All things Charlottesville (merged)

[RocketRichard]

Both sides of these violent loser groups are the same. Both have a shitty agenda they want to push and will use whatever rethoric is convenient. They're both terrorist style groups and need to be treated as such.

At this point arguing who's more or less violent isnt going to begin to fix anything. 

These are violent groups, many of which are "professional protestors", who are showing up with the intention to be violent and spur others to violence. What they're not is children and can't be treated like a grade 1 class being rowdy.

With respect Jarnhamar, violence is not the answer during protests, I agree.  No excuse for the counter protesters to be violent (except in self-defence). The huge issue here is the racists who are white supremacists, neo-nazis, anti-Semites and homophobes who judge, and advocate harm towards others based on their colour, creed and gender. Thanks for your points J.


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[a_majoor]

What is making this entire discussion so circular is the violent degradation of language and meaning over the years. People who carry Swastika flags are not "alt" anything, they are National Socialists. Antifa and similar groups who use violence to shut down free speech are not "alt-left", they are acting as thuggish "Red Guards". The idea that Nazis and Communists fight street battles isn't new or ahistorical, it is a reality that was played out in the streets of Germany and Italy (and to a lesser extent in several other European countries) in the early 1930's.

Recognizing this fact is important, since the breakdown of civil society and high trust institutions was a precursor to the rise of mass political movements in the late 19th and early 20th century (mass media being one of the other drivers). I doubt anyone could argue that civil institutions are either breaking down or becoming extinct (look at the declining memberships in service clubs or church denominations, for example), and the rise of "Identity" politics where people are lumped and valued by their skin colour, gender or orientation over their merit and contributions is certainly resulting in a breakdown of high trust society.

The freakout response by the media over President Trump calling out both sides of the Charlottesville fracas is very instructive, he is not conforming to their "narrative" of the events. When he questioned one reporter to "define the alt-right" he directly challenged their ability to characterize people according to identity groups (alt-right, if you remember, first gained major currency when Hillary Clinton used it as a pejorative in the 2016 elections, but it was never defined either them or now). There will be a lot more redefining of terms between now and 2020 (and 2024), but what the establishment Left seems to have lost sight of is their relentless fixation on identity politics and casting white Americans as an evil "out" grouping has essentially created a large new "identity" group, one which is both angry at tis treatment by the establishment political, bureaucratic, academic and media classes, but also one which makes @ 70% of the demographic of America. I'm sure that is going to go well for them in the future......

 

[kratz]

Thank you for your assessment Thucydides. I've been mulling these events over, searching for a way of expressing my thoughts. Your post did so far more effectively.

MilPoints inbound.

 

[Rifleman62]

Notice when the POTUS asked for questions from the media yesterday there was not one question on the possibility of a nuclear strike by NOKO and retaliation by the US and Allies with the consequences of possible million casualties. To me that says it all.

 

[Strike]

The freakout response by the media over President Trump calling out both sides of the Charlottesville fracas is very instructive, he is not conforming to their "narrative" of the events. When he questioned one reporter to "define the alt-right" he directly challenged their ability to characterize people according to identity groups ...

You're giving him too much credit.  That was a stalling tactic as he tried to take control of the situation and have them ask the questions he wanted and avoided answering ones he didn't like.  Nothing more.

But yeah, the rest I agree with.

Now, as to your first para of the post, don't forget who we sided with and which side we fought against. Just like the misbehaving kids analogy in my previous post...(I may be dealing with a kid who is misbehaving a lot.  So bear with me if I'm heavy on those comparisons...is it wine o'clock yet?)

 

[ModlrMike]

The freakout response by the media over President Trump calling out both sides of the Charlottesville fracas is very instructive, he is not conforming to their "narrative" of the events. When he questioned one reporter to "define the alt-right" he directly challenged their ability to characterize people according to identity groups (alt-right, if you remember, first gained major currency when Hillary Clinton used it as a pejorative in the 2016 elections, but it was never defined either them or now). There will be a lot more redefining of terms between now and 2020 (and 2024), but what the establishment Left seems to have lost sight of is their relentless fixation on identity politics and casting white Americans as an evil "out" grouping has essentially created a large new "identity" group, one which is both angry at tis treatment by the establishment political, bureaucratic, academic and media classes, but also one which makes @ 70% of the demographic of America. I'm sure that is going to go well for them in the future......

Wait... I'm confused. How does one radical Muslim terrorist not represent all of Islam, but one anti-Semitic redneck represent all Caucasians?

 

[GAP]

Wait... I'm confused. How does one radical Muslim terrorist not represent all of Islam, but one anti-Semitic redneck represent all Caucasians?

Sneaky little buggers eh?

 

[Lumber]

As a centrist, I'm honestly torn on so many different levels about this situation.

