavanaugh's appointment and jurisprudence are (rightly) not held responsible for the man who was arrested outside his home for attempting to assassinate him.

anigbrowl5• 3 years ago

One difference here is that lots of people criticized Brett Kavanaugh while one individual undertook to commit violence against him (before turning himself in when he arrived at his destination; his case is still pending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_assassination_...).

In contrast, a Twitter account with a lot of followers that has a habit of calling out specific people/institutions for being 'woke' has a following that has yielded multiple different bomb threats over the last couple of years; I think this is the 9th or 10th such incident, with many more incidents of general harassment (about 60). If it's happening so frequently that it becomes predictable one wonders why the person in question hasn't made any effort to dissuade followers from engaging in such activity.

perihelions4• 3 years ago

- "consistently followed shortly after by bomb threats, doxxing, and other harassment"

And what on Earth do you think the KKK was? The very case law you're citing [0] secured their rights to hold white-supremacy rallies. LibsOfTikTok (probably) doesn't meet that standard either, and that shouldn't be even slightly surprising. Glorifying, advocating, inspiring actualized violence — like both the KKK and these people have done — don't pass the Brandenburg bar. "Directed towards" and "imminent" are key tests. Those are not present (I'm not familiar with what these hate groups say; I'm drawing inference from the choice of phrasing you used to describe it, "turning the spotlight on". That is not Brandenburg incitement).

[0] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/970/incitement-to-i...

hackermatic4• 3 years ago

I figured the difference is that the KKK rally was "just" a rally with no other immediate actions associated to it, while in this case, there is a pattern of callout videos or tweets that immediately inspire someone to call in a threat.

throwawa14223• 3 years ago

I hadn't heard of this account before so I went and looked into them. What are they doing that any other journalist isn't doing?

daft_pink• 3 years ago

Bomb threats are wrong, but is someone really going to bomb a library? And if they are really going to go through all the trouble to plant a bomb are they really going to phone ahead with a warning?

Why are we taking these threats seriously?

anigbrowl5• 3 years ago

Probably not, but planting real bombs and communicating threats has a long history as an asymmetric strategy. While bombings are somewhat unusual* in the US, they have occurred in the past, and politically motivated shooting attacks are so common as to be sadly normal. A neo-nazi went on a mini rampage in Florida last week, and also last week some guy in Southern California shot a clothing store owner because he disapproved of an LGBT pride flag displayed at the business.

* But not that unusual. Here's a report outlining two overlapping bombing campaigns in California last year - one by an unstable tech worker, the other by a group of meth dealers in Fresno.

https://leftcoastrightwatch.org/articles/what-if-there-were-...

xboxnolifes• 3 years ago

And if they are really going to go through all the trouble to plant a bomb are they really going to phone ahead with a warning?

Yes, if the goal isn't murder. It's certainly not without precedent.

MandieD2• 3 years ago

One example - the IRA bombings where they phoned in warnings, like Manchester 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing

l3mure• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph

His stated motive was an opposition to "the ideals of global socialism" and to "abortion on demand," both of which he claimed were condoned by the United States government.
At age 29, Rudolph perpetrated the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which occurred on July 27, 1996, during the 1996 Summer Olympics. He made two anonymous 911 calls, warning about the bomb before it detonated.

ggm• 3 years ago

I'm trying to remember the quote about burning the library of Alexandria. I am sure it's a modern(ish) invention, probably the enlightenment or even later. Romanticising what people said as they torched the scrolls has a fine quality to it.

(I think it's "if its not in the Koran its a lie, and if it is in the Koran it's superfluous")

wrp2• 3 years ago

I've seen quotes like that in other contexts, but in relation to the Library of Alexandria, it's surely apocryphal. The Library declined over several centuries, so gradually in fact, that it's impossible to say exactly when it ceased to be a major research center.

andrewstuart2• 3 years ago

The ancient Library of Alexandria was lost to fire in the 3rd century BC.

The the even-more-ancient Library of Ashurbanipal from the 7th century BC was not lost and was in fact found with over 30,000 texts. The irony being that it was preserved because it was burned, and most of the writings were clay tablets, thus were preserved even better in the fire.

wrp2• 3 years ago

There was no cataclysmic destruction of the Library of Alexandria. It declined slowly over several centuries. Wikipedia gives a decent overview. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria)

Jean-Yves Empereur discusses the archaeological evidence in "The destruction of the Library of Alexandria: An archaeological viewpoint" in the edited volume What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria? (2008).

In that same volume, Qassem Abdou Qassem and Bernard Lewis each discuss the origin of the quote mentioned above and dispute its authenticity.

raverbashing2• 3 years ago

I've hear something similar about the Spanish and the Maya but I might be mistaken

esalman2• 3 years ago

The quote is disputed, and historical accuracy is important. Additionally, it's worth noting that attributing the burning of the Library of Alexandria solely to Muslims oversimplifies a complex historical event. It's important to consider the broader historical context and the contributions of Muslim scholars, such as the establishment of the Grand Library of Baghdad, which reflects a different aspect of their relationship with knowledge.

MandieD2• 3 years ago

The 415 AD murder of Hypatia of Alexandria, the first well-known female mathematician, was a 100% Christian operation... likely inspired by a political smear campaign put on by the Bishop of Alexandria who was trying to consolidate secular power.

Etrnl_President2• 3 years ago

It is time to outlaw bombs! Private citizens should not handle bombs, not even for hunting.

There have been several public library bomb threats this week

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