You know, sometimes I go over to the Codex forums, because I've always thought they were less extreme than the shit that is seen on 4-chan and the truly dark recesses of the web. But something about being confronted with the fact that this all took place yesterday specifically because of the online movement they have been involved in has caused most people to simply double-down, because nothing in life is harder than admitting you were wrong. I saw someone I have traded posts about game tips before post of picture of the girl who was killed, Heather Heyer, pointing to her Facebook page as proof that she was an SJW, saying Fields had good targeting, but that he should have (and I quote) "driven a freightliner instead". This is the general consensus this morning among the Alt-right crowd. That it would have been much better if he had hit and killed more people. That, and they think it was a false flag. That's what is being said by thousands if not millions of young men online today.
This may have started as "edgy" irony, or being pissed about women and gay people in video games, or wanting to be part of some kind of online counterculture. It has morphed into something that is evil to the core. There is an entire nascent fascist movement that has been cultivated online that now numbers in the millions. Yesterday is what happens when some of them leave their computers and take to the streets. They have even given a name to the car that was used in the murder: The Challenger of Peace. Chilling stuff.
Funny, because no one shut down their speech yesterday in the LEAST.
Violence in response to speech is the shutting down of speech. And people objected when I once said the left often plays defense for their own violent offenders. They did it this time, and many times beforehand, i'm quite sure we've even argued about these past events before.
I know I just said arguing over whose political violence is worse is ultimately childish and futile. But to pretend these ""counter protesters"" aren't chasing anyone they dislike around literally everywhere they gather, looking for a fight and bringing one, is so obviously untrue i'm gonna have to call it out.
It's not possible to realistically deny that every time Antifa shows up, and they did show up, as they always do, they show up to assault people. With weapons. The major speakers, themselves, were assaulted and maced and one Baked Alaska, so far from a "neo nazi" its laughable, is still in the hospital with possible permanent eye damage.
In fact, almost *every time* Richard Spencer shows his face lately, he's assaulted or maced in some way. And he engages in no violence whatsoever. Your side openly celebrates this. You're talking about naming and shaming when the reality is the threat of physical danger anywhere you go. It doesnt matter how much you dont like the person or his ideas, indiscriminate unprovoked violence towards innocents is wrong.
The escalation of violence will continue if the left continues to be dishonest about it. You have to call out their own side for their repeated aggression instead of playing defense for them, if their own in-group shuns them instead of celebrates them, maybe they wouldn't feel so validated.
All political violence is wrong. Both sides are doing it. It doesn't hurt to be consistent and accept reality.
If we are going to compare left and right
Which I was indeed doing a comparison with, left v right on the subject of free speech...
I don't see how shouting down a conservative speaker during a speech is comparable to assault and murder
Which is a comparison (free speech vs violence) I wasn't making. But it deserves to be mentioned you left out assault as one of their methods of shutting down speakers, or protests, which is demonstrably the case.
If you really insist on that comparison then compare the BLM protest cop killer who wanted to kill whites and white cops, the Sanders campaign worker that shot at republicans, the SPLC inspired shooter, the Clinton activist father of the Pulse nightclub mass shooter, the worst in our history,.
Just because that was the only subject I was speaking about at the current time was free speech, doesn't mean I lacked for examples of left wing murder and murder attempts. Again, political violence is wrong, both sides do it. Pretending otherwise only emboldens one side which just makes the problem worse.
Relevant. The left has absolutely been brazenly calling for violence and should admit to the fact that calling for violence increases the chance of it happening.
The right, who live in alternative reality, get so worked up about what others are doing, that they end up doing the things that they accuse others of doing.
Nazis ran over people, people on the right saw it but they're saying "the left!" or "both sides!".
Republicans say that illegal aliens are voting or something, then those Republicans commit all the voter fraud. They gerrymander and voter purge and close polling stations.
All the golf that Trump accused Obama of doing; he's now done fifty times more golfing than Obama did in 8 years.
Trump attacked the Clinton foundation. Laughable for a guy who enriches himself by holding fundraisers at his own hotels and also charging the Secret Service inflated prices to stay at his hotels.
All those Republican bathroom bills. Zero transgender offenders but multiple Republican politicans have committed various bathroom crimes.
One of the main arguments I'm hearing today on the right is "well, if you call people Nazis long enough, what do you expect to happen??" As if somehow if people started calling me a necrophiliac for 6 months I would somehow develop a proclivity for corpses that I didn't have previously.
Incidentally, the right has been calling feminists "feminazis" since at least the mid-90s when Rush Limbaugh coined the term, and they seem to have thus far been immune to marching with swastikas and Confederate flags.
I think there is a bit of a refusal to acknowledge problems on both sides.
On political violence I think there's plenty of evidence that the left uses that as well as the right. That doesn't mean that the situation in Charlottesville was not very one-sided and it would be asking a huge amount of people to restrain themselves when being intimidated by large groups wielding shields, baseball bats and torches. However, I think @WarChiefZeke's right that it doesn't help to see all problems everywhere as originating with one side - that's only going to further entrench opinions.
