A car just crashed into a group of, what it seems to be, counter-protesters. The media is still reporting the possibility it could have been an accident. It wasn't, I have watched the video on Twitter. A car comes blazing into a crowded street at over 40 mph and then flees the scene. It was domestic terrorism. Here it is, if you can stomach it. Accident my ass:
We've had a similar discussion not long ago. I don't disagree that there is discrimination and, yes, I think that can be justified. In moral terms if you believe that, in the absence of discrimination, genders would be equally represented in a particular workforce then all you're doing is counter-acting existing discriminatory forces. I accept that not everyone does believe that, but I think the majority do.
This here is where I think our fundamental disagreement lies. I do not believe that there is reason to believe that, in the absence of discriminatory forces, that a given employment field will naturally be highly representative of the demographics of the wider society. I see compelling reasons, whether cultural or biological, for some segments in society to prefer certain things in life and pursue those things more often than other groups. That's not discrimination by others, that's ones own free choices in action. As such, I do not believe it is counter-acting existing forces of discrimination, but creating them.
All i'm seeing in my news feed is Charlottesville. This is what identity politics escalation looks like. I don't see this going away any time soon as the alt right and the SJW left seem determined to double down on identity based ideology.
Ahhh....now it's both sides, since even you can't find a way to defend this, but also can't admit where the problem actually lies. The Alt-right literally descended upon a prayer service being held in a church last night with torches, and today showed up dressed in riot gear from the get-go. I saw a pastor get shoved on live TV. Blaming the "SJW left" for this Nazi rally is like blaming a rape victim for wearing a short skirt.
Yes, it's both sides. No, I have never held any other positon that disavowing all political violence. I've documented it for months in here. Berkeley Profs. smashing Trump supporters with bike locks, urine getting thrown at Lauren Southern, multiple acts of Antifa, etc. etc. I mean, CNN wants you to punch nazis according to their twitter. They promote political violence. I don't care to list all the examples because it isn't relevant. Point is, to deny the political violence of both sides, which I have not done, is to deny reality.
Is it me who needs to admit something?
This is also why I am for free speech. When you stop talking to each other, you start seeing them as the enemy, you start getting more radical, extremism and violence emerge as a result.
Do they honestly think that Trump actually cares what they want. He doesn't need their approval to do anything.
Although condemning Trump is a great way to get in the news and maybe find some new donors for your organization.
I highly doubt thinking that Trump cares what they want is the point of publishing it. What Trump is going to do when he speaks in a few minutes is condemn amorphous "violence and hate", while never mentioning that today is a direct result of white supremacists and Nazis emboldened by his election. He will not utter the words, because they are part of his base.
Now word is that someone has died, and that would almost certainly be a direct result of the terrorist car attack. News flash for those keeping count: no one has been killed be a leftist college protester. Now one has been killed by someone who intentionally mowed down those protesters with a car.
Trump, in response to THIS SPECIFIC event, says "hate on both sides". Again, white nationalists and Nazis, last night marched on a church with torches, and today one of them plowed in to a group of protesters and killed one. As I said 5 minutes ago before I edited this, Trump CANNOT condemn white supremacists or Nazis, because they are part of his base. This was an predictable as the sun rising in the East. He talked about it for 3 minutes and then went on like absolutely nothing has taken place. Trump's speech was nothing but tacit approval of what has happened the last 14-15 hours.
Trump has already disavowed David Duke and his ilk so saying he can't or won't disavow white supremacists is simply untrue. Floyd Lee Corkins tried to kill as many as possible in the Family Research Council because the SPLC put them on one of their "hate lists", but this is seriously unproductive so I have little more to say on the matter. Arguing over whose political violence is worse, or denying it outright, is petty, partisan bickering, and I want no part of it. All political violence is wrong.
Know this, beyond a shadow of a doubt: When Donald Trump wants to attack or go after someone, he is not shy about doing it. Congressman, celebrities, North Korea, the judge in his Trump University case, James Comey. He knows what he is saying when he says it. The fact that he did NOT mention white supremacists today was done ON PURPOSE, because he does not dare offend them.