I hold Nazism and White Supremacy to be abhorrent, so I support the creation of counter-organizations (in principle) like Antifa and BLM.

However, I believe in peaceful assembly, lobbying, and protest, so I denounce the violence and hateful rhetoric that these organizations have been espousing.

I hold freedom of assembly and freedom speech to be paramount in our society (among other rights), so I support the "alt-rights" right to organize, assemble, protests, and speak out, and I hate neo-social-marxists and their "shouting-down" of right-wing-conservative speakers (i.e. Ann Coulter).

However, I believe Nazism specifically represents a very specific and very deliberate call to violent action against "untermensch", so I support a much more forceful (not necessarily violent, though) attempts by antifa/BLM to subvert, denounce, and destroy neo-nazi and similar organizations.

This is a really good article which admonishes both organizations:

What Trump Gets Wrong About Antifa
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/what-trump-gets-wrong-about-antifa/537048/

As I argued in my essay, some of their [Antifa's] tactics are genuinely troubling. They’re troubling tactically because conservatives use antifa’s violence to justify—or at least distract from—the violence of white supremacists, as Trump did in his press conference. They’re troubling strategically because they allow white supremacists to depict themselves as victims being denied the right to freely assemble. And they’re troubling morally because antifa activists really do infringe upon that right. By using violence, they reject the moral legacy of the civil-rights movement’s fight against white supremacy. And by seeking to deny racists the ability to assemble, they reject the moral legacy of the ACLU, which in 1977 went to the Supreme Court to defend the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois.

Antifa activists are sincere. They genuinely believe that their actions protect vulnerable people from harm. Cornel West claims they did so in Charlottesville. But for all of antifa’s supposed anti-authoritarianism, there’s something fundamentally authoritarian about its claim that its activists—who no one elected—can decide whose views are too odious to be publicly expressed. That kind of undemocratic, illegitimate power corrupts. It leads to what happened this April in Portland, Oregon, where antifa activists threatened to disrupt the city’s Rose Festival parade if people wearing “red maga hats” marched alongside the local Republican Party. Because of antifa, Republican officials in Portland claim they can’t even conduct voter registration in the city without being physically threatened or harassed.

So, yes, antifa is not a figment of the conservative imagination. It’s a moral problem that liberals need to confront.

However:

But saying it’s a problem is vastly different than implying, as Trump did, that it’s a problem equal to white supremacism. Using the phrase “alt-left” suggests a moral equivalence that simply doesn’t exist. For starters, while antifa perpetrates violence, it doesn’t perpetrate it on anything like the scale that white nationalists do. It’s no coincidence that it was a Nazi sympathizer—and not an antifa activist—who committed murder in Charlottesville. According to the Anti-Defamation League, right-wing extremists committed 74 percent of the 372 politically motivated murders recorded in the United States between 2007 and 2016. Left-wing extremists committed less than 2 percent.

Second, antifa activists don’t wield anything like the alt-right’s power. White, Christian supremacy has been government policy in the United States for much of American history. Anarchism has not. [...] Even if antifa’s vision of society were as noxious as the “alt-right’s,” it has vastly less power to make that vision a reality.

And antifa’s vision is not as noxious. Antifa activists do not celebrate regimes that committed genocide and enforced slavery. They’re mostly anarchists. Anarchism may not be a particularly practical ideology. But it’s not an ideology that depicts the members of a particular race or religion as subhuman.

As a centrist, I share with you this plea: Shut-Up; all of you, please.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

You're giving him too much credit.  That was a stalling tactic as he tried to take control of the situation and have them ask the questions he wanted and avoided answering ones he didn't like.  Nothing more.

But yeah, the rest I agree with.

Now, as to your first para of the post, don't forget who we sided with and which side we fought against. Just like the misbehaving kids analogy in my previous post...(I may be dealing with a kid who is misbehaving a lot.  So bear with me if I'm heavy on those comparisons...is it wine o'clock yet?)

and don't forget that the USSR helped the Nazi's rebuild their army, carve up Poland and failed to act against Japan. Abused our trust and imposed a horrific system unto to all they captured. The Soviets were always a marriage of convenience for the west, they asserted themselves as our foe very quickly afterwards.

 

[Strike]

Wait... I'm confused. How does one radical Muslim terrorist not represent all of Islam, but one anti-Semitic redneck represent all Caucasians?

Really?  Because it happened at a white supremacist rally maybe?  A rally that EVERYONE knew was going to escalate into violence in some way shape or form by the way.

 

[The Bread Guy]

... It's funny how people who are ready to grab a pitchfork as soon as a Nazi is spotted, starting mumbling when they see a communist.

Not to excuse the Nazis, but yup ...