On illegal voting I did some research some months ago when this issue was being discussed and it's not hard to come up with credible stories of voter fraud in local news. A quick Google this morning showed this relatively recent story which looks at the national position. The facts at a national level are disputed, so it's not clear just what the size of the problem is. However, it's not difficult to find local coverage where the facts are not disputed - so it seems clear to me that there is indeed a problem that deserves to have been talked about more than it has.
On a slightly different topic, there have been a number of mentions recently about the right to free speech and what this means. If one person is free to say whatever they want, but another person is free to try and disrupt them saying it - you have a recipe for deepening conflict. Personally I'm more comfortable with the European approach that you shouldn't be free to say whatever you want in the first place - words matter as well as actions when it comes to promoting hate ...
I think there is a bit of a refusal to acknowledge problems on both sides.
On political violence I think there's plenty of evidence that the left uses that as well as the right. That doesn't mean that the situation in Charlottesville was not very one-sided and it would be asking a huge amount of people to restrain themselves when being intimidated by large groups wielding shields, baseball bats and torches. However, I think @WarChiefZeke's right that it doesn't help to see all problems everywhere as originating with one side - that's only going to further entrench opinions.
On illegal voting I did some research some months ago when this issue was being discussed and it's not hard to come up with credible stories of voter fraud in local news. A quick Google this morning showed this relatively recent story which looks at the national position. The facts at a national level are disputed, so it's not clear just what the size of the problem is. However, it's not difficult to find local coverage where the facts are not disputed - so it seems clear to me that there is indeed a problem that deserves to have been talked about more than it has.
On a slightly different topic, there have been a number of mentions recently about the right to free speech and what this means. If one person is free to say whatever they want, but another person is free to try and disrupt them saying it - you have a recipe for deepening conflict. Personally I'm more comfortable with the European approach that you shouldn't be free to say whatever you want in the first place - words matter as well as actions when it comes to promoting hate ...
That voter thing you posted is from the Washington Times which is not a legitimate news source. It's literally conservative propaganda. It's a lousy world that we live in that the website has been set up to pretend to be "news" and here someone making a cursory Google search is misled in this manner.
Apparently the rally organizer, the day after one of his people killed someone and injured many more, gave a press conference but ran away when he felt threatened.
He then tweeted about oh lordy there's no free speech! You can speak but if you poke people in the eye what do you expect. As you say, Grond0, there should be accountability for your words but there isn't. Actually I don't know if it's accountability that's missing or common sense. "Haha I said something terrible but oh no he didn't like it and hit me I'm shocked." At some point you are dumb. Also an American tourist got punched for giving a nazi salute in Germany.
I don't know what to say to these people. But you can't say anything to them they are going to stupid no matter what you SAY. You tell them hey the stove is hot don't touch it. Then they touch it and get burned. I guess i feel about is that I personally feel your right to announce your stupidity to the world should be defended. But yeah no one lives in a vacuum and perhaps you should consider what you are saying how it affects others. But it doesn't do any good to say that so some people.
There is, statistically speaking, NO voter fraud in this country. The idea that that Washington Times article states in which 5.7 million people may have voted illegally is preposterous. There were a couple instances of actual voter fraud in the last election, and all of them were Trump voters, who said they were doing it to try even out the apparent illegal votes that don't exist. 5.7 million people are not risking prison time to add a single measly vote to a candidate. The total amount of verifiable cases of voter fraud in this country in the last decade wouldn't be enough to swing an election for County Treasurer.
And @smeagolheart is entirely correct. The name of the Washington Times has always been meant to give it an air of legitimacy, but it is as much a right-wing propaganda outfit as FOX News or Breitbart. It actually predates both of them. This is how effective straight-up lies are, and how the bigger they are, the more effective they are. Does no one find it odd that the claim of 3 million illegal votes just so happens to be the PRECISE amount of votes Donald Trump lost the popular vote by?? But moreover, let's say in some whacked-out universe 3 million people actually did vote illegally. Even if you grant that absurdity, you would then have to buy into the narrative that every single solitary one of those THREE MILLION people all voted for one candidate over the other.
I didn't simply accept the article in the Washington Times uncritically @jjstraka34. First of all I read it carefully and considered it in the context of the significant amount of research I did on this subject before. Secondly (as I'm not familiar with American publications) I looked at a view on the paper from https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-times/. That confirmed my impression that, though this was a right-wing paper, it was unlikely to be publishing something totally untrue (and anyway there are things in the article that were consistent with what I'd seen before).
I don't disagree that 3m is likely to be much too high a figure and the slant given to the story will of course reflect the right-wing views of the paper. However, I've seen multiple posts on this thread saying that there is no evidence of voter fraud - and that simply is not true. There is considerable evidence of illegal voting and some serious research should be done on it to get a more accurate picture of the scale of the problem. I don't believe that taking the position that there is no problem at all is a credible stance and doing that is simply going to be another way of entrenching attitudes.
I have no desire at all (at all at all) to defend Donald Trump and I don't think discussing a figure of 3m is relevant (and that's not referred to in the article I linked anyway). However, in relation to the principle involved I would be surprised if it were not the case that the vast majority of people who voted illegally were against him. As that perception I'm sure is shared by most people, Trump is currently being offered a perfect excuse to both ignore the popular vote and give legitimacy to the various dirty tricks on voting that Republicans are playing.
