My grandfather fought in WW2 and was such a gentle, honest, and hard-working man. It pains me to think that, if he were alive today, he would be heart-broken to see the country under the spell of the same fascist ideologies fueled by bigotry and hate that he fought against, and lost good friends to. I remain hopeful that we will come out on top of this stronger and more resilient, but the events from this last weekend are unsettling and hard to understand.
The fascists never really went away. They've been quietly biding their time, building up their propaganda machine, sabotaging the educational system, disrupting civil society, and waiting for their chance to strike. Now that the World War II vets who experienced fascism firsthand are dying off, they see their golden opportunity.
The ACLU, on behalf of honest-to-God neo-nazis who wanted to march in a place where 1/6 of the folks were Holocaust survivors, stood up for the 1st amendment. Notably, it established that icons of a hate group were not themselves fighting words--rather different than the "everything is violence" position taken by the myopic today.
I'm equally unsettled that few seem as principled or dedicated to basic freedoms today.
My grandfather also fought in World War 2 - in fact, he abandoned the family farm in the middle of the night at 17 to go defend his nazi occupied country. He'd spend the following 4 years living in forests and trying to blow up german trains at night, and seeing his closest friends die.
He fought at the liberation of Royan, and received a fairly prestigious decoration for it. After the war, he married my grandma - whom he had met through a postal service that matched young soldiers to young women so as to keep them motivated - just by showing up to her house, as he had nowhere else to go to.
He then worked in a chemical plant, starting from the bottom, and ending up in a very respectable managerial position. His first child became a surgeon, and his second child a chemical researcher for the very company he had worked for.
Sadly, he spent the last 15 years of his life becoming more and more racist, frequently disparaging arabic/black people, and voting for extreme right political parties. He died never knowing that my cousin was gay, and that he had been breaking her heart with all of his anti gay rhetoric. He taught her to count, drive, and was basically a second father to her.
For him, Americans were always the liberators, coming from a country of justice and respect. He was very proud when I moved to the US.
And now people are marching with nazi flags in the open streets.
> Outside of our unfixable segregated ghettos, where serial killers are murdering people every day, America is fine. And the ghettos are easy enough to avoid.
"Everything is fine for me, therefore everything is fine!"
But you're right: The neo-Nazis seem mostly to be buffoons, more-or-less. We have some people in the White House who are having a very difficult time taking the obvious moral stance against them, though. Decrying Nazis is literally the most no-brainer thing a politician can do. This is the softest softball of national crises. And our President completely whiffed it.
Both groups were behaving violently, and he addressed it exactly as such. Unfortunately it ended with the death of a young woman, but the event didn't go from zero to 100 with the car incident. A lot was happening between the two groups to the lead up.
The media wants to build the case that anything against their messaging is extremist, they don't mention Antifa as being a huge instigator in the violence in this event as well, but we don't need them to tell us when we've witnessed it multiple times in California and other cities. Trump in this situation was literally the only adult in the room on this one. Just because he didn't get on board with the manufactured and editorialized talking points doesn't insinuate some nefarious connection to racism and the kkk. It's pretty obvious to most people that he doesn't harbor that ideology.
Fact is, in our country we have a right and an expectation to peacefully assemble in the public square, short of calling for insurrection or openly instigating a riot, Americans are allowed to get on their soapbox and other Americans can choose to ignore or listen.
What happened in Charlottesville was a travesty for civil rights and a complete mess where multiple violent hate groups in conjunction with an all too eager media put an embarrassing show on display.
I watched a decent amount of video on Twitter and Periscope of these protests and didn't see a single piece of evidence that showed violence incited by one of the counter protesters. I did see pictures and videos of the "Unite the Right" folks carrying guns, using hate speech, assaulting people, and committing terrorist acts. Do you have any evidence to show "both sides" inciting violence to the same degree or are you just repeating hearsay?
The "both sides do it" argument misses historical context. As little as 50 years ago, the KKK was still lynching people, and lynched about 4000 African Americans totally according to figures. After they couldn't lynch anymore, the moved on to terrorizing African Americans by burning crosses on people's lawns, and bombing churches. We just ended Jim Crow, an Apartheid system, only a half century ago, and today black people still face intense racism. I see people saying "it's a fringe" yet I can still hear people making racist comments in my own family, none of whom go to Nazi/KKK marches.
