Defining the term 'Thug'.

[untermensche]

In my lifetime the biggest thugs were the Bush administration who lied and distorted and misrepresented and strong armed and bribed and then attacked another nation massively and deliberately. Thugs on a scale too large for most people to fathom.

Large thugs with a lot of resources do fine in the US.

Street criminals arise usually because of economic conditions combined with either alcohol or some other kind of drug.

It's usually the last stage of a life begun with hardship spiraling downward.

Certainly you want to rid yourself of street criminals.

Which brings us back to the real thugs that spend trillions for useless wars but won't spend anything to improve conditions in the many many US slums, usually segregated by race.

Did you just say street criminals are not real thugs?

What I wrote is plain.

There are big thugs and small.

I care most about the big ones. As any rational person should.

I also think the number of the small thugs could be reduced by simply pouring money on the problem, but there are better uses of money to lessen the problem.

 

[LordKiran]

In my lifetime the biggest thugs were the Bush administration who lied and distorted and misrepresented and strong armed and bribed and then attacked another nation massively and deliberately. Thugs on a scale too large for most people to fathom.

Large thugs with a lot of resources do fine in the US.

Street criminals arise usually because of economic conditions combined with either alcohol or some other kind of drug.

It's usually the last stage of a life begun with hardship spiraling downward.

Certainly you want to rid yourself of street criminals.

Which brings us back to the real thugs that spend trillions for useless wars but won't spend anything to improve conditions in the many many US slums, usually segregated by race.

Did you just say street criminals are not real thugs?

No, you merely inferred that. Possibly disingenuously or possibly because you didn't pick up on the obvious rhetorical device. "We all know who the real monsters are here!"

 

[iolo]

The Thugs worshipped Kali, goddess of destruction, by setting about especially travellers and beating/killing them. Thuggee was stamped out in British India, and the word was used, as a result, for a peculiarly violent criminal, from which, I suppose, its use spread to the United States, where violence was more evidently endemic.

 

[fast]

There are big thugs and small.

Okay, just making sure. Even if the powerful 'thugs' of the world are in some way responsible for the rise of uninfluential street thuggery, the people we all come to regard as thugs because of their behavior and demeanor are still quite worthy of the label.

 

[Angry Floof]

It means black skinned, and nothing else. It used to mean something like bully but no one really uses the word except people of that very bully mentality using it as a means of justifying ignorant fear and a stunted regard for their fellow human beings.

 

[Terrell]

Violent criminals, regardless of race, sex, or socioeconomic class. The same behavior shouldn't be "troubled" when one demographic group of mentally competent adults do it, and "thuggish", when another demographic group of mentally competent adults do it.

 

[thebeave]

It means black skinned, and nothing else. It used to mean something like bully but no one really uses the word except people of that very bully mentality using it as a means of justifying ignorant fear and a stunted regard for their fellow human beings.

Pres Obama used the word "thug" back in the video I posted to describe black rioters. Does your statement apply to him, or is he somehow an exception?

 

[Angry Floof]

It means black skinned, and nothing else. It used to mean something like bully but no one really uses the word except people of that very bully mentality using it as a means of justifying ignorant fear and a stunted regard for their fellow human beings.

Pres Obama used the word "thug" back in the video I posted to describe black rioters. Does your statement apply to him, or is he somehow an exception?

No. He was responding to the same thing I'm describing. I refer to the GOP and other knuckle draggers as "thugs" for the same reason. The only reason that word is so popular is not because of Obama by any stretch of even the stupidest right wing authoritarian follower's weak imagination. It's a dog whistle, a shortcut to thinking, for fearful bigots who can't muster up the frontal lobe power to adapt to a tribe of seven billion. Nobody would be using it otherwise.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A thug can also be independent, but the defining quality is street level, usually violent crime. Your muggers, your robbers, your drug dealers, your drive-by shooters.

Okay, so a person with a documented history of violence qualifies as a thug. That would be especially true if he's been arrested and convicted or pled guilty to crimes of violence on more than one occasion, right?