I do understand your frustration with the current situation where it often seems that 'alternative' facts have equal status with factual facts. However, I think in the long term that's best dealt with by following an evidenced-based approach rather than retreating into 'them' and 'us' positions.
Voter fraud is also ballot stuffing - a more effective and widely used tactic than double casting.
You only need a handful cooperating people to commit ballot stuffing, which can swing an election and will swing it to one side.
Sure, I'd grant that this issue should be looked at, but it should be looked at by an independent judicial committee that both parties can equally agree to. Anything less will turn it into a political farce.
I guess i feel about is that I personally feel your right to announce your stupidity to the world should be defended. But yeah no one lives in a vacuum and perhaps you should consider what you are saying how it affects others.
I concur. How will we know who the idiots are if they don't clearly identify themselves via their words?
Now...about this weekend's activities...if you weren't from Charlottesville or the surrounding communities then you didn't have any business being in Charlottesville (unless you happened to be there on vacation or a similar routine activity). If you went there specifically to attend a protest or a counter-protest then you are part of the problem. It's their statue--if they want to decommission it and/or remove it then they have the right to do so without any outsider input. There isn't any reason to have statues of Civil War figures on either side--how is it logical to memorialize the fact that we were brutally killing each other 156 years ago? If you want to have historical reminders then put up text-based plaques which denote "this happened here on such-and-such date". The past happened and it cannot be changed but people are getting far too upset over things *right now* and if they don't deescalate then these clashes are going to get worse.
On a tangentially-related topic, is the extreme alt-right mindset ingrained into people as children, learning it from their parents, or do they pick it up from others by browsing the Internet? If they didn't learn it as a child, then how does someone go from being a rational, logical person to being someone with a very narrow view and highly confrontational view of the world? (The presumption here is that they were logical to begin with.) I see the phrase "disaffected young white male" applied to these people (even though, presumably, some of them must be females) but what makes them so disaffected? Poor job prospects? Low income? They think there is no future where they are currently living? This doesn't make any sense because they are living in a country where they are able to move to where they can find a better future. If all those Okies and Arkies could do it during the Dust Bowl 30s, many of whom were worse off than these people, then they can find a better life that doesn't include hatred. No one is holding them back or holding them down except themselves. The ones who were able to travel halfway across the country just so they could "defend" a statue they probably had never seen before, though, what is their excuse? "Taking down the statue is an affront to white culture", they may say. How is that possible? I am white and I didn't realize that some POS statue in Virginia was my "culture". The fact that they have the time and money to travel all that way means they can't be that disaffected so they must have some other reason for being there. Just to get into someone else's face and be allowed to get away with it? They can do that in their home town by going to a bar and starting a fight.
Bottom line, if your side was the side who had a person drive a car into a crowd of people then your side is wrong and needs to back down first.
I know some alt-right people, family members and people at work. I can think of a few in particular who are Trump supporters and believed Hillary was just the worst thing ever.
I know girl says she was often beat up by a gang of black girls at school. Now that she's grown up she still holds a dislike against black people (and mexicans for good measure). But, no, she doesn't consider herself racist. Looking at her facebook page she's one of those that makes deplorable posts saying things like so and so should be beat up (or whatever) for opposing Trump's terrible agenda of the day. In real life, she can be sweet but she'll write the worst stuff from behind a keyboard. She highly encouraged someone who wasn't going to vote to fill out a ballot for Trump to make sure her man won, practically doing it for her, all to counter the billions of illegal votes that Hillary was in her mind going to get.
I know a guy who is a Christian Conservative. He's very religious and also very "I speak my mind!" which can be often from him an excuse to be a jerk or say outrageous things. He excuses Trump because he says at least we got someone in Government who stands for Christian family values! Which of course is a lol considering Trump's got kids from 3 marriages and owns casinos and lies as often as breathes.
Another guy I know is a deplorable. He listens to alt-right talk Radio daily. He'll make alt-right type comments now and then out of the blue. The context could be talking about the football game and he would be the type to say something like "so-and-so works hard on the field. He doesn't sit around and wait for HANDOUTS like some LIBRUL!" He will still go on rants against Obama or Hillary despite them not being in charge or anything anymore. He is kind of a sourpuss and unpleasant to be around.
The disaffected white male part is almost certainly more social disillusionment than economic. And my suspicion is that it has alot to do with problems they have with women. As the actor Michael Rappaport said in pretty funny video he shot while walking his dog on Saturday, he asks why the hell any college male would be spending their weekend at a Confederate/Nazi rally rather than going on a date or going to a party. Or a movie. Or anything normal people do. That crowd was 98% male.