That historical context makes these bold marches a larger concern, because for every buffoon you see in that march, there are 10 "moderate buffoons", and 100 "moderate moderate buffoons", who walk around thinking because they're not a Nazi or KKK member, and don't own slaves, they're not racist, but who do hold very bias views.
These views translate into more convictions for black people faced with juries, they translate into more loan or job applications denied.
That's why a re-emboldened KKK/NeoNazi group is a concern. Dailystormer has 300,000 registered accounts, how many does Antifa have?
The US has never had a communist revolution, we haven't had people sent to Gulags or "reeducated" for failing to support The Party, or Marxism. But we have sent 150,000 people to camps for the crime of being Japanese. So radical leftists aren't exactly a scary threat, they seem even more buffoonish by far, the dead-enders still calling for communist ownership of everything.
So when I read right wing media reports about the so-called history of left-wing violence, I'm not very phased. I would be scared if say, I lived in eastern Europe.
But white supremacists are much more realistic threat to the US social fabric because so many people hold racist views, either overtly, or implicitly.
Imagine an Islamic theocracy which turned secular over time. Suddenly, religious conservatives are emboldened and start huge marches, and some violent opposition groups emerge. Should the majority of the population be fearful of the opposition, or a retreat back to a religious theocracy which say, 50% of the people in the rural areas aren't opposed to?
Historical context matters a lot, and the giant racial scar that still hasn't healed in America means that Antifa and the KKK are no where near equal in concern or guilt for damage to the social fabric.
Didn't he release a statement decrying the racists and suggesting we come together? I've seen it quoted over the past two days. I suppose I could seek an official source.
After a literal Nazi literally killed someone at a literal Nazi rally, the President issued a statement in which he said that violence is bad and that both sides were to blame.
Two days later, after basically everyone on the planet (including GOP leadership, because even spineless gutter-feeders can tell what an obvious political slam-dunk this is) had had a chance to suggest to him that maybe the literal Nazis literally killing people were maybe a tiny bit more at fault than the woman that they had killed for standing across the street from them and peacefully counter-protesting, he finally issued another statement saying that white supremacists maybe aren't so great after all.
You'll forgive me for not putting too much stock in the second statement, given the circumstances.
Disclaimer: I'm not defending nazis, murderers, or nazi murderers.
Trump's statement seems thoughtless but it's not completely incorrect. For months we've had antifa protesters who have gotten into violent fights with nazis and alt-right supporters at rallies. There's a lot of people very proud of that.
At the very least at this rally there were antifa protesters carrying bats and wearing helmets, using pepper spray, etc. Now whether that's justified is another issue, but a lot of us would like it if the fringes of both sides would chill out, before violence they can't control breaks out as it so often can do.
The White House refused to condemn the KKK, Nazis, or white supremacy by name for more than two days. Until the August 14th statement by the President, the only statement made was on background with no member of the White House staff making attaching their name or office to it.
I believe Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a comment on August 13th.
He did today. Seems like his handlers convinced him: His tweets about it seemed pretty crabby. But over the weekend he definitely came off as completely tone-deaf -- to the point of neo-Nazi groups actually wondering if he was supporting them.
I actually don't think that means he supports Nazis. But he's the President. And part of the job is helping the country deal with situations like this.
>If you think America is falling under the influence of neo-Nazism, then you're a sucker to the media propaganda. These idiots are such an extreme fringe that I wouldn't even say they represent the "far right." And it's naive to think the FBI isn't half-way up the colons of every one of these fringe groups.
This was precisely the common sentiment surrounding the SA in 1920's Germany. Ernst Röhm was a borderline mentally retarded street thug until Hitler gave him a uniform. When these idiots are allowed to run amok awful and unforeseeable things happen because, being losers already, they have nothing to lose.
The problem is that the Weimar government legitimized the brown shirts while denouncing the remnants of the Spartacus League. That's how Hitler came to power.
