In the past several days, President Trump has taken great pains to not piss off his white/right constituents when addressing the events in Charlottesville. Yesterday he huffed and puffed while trying to draw bizarre distinctions between “neo-nazis” and other subgroups who merely believe white folks out to be supreme (). Appalling to be sure, and he was rightly criticized for that, but he also stuck to his earlier claim that both sides - protestor and counterprotestor - share blame for the violence that occurred on Saturday. He was criticized for that too, but I’m not certain he should have been.
What’s your opinion? Should both sides be blamed for the violence, or does blame belong only to the alt-right crowd?
My thoughts:
Although the single most horrifying instance of violence (the car attack) was perpetrated by a neo-Nazi, the picture is less clear regarding the hand-to-hand fighting and other mayhem. “Antifa” group(s), with a reputation for violence and destruction, arrived armed and ready to rumble. Are we really to believe they (and others on their side of the political divide) didn’t destroy any property, didn’t instigate any physical attacks, and restricted their application of violence to (at most) a vigorous self-defense against physical assaults from the alt-right folks?
As awful as the alt-right crowd is, as reprehensible as their views and thought processes are, it is extremely tempting to lay at their feet 100% of the blame for the violence. But ISTM there really are people and groups on the left end of the spectrum who do not support the concept of free speech, and believe in the use of violence to suppress speech and ideas they find objectionable - and those people/groups do/should share some of the blame for the general mayhem that happened that day.
It’s obvious that not 100% of the violence came from the Nazis.
Some violence came from the people who were against the Nazis.
The thing is. . . in criminal law, in criminal sentencing, we have a concept of aggravating and mitigating factors. An aggravating factor is a factual circumstance that can legitimately be considered as justifying a harsher sentence. A mitigating factor is one that justifies a lighter sentence.
So my informal, non-legal comment by analogy is that violence to advance Nazi causes is an aggravating factor. It makes the violence more despicable.
And violence to oppose Nazi causes: still not legal, sure, but a hell of a lot more understandable than some random act. A mitigating factor.
So a white supremacist who spontaneously knocks a counterprotestor unconscious is deserving of a harsher sentence than a counterprotestor who spontaneously knocks a white supremacist unconscious? ISTM that each has infringed on the other’s right to free speech/free assembly by equal measure; their particular positions on social issues, expressed or unexpressed, ought not be an aggravating or mitigating factor.
The antifa side has been accused of having clubs and sticks.
We have photographic evidence that the alt-right Nazis and KKK showed up with body armor, shields, and guns.
I’m more inclined to blame the guys with armor and guns at an allegedly “peaceful” rally. I mean, who the hell shows up to a “peaceful” gathering armed for bear? The Nazis/KKK showed up hoping for a fight and they got one. And now they’re whining about. Their side killed someone and they’re claiming to be oppressed and mistreated!
Yes, I blame the rabid rally side for the violence and chaos.
When a person shows up explicitly endorsing violence against members of a group and then takes violent action against members of that group, it doesn’t feel spontaneous to me. I am a lot less likely to give such a person the benefit of the doubt.
OK, I understand you were issuing a non-legal comment, so I’ll leave the concept of judicial sentencing out of it. The bottom line is that you see physically equivalent acts of violence from the two sides as bearing different levels of blame. Am I understanding that correctly?
No one’s right to free speech has been infringed. One of them is advocating for the end of democracy as we know it and mass genocide; the other takes issue with that - either being a potential victim of said genocide, or having friends who might be.
If you say something that offends me, and I hit you - I might be charged with assault. But I might not - read you something :
“In general, provocation is not a defense for an assault and battery. Provocation can lessen your sentence, but it will almost never dismiss the charges. For example, an aggravated assault can be lowered to a normal assault if heavy provocation of the accused is shown.”
Both groups consider brawling in the streets to be a legitimate means of advancing their political agendas. What they believe isn’t the issue here. It is what they do.
I think a lot of people are confused and incorrectly applying free speech doctrines to questions of moral blame.
The government’s regulation of speech must be viewpoint neutral because governments will try to censor ideas they don’t like. This fact must also necessarily prohibit selective policing of other laws based on the ideological motivations of the actor. But it has nothing to do with moral blameworthiness. Actions motivated by racism are much more blameworthy than identical actions motivated by antiracism.
I’m sure some of the counter-protestors did morally wrong things that day. But in the context of an event in which Nazis killed a woman and then bragged about it, any talk of moral blame for both sides is a moral monstrosity. It’s an attempt to evade or downplay the blame properly put on the Nazis.
[Motivations also often matter with legal blameworthiness, and probably would matter here as to what crimes individual acts of violence constituted. So the people saying both sides are legally equal are also wrong for that reason, but even that is a sideshow to the question of moral blameworthiness.]
Is it even to advance political agendas at this point?
I think many of the people showing up at this point are just looking to get into a fight. They don’t know or care what the politics are, they just like the idea of the viscera of a big brawl.
I am not sure why we can’t just give it to them. Cordon off an area, no guns, no knives, no weapons of any kind, and just let them go at it for a while. Use paintball rules. If someone is down, they are out, they are no longer a target, if someone wants to give up and leave, they can put their hands up and leave unmolested. Anyone breaking the rules gets charged with assault, but as long as you follow the rules, then everyone is there voluntarily.
There may be some injuries, maybe some broken bones, and possibly even a fatality or so, but at least they could get it all out of their system with willing participants.
I’d say “moral responsibility,” is a better concept than “blame.”
But, yes. I do. I think both Abe and Bill can walk down the street wearing T-shirts that read, respectively, " I (heart) Puppies," and “I (heart) Murdering Jews” without deserving legal sanction. That’s the core of the First Amendment.
And I think anyone deciding to physically strike Abe or Bill in retaliation for that act is committing a crime.
I’m just saying that I regard Bill as assuming more risk by his perfectly legal action than Abe did by his perfectly legal action, and on a personal level I’d be less likely to strongly condemn the guy who hit Bill’s act as “senseless violence.”
Actually, under the doctrine of free speech, both of those parties should be equally free to openly share their views in public and in private. That is what “free speech” means. Socialists and anarchists also advocate the “end of democracy as we know it”, but are free to express those beliefs in speech and in writing.
In this case, though, free speech is not the issue. Freedom of speech is a Constitutional right. Constitutions define how a government must relate to citizens, not how citizens must relate to each other. The government allowed both sides to express their views, ergo no freedom of speech issue. Citizens attempted to stop other citizens from expressing views they don’t agree with, and some did so violently. There are laws and statutes in place to handle those situations, not rights.
In my opinion, any person who uses non-defensive violence should be prosecuted, regardless of what cause they are “supporting” or “defending”.
I think as soon as you’re in a group that advocates hate on another group or even exists primarily to hate another group, you’re wrong. As soon as you hate someone you don’t know who has ideas you dislike but as far as you know has not committed any crime, you’re wrong. You can disagree with them, you can not like them, but hating them is wrong. As soon as your hate turns to violence, then you’re not just wrong, you’re a criminal.
). Appalling to be sure, and he was rightly criticized for that, but he also stuck to his earlier claim that both sides - protestor and counterprotestor - share blame for the violence that occurred on Saturday. He was criticized for that too, but I’m not certain he should have been.