 

[ModlrMike]

As a centrist, I share with you this plea: Shut-Up; all of you, please.

The political spectum is much more like a horseshoe where the extreme left and the extreme right are closer to each other than they are to the center.

 

[ModlrMike]

Really?  Because it happened at a white supremacist rally maybe?  A rally that EVERYONE knew was going to escalate into violence in some way shape or form by the way.

So you're saying that because they're Nazis so are the rest of us? How does that work?

 

[a_majoor]

To answer Strikes point about "Alt-Right", by some media characterizations I would be defined as "Alt-Right" (despite being a very small "l" libertarian). Alt-Right was used as a pejorative by Hillary Clinton, and adopted by the media. Unlike several other pejoratives which rapidly boomeranged against them (the origin of "Fake News" was also the media attempting to negate anything said against Hillary), the definition of alt-right has remained quite nebulous. It is pretty easy to see and point out the distortions of the media, hence the ease and rapidity that "Fake News"" boomeranged against the MSM, but alt right isn't so immediately easy to identify or characterize. If anything, the new counter-meme which will catch on is "alt-left", since President Trump has linked it rhetorically with the media pejorative "alt-right".

ModrMike's point reinforces the power of the media and narrative: one of anything does not characterize the whole, but constant repetition or denial of an idea certainly can make things seem that way. These are simply very old propaganda or PSYOPS ideas being used by the media against their political opponents or to reinforce their "narratives".

As for the horseshoe idea, look up Politics with more Dimensions.

 

[Strike]

So you're saying that because they're Nazis so are the rest of us? How does that work?

No, I'm saying the people he was hanging out with at the protest were.  And also, I didn't see any reports that labelled every Caucasian as a Nazi because of this one guy.  What I did see was that every Caucasian that was parading in the initial march was labelled as either that or a white supremacist.

As much as I love this graphic, the problem with it is that all of us sitting in the centre are mostly sitting around not doing anything to stop the extremes from growing.

To deal with the left really isn't all that hard.  Many of their demands might seem frivolous to those of us who are right of centre, but if they don't infringe on your own personal rights then it shouldn't be an issue.

Dealing with the extreme right on the other hand is a bit harder because, being the polar opposite of the hard left, they want some people's rights taken away or their own elevated.  Either way, they want to have a bigger piece of the pie.

Sitting in the centre and bitching and moaning about what this side is saying and that side is doing doesn't help anyone.  At which point will the centre stand up and do something? (And yes, I know that those of us in uniform don't really have that option.  Maybe that's why we are all so vocal on here.)

 

[Rifleman62]

Quote from: Colin P on Today at 09:14:20
... It's funny how people who are ready to grab a pitchfork as soon as a Nazi is spotted, starting mumbling when they see a communist.

Milnews.ca:

Not to excuse the Nazis, but yup ...

And to add, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Canada

The Communist Party of Canada (French: Parti communiste du Canada, CPC/PCC) is a communist political party in Canada founded in 1921 under conditions of illegality. Although it is now a political party without any elected political representation, the party's candidates have been elected to the Parliament of Canada, the Ontario Legislature, the Manitoba Legislature, and various municipal governments across the country. The party has also contributed significantly to trade union organizing and labour history in Canada, peace and anti-war activism, and many other social movements.[2]
The Communist Party of Canada is the second oldest party after the Liberal Party of Canada (or the third if the Liberal-Conservative Party is considered the ancestor of the modern Tories). In 1993 the party was de-registered and had its assets seized, forcing it to begin a successful thirteen-year political and legal battle to maintain registration of small political parties in Canada. The campaign culminated with the final decision of Figueroa v. Canada, changing the legal definition of a political party in Canada [3] Despite its continued presence as a registered political party, the CPC places the vast majority of its emphasis on extra-parliamentary activity what it terms "the labour and people's movements", as reflected in its programme "Canada's Future is Socialism".

 

[Kat Stevens]

Antifa got its start on university campuses as a way to shout down and threaten dissenting thought and speech from the chosen path of right-think. See the story of the wonderful peace loving college professor who smashed a man in the head with a bike lock, and encouraged others to do likewise.  At that particular function, the only inflammatory banners on display were Antifas. It seems to me that they are more than happy to suppress people's rights.

To deal with the left really isn't all that hard.  Many of their demands might seem frivolous to those of us who are right of centre, but if they don't infringe on your own personal rights then it shouldn't be an issue.

Dealing with the extreme right on the other hand is a bit harder because, being the polar opposite of the hard left, they want some people's rights taken away or their own elevated.  Either way, they want to have a bigger piece of the pie.