When you legitimize one group and denounce another, it leads to further instability.
neo-Nazism? No, America has had its own racist fascists since before the civil war. These are the same type of people who started the confederacy, fought for the south, implemented jim crow, lynched blacks, prevented civil rights legislation, and now have infiltrated our government all the way up to the president. There's nothing neo about American fascism and it's very fucking real. Just because you don't encounter them in everyday interaction doesn't mean they don't exist. Every asshole flying a confederate flag, apologizing for the south's disgusting actions, or trying to preserve the "heritage" of their slaver ancestors contributes to this, but some, including the president, are now taking it further, inciting violence and spewing hate in the name of free speech. There's very little neo about the nazis in this country. They've been around forever and now all these scumbags are coming out of the woodwork. It's only media propaganda, to these stupid idiots who believe that because they want to believe it, because hate drives them. And there's millions of these people.
Fringe and emboldened. This is their closest shot in the modern era and there are more tools than ever to get people split and propagandize them. I'd say their chances are approaching nil, but if there is some supreme fuckup even the chance is scary.
I have to agree. The neo-nazis you saw this weekend were always there. They just weren't cover by the media so it didn't get that much attention.
You want to see how powerful the media is? It's a great example. Whatever the news covers immediately becomes a national crisis. And vice versa, if the media doesn't cover it, nobody cares.
I mean, he's a troll who is intentionally offensive, but either Slate doesn't know what they're talking about or they're lying. One thing he isn't is a white supremacist.
And Seb Gorka? According to his Wikipedia page, his father, Paul Gorka, was awarded a medal by Vitézi Rend in 1979 "in recognition of his resistance to the post-war Soviet occupation of Hungary". Slate seems to consider that evidence that he's a Nazi.
Every reference to Nazis on that page is about his father's association with the Hungarian Historical Order of Vitéz.
Apparently, that group worked with the Nazis during WW2, but "this Order granted Gorka's father, Paul Gorka, their title in 1979 in recognition of his resistance to the post-war Soviet occupation of Hungary".
Do you have some reason to believe he or his father is (or was) a Nazi? There's no evidence of that on that Wikipedia page.
I do not think the distinction is meaningful in the extreme. Are we really going to claim that Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia were in some way polar opposites?
The correct distinction is bigotry vs inclusiveness, freedom vs slavery, rights vs oppression. The murdered woman was a civil rights activist, peacefully protesting white supremacists. To lump her in with her murderer as an "extreme idiot" is to do violence both to her memory and to the entire history of civil rights in America. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms, and I respectfully invite the downvoters of my previous remark to explain why they disagree.
And yes, the far left and far right are very similar, which is why I've previously argued that framing all this in terms of an authoritarian-libertarian spectrum is more useful than using a left-right one.
The stock and trade of our national media and the federal government with the participation of both political parties is identity politics and division.
The event this weekend was a classic example of this and now every 12 year old on the internet is screaming nazi and kkk.
If this country wasn't solidly middle of the road, you wouldn't have Bush two terms, Obama two terms, followed by Trump, with an ever changing congress.
Americans aren't the racist bigots the media and government claims, but judging by the news, Reddit, and internet articles, everyone right of Bernie is now KKK.
Americans want privacy, freedom, respect for our civil liberties, rule of law, and economic opportunity, and everyone else outside of that wants our money while egging us on to fight.
I'm saddened by the efforts of others to divide the nation and pit us against each other. Sometimes it feels like there are too many interests trying to use fear and division to achieve their own ends.
I refuse to buy into that way of thinking. I'm an American and so is everyone that shares our values. Everyone.
It's true. The far right wants to celebrate racism and genocide. The far left wants single-payer healthcare and open access to economic opportunities for women and minorities. Very divisive.
You are being disingenuous. People celebrating violence at Berkeley and reminding Liberals that come revolution time they will be getting the bullet too, are closer to the opposite of the klansmen/neo-nazis in both extremity, and in numbers.
Can't we all just denounce extremist ideologies of every stripe without needing to softball the people we are closer to aligning with?
No. Not when there are fascists marching in the street.
