Hey you hate-filled nazis and white supremacists...

[mjr]

You, yeah, you. You hate-filled nazis and white supremacists.

What in the world are you thinking!? Go away! Nobody likes you! On behalf of Reasonable Conservatives and Liberals everywhere: "Get out of OUR COUNTRY!" We don't want you here. We sure as heck don't want you as "members" of our political ideologies.

This Conservative is disgusted, angered, and appalled by your UTTERLY RACIST, HATE-FILLED IDEOLOGY! A harsh denouncement on my part doesn't seem harsh enough.

You bastards KILLED three people today, and injured several more! And for what? Your arguments are ineffective to us rational people.

I suppose I should pray for you, but I don't know if I can. The Bible tells us to love and pray for our enemies, but that's really, really difficult right now.

That is all. So very disgusted by this.

[Greenday]

As God put it, you can't be both a proud American and a nazi. We fought a whole war over it. The whole world was involved.

[Canarr]

Meanwhile, in Germany...

This is the way things should be: the American is being fined for the use of Nazi symbols (a felony in Germany), and the German who attacked him is wanted for assault. Because vigilantism is a shitty thing.

EDIT:

You bastards KILLED three people today, and injured several more!

Was the helicopter crash the result of an attack? I haven't found any details on that.

[Greenday]

Was the helicopter crash the result of an attack? I haven't found any details on that.

Pretty sure it just crashed while on the way to respond.

[lordlundar]

This was an inevitable disaster for multiple reasons. (no, at no point am I defending the White Supremacists, just pointing out that blame is not exclusive to them)

- Both the White Supremacists and the Anti-fa thugs, who both were looking for a fight.
- The Mayor and Governor who issued stand down orders for their respective law enforcement agencies, despite assurances they could control the situation.
- The law enforcement agencies who knew such an order was going to result in this but abides by it.
- The media agencies on both ends of the spectrum using previous incidents and doctored information to fuel the bigotry on both ends, most of which continuing to use this incident to spur more violence.

The only real victims of this was the lady killed and the (very few) people that went there hoping to talk and be rational.

I'm not including the copter deaths because unless evidence comes up that the copter was brought down by an attack, it's a coincidence that is being tied to the event and nothing more. Tragic none the less, but at current not directly linked.

[Canarr]

And here another example on why doxxing people is shitty and we shouldn't be doing it.

Honestly, how is that so difficult?

[mjr]

And here another example on why doxxing people is shitty and we shouldn't be doing it.

Honestly, how is that so difficult?

Great point, Canarr.

That's also why I emphasize that we can't just throw around words like "racist", because some labels are difficult, if not impossible, to shake.

This guy now has a label that, in the public eye, he will likely never be able to get rid of. He will be associated with a group whether he is or isn't.

[Pixelated]

I realize there's nothing even remotely funny about Nazis generally ... but this is pretty close ...

[Canarr]

An interesting bit of background here:


So, are they right? Should Nazis receive the same protections under the Constitution as other groups? Or should they be exempted from there protections? And if Nazis are exempted - who else should be, as well? And who decides which groups deserve protection, and which groups don't?

[s_stabeler]

actually, the ACLU's right. Even if you find someone's views distasteful, providing they are ONLY airing their views, then they are protected. (I draw the line, however, when someone is actively encouraging someone else to act. In other words "all X must die" is distateful but protected. "Go out now and kill an X" is not.

Particularly since in Charlottesville, they were legitimately protesting a government action they disagreed with. That, and protesters who toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier were themselves out of line, IMHO. (that statue was presumably a war memorial, and you quite definitively cannot say that all confederate soldiers were racists- or no more that was typical at the time, anyway- since a fair percentage probably served mainly because they saw the war as the Union states trying to overthrow the legitimate government of the Confederate states.)

in short, it's an exceptionally dangerous precedent if membership of a designated group is sufficient to strip First Amendment rights. (after all, presumably politicians would maintain the list of groups that membership of would cause a loss of First Amendment privileges. I would be unsurprising if the very first list included "everyone who disagrees with me"- particularly since voting can be considered a form of speech, and the right to vote itself is not actually on the list of specifically enumerated rights.

[lordlundar]

The truly sad part about the General Lee statue is that the ones wanting it taken down did not do their research. If perspective was the only factor for joining a side Lee would have been a Union General, and in fact was even offered a position as such which he refused because he didn't want to be involved in the conflict. He only joined the Confederacy because Union forces attacked his home state.

[Canarr]

Another interesting article on free speech.

[s_stabeler]

there's also the fact that censoring the entire idea- that is, when "that's racist" is enough to shut down the argument completely- runs the risk of allowing bigots to use the "what the man doesn't want you to know" argument to encourage people to believe their bullshit.

to say nothing of the fact that sometimes attempts to get rid of the more...structural racism- that is, where it isn't bigotry as such, but where it's closer to "I never thought of that as being racist" it can come across sometimes as "I define what's racist" or even "disagreeing with a black person is racist" (itself a racist statement on the face of it. (that, and I've seen at least once where people have claimed that "racist" is specifically for white-on-black bigotry, while black-on-white is merely "racially-motivated"- that's not really a useful distinction.)

[Canarr]

there's also the fact that censoring the entire idea- that is, when "that's racist" is enough to shut down the argument completely- runs the risk of allowing bigots to use the "what the man doesn't want you to know" argument to encourage people to believe their bullshit.

That's a good point, yes. This article here has a few more arguments as to why even hateful speech shouldn't be censored. The best one is #4:

4) Censoring Nazis would weaken public virtue

Basically, the argument goes that suppressing unwanted speech not only silences the individual making the speech - without actually challenging his position to maybe make him change his mind - but also that the rest of society is weakened by it. We, as society, are absolved of having to think about possible bigotry ourselves, of having to make up our own mind about right and wrong, because someone else already decided that this particular idea is wrong. Not to mention that the bigotry is still there, festering, spreading in secret.

Honestly. what would've happened if nobody had actually gone to that rally in Charlottesville? If a few thousand right-wing nut jobs had just held their walk and talk, with no one there to watch? Would people even be talking about this? Would they have gotten this kind of publicity?

IMO, the best way to combat the views these people hold would've been to hold a counterprotest somewhere at the other end of the city, with no contact between the two groups. That way, the right-wingers can't claim that they were harassed, or attacked, and the people protesting could've still shown that their message has a lot more followers. It might even have been possible to discuss the removal of the statue on its own merit.

[s_stabeler]

I actually disagree- In my experience, counter-protests- where it's "we disagree with X protesters"- rarely achieve much, if anything. (not to mention it also leaves the argument of "they're just trying to shout us down because they can't handle the truth" open.)

I do agree, though, that they should have talked about why they thought the memorial should have been removed. (it's actually itself a topic that deserves debate about to what extent racism by an individual or group of individuals should bar commemoration of said individual or group of individuals. (The statue of a confederate soldier, that statue of Rhodes that students demanded the removal of, there are undoubtedly similar cases.)- it can give off the impression- how accurate it is I don't know- that there is something of historical revisionism going on to dehumanise racists- to make their racism the only part of them that's remembered. That's never a good thing- particularly since it's one of the few good arguments racists actually have ("if they are lying about X, how can you trust they are being honest about Y?" and/or "we oppose their lies about X")