The thing about the "all sides" statement by Trump is that, in this specific instance, the event he was actually talking about, it was one-sided.
If we're talking in strictly general terms about the country as a whole, then saying both sides have violent fringes is true. But if we're talking about the violence in Charlottesville, only one of those groups was violent this day.
That is, the guys who brought baseball bats and guns.
The thing about the "all sides" statement by Trump is that, in this specific instance, the event he was actually talking about, it was one-sided.
If we're talking in strictly general terms about the country as a whole, then saying both sides have violent fringes is true. But if we're talking about the violence in Charlottesville, only one of those groups was violent this day.
That is, the guys who brought baseball bats and guns.
Not the unarmed civilians.
I cannot emphasize enough how this all started. A group (yes, a leftist group, but a group of people) were having a prayer service in a church, ostensibly about how they were going to counter the white supremacist protest today. And hundreds of racists with torches descended upon the church and basically surrounded it. I want everyone to imagine what that must have been like for the people inside that building, especially the black ones, as hundreds of white men wielding fire marched towards them totally unprovoked. That isn't free speech, that is terrorism in and of itself.
Trump has been playing with this fascist fire since he came down that escalator and called Mexicans rapists. It was the first thing the GOP base heard him say, and they were devoted to him from that point on. His rallies (especially in the early part of the campaign) were so blatantly fascist in nature that you'd have to willfully bury your head in the sand to not see it. In the meantime, over the last year, this Alt-right, white nationalist movement of (mostly) young men online has been festering week by week. Visits to their websites or discussion forums (easy enough to track down) reveal straight up eliminationist rhetoric. This is not going to get better. I said it long ago, and I continually say. When you unleash these type of dark forces, you cannot control them. They take on a life of their own. And Trump is a prisoner of his own creation, simply unable to criticize people carrying torches and Nazi flags, because he needs them politically.
There were countless white supremacists walking around today with weapons, including guns. I'll remind everyone that Tamir Rice was a 12-year child playing with a toy gun in a park who was shot dead within 2 seconds flat. We don't have a race problem in this country??
Sebastian Gorka, a top White House adviser, who, coincidentally, is a member of a Hungarian Nazi group and wears their pin in numerous photos, said that it was likely the MN mosque bombing was a false flag, instigated by the left. That is the only word we have gotten from the White House about a bomb being thrown through the window of a mosque.
The Republican Party bears responsibility for today’s fatal violence in Charlottesville.
In May, the North Carolina House of Representatives passed a bill that would legally protect drivers who run over protesters. “I became concerned for drivers after watching the recent protests which turned into riots in Charlotte and other cities,” Republican Rep. Justin Burr told Fox News at the time.
The driver has been identified as James Alex Fields, 20. Pretty much exactly who it was thought he would be. Young, white, disaffected male. Earlier, the Alt-right sleuths on 4-chan were trying to pin this on the PREVIOUS owner of the car, mostly because he had made anti-Trump statements on Facebook. Turns out he was at a wedding with his girlfriend the entire day. They were so desperate to concoct a false-flag narrative that they reached for the first thing they saw. It was GOSPEL among the internet Pepe-brigade for the last few hours that this was actually an Antifa member who drove into the wrong crowd of people. Little did they know the title on the car had been changed years ago. What a bunch of fools.
Now is great time to point out that memes regarding the subject about running down protesters with cars have been popular and circulating among Alt-right circles for months on end.
By the way, finally....FINALLY, the media is calling a white perpetrator a domestic terrorist. All it took was a group of Nazis descending on an American city in 2017. Turns out the left's "overheated rhetoric" about them wasn't overheated at all.
You'll notice in a ton of photos from last night and today many of the white supremacists wearing white polo shirts and khakis. This is intentional. They are apparently dressing like Trump does on the golf course. No joke.
