by D-LOGAN » Sat Aug 19, 2017 8:58 pm
Okily dokily. Little late to the party, but I suppose I’ll give my take. First up, I support the right of white nationalists/alt-righters/whatever-ers to have their little march, let the babies have their bottle and all that. And while I support the right of counter-protesters, I personally advise against it, I mean I advise against having a neo-nazi march or even being a neo-nazi in the first place, but if they’re gonna do it and aren’t breaking any laws, I think the best response is to leave them to it.
We have similar stuff in this neck of the woods too like. Up the North they have Loyalist marches that specifically go through Catholic neighbourhoods and Republican marches that specifically through Protestant neighbourhoods. Now I’m sure if you asked them they’d tell you “Oh we only march through those spots to commemorate the great battle of such and such way back in 14 hundred and whatever” but, and I don’t think I’m being too cynical here, I feel safe enough in saying it’s really just a “fuck you” to the people you don’t historically get along with.
And again, I say let ‘em. Even if they’re just doing it out of mean spiritedness, as long as they’ve got all their paperwork and permits and whatnot filed out and it’s all legal, have at it folks.
Now as to the incidents in Charlottesville, I gotta say I don’t have the same reaction as many to Trump’s first comment on this. I think both violent extremist sides should be condemned, not just the white nationalist side. And to be frank I’ve seen people vociferously oppose condemnation of anyone but the white nationalist side, or that mentioning the violence of the far-left individuals means you sympathise with Nazis, or are somehow minimizing Heather Heyer’s death, hell I’ve seen people declare there’s only one way of looking at this- the Nazis and the anti-nazis and you’re either for one side or the other.
But I understand why people have said they wanted more immediate and specific condemnation of the white nationalists. While I don’t believe that Trump is a white nationalist or whatever or supports or actively courts them, I get other people do, and more disturbingly a lot of white nationalists think he does, so I think it’s a fair expectation people have to hear him denounce them first and foremost. But I definitely feel this in no way makes it okay for the people I see actively either downplaying or denying the violence of Antifa types here or in general.
(Oh just for the sake of brevity, I shall be referring to the people in the Unite he Right march as White Nationalists regardless of whether each of them actually were and referring to the counter-protesters who became violent as Antifa, but to be clear I have no beef with counter-protestors who didn’t engage in violence and will be leaving them out of this altogether.)
My take on all this is as such, I am MORE against the Antifa group in general than I am for the White Nationalist group in general in this event. I am MOST against what James Fields did, however as of course what he did was infinitely worse than what anyone else did. But the reason I’m more against the Antifa portion is, I believe they went there with the intention of violently suppressing another group’s right to legal assembly, which they did. Of course not all the counter protesters did this, but I’m focusing on the ones that did.
I have no reason however as of yet to believe James Fields actions were what the white nationalist side went there to do. I believe when he drove that car into that crowd, he was acting for himself alone and that was not part of the white nationalist side’s plan.
Now I absolutely assume some of the white nationalists went there expecting far-left types to show up and start a fight, not to mention there were white nationalists who attacked people of their own accord when it all kicked off, which obviously I’m also against too but I still believe the group showing up there to start a fight is worse than the group which was engaging in their legal rights.
And Antifa certainly did engage in brutality, I mean a journalist was punched in the face, a man was pepper sprayed causing eye damage and according to a New York Times reporter on the scene-
“I saw a club-wielding ‘antifa’ beating white nationalists being led out of the park”.
These people are no joke.
So to anyone of the opinion that Antifa’s violence is less-bad because they attack bad people, first of all I say I disagree, attacking people who aren’t actually breaking the law is always bad and secondly, they most certainly don’t always target bad people, a journalist was hospitalised in Richmond whilst filming an anti-klan/homophobia march and was beaten over the head just before all this. Not to mention the fact they pepper spray women for wearing hats that merely look like MAGA hats, they bash in unconscious men’s heads with poles, they smash people’s skulls with bike locks etc. These folks aint nice.