As for the online part....look, alot of this has it's roots in Gamergate and the anti-PC movement, and they just keep going further down the rabbit hole. The goal here seems to be the complete eradication of polite society, the type of things that keeps people from coming to blows in the supermarket. Meaning, there are things you just don't say in public. Thus far, this movement has thrived because of the anonymity of online shit-posting, but it has now grown too large not to spill over. And many of the people who started out hating Anita Sarkesian have morphed into full-on white nationalists. It is a counter-culture as much as the hippie movment of the '60s, but it's aims couldn't be more different. Here is a letter to the editor of a newspaper (incidentally, the city I live in) who saw the pictures of his son at the rally and wrote this in repsonse:
On a completely unrelated topic, a recent analysis of the metadata of the Guccifer 2.0 data dump, the one which contained a lot of documents obtained from DNC servers, seems to indicate that it would have been impossible for the data dump to be collected by remote hack from Romania (as was originally claimed). Instead, the data dump appears to have been done *locally*--someone most likely using a USB drive to copy the files. This would indicate "inside job" rather than "foreign hack". The analysis did not touch upon the content of the files, only the sizes and internal time stamps of the files. Notable conclusions: the files were originally copied onto a system with Eastern Time zone settings in effect (UTC -5), which would indicate the system was located in that time zone, that the files were likely copied using a Linux command (it is trivial to get a bootable version of Linux on a USB drive these days...or back during mid-2016 when the data dump happened) and--this is probably the most important conclusion--that the file transfer rate of the data dump clocks in at about 23 Mbps, which is the rate you would expect to find for copying files to a USB-2 drive (both the Forensicator and other researchers found that Internet-based transfer speeds which were available at the time of the dump would have been about 15Mbps...and would have been less to Romania where the hack was said to have originated).
Plausible...not plausible...I am uncertain because I am not a forensic data analyst; however, this evidence should probably be considered alongside any evidence the still-ongoing investigations produce so that everyone may finally get to the truth. One interesting point worth noting, though--as far as anyone knows the FBI has not examined the DNC's servers directly.
My questions about election hacking are as follows: how did the Russians know which election machines to hack? If they could hack the ones in Wisconsin or Ohio why didn't they hack the ones in California or New York to give Trump more electoral votes? Why didn't they also hack the vote count so he wouldn't lose the popular vote despite receiving an Electoral win? I mean, if you are going to cheat to win you might as well go all in. *shrug*
The main problem i have with this image is the hammer and sickle. These symbols have a history and by using the iconography one invokes that history. Granted, the alt right is worse in this regard. The swastika and Sieg Hail has its own dark history, and I highly doubt that it's just a coincidence when alt righters shout "blood and soil".
Yet, one cannot use the hammer and sickle as 'merely' a symbol for "being anti fascist". Stalin and his ilk have tainted that symbol, in much the same way that Hitler and his ilk have tainted the swastika. And again, these symbols cannot be used without invoking that history. As such, this movement becomes associated with anti fascism, yes, but also with something that has been historically shown to be not that much different.
Also, the rise of totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt for a much longer read
Of course, there is more heterogeneity In the anti fascist movement compared to the alt right movement (notice how unified and 'on point' the alt right is--e.g. ' blood and soil'). This suggests an awareness of history on their part that doesn't seem to be present in the ant movements. I've personally talked to many that have 'approved' (i.e. as measured with a 'like') of the above meme that didn't even notice the h&s. Of course, the swastika has captured the American imagination in a way that the h&s hasn't. This is likely at least partially due to the fact that, in many ways, Stalin's victims haven't been given the same voice that Hitler's victims have. (Which is pretty amazing considering that the cold war just happened--a lot of things are amazing considering that the cold war just happened...)
What is missing, imo, is a notion of what King called self purification:
"Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?"" ( See www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html )
There is more to it than this, of course. They strategically chose when and where to protest (etc.) in order to maximize effectiveness. They knew that the media would try to portray them in a negative light, as being somehow equivalent to the racism they were trying to fight (or that their actions would be used to justify the racist sentiment).
The purpose of purification was not ideological but practical. Yes, they were right to be angry, they were right to be furious, in fact, but they recognized that to show that animosity, no matter how justified, would only serve to distort or obscure the message (or be used to distort or obscure the message).
Never seen anyone so pissed he was being forced to make a speech as Trump was just now about the events this weekend. Anyway, both my parents used to tell me something when I did the right thing after exhausting all other options "a day late and a dollar short".
Never seen anyone so pissed he was being forced to make a speech as Trump was just now about the events this weekend. Anyway, both my parents used to tell me something when I did the right thing after exhausting all other options "a day late and a dollar short".
Well, yeah, but it's always right to do the right thing. Of course, timing can be important when doing the right thing. The right thing to do was to immediately condemn the alt right. This was especially important when they were invoking him in numerous ways (e.g. ' we're fulfilling the promise of trump'--Duke. That would be tremendously embarrassing to most people...)
Edit: I haven't seen the briefing, but i assume that he's upset with the media (or the left) for having to nominally distance himself from the alt right rather than (e.g.) Duke for trying to associate him with the kkk(?)
It's no coincidence that on the same day he is forced to make this statement, Trump is also floating the idea of a pardon for recently convicted racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In the meantime, the Daily Stormer has had their URL removed by GoDaddy and have been denied a new one by Google (NOT a free speech issue). Their response to Trump today??
It was mentioned earlier that Baked Alaska and other similar Alt-right activists are not white supremacists. They went to a rally that was called "Unite the Right". Here is the definition of "unite":
to join, combine or incorporate so as to form as a single unit
Again, accepting this narrative means dismissing the English language itself.
Arpaio was racist as heck. And it was a big deal to get him actually convicted of anything, as you guys see cops get a lot of leniency, perhaps too much as seen by how many cops shoot people and walk away scot free. Anyway, if Trump pardons Arpaio that would just make a mockery of justice. Which suits Trump.