The group whose shield he is carrying is called Vanguard America. The Anti-Defamation League has already had a lengthy write-up on them prior to today. We need to start having a serious conversation about the what this Alt-right movement has fostered in this country:
Vanguard America (VA) is a white supremacist group that opposes multiculturalism and believes that America is an exclusively white nation. Using a right-wing nationalist slogan, Blood and Soil, VA romanticizes the notion that people with “white blood” have a special bond with “American soil.” This philosophy first originated in Germany (as Blut und Boden) and was later popularized by Hitler’s regime. In the same vein, VA uses “For Race and Nation” as a variant slogan. Following this theme, VA maintains that America “is to be a nation exclusively for the White American peoples who out of the barren hills, empty plains, and vast mountains forged the most powerful nation to ever have existed.”
VA has some paramilitary characteristics. In states with open carry laws, Irizarry, who uses the title Commander, and several other members have openly carried firearms during rallies and protests. The standard uniform for members consists of khaki pants and a white polo. At several venues, members have stood and marched in military-styled formations, and utilized military facing movements and rest positions.
Vanguard America is active online, particularly on Twitter, but is best known for posting white supremacist fliers at universities across the country throughout the 2016-17 school year. During the year, the ADL counted at least 32 incidents where VA fliers were posted on campus in Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
The rise of this group to more prominence (so to speak) directly correlates with the rise of Trump's Presidential campaign and his Election victory. Let's talk about 3 of Trump's closest advisers: Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka.
Bannon is the most obvious, who has bragged about making Breitbart one of the centers of the Alt-right universe:
"We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon's target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon's leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an "eclectic mix of renegades," accusing President Barack Obama of importing "more hating Muslims," and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of "political correctness."
Next is Gorka, who, as I said before, is a full-blown member of a group of Hungarian Nazi sympathizers:
A group with alleged historical links to Nazi Germany has told NBC News it was "proud" when President Donald Trump's deputy assistant wore its medal.
Controversy has swirled around Sebastian Gorka, one of Trump's top counterterrorism advisers, ever since he attended the president's Jan. 20 Inaugural Ball wearing the honorary medal of Hungarian nationalist organization Vitezi Rend.
NBC News traveled to Hungary to dig deeper into Gorka's ties with the group, speaking with members of the organization as well as with locals who knew him when he lived there.
"When he appeared on U.S. television ... with the medal of the Vitez Order ... it made me really proud," Vitezi Rend spokesman Andras Horvath said in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Vitezi Rend is also known as the Order of Vitez.
And then there is speechwriter Stephen Miller, famous in just the last week for trashing the motto of the Statue of Liberty. Stephen Miller is an old friend of Richard Spencer, whose speeches have been attended numerous times by members of Vanguard America:
Miller is a former staffer for the nativist Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), now Trump’s nominee for attorney general. The announcement of Miller’s new role drew praise from white nationalist leader Richard Spencer. “Stephen is a highly competent and tough individual,” Spencer, who famously coined the term “alt-right” to describe the insurgent right-wing movement that has attracted white nationalists and supremacists, told Mother Jones on Wednesday. “So I have no doubt that he will do a great job.”
Spencer told me that at Duke, Miller helped him with fundraising and promotion for an on-campus debate on immigration policy that Spencer organized in 2007, featuring influential white nationalist Peter Brimelow. Another former member of the Duke Conservative Union confirms that Miller and Spencer worked together on the event. At DCU meetings, according to a past president of the group, Miller denounced multiculturalism and expressed concerns that immigrants from non-European countries were not assimilating.
“I knew [Miller] very well when I was at Duke,” Spencer told me when I visited him at his home in Whitefish, Montana, a few weeks before the election. “But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this, because I don’t want to harm Trump.”
There are very, very clear reasons why Trump didn't say what he didn't say today. You're blind if you don't see it.
I listened to MIller's speech as well. I don't see how he 'trashed' (that's a bit much) the motto of the Statue of Liberty. Regardless, that motto, as touching as it may be, should probably not be the underlying rule governing our immigration system. What I did hear were reasonable suggestions on immigration reform, many based on how other countries operate. I'm hardly even an amateur on such matters but some of it did sound reasonable. I will say both Acosta and Miller were quite rude to each other. Acosta seemed like he was not open to measures that might suggest something different than how it operates now.