 

[Jarnhamar]

With respect Jarnhamar, violence is not the answer during protests, I agree.  No excuse for the counter protesters to be violent (except in self-defence). The huge issue here is the racists who are white supremacists, neo-nazis, anti-Semites and homophobes who judge, and advocate harm towards others based on their colour, creed and gender. Thanks for your points J.


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Hey RR, nice to hear from you again!

I too think this Nazi supremist crap is abhorrent. I wouldn't piss on them if they were dying of thirst.  (also because I probably have a shy bladder lol) Maybe it's a bit too pragmatic of me but philosophy aside I don't see attacking someone because theyre brown all that different from attacking someone for wearing a red maga hat. (also there's plenty of videos of BLM, for example, attacking people for being white.)

Looks wise I'm guessing Id be a big target for an antifa baseball bat squad and I'd get attacked for walking past them had I been at this rally.

Im going to guess that not many people show up to these protests on either side looking for peaceful assembly. They want blood. 
I'm not sure how a masked antifa assaulting people with bat's smashing store windows in 2017 is much different than masked Nazis assaulting people with bat's and smashing store windows in 1938.  IMHO they're the same. The US needs to arrest leadership and instigators on both sides, equally.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

No, I'm saying the people he was hanging out with at the protest were.  And also, I didn't see any reports that labelled every Caucasian as a Nazi because of this one guy.  What I did see was that every Caucasian that was parading in the initial march was labelled as either that or a white supremacist.

As much as I love this graphic, the problem with it is that all of us sitting in the centre are mostly sitting around not doing anything to stop the extremes from growing.

To deal with the left really isn't all that hard.  Many of their demands might seem frivolous to those of us who are right of centre, but if they don't infringe on your own personal rights then it shouldn't be an issue.

Dealing with the extreme right on the other hand is a bit harder because, being the polar opposite of the hard left, they want some people's rights taken away or their own elevated.  Either way, they want to have a bigger piece of the pie.

Sitting in the centre and bitching and moaning about what this side is saying and that side is doing doesn't help anyone.  At which point will the centre stand up and do something? (And yes, I know that those of us in uniform don't really have that option.  Maybe that's why we are all so vocal on here.)

That is a load of crap. The left is just as organised as the right. Both have weapons. Both break the law to the same extent. The only difference is the label. Otherwise, they would be indistinguishable. Quit apologising for assholes.

 

[a_majoor]

The "Left/Right" division is based on an extremely obsolete conception of politics (i.e. the aristocratic members of the French parliament sat on the "right" of the king in the legislature, while the bourgeoisie members sat on the left). I'm pretty sure Bourbon kings are no longer a factor in modern political discourse or theory......

If anything, the division seems to run from those who have a conception of people as atomistic units on a group (al the various divisions of Socialists) to those who see people as individuals with full agency (anarchy is the ultimate end point here). For the vast majority, people are generally willing to give up some of their rights and agency in the interests of joining with and getting the advantages of a larger cooperative grouping. This is actually outside of politics, family/tribe/clan groupings are as old as humanity and function in the same way.

Politics, in Organizational Theory, is defined as a means of allocating limited resources. This is also true outside of the "political" arena, we speak of "office politics" as people jockey to get more power/presteige/resources for themselves or group inside the company. Political parties do this to gain the resources of the taxpayer for their own supporters, crony's and clients. And regardless of what you call yourself (left or right), generally getting more of a limited resource means taking it from someone else. We have managed to avoid the full zero sum game simply because human genius, capitalism and free markets have allowed people to develop new resources or increase efficiencies to the point that the pie has massively expanded since the industrial revolution and even notionally poor people in Western countries have cars, internet and other resources that even Kings could not have 200 years ago.

Most Progressive ideology emphasizes the group over the individual, and taking resources from some groups to give to other groups. identity politics simply slices and dices the groups even further (old style Marxists spoke of classes of workers, and old style National Socialists would speak of the [insert nationality here] "people", without further subdivisions). Being arbitrarily lumped in to a group is pretty "illiberal" in every sense of the word, and who, after all, defines these groups?

So back to my initial point, the use of language and meaning has morphed many concepts and is used to distort the meaning and nature of what is being spoken of. American politics is splintering in many ways, and as I have spoken of in other threads, social, economic and demographic changes have made many of the institutions and structures created in the past obsolete or unable to deal with the issues of the day. Just like the American Federalist and Whig parties disappeared rapidly in the past as they no longer had relevant answers to the issues of the day, so current American political parties, social structures and institutions also no longer seem to have relevant answers.

President Trump, Bernie Sanders and the various groups emerging are symptoms, not causes. Whatever changes result from this will include new institutions (including political parties. President Trump may run as a Republican, but is observably not one. Bernie Sanders does not even pretend to be a Democrat, unless it suits his needs at the moment). How this plays out in the end is an open question, and some of the answers are quite frightening to contemplate.....