What about someone who has a documented history of using the threat of violence to intimidate others? Is that thug behavior or something else?

I wouldn't say that merely a documented history of violence qualifies.

Rather, to me the defining characteristic of a thug is that they are very quick to resort to violence to solve a problem. Look at their history--thugs will have engaged in repeated violence. If you can't examine their history look at what prompted the violence. Was this one planned act, or just a response to some minor provocation?

- - - Updated - - -

Aggressively pushy in getting ones way.

In other words, just about everyone in China.

No, your definition doesn't work.

 

[Bronzeage]

"Thug" and "thug life" are like any other derogatory term which has been picked up by its object and worn as a banner of pride, once they realize it has an intimidation factor.

THUG LIFE
1) acronym for "The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone". This acronyn was made popular by American rap artist 2Pac.
2) The Codes Of Thug Life where a set of codes written by 2Pac. The codes where designed to give order to the rise of gang violence and drug dealing. It made certain immoral actions, against the code which, would become a code of the street.
These codes where signed by heads from the Bloods and Crips at a peace treaty picnic called the Truc Picnic, in California in 1992.
3) Thug Life was a rap group formed by 2Pac which consisted of him and 4 others: Mopreme, Macadoshis, Big Syke, and The Rated R
After 2Pac was imprisoned on rape allegations the rappers would disband. Some would regroup after 2Pac's release and signing with Death Row Records and form the beginning of rap group called Tha Outlawz.

Anyone who believes any of the above is also likely to believe Johnny Cash did hard time in prison. Once an image is found to have financial value, you really can't trust anything after that.

It's human nature to want to feel safe, and the worse the environment, the greater this need becomes. Being a member of a group(herd) is a natural instinct. Once a group becomes a source of money, it becomes a gang, which requires rules and a hierarchy. This creates a public image which is carefully groomed to enhance its threatening aspects. What you call it doesn't really matter.

Once the image is in the public mind, it will be imitated and spread far beyond the group and the gang.

In my younger days, I was a "Hood". This was a contraction for hoodlum. It was a label conferred on me and my friends because we had long hair, beards(as best we could manage), ragged jeans and we drove loud cars. These weren't the shiny brand new Trans-Am that daddy bought. Our cars were older, a little rough, but fast and loud. We never engaged in any serious criminal activity, after all, we were just a bunch of middle class white boys from nice homes, but nobody had to know that. The way we dressed was a talisman that kept trouble a little farther away and we knew it.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Violent, but offensive/unprovoked in their action. A person can overreact in a violent manner in response to another's wrongdoing upon them. I would not consider this thuggish. And though the word may have been co-opted by some to describe young black males, for others to assume they know the word is being used as a euphemism for something much more offensive should tread lightly until the individual has established a long and proven track record of such. It's a hell of a assumption to make.

 

[thebeave]

Pres Obama used the word "thug" back in the video I posted to describe black rioters. Does your statement apply to him, or is he somehow an exception?

No. He was responding to the same thing I'm describing. I refer to the GOP and other knuckle draggers as "thugs" for the same reason. The only reason that word is so popular is not because of Obama by any stretch of even the stupidest right wing authoritarian follower's weak imagination. It's a dog whistle, a shortcut to thinking, for fearful bigots who can't muster up the frontal lobe power to adapt to a tribe of seven billion. Nobody would be using it otherwise.

Not sure I get it. In your original post, you seem to be saying there are two definitions of thug, as follows:

1) Modern day definition of thug: Black skinned and nothing else.
2) Old school definition of thug: A bully, but the only people who mean it this way are bullies themselves with ignorant fear and lacking empathy.

So which one is Obama again? Number one or number two?

 

[ZiprHead]

Interesting. I put "white thugs" into google images and got a whole lot of white people emulating black gang culture. Apparently even google thinks thug means black unless it's qualified.