I'm honestly unsure what the solution to this is. It should be a US problem, but it looks like they are passing the buck. Canada is being forced into a rough position, and I think perhaps we need to make this an international incident... the dodging of refugees is a huge '$&*# you' to the international community and treaties, and many countries are doing it atm. Making an example of the US would discourage other countries from failing to fulfill their obligations. Its not like the US didn't interfere in Haiti's past ffs.
I do not have high hopes for this though, and expect more BS.
Yesterday was not the first murder committed by white supremacists since the inauguration. The Portland train stabbings, the killing of an Indian immigrant in Kansas who was an engineer, the murder of a black service member on a college campus in (I believe) Maryland. There is now a body count accumulating. Left-wing protesters have engaged in violent acts (mostly against property), and yes, someone did shoot up the Congressional softball practice. But no one has died. The actual fatalities are all accumulating on one side.
Many of the people easily recognizable at the march Friday night were quickly identified. One is going to have a hell of a time when he goes back to campus in the fall. Another was fired from his job almost immediately. This is the ultimate example of what the Alt-right doesn't get about free speech. Normal citizens set about identifying and publically shaming them. They will whine about their rights being violated, but it's all crap. They are simply spoiled little brats who shouldn't have been in the kitchen if they can't handle the heat.
A group of literal nazis were able to get into the largest political gathering in Sweden by whining about "free speech" and their right to have an opinion. They used this opportunity to interrupt other speakers and scream that people with other opinions than themselves were traitors that should be killed. They also found the time to vandalize a protest project and make sick jokes about the Holocaust.
It should be pretty obvious that the alt-right and neo-nazis don't give a damn about free speech. It's just a tool for them to exploit.
A group of literal nazis were able to get into the largest political gathering in Sweden by whining about "free speech" and their right to have an opinion. They used this opportunity to interrupt other speakers and scream that people with other opinions than themselves were traitors that should be killed. They also found the time to vandalize a protest project and make sick jokes about the Holocaust.
It should be pretty obvious that the alt-right and neo-nazis don't give a damn about free speech. It's just a tool for them to exploit.
Nazi imagery is banned in much of Europe. That will never happen here, but it's fairly difficult to argue with their reasoning. They did systematically murder over 6 million people and plunged the entire continent and the world into a conflict that can only accurately be described as hell on earth.
I say this all the time, Nazism did not begin and end at gas chambers and an attempt at world domination. In the '30s, it wasn't all that different than what you saw in Charlottesville. The members of the Alt-right would be well served to remember what happened to the Nazi rank and file in the streets, commonly known as the brown shirts. Once Hitler consolidated his power in 1934, he killed their leaders, in what is known as the "Night of the Long Knives". In the end, only the elite in the Nazi leadership retained their power. Hitler, Goring, Goebbels, Hess, and Himmler. They had no actual use for the rabble once they had accomplished their objective.
Whether the alt right or neo nazis care about free speech, I don't know. I do know that the left represents a far greater threat to free speech at seemingly every turn. They are interested in free speech only when it means the right to supress speech, and create consequences for speech, and do everything they can to take the "free" out of free speech. Nazis are just a cover, a faux moral veneer for a censorship campaign they have been waging for a long time. They won't try to censor you for being a "nazi", they'll call you a nazi and censor you for not agreeing with them. It still gets me that Ben Shapiro, of all people, was censored by the left. You literally can not get more mild.
The left seems to have forgotten that free speech has always been supposed to mean the rights of speech you don't like to be protected, even if it hurts your feelings, even if you find it to be "hate speech", which legally speaking, is not a thing.
I'm not worried about neo nazis taking away free speech rights. I'm worried about radical leftists shutting down what they don't like under vague moral pretenses that really come down to a dislike of the subject matter and false guilt by associations.
The thing about the "all sides" statement by Trump is that, in this specific instance, the event he was actually talking about, it was one-sided.