What you have here is a flat-out admission that he only made the statement today because he felt like he had to, and that it was totally insincere. First of all, he is the President of the United States. You are expected to rise to the occasion and not act like making a statement against Nazis marching in the streets is akin to running 10 miles uphill with a backpack. Second of all, he just used harsher words for the media at the end of this tweet than he has made about the white supremacist marchers.
He didn't give the apology he wanted to make and he didn't really mean it. He definitely plans to disavow his apology later. "I meant that violence on both sides has to stop. I don't disavow people that want to make amerika great again." That could easily will be what he says tomorrow. He's only saying he only made that statement because of the outcry from the media.
That's how it works, the media goes in the middle, ("media" is related to middle linguisticly). Trump just wants to have one way dialogue so that he can spin stories to suit the lies he wants to tell. The media is there, protected by the 1st amendment, to protect us common folk who have other things to do with our lives than follow every second of politics. We got to do things like work our jobs and take care of our families. The press is there to keep this from the situation they have in your north koreas or your Russias where the government tells the story and that's what you have to live with. That's what Trump wants, just tell us the story, blow smoke up our butts, and we're supposed to be like "yeah ok I guess so". That's why he's always attacking the media. He can't lie quite as freely as he's used to doing for his business ventures.
This is an old article about how US customs, in the early 20th century, used toxic chemicals to "cleanse" Mexican immigrants coming into the country. But the real revelation here, is this bit about just how the Nazis themselves found one of their most notorious extermination tools:
But I also unexpectedly uncovered other information at the National Archives that took my great-aunt's personal recollections beyond family lore or microhistory. These records point to the connection between the U.S. Customs disinfection facilities in El Paso-Juárez in the 20s and the Desinfektionskammern (disinfection chambers) in Nazi Germany. The documents show that beginning in the 1920s, U.S. officials at the Santa Fe Bridge deloused and sprayed the clothes of Mexicans crossing into the U.S. with Zyklon B. The fumigation was carried out in an area of the building that American officials called, ominously enough, "the gas chambers." I discovered an article written in a German scientific journal written in 1938, which specifically praised the El Paso method of fumigating Mexican immigrants with Zyklon B. At the start of WWII, the Nazis adopted Zyklon B as a fumigation agent at German border crossings and concentration camps. Later, when the Final Solution was put into effect, the Germans found more sinister uses for this extremely lethal pesticide. They used Zyklon B pellets in their own gas chambers not just to kill lice but to exterminate millions of human beings.
On top of that, apparently, while other people were lying dead or in a hospital, Donald Trump was pissed off about how he was being treated by the media. Most of the country realizes we have a monster as a President. I'm not sure anything can be done to convince the 34% who still support him:
The customs story is not surprising, considering here in NC the guv'ment is still makin reparation payments for the forced sterilization program we had just a few decades ago.
Voter fraud is also ballot stuffing - a more effective and widely used tactic than double casting.
You only need a handful cooperating people to commit ballot stuffing, which can swing an election and will swing it to one side.
Sure, I'd grant that this issue should be looked at, but it should be looked at by an independent judicial committee that both parties can equally agree to. Anything less will turn it into a political farce.
And...is not a goal of the GOP to fix.
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Trump tweeted this out this morning and deleted it, before the woman who was killed in this exact same manner is even buried. No idea what else to say.
A couple days after a young woman was killed by a white supremacists car (and many more were injured) popular vote loser Trump retweets a white supremacists image showing a journalist being run over by a train. I'd say 'what is he thinking!?' but it seems clear what he's thinking.
I think at this point you gotta get Republicans to condemn and disavow this guy.
The disavow game is pure propaganda and Trump was right to call it what it is. Anyone who doesn't disavow Antifa is a communist or communist sympathizer. Anyone who doesn't condemn radical left wing terrorism in the strongst possible terms tacitly endorses it.
That would be...the entirety of the Democrats. They probably all want the violence to happen!
Comments
That's exactly what they did in Nazi Germany.
This may have started as "edgy" irony, or being pissed about women and gay people in video games, or wanting to be part of some kind of online counterculture. It has morphed into something that is evil to the core. There is an entire nascent fascist movement that has been cultivated online that now numbers in the millions. Yesterday is what happens when some of them leave their computers and take to the streets. They have even given a name to the car that was used in the murder: The Challenger of Peace. Chilling stuff.
I know I just said arguing over whose political violence is worse is ultimately childish and futile. But to pretend these ""counter protesters"" aren't chasing anyone they dislike around literally everywhere they gather, looking for a fight and bringing one, is so obviously untrue i'm gonna have to call it out.
It's not possible to realistically deny that every time Antifa shows up, and they did show up, as they always do, they show up to assault people. With weapons. The major speakers, themselves, were assaulted and maced and one Baked Alaska, so far from a "neo nazi" its laughable, is still in the hospital with possible permanent eye damage.
In fact, almost *every time* Richard Spencer shows his face lately, he's assaulted or maced in some way. And he engages in no violence whatsoever. Your side openly celebrates this. You're talking about naming and shaming when the reality is the threat of physical danger anywhere you go. It doesnt matter how much you dont like the person or his ideas, indiscriminate unprovoked violence towards innocents is wrong.