And what extreme left are you talking about anyway? What domestic ideology on the left, exactly, are you referring to? Where are they marching down the street to restrict the rights and freedoms of your fellow Americans, to stop individuals living happy and prosperous lives? Do you mean BLM marchers asking not to be victimised? Is that an extreme ideology?
But you're insane if you're comparing a student protest at Berkeley with a bunch of literal neo-Nazis and alt-righters celebrating white power with symbols of racism and genocide.
Not for the level of violence. But for what the violence was in service of.
But one unhinged guy in a car is suddenly representative of the right wing? I say this being on the left.
I'm utterly appalled at what goes on in social media. People who a few years ago were quiet exemplars of sanity are now calling for violence, witch hunts and pretending like the US is one step away from civil war.
It's media that's doing this. A protest by one's own side is powerful, solemn and the height of democracy. If it's the other side, it's intimidating, primal and a rapid descent into tyranny. One rotten egg on your own side is just an unfortunate lunatic, on the other it's emblematic of the radicalization hidden just beneath the surface. The informational content has made way for a completely emotional, tribal way of looking at the world. It's just convenient narratives, with no one particularly interested in figuring out whether something is actually big, or just puffed up into the next big news cycle. News coverage now creates importance, instead of the other way around. The people who keep this going are the ones who benefit from eternal conflict, and it's not you and I.
This time the antifa found casus belli in the death of a compatriot. Just the same, the right could've gotten unlucky (or lucky) and had one of their own die to a u-lock to the head at Berkeley. Fill in your own examples, if you can still remember them a few weeks later.
Violence begets violence, especially if you broadcast it non stop for rageclicks and social validation points. It's not journalism anymore, it's just juvenile activism and pandering.
All I mean is that people who are entirely comfortable about where their politics are with regards to a given discourse rarely feel the need to reaffirm said politics in an abstract sense, i.e., "I'm on the far left too, but--" whatever.
It seemed easier than dealing with the probable responses that my own experiences condition me for. Namely, if I point out a negative action, people have historically commented with false beliefs about my politics.
It was meant to save time and add clarity. I know there are people on my side of the political spectrum who do things I don't agree with. I know that my favored politicians are less than ideal. I admit this.
I'd have voted for Bernie in the general, had he been the candidate.
At the same time, I watched the video where the young lady was killed. They had bats, rebar, and it looked like one had a chain. Life isn't a video game, they didn't just pick that stuff up off the ground in those numbers and with that level of readiness. I also know they weren't Trump supporters.
No, they are on the left. They are on the same end of the political spectrum as I.
But, the usual response I get (when pointing out flaws by those on my end of the spectrum, which happens with great frequency) is to all me everything from a Nazi to a Trump supporter. (I am not sure which one they consider worse.)
So, I figured I'd save some time. It would appear that it didn't work to save one bit of time.
But I don't understand what you'd have the left do in that situation, turn the other cheek? Conservatives love boasting about carrying around their guns. Frankly the fact that somebody was killed to me suggests that they weren't properly armed to defend themselves.
This is of course assuming you don't unconditionally condemn violence, which you might.
I'd have them not go to counter protest while brandishing weapons - or at all. Go the day before, go the day after, or at least don't go punching the other side as they are marching peacefully.
The right was actually behaving themselves, by all accounts. Well, other than the being Nazi part. They were peacefully marching, albeit with torches, and then some folks decided to punch a Nazi. Don't do that.
Violence is sometimes the only answer. It's not the answer to peaceful marching, no matter how much Nazis suck. They have a right to peacefully assemble, even though they suck.
Going down to instigate violence is bad. Don't do that. Also, maybe don't brandish weapons and hit people. That's not going to change hearts and minds.
When the car smashed into the crowd, the weapons were already out. Besides, if they are worried about firearms, a bat is a poor choice of defensive weapon.
Let them protest. That is their right. Why they were carrying tiki torches is beyond me, but they weren't actually hurting anyone with them. They were just being idiots, also known as Nazis. Let them do their thing and have your own peaceful protest.
I admit, it's pretty tempting, but they might just want to stop punching Nazis - unless the Nazis start swinging first. I mean, isn't the goal to be better than the other side?