If we're talking in strictly general terms about the country as a whole, then saying both sides have violent fringes is true. But if we're talking about the violence in Charlottesville, only one of those groups was violent this day.
That is, the guys who brought baseball bats and guns.
Not the unarmed civilians.
There was the side with the car and the side with the people getting run over. Trump said he wanted both sides to stop the violence. Was this just clueless Trump at it again? No. His is mean, makes terrible choices and lives with alternative facts but he's not clueless.
That statement was typical Trump. On the one hand he is victim blaming and also it was him refusing to admit fault from his side which is also typical of Trump. Yes, that means the alt right neonazis are his side.
He never will admit fault even when presented with photos or recording and sworn testimony. Strength, right alt right? That's what you want a guy who can never admit he's wrong or learn from mistakes and is only out to enrich himself. Swell, keep standing by your man. He's a lot like Kim Jong Un both need to be seen as faultless and neither can admit being wrong.
I'm honestly unsure what the solution to this is. It should be a US problem, but it looks like they are passing the buck. Canada is being forced into a rough position, and I think perhaps we need to make this an international incident... the dodging of refugees is a huge '$&*# you' to the international community and treaties, and many countries are doing it atm. Making an example of the US would discourage other countries from failing to fulfill their obligations. Its not like the US didn't interfere in Haiti's past ffs.
I do not have high hopes for this though, and expect more BS.
I just find it ironic that the US is complaining about "leaky" borders and yet it leaking the other way. The Haitians are not the first to do this.
Whether the alt right or neo nazis care about free speech, I don't know. I do know that the left represents a far greater threat to free speech at seemingly every turn. They are interested in free speech only when it means the right to supress speech, and create consequences for speech, and do everything they can to take the "free" out of free speech. Nazis are just a cover, a faux moral veneer for a censorship campaign they have been waging for a long time. They won't try to censor you for being a "nazi", they'll call you a nazi and censor you for not agreeing with them. It still gets me that Ben Shapiro, of all people, was censored by the left. You literally can not get more mild.
The left seems to have forgotten that free speech has always been supposed to mean the rights of speech you don't like to be protected, even if it hurts your feelings, even if you find it to be "hate speech", which legally speaking, is not a thing.
I'm not worried about neo nazis taking away free speech rights. I'm worried about radical leftists shutting down what they don't like under vague moral pretenses that really come down to a dislike of the subject matter and false guilt by associations.
So "Free" speech means you will not be prosecuted by the government for speaking out against, anything.
The left can not take that away ever. They will not be able to lock up individuals just because they are a neo-Nazi racist. They can arrest them if that neo-Nazi utter death threats against an individual or group however, convictions solely on that are rare.
However, the left can organize and create boycotts or protests against individuals or groups. It isn't like the right hasn't applied the same tactics; just ask the Dixie Chicks.
However, in American history, the right has taken free speech and arrested people over it to the point of conducting Witch Hunts around communism. The left, not to my knowledge.
People are allowed to be upset about what people say. They can demand laws for hate speech, government can even enact said laws, but chances are, they will be struck down by the courts if it gets that far.
Whether the alt right or neo nazis care about free speech, I don't know. I do know that the left represents a far greater threat to free speech at seemingly every turn. They are interested in free speech only when it means the right to supress speech, and create consequences for speech, and do everything they can to take the "free" out of free speech. Nazis are just a cover, a faux moral veneer for a censorship campaign they have been waging for a long time. They won't try to censor you for being a "nazi", they'll call you a nazi and censor you for not agreeing with them. It still gets me that Ben Shapiro, of all people, was censored by the left. You literally can not get more mild.
The left seems to have forgotten that free speech has always been supposed to mean the rights of speech you don't like to be protected, even if it hurts your feelings, even if you find it to be "hate speech", which legally speaking, is not a thing.
I'm not worried about neo nazis taking away free speech rights. I'm worried about radical leftists shutting down what they don't like under vague moral pretenses that really come down to a dislike of the subject matter and false guilt by associations.