 

[ronburgundy]

Interesting. I put "white thugs" into google images and got a whole lot of white people emulating black gang culture. Apparently even google thinks thug means black unless it's qualified.

Only if your racist enough to think that gang culture and 2-Pac's commercialization of it = "black".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Interesting. I put "white thugs" into google images and got a whole lot of white people emulating black gang culture. Apparently even google thinks thug means black unless it's qualified.

Google doesn't "think" in situations like this. It's simply a mirror on what people say.

 

[ronburgundy]

Interesting. I put "white thugs" into google images and got a whole lot of white people emulating black gang culture. Apparently even google thinks thug means black unless it's qualified.

Google doesn't "think" in situations like this. It's simply a mirror on what people say.

And in this case a mirror on the actual commercialized phrase "thug life" that most the people in the pics either inked (sometimes fake) on their body or tagged their own selfie with. Also, the 7th pic is a mug shot of a neo-nazi who is only emulating "blacks" if "black" = tattooed criminal.

 

[TSwizzle]

We have a minor issue in another thread in which people are discussing the term 'thug' and how it is used. I think having a clear, mutually agreed upon definition would be helpful. So, what do you think the term 'thug' means? How would you define it?

In
Thug describes a violent, typically cowardly male. The word is most often used to describe violent football casuals. In the UK anyway.

 

[Mumbles]

"Thug" means the same thing it always has in English - namely, a violent, criminal person.

And yes, I'm aware that some people refer to any random black person as a "thug" (eg. Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Richard Sherman, Barack Obama, Common, among many others). This is an example of the "black brute" stereotype. Shortly after the end of Reconstruction, a stereotype of black men as super-strong, usually with a strong need to rape white women, and needing to be put down with gunfire emerged. This was portrayed by Gus in Birth of a Nation, and you can see it clearly in George Zimmerman's bizarre description of Trayvon Martin.

eta: I see a lot of references to Tupac Shakur in this thread - Tupac embraced the term because he was fully aware of the stereotype.

 

[Angry Floof]

No. He was responding to the same thing I'm describing. I refer to the GOP and other knuckle draggers as "thugs" for the same reason. The only reason that word is so popular is not because of Obama by any stretch of even the stupidest right wing authoritarian follower's weak imagination. It's a dog whistle, a shortcut to thinking, for fearful bigots who can't muster up the frontal lobe power to adapt to a tribe of seven billion. Nobody would be using it otherwise.

Not sure I get it. In your original post, you seem to be saying there are two definitions of thug, as follows:

1) Modern day definition of thug: Black skinned and nothing else.
2) Old school definition of thug: A bully, but the only people who mean it this way are bullies themselves with ignorant fear and lacking empathy.

So which one is Obama again? Number one or number two?

Thank you. Please let me clarify. The word "thug" would not make headlines or be uttered publicly by politicians or news media if it weren't a dog whistle for a particular kind of listener. If not for that particular kind of listener being sort of steroids after a couple of decades of predatory fear and hate mongering, the word "thug" would be no more politically charged than "jerk" or something. It used to be that the word "thug," for me, just meant something like:



He didn't really need to be white, but I've been watching American media my whole life and since that was mostly whiteness as far as they eye can see, and most characters were white good or bad, it would never have occurred to me to imagine my mental "thug" to be black for any meaningful reason if not specified. But now it's been suggested repeatedly and in ways that right wing authoritarians can't be aware of because that would require some interest in secular science as well as the capacity for insight into one's own cognitive mechanisms. Hint: Manipulated associations with images and phrases coupled with hijacking your prejudices and fears goes a long way toward creating your worldview underneath the radar of conscious examination.

Thugs are now black people, or more accurately, black people are thugs, in the minds of right wing authoritarian followers with microphones and right wing ears among the voting audience.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

euphemism

eu·phe·mism

/ˈyo͞ofəˌmizəm/

noun: euphemism; plural noun: euphemisms

a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

So, 'thug' is a euphemism for ni**er? Is that why some posters don't use it to describe whites?

Basically.