Call me old fashioned but these are not the people I want to be giving the right to randomly assault people on the streets, frankly no one is.
As for the whole Nazis being created in a vacuum or not stuff. While it’s certainly true that neo-nazi types have been around for a long long time and would still exist with or without the current strained political systems, I also have to concur I do see reasons in my opinion for some of the current rise in it.
The reason these jokers think there’s so much anti-white sentiment is because … there is! I see it. I hear prominent people espousing it. Aside from all ‘ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE RACIST” and “TOXIC WHITENESS” stuff, I see politicians and media types calling for there to be less white people or that’d be a good thing if they were a minority. I mean I know some people have trouble seeing a problem with that, but I can’t abide any talk of it’ll be a good thing if there’s less of this or that ethnic group, regardless of how they want to go about having less of them, ever!
That just would not fly here. And I can’t see it flying anywhere else.
I genuinely believe the rise of this, at least in part is a reaction to the rise of identity politics stuff, because that’s what white nationalism is, it’s just another version of it. Hell, Richard Spencer himself has openly said the alt-right is- “identity politics for white Americans and for Europeans around the world".
This identity politics/ intersectionality stuff is in my mind evil. It is cancer. Fuck it. The answer to hateful identity politic rhetoric is not to embrace just as or more hateful identity politic rhetoric on the other side. But some people are weak and stupid and lost, and they'll make for easy pickings to be recruited by the malicious.
Personally right now I am more concerned with far-left extremism than the far-right type (although that may change soon if things keep up). To be frank, to an outsider like me looking in, I can’t help but think if you were to count all the murders, attempted murders, assaults, property damage, riots and violently or through force shutting down other people’s legal assembleys or speaking events, the numbers would sway towards the far-left side.
I suppose it depends on when you start the clock, like I would go with when the election cycle started as that’s when I think we started to see a new dynamic. And of course you’d have to be clear on what you’re talking about. I think maybe more murders have been committed on the far right, but I think assaults and vandalism are more on the far left-side, but as I say I would have to actually go crunch the numbers and figure out exactly where the clock is being started.
Personally I wouldn’t count eco-terrorists as far-left extremists though. I think environmental/animal rights extremism is its own separate animal and as such the left doesn’t have to eat them the same way the right has to eat neo-nazis. But I would count black supremacist police shooters like Micah Johnson and Gavin Long etc. But I think most of them happened before the election cycle.
Plus it’s a difficult one to get information on as the people folks tend to go to for this usually aren’t aren’t much help. For instance the SPLC (an organisation I despise and hope Majid Nawaz sues the fuck out of them) and the ADL don’t even keep tabs on groups like Antifa or BAMN. They’re mainly focused on extremism on the right, although the SPLC does keep a section on black seperatists at least so there's that.
So you’d have to go through all the numbers and know at what point you’re starting from to get an overall idea. But to be honest I see less wide-spread public condemnation of far-left extremists where things like the Klan, neo-nazis, skinheads etc. are almost universally despised and rightly so.
And as for what groups like Antifa wanted in the end? Well that’s easy- COMMUNISM MY DEAR BOY! They may be anarchists, but the flavour of it they swig from is anarcho-communism. Black and red be the colour of the flag they fly baby!
And they are not shy about it. That’s what they say they want. They hate capitalism, they hate freedom of speech, they hate western values, they think America is an evil, white supremacist patriarchy that must be destroyed and torn down and replaced with what they see as a perfect utopia. They’re practically a silly stereotype that’s been brought to life, dressed up as a ninja, handed clubs and mace cans and sent off to batter anyone to the right of Che Guevara. And they are not only happy to use violence to get it, they feel it’s their duty to do so. And if you’re not on-board with that, then you’re just a nazi-sympathiser. Remember folks “liberals get the bullet too”.
So in a nutshell, neo-nazis= bad. Anarcho-communists= bad. Political violence= bad. Identity politics= bad.
Allowing for freedom of speech and assembly, even for people you despise= good.
Winning people over through reasoned argument= good.
That’s how I roll.
Not just yet, I'm still tender from before.