Funny, because no one shut down their speech yesterday in the LEAST. As a matter of fact, the cops went out of their way to give them a long leash, to the point where they let them surround a full church while carrying torches Friday night. In the end, people died for their free speech. And again, we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what free speech means, and I seriously don't know how many times it has to be said. The first amendment covers what the government cannot do to curtail your rights, and NOTHING more. If the left wants to publicly shame the Alt-right members who participated in this, that is them using THEIR free speech rights to do so. Your philosophical views about free speech aren't written into the constitution. And that is all they remain. Their speech IS protected, it WAS protected yesterday, at the expense of human life. And yet that STILL isn't enough. They also have to apparently be free from both 1.) any response at all and 2.) social consequences. Now tell me who the actual "snowflakes" are. If anything, yesterday is the ultimate example of how the free speech rights of the most repugnant of views ARE protected. But they are NOT protected from the speech of others being used against them.
Whether the alt right or neo nazis care about free speech, I don't know. I do know that the left represents a far greater threat to free speech at seemingly every turn. They are interested in free speech only when it means the right to supress speech, and create consequences for speech, and do everything they can to take the "free" out of free speech. Nazis are just a cover, a faux moral veneer for a censorship campaign they have been waging for a long time. They won't try to censor you for being a "nazi", they'll call you a nazi and censor you for not agreeing with them. It still gets me that Ben Shapiro, of all people, was censored by the left. You literally can not get more mild.
The left seems to have forgotten that free speech has always been supposed to mean the rights of speech you don't like to be protected, even if it hurts your feelings, even if you find it to be "hate speech", which legally speaking, is not a thing.
I'm not worried about neo nazis taking away free speech rights. I'm worried about radical leftists shutting down what they don't like under vague moral pretenses that really come down to a dislike of the subject matter and false guilt by associations.
As a liberal myself, the reason I object to the white nationalists and their actions in Charlottesville is not because they are racist or whatever. The reason I object is because these people were literally committing violent crimes. The white nationalists brought baseball bats and guns and assaulted unarmed civilians. One of them committed murder that day.
I myself have complained about left-wing agitation on some college campuses, but if we are going to compare left to right, I don't see how shouting down a conservative speaker during a speech is comparable to assault and murder.
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http://globalnews.ca/news/3657661/canadian-army-sets-up-tents-at-lacolle-border-to-welcome-asylum-seekers/
An open-letter from the Anne Frank Center to President Trump:
Is it me who needs to admit something?
This is also why I am for free speech. When you stop talking to each other, you start seeing them as the enemy, you start getting more radical, extremism and violence emerge as a result.
Although condemning Trump is a great way to get in the news and maybe find some new donors for your organization.
Now word is that someone has died, and that would almost certainly be a direct result of the terrorist car attack. News flash for those keeping count: no one has been killed be a leftist college protester. Now one has been killed by someone who intentionally mowed down those protesters with a car.
Trump, in response to THIS SPECIFIC event, says "hate on both sides". Again, white nationalists and Nazis, last night marched on a church with torches, and today one of them plowed in to a group of protesters and killed one. As I said 5 minutes ago before I edited this, Trump CANNOT condemn white supremacists or Nazis, because they are part of his base. This was an predictable as the sun rising in the East. He talked about it for 3 minutes and then went on like absolutely nothing has taken place. Trump's speech was nothing but tacit approval of what has happened the last 14-15 hours.
If we're talking in strictly general terms about the country as a whole, then saying both sides have violent fringes is true. But if we're talking about the violence in Charlottesville, only one of those groups was violent this day.
That is, the guys who brought baseball bats and guns.
Not the unarmed civilians.
Trump has been playing with this fascist fire since he came down that escalator and called Mexicans rapists. It was the first thing the GOP base heard him say, and they were devoted to him from that point on. His rallies (especially in the early part of the campaign) were so blatantly fascist in nature that you'd have to willfully bury your head in the sand to not see it. In the meantime, over the last year, this Alt-right, white nationalist movement of (mostly) young men online has been festering week by week. Visits to their websites or discussion forums (easy enough to track down) reveal straight up eliminationist rhetoric. This is not going to get better. I said it long ago, and I continually say. When you unleash these type of dark forces, you cannot control them. They take on a life of their own. And Trump is a prisoner of his own creation, simply unable to criticize people carrying torches and Nazi flags, because he needs them politically.
