If these antifa knuckleheads show up and fight the Trump knuckleheads (like the ones who showed up in Berkeley wearing combat helmets and pulling knives), my reaction is, “You two have all the fun you want, and leave the rest of society alone!”
Of course I don’t support the use of violence in protests. But I will say that I sense that the OP’s outrage at left-wing violent groups is probably a matter of complaining about a speck in someone else’s eye while there’s a plank in one’s own. Right-wing political violence is surely a much bigger problem than these no-count hooligans.
Let me help you out here,** Hurr**. You don’t know much about lefties, or you would know that amongst us, Berkeley AKA “Berzerkely” is not the point of the spear, it is not the beating heart of the left. It is Berkeley, the first American city to have a foreign policy. We are entertained by Berkeley, we are not instructed, we are not led.
The smartest and cruelest thing Berkeley radicals could have done to Anne of Green Goebbels is to ignore her. They ain’t that smart.
I suspect most people feel this way. The ones that don’t get a lot of attention (which is probably at least in part why they do it), but behind the scenes are a bunch of normal folks who find that behavior abhorrent.
Agreed. That story was pretty appalling all around. Not just that violence became the day’s norm, but that the police apparently ignored it and the surrounding students seemed to take it in stride. As far as university culture goes, I’m of the opinion that exposure to ideas we hate is pretty critical to the intellectual development of young people, and a great opportunity for students to learn critical thinking. Universities can and should breed controversy, and they should be able to do it safely. The problem is that school administrations really seem to view their chief responsibility as satisfying customers, as opposed to nurturing learning in a safe environment. It really is a fundamental question of the purpose of a university.
I’m not on the ‘‘real problem is our fascist PC culture’’ side because students have a right to feel safe (in the case of Milo, for example, he had a history of harassing individual students - he absolutely should have not been allowed to come to campus, and the fact that he then individually targeted and endangered the safety of a trans woman attending his event was a massive failure on the administration’s part.) Administrators are in the unenviable position of trying to figure out what poses a legitimate threat and what doesn’t, especially in a culture that can apparently erupt in violence at any moment. And I can empathize with that trans woman finally finding a place in her life where she is accepted and understood, not wanting someone else’s hatred and ignorance to encroach upon the only bit of safety she’s ever known. In some cases, when we talk about ‘‘safe spaces’’ we mean that very literally. Some people have precious few spheres of life where they are not the continued victims of harassment and assault, and it makes perfect sense to want to hold onto that one space where they have the freedom to be themselves.
However I think there’s some grain of truth to the idea that young people are increasingly being taught, through their own filtered social media, news, and academic world, that they have a right to shut down any speech they find upsetting. It’s one of the reasons I left Facebook - the echo chamber infuriated me. And the most offended tend to be the most privileged. Because they have the luxury of working up the outrage, I guess.
I’m trying to imagine a reason for excluding this kind of information from your OP. If you had been more forthcoming up front, you might have had less of the kind of crap per below.
I personally don’t think HD was trying to make a gotcha out of this thread, it just came out that way because of the weird way he framed it by leaving all information out of the OP. So now instead of discussing the perfectly cromulent issue of allowing free speech for people whose views we find repellent, we get this kind of idiotic back and forth.
I’ve tried to do it both ways before, and I seem to get some degree of crap no matter what. When I include my perspective in the OP, I get accused of poisoning the well. This time I didn’t do that, and I got this reaction.
Holy shit, that article says that the Pentagon labeled this group to be “low-level terrorists!”
Wait, upon digging, this is the basis of that conclusion. I still don’t have the time of day for that group, but it just shows that Breitbart just can’t resist being full of shit on everything.
And I find it annoying when people say things about me that are not even hinted at in my words or actions. I didn’t post that article-got anything snarky to say about the person who did?
They were gleeful about it because she and her boyfriend were hurling empty wine bottles into the right wing crowd. There are photos online showing her holding a green wine bottle shortly before being punched. The guy who punched her saw her doing this and pushed her down to stop her and then when she jumped back up and tried to grab him by the collar he nailed her. She’s a moron. An airheaded soft-core hairy porn star who claimed she was setting out to get “100 Nazi scalps” that day and appeared to be wearing weighted gloves. The guy getting piled on and the crap beaten out of him next to her is her boyfriend. She got off easy. Wine bottles thrown and tumbling through the air can do a lot of damage. The majority of the media, typically, is hailing her as a victim and hero and him as a villain.
This thread is hilarious. What’s Antifa? Which Antifa? Define Antifa to the n[sup]th[/sup] degree, then we’ll talk. It’s like the Obfuscation Olympics in here.
I think it’s safe to say that when the OP talks about Antifa, he means the same Antifa that’s been in the news at least once a week every week for the last three months. The black-clad scumbags in face masks tearing shit up at Berkeley and holding pitched street battles with Trump supporters.