The escalation of violence will continue if the left continues to be dishonest about it. You have to call out their own side for their repeated aggression instead of playing defense for them, if their own in-group shuns them instead of celebrates them, maybe they wouldn't feel so validated.
All political violence is wrong. Both sides are doing it. It doesn't hurt to be consistent and accept reality.
Which I was indeed doing a comparison with, left v right on the subject of free speech... Which is a comparison (free speech vs violence) I wasn't making. But it deserves to be mentioned you left out assault as one of their methods of shutting down speakers, or protests, which is demonstrably the case.
If you really insist on that comparison then compare the BLM protest cop killer who wanted to kill whites and white cops, the Sanders campaign worker that shot at republicans, the SPLC inspired shooter, the Clinton activist father of the Pulse nightclub mass shooter, the worst in our history,.
Just because that was the only subject I was speaking about at the current time was free speech, doesn't mean I lacked for examples of left wing murder and murder attempts. Again, political violence is wrong, both sides do it. Pretending otherwise only emboldens one side which just makes the problem worse.
Relevant. The left has absolutely been brazenly calling for violence and should admit to the fact that calling for violence increases the chance of it happening.
The right, who live in alternative reality, get so worked up about what others are doing, that they end up doing the things that they accuse others of doing.
Nazis ran over people, people on the right saw it but they're saying "the left!" or "both sides!".
Republicans say that illegal aliens are voting or something, then those Republicans commit all the voter fraud. They gerrymander and voter purge and close polling stations.
All the golf that Trump accused Obama of doing; he's now done fifty times more golfing than Obama did in 8 years.
Trump attacked the Clinton foundation. Laughable for a guy who enriches himself by holding fundraisers at his own hotels and also charging the Secret Service inflated prices to stay at his hotels.
All those Republican bathroom bills. Zero transgender offenders but multiple Republican politicans have committed various bathroom crimes.
Incidentally, the right has been calling feminists "feminazis" since at least the mid-90s when Rush Limbaugh coined the term, and they seem to have thus far been immune to marching with swastikas and Confederate flags.
On political violence I think there's plenty of evidence that the left uses that as well as the right. That doesn't mean that the situation in Charlottesville was not very one-sided and it would be asking a huge amount of people to restrain themselves when being intimidated by large groups wielding shields, baseball bats and torches. However, I think @WarChiefZeke's right that it doesn't help to see all problems everywhere as originating with one side - that's only going to further entrench opinions.
On illegal voting I did some research some months ago when this issue was being discussed and it's not hard to come up with credible stories of voter fraud in local news. A quick Google this morning showed this relatively recent story which looks at the national position. The facts at a national level are disputed, so it's not clear just what the size of the problem is. However, it's not difficult to find local coverage where the facts are not disputed - so it seems clear to me that there is indeed a problem that deserves to have been talked about more than it has.
On a slightly different topic, there have been a number of mentions recently about the right to free speech and what this means. If one person is free to say whatever they want, but another person is free to try and disrupt them saying it - you have a recipe for deepening conflict. Personally I'm more comfortable with the European approach that you shouldn't be free to say whatever you want in the first place - words matter as well as actions when it comes to promoting hate ...
Apparently the rally organizer, the day after one of his people killed someone and injured many more, gave a press conference but ran away when he felt threatened.
He then tweeted about oh lordy there's no free speech! You can speak but if you poke people in the eye what do you expect. As you say, Grond0, there should be accountability for your words but there isn't. Actually I don't know if it's accountability that's missing or common sense. "Haha I said something terrible but oh no he didn't like it and hit me I'm shocked." At some point you are dumb. Also an American tourist got punched for giving a nazi salute in Germany.
I don't know what to say to these people. But you can't say anything to them they are going to stupid no matter what you SAY. You tell them hey the stove is hot don't touch it. Then they touch it and get burned. I guess i feel about is that I personally feel your right to announce your stupidity to the world should be defended. But yeah no one lives in a vacuum and perhaps you should consider what you are saying how it affects others. But it doesn't do any good to say that so some people.
And @smeagolheart is entirely correct. The name of the Washington Times has always been meant to give it an air of legitimacy, but it is as much a right-wing propaganda outfit as FOX News or Breitbart. It actually predates both of them. This is how effective straight-up lies are, and how the bigger they are, the more effective they are. Does no one find it odd that the claim of 3 million illegal votes just so happens to be the PRECISE amount of votes Donald Trump lost the popular vote by?? But moreover, let's say in some whacked-out universe 3 million people actually did vote illegally. Even if you grant that absurdity, you would then have to buy into the narrative that every single solitary one of those THREE MILLION people all voted for one candidate over the other.
I don't disagree that 3m is likely to be much too high a figure and the slant given to the story will of course reflect the right-wing views of the paper. However, I've seen multiple posts on this thread saying that there is no evidence of voter fraud - and that simply is not true. There is considerable evidence of illegal voting and some serious research should be done on it to get a more accurate picture of the scale of the problem. I don't believe that taking the position that there is no problem at all is a credible stance and doing that is simply going to be another way of entrenching attitudes.