There were countless white supremacists walking around today with weapons, including guns. I'll remind everyone that Tamir Rice was a 12-year child playing with a toy gun in a park who was shot dead within 2 seconds flat. We don't have a race problem in this country??
A: Something something Benghazi, something something emails.
This is quite good:
In May, the North Carolina House of Representatives passed a bill that would legally protect drivers who run over protesters. “I became concerned for drivers after watching the recent protests which turned into riots in Charlotte and other cities,” Republican Rep. Justin Burr told Fox News at the time.
Tennessee Republicans introduced a similar bill.
Now is great time to point out that memes regarding the subject about running down protesters with cars have been popular and circulating among Alt-right circles for months on end.
By the way, finally....FINALLY, the media is calling a white perpetrator a domestic terrorist. All it took was a group of Nazis descending on an American city in 2017. Turns out the left's "overheated rhetoric" about them wasn't overheated at all.
You'll notice in a ton of photos from last night and today many of the white supremacists wearing white polo shirts and khakis. This is intentional. They are apparently dressing like Trump does on the golf course. No joke.
Vanguard America (VA) is a white supremacist group that opposes multiculturalism and believes that America is an exclusively white nation. Using a right-wing nationalist slogan, Blood and Soil, VA romanticizes the notion that people with “white blood” have a special bond with “American soil.” This philosophy first originated in Germany (as Blut und Boden) and was later popularized by Hitler’s regime. In the same vein, VA uses “For Race and Nation” as a variant slogan. Following this theme, VA maintains that America “is to be a nation exclusively for the White American peoples who out of the barren hills, empty plains, and vast mountains forged the most powerful nation to ever have existed.”
VA has some paramilitary characteristics. In states with open carry laws, Irizarry, who uses the title Commander, and several other members have openly carried firearms during rallies and protests. The standard uniform for members consists of khaki pants and a white polo. At several venues, members have stood and marched in military-styled formations, and utilized military facing movements and rest positions.
Vanguard America is active online, particularly on Twitter, but is best known for posting white supremacist fliers at universities across the country throughout the 2016-17 school year. During the year, the ADL counted at least 32 incidents where VA fliers were posted on campus in Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
The rise of this group to more prominence (so to speak) directly correlates with the rise of Trump's Presidential campaign and his Election victory. Let's talk about 3 of Trump's closest advisers: Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka.
Bannon is the most obvious, who has bragged about making Breitbart one of the centers of the Alt-right universe:
"We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon's target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon's leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an "eclectic mix of renegades," accusing President Barack Obama of importing "more hating Muslims," and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of "political correctness."
Next is Gorka, who, as I said before, is a full-blown member of a group of Hungarian Nazi sympathizers:
A group with alleged historical links to Nazi Germany has told NBC News it was "proud" when President Donald Trump's deputy assistant wore its medal.
Controversy has swirled around Sebastian Gorka, one of Trump's top counterterrorism advisers, ever since he attended the president's Jan. 20 Inaugural Ball wearing the honorary medal of Hungarian nationalist organization Vitezi Rend.
NBC News traveled to Hungary to dig deeper into Gorka's ties with the group, speaking with members of the organization as well as with locals who knew him when he lived there.
"When he appeared on U.S. television ... with the medal of the Vitez Order ... it made me really proud," Vitezi Rend spokesman Andras Horvath said in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Vitezi Rend is also known as the Order of Vitez.