And, yeah... Don't go brandishing weapons. That's just dumb. It's even more dumb if you believe the opposition has firearms. Firearm vs. rebar means firearm wins - except for in the movies. Also, carrying a bat may scare one of them into using their firearm - they are a not very bright and very skittish group. Treat them like big, dumb, herd beasts.
No, but always form the strongest version of your argument that you are capable of. The dude who shot up the congressional baseball game a couple months ago was a Bernie supporter.
It wasn't really an argument. Most of a roundabout way of saying that the white suprematists out in force this weekend celebrating racism and genocide were far righters. And I think you'll find that Nazi and Confederate flag-waving is less popular on the left. In my humble experience.
There are crazy people from across the political spectrum who commit violent crimes. Yes, many are liberal. Many are conservative. Trying to tally who did more is silly. But if we're against violent crime, maybe we should also have a conversation about gun control.
Edit: You appear to have changed the phrasing of your comment. You originally asked if that was the strongest argument I could come up with.
Natural outcome of identity politics is hate and divisions among the populace. Expect country to get a lot crazier in the coming years. Social fabric is being stretched quite far.
All identity politics is bad because it is imprecise. At the individual level we are all identity fluid. Well, except perhaps those who who abdicate their agency in favor of groupthink.
"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Don't get your hopes up that things will ever get better (though I've read and agree, racial division in US was lowest in Bush Sr years, so perhaps a little better is doable), though do continue to work so that it doesn't get worse (here and elsewhere, it's been way worse).
Tangential question: when did using the term sucker to describe a gullible person start? I would have guessed it would be a lot more recent than 1947. Now I am curious.
"young mammal before it is weaned," late 14c., agent noun from suck. Slang meaning "person who is easily deceived" is first attested 1836, American English, on notion of naivete; the verb in this sense is from 1939. But another theory traces the slang meaning to the fish called a sucker (1753), on the notion of being easy to catch in their annual migrations. Meaning "lollipop" is from 1823.
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
To say it's "complex" seems to justify the kind of raw bigotry you see in KKK/neo-nazis/"alt-right". People on the conservative side might say:
• "I'm sick of SJW libtards telling me what to do"
• "we're losing out jobs because of immigrants/others"
• "we're losing our culture to immigrants/others"
The gamut runs from bald-faced lies to legitimate grappling with the inequities and isolation of modern life. None justify bigotry, which exists only to actively and passively cause people harm. Having an articulate and unifying vision of why this kind of hatred should be rejected is valuable and appropriate.
IDK, when you have a president who himself is all too eager to put an embarrassing show on display, regarding just about everything else he's encountered, from Schwarzenegger's ratings to Nordstrom's shoe line, to Vanity Fair restaurant reviews ... a weak-livered response on perhaps the most import topic in America right now ... speaks volumes.
Even that aside, saying "the only" adult in the room ... No matter what you think of the media, pretty much every other current or former US or foreign politician of any party had something less tardy-fifth-graderish to say on the subject.
I'm not a supporter, but seriously, his supporters voted him to be politically incorrect, right? If it's the infantada, then he should be getting up there and shouting "infantada!", right? Or "infantada! and white nationalists!", to be, whatever. I wouldn't agree with it, but I could understand it. Yet he gets on stage and makes about the most banal scripted disinterested unstudied PC statement imaginable, and then leaves without questions. I don't see where the support is coming from.
Premeditated murder is not the same as fighting between the protesters. Let's stop pretending that it is. While all violence is abhorable, it's not all created equal. The nazi in that car murdered someone and Trump condoned it with his silence. To me, that makes trump a nazi and white supremacist. But that's hardly news at this point.
It's really not that great a comment. It's not a bad account of the events, but we have KKK voicing open support for the president and communicating that they feel his actions and policies are a show of support for them. And Trump was slow and seemingly reluctant to denounce them. Yes, damn anybody who brought violence into the picture, but let's not try to obfuscate or down-play that we have white supremacists feeling vindicated and empowered.
Not trying to obfuscate anything. Quite the opposite. Just laying the facts of the event out so we can put what the President said into an accurate context.
I don't think those facts are lost in this discussion. It feels instead like they're being reiterated to excuse a man who needed to be goaded into denouncing hate groups that support him.