I have no desire at all (at all at all) to defend Donald Trump and I don't think discussing a figure of 3m is relevant (and that's not referred to in the article I linked anyway). However, in relation to the principle involved I would be surprised if it were not the case that the vast majority of people who voted illegally were against him. As that perception I'm sure is shared by most people, Trump is currently being offered a perfect excuse to both ignore the popular vote and give legitimacy to the various dirty tricks on voting that Republicans are playing.
I do understand your frustration with the current situation where it often seems that 'alternative' facts have equal status with factual facts. However, I think in the long term that's best dealt with by following an evidenced-based approach rather than retreating into 'them' and 'us' positions.
You only need a handful cooperating people to commit ballot stuffing, which can swing an election and will swing it to one side.
Sure, I'd grant that this issue should be looked at, but it should be looked at by an independent judicial committee that both parties can equally agree to. Anything less will turn it into a political farce.
Now...about this weekend's activities...if you weren't from Charlottesville or the surrounding communities then you didn't have any business being in Charlottesville (unless you happened to be there on vacation or a similar routine activity). If you went there specifically to attend a protest or a counter-protest then you are part of the problem. It's their statue--if they want to decommission it and/or remove it then they have the right to do so without any outsider input. There isn't any reason to have statues of Civil War figures on either side--how is it logical to memorialize the fact that we were brutally killing each other 156 years ago? If you want to have historical reminders then put up text-based plaques which denote "this happened here on such-and-such date". The past happened and it cannot be changed but people are getting far too upset over things *right now* and if they don't deescalate then these clashes are going to get worse.
On a tangentially-related topic, is the extreme alt-right mindset ingrained into people as children, learning it from their parents, or do they pick it up from others by browsing the Internet? If they didn't learn it as a child, then how does someone go from being a rational, logical person to being someone with a very narrow view and highly confrontational view of the world? (The presumption here is that they were logical to begin with.) I see the phrase "disaffected young white male" applied to these people (even though, presumably, some of them must be females) but what makes them so disaffected? Poor job prospects? Low income? They think there is no future where they are currently living? This doesn't make any sense because they are living in a country where they are able to move to where they can find a better future. If all those Okies and Arkies could do it during the Dust Bowl 30s, many of whom were worse off than these people, then they can find a better life that doesn't include hatred. No one is holding them back or holding them down except themselves.
The ones who were able to travel halfway across the country just so they could "defend" a statue they probably had never seen before, though, what is their excuse? "Taking down the statue is an affront to white culture", they may say. How is that possible? I am white and I didn't realize that some POS statue in Virginia was my "culture". The fact that they have the time and money to travel all that way means they can't be that disaffected so they must have some other reason for being there. Just to get into someone else's face and be allowed to get away with it? They can do that in their home town by going to a bar and starting a fight.
Bottom line, if your side was the side who had a person drive a car into a crowd of people then your side is wrong and needs to back down first.
I know girl says she was often beat up by a gang of black girls at school. Now that she's grown up she still holds a dislike against black people (and mexicans for good measure). But, no, she doesn't consider herself racist. Looking at her facebook page she's one of those that makes deplorable posts saying things like so and so should be beat up (or whatever) for opposing Trump's terrible agenda of the day. In real life, she can be sweet but she'll write the worst stuff from behind a keyboard. She highly encouraged someone who wasn't going to vote to fill out a ballot for Trump to make sure her man won, practically doing it for her, all to counter the billions of illegal votes that Hillary was in her mind going to get.
I know a guy who is a Christian Conservative. He's very religious and also very "I speak my mind!" which can be often from him an excuse to be a jerk or say outrageous things. He excuses Trump because he says at least we got someone in Government who stands for Christian family values! Which of course is a lol considering Trump's got kids from 3 marriages and owns casinos and lies as often as breathes.
Another guy I know is a deplorable. He listens to alt-right talk Radio daily. He'll make alt-right type comments now and then out of the blue. The context could be talking about the football game and he would be the type to say something like "so-and-so works hard on the field. He doesn't sit around and wait for HANDOUTS like some LIBRUL!" He will still go on rants against Obama or Hillary despite them not being in charge or anything anymore. He is kind of a sourpuss and unpleasant to be around.
As for the online part....look, alot of this has it's roots in Gamergate and the anti-PC movement, and they just keep going further down the rabbit hole. The goal here seems to be the complete eradication of polite society, the type of things that keeps people from coming to blows in the supermarket. Meaning, there are things you just don't say in public. Thus far, this movement has thrived because of the anonymity of online shit-posting, but it has now grown too large not to spill over. And many of the people who started out hating Anita Sarkesian have morphed into full-on white nationalists. It is a counter-culture as much as the hippie movment of the '60s, but it's aims couldn't be more different. Here is a letter to the editor of a newspaper (incidentally, the city I live in) who saw the pictures of his son at the rally and wrote this in repsonse:
Barack Obama said it in a tweet on Saturday, they weren't born this way.
Meanwhile, another group of analysts, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (acronym VIPS--you have to be kidding me, right?), also have found evidence seeming to support the conclusion that the file dump was local rather than remote.
Plausible...not plausible...I am uncertain because I am not a forensic data analyst; however, this evidence should probably be considered alongside any evidence the still-ongoing investigations produce so that everyone may finally get to the truth. One interesting point worth noting, though--as far as anyone knows the FBI has not examined the DNC's servers directly.