And then there is speechwriter Stephen Miller, famous in just the last week for trashing the motto of the Statue of Liberty. Stephen Miller is an old friend of Richard Spencer, whose speeches have been attended numerous times by members of Vanguard America:
Miller is a former staffer for the nativist Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), now Trump’s nominee for attorney general. The announcement of Miller’s new role drew praise from white nationalist leader Richard Spencer. “Stephen is a highly competent and tough individual,” Spencer, who famously coined the term “alt-right” to describe the insurgent right-wing movement that has attracted white nationalists and supremacists, told Mother Jones on Wednesday. “So I have no doubt that he will do a great job.”
Spencer told me that at Duke, Miller helped him with fundraising and promotion for an on-campus debate on immigration policy that Spencer organized in 2007, featuring influential white nationalist Peter Brimelow. Another former member of the Duke Conservative Union confirms that Miller and Spencer worked together on the event. At DCU meetings, according to a past president of the group, Miller denounced multiculturalism and expressed concerns that immigrants from non-European countries were not assimilating.
“I knew [Miller] very well when I was at Duke,” Spencer told me when I visited him at his home in Whitefish, Montana, a few weeks before the election. “But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this, because I don’t want to harm Trump.”
There are very, very clear reasons why Trump didn't say what he didn't say today. You're blind if you don't see it.
I will say both Acosta and Miller were quite rude to each other. Acosta seemed like he was not open to measures that might suggest something different than how it operates now.
I do not have high hopes for this though, and expect more BS.
The UN is one that should take more responsibility for Haiti. Their negligence was part of a massive epidemic there.
Many of the people easily recognizable at the march Friday night were quickly identified. One is going to have a hell of a time when he goes back to campus in the fall. Another was fired from his job almost immediately. This is the ultimate example of what the Alt-right doesn't get about free speech. Normal citizens set about identifying and publically shaming them. They will whine about their rights being violated, but it's all crap. They are simply spoiled little brats who shouldn't have been in the kitchen if they can't handle the heat.
It should be pretty obvious that the alt-right and neo-nazis don't give a damn about free speech. It's just a tool for them to exploit.
I say this all the time, Nazism did not begin and end at gas chambers and an attempt at world domination. In the '30s, it wasn't all that different than what you saw in Charlottesville. The members of the Alt-right would be well served to remember what happened to the Nazi rank and file in the streets, commonly known as the brown shirts. Once Hitler consolidated his power in 1934, he killed their leaders, in what is known as the "Night of the Long Knives". In the end, only the elite in the Nazi leadership retained their power. Hitler, Goring, Goebbels, Hess, and Himmler. They had no actual use for the rabble once they had accomplished their objective.
The left seems to have forgotten that free speech has always been supposed to mean the rights of speech you don't like to be protected, even if it hurts your feelings, even if you find it to be "hate speech", which legally speaking, is not a thing.
I'm not worried about neo nazis taking away free speech rights. I'm worried about radical leftists shutting down what they don't like under vague moral pretenses that really come down to a dislike of the subject matter and false guilt by associations.
That statement was typical Trump. On the one hand he is victim blaming and also it was him refusing to admit fault from his side which is also typical of Trump. Yes, that means the alt right neonazis are his side.
He never will admit fault even when presented with photos or recording and sworn testimony. Strength, right alt right? That's what you want a guy who can never admit he's wrong or learn from mistakes and is only out to enrich himself. Swell, keep standing by your man. He's a lot like Kim Jong Un both need to be seen as faultless and neither can admit being wrong.
The left can not take that away ever. They will not be able to lock up individuals just because they are a neo-Nazi racist. They can arrest them if that neo-Nazi utter death threats against an individual or group however, convictions solely on that are rare.
However, the left can organize and create boycotts or protests against individuals or groups. It isn't like the right hasn't applied the same tactics; just ask the Dixie Chicks.
However, in American history, the right has taken free speech and arrested people over it to the point of conducting Witch Hunts around communism. The left, not to my knowledge.
People are allowed to be upset about what people say. They can demand laws for hate speech, government can even enact said laws, but chances are, they will be struck down by the courts if it gets that far.
I myself have complained about left-wing agitation on some college campuses, but if we are going to compare left to right, I don't see how shouting down a conservative speaker during a speech is comparable to assault and murder.