My questions about election hacking are as follows: how did the Russians know which election machines to hack? If they could hack the ones in Wisconsin or Ohio why didn't they hack the ones in California or New York to give Trump more electoral votes? Why didn't they also hack the vote count so he wouldn't lose the popular vote despite receiving an Electoral win? I mean, if you are going to cheat to win you might as well go all in. *shrug*
Yet, one cannot use the hammer and sickle as 'merely' a symbol for "being anti fascist". Stalin and his ilk have tainted that symbol, in much the same way that Hitler and his ilk have tainted the swastika. And again, these symbols cannot be used without invoking that history. As such, this movement becomes associated with anti fascism, yes, but also with something that has been historically shown to be not that much different.
Worth a read
Also, the rise of totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt for a much longer read
Of course, there is more heterogeneity In the anti fascist movement compared to the alt right movement (notice how unified and 'on point' the alt right is--e.g. ' blood and soil'). This suggests an awareness of history on their part that doesn't seem to be present in the ant movements. I've personally talked to many that have 'approved' (i.e. as measured with a 'like') of the above meme that didn't even notice the h&s. Of course, the swastika has captured the American imagination in a way that the h&s hasn't. This is likely at least partially due to the fact that, in many ways, Stalin's victims haven't been given the same voice that Hitler's victims have. (Which is pretty amazing considering that the cold war just happened--a lot of things are amazing considering that the cold war just happened...)
What is missing, imo, is a notion of what King called self purification:
"Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?""
( See
www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html )
There is more to it than this, of course. They strategically chose when and where to protest (etc.) in order to maximize effectiveness. They knew that the media would try to portray them in a negative light, as being somehow equivalent to the racism they were trying to fight (or that their actions would be used to justify the racist sentiment).
The purpose of purification was not ideological but practical. Yes, they were right to be angry, they were right to be furious, in fact, but they recognized that to show that animosity, no matter how justified, would only serve to distort or obscure the message (or be used to distort or obscure the message).
Edit: I haven't seen the briefing, but i assume that he's upset with the media (or the left) for having to nominally distance himself from the alt right rather than (e.g.) Duke for trying to associate him with the kkk(?)
It was mentioned earlier that Baked Alaska and other similar Alt-right activists are not white supremacists. They went to a rally that was called "Unite the Right". Here is the definition of "unite":
to join, combine or incorporate so as to form as a single unit
Again, accepting this narrative means dismissing the English language itself.
What you have here is a flat-out admission that he only made the statement today because he felt like he had to, and that it was totally insincere. First of all, he is the President of the United States. You are expected to rise to the occasion and not act like making a statement against Nazis marching in the streets is akin to running 10 miles uphill with a backpack. Second of all, he just used harsher words for the media at the end of this tweet than he has made about the white supremacist marchers.
That's how it works, the media goes in the middle, ("media" is related to middle linguisticly). Trump just wants to have one way dialogue so that he can spin stories to suit the lies he wants to tell. The media is there, protected by the 1st amendment, to protect us common folk who have other things to do with our lives than follow every second of politics. We got to do things like work our jobs and take care of our families. The press is there to keep this from the situation they have in your north koreas or your Russias where the government tells the story and that's what you have to live with. That's what Trump wants, just tell us the story, blow smoke up our butts, and we're supposed to be like "yeah ok I guess so". That's why he's always attacking the media. He can't lie quite as freely as he's used to doing for his business ventures.
This is an old article about how US customs, in the early 20th century, used toxic chemicals to "cleanse" Mexican immigrants coming into the country. But the real revelation here, is this bit about just how the Nazis themselves found one of their most notorious extermination tools:
But I also unexpectedly uncovered other information at the National Archives that took my great-aunt's personal recollections beyond family lore or microhistory. These records point to the connection between the U.S. Customs disinfection facilities in El Paso-Juárez in the 20s and the Desinfektionskammern (disinfection chambers) in Nazi Germany. The documents show that beginning in the 1920s, U.S. officials at the Santa Fe Bridge deloused and sprayed the clothes of Mexicans crossing into the U.S. with Zyklon B. The fumigation was carried out in an area of the building that American officials called, ominously enough, "the gas chambers." I discovered an article written in a German scientific journal written in 1938, which specifically praised the El Paso method of fumigating Mexican immigrants with Zyklon B. At the start of WWII, the Nazis adopted Zyklon B as a fumigation agent at German border crossings and concentration camps. Later, when the Final Solution was put into effect, the Germans found more sinister uses for this extremely lethal pesticide. They used Zyklon B pellets in their own gas chambers not just to kill lice but to exterminate millions of human beings.
On top of that, apparently, while other people were lying dead or in a hospital, Donald Trump was pissed off about how he was being treated by the media. Most of the country realizes we have a monster as a President. I'm not sure anything can be done to convince the 34% who still support him:
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
-Joseph Stalin
Trump tweeted this out this morning and deleted it, before the woman who was killed in this exact same manner is even buried. No idea what else to say.
I think at this point you gotta get Republicans to condemn and disavow this guy.
That would be...the entirety of the Democrats. They probably all want the violence to happen!
The train of thought is absurd on it's face.