Why hello, Comrade Herring. So nice to meet you.
I’m afraid we will be seeing more of this: http://reverepress.com/news/white-supremacists-attack-black-man-fast-food-chain-instantly-regret/ (you may end up shutting off the audio after a bit… the commentating is annoying much like most home video commentating is) both because of cellphones being everywhere and the alt-right feeling emboldened by “their” president.
I was actually astonished that it didn’t go from one on one to the whole skinhead/kkk/whatever they were group jumping the Black guy.
My husband doesn’t quite “get” why tearing down the statues is such a big thing. When I looked at him and said “Honey, you are a white male. You’ll never have people side eye-balling you when you walk in a door. You’ll never have white women clutch their purse to themselves when they see you. You’ll never have to carry your driver’s license to prove you are an American Citizen. Your sons might have to deal with this… especially the one who looks the most like me.” He had a light bulb moment. He’s forgotten my heritage pretty much because he just sees me.
Hereis a video of communists arriving at the counter protests and being cheered. There affiliation is clearly visible on their signs and one lady has a USSR flag. Everyone who saw that and kept counter-protesting must be a communist.
So, have you seen the posters? Here’s one (apparently the official one) (very little KKK/Nazi imagery), and here’s a Daily Stormer one (nice call out to the Jews)
There was cheering, but who knows what they were cheering for? And I would have no idea who these people are, or that they were communist, if you hadn’t told me. A single hammer and sickle by a single person is not comparable to hundreds marching with swastikas and other nazi/white supremacist imagery and chanting nazi/white supremacist slogans.
Since they were chanting “Black lives matter” I would have assumed they were BLM, not communists, as I imagine most of the other protesters assumed.
No explicit KKK/Nazi imagery, sure. But the confederate memorial statues, confederate flag, and confederate army imagery - together with an artistic style that feels an awful lot like the third reich - should suggest to anyone with more than handful of functioning neurons that this might not be a gathering of mainstream conservatives.
Most of what I saw in that video were signs that were anti-racism. There were a few symbols that if I remember correctly from my history class were communist symbols, but they were largely overshadowed by the messages on the signs that were carried.
Were there any anti-racist flags and signs that were being carried by the nazis?
Not to get too far into political philosophy, there is a difference between communism and nazis.
Communism has as its ideal equality to all. Implementation has been shaky, and I don’t know that it could be implemented fairly, but at it’s core, it emphasizes that everyone is equal and should get equal treatment.
Nazis, at their core, believe that they are better than everyone else, and that everyone else needs to get out of their way or be moved out of the way.
There certainly have been communist leaders and governments that were bad, but that is a fault of people and corruption of power. You can not have a nazi government that is not evil, it goes against their philosophy.
So, if we are comparing, yes, nazis are far far worse than communists. Marching alongside a communist means that you subscribe to at least the tenets of fairness and equality, individuals may have their own reasons, but that is the common connection. Marching along with nazis means you subscribe to the tenets of racism and bigotry.
Yes there is. Both philosophies are repugnant, but a lot more people (more than 100 million) were killed by regimes following one of them.
I see no evidence there were any Stalinists or Maoists at the march.
No one is advocating punching someone for disagreeing with them. Why does this meme continue?
I don’t disagree with Nazis. Nazis are evil. They are assholes who are choosing to identify with one of the most evil people in history, and are advocating for genocide of non-whites. They are fundamentally dangerous people who are actively trying to harm society. They see others as nonhuman, and want their blood and soil.
I’m still not sure where I fall on punching Nazis. But I do not merely disgree with Nazis.
They are evil, and I am trying to eradicate them.
You do realize, don’t you, that clanging a cow bell directly next to a persons ear can cause serious damage, right? A cowbell is ~110 db at 2 feet, that is at the pain threshold for most people.
Purposely ringing a cowbell next to a persons ear is assault. It can causing permanent hearing loss.
So, one person started assaulting another. It was the person with the cowbell. However, as usual, you have the actors backwards.
Slee
This terrible attack must not stand, especially when the person was on a subway train or in a bus and couldn’t move away – it’s not like they were in a park with lots of open space and they could have walked away. Obviously physical force was the only way to end this very dangerous situation. I know that any time a child shouts next to me in public, physical force is a good option to end this dangerous threat to my hearing, unless I’m in the very rare situation in which there’s space around me to move away from the terror of loud noises.
And they were also legally blind? They couldn’t see the Nazi flags? They’re very noticeable.
And why, if the weren’t Nazis or white supremacists, where they chanting “Jews will not replace us”? Are you at all familiar with the facts? There was no bunch of innocent Confederate history lovers anywhere.
No, wrong.
WORLD WARS STARTED: Nazis 1, “Antifa” 0
GENOCIDES: Nazis… 4? 5? Depends how you count. “Antifa” 0.
Let’s compare ideologies:
ANTIFA: Fascism is bad.
NAZISM: There is no objective right or wrong. All humanity is in endless racial warfare. The purpose of the state is to murder all people not of the race the Nazis subjectively define as their preferred race, and then to wage war on all other races, until all are murdered or enslaved. The rule of law, justice, and the dignity of the person are irrelevant; all must be seconded to the state for the purpose of genocide and war.
See, if one of these alleged “Antifa” people commits a crime, that’s just an asshole; it has no ideological connection with not liking fascism. When a Nazi commits an act of violence, that is the point of Nazism. Bearing a Nazi flag is exactly the same as saying they want to murder my wife and stepdaughter and millions of others. It’s an open threat and a declaration of hostility to the human race.
Let’s review patriotism:
ANTIFA: Can be loyal to their countries and usually are.
NAZIS: Traitors. All Nazis want the state as it exists destroyed and its citizens massacred.
So, no. Your attempt at false equivalence fails.
“Antifa” run around waving red flags and hammer/sickle regalia. Those are symbols of an ideology that killed more than 100,000,000 people in the 20th century.
I was actually going for humor there . . .
So when an anti-fascist commits a crime against an alleged fascist, that has no ideological connection with being anti-fascist?
Could I get a cite, or some idea where you are getting the notion that Antifa members are “usually” loyal to their countries? Have you spoken to a lot of them, or do they have a lot of websites saying they love America and support her institutions? Do they typically carry signs at their protests saying “Keep America Great!” or things like that?
TIA.
Regards,
Shodan
Communism has covered quite a number of people for quite a number of years, under quite a number of regimes. Communism definitely has its drawbacks, and I don’t know that it has ever been implemented in a good way, and I don’t know if it ever can be implemented in a good way, but it does not at it core advocate for such.
Nazis only had power in a few small regions for a couple decades. At the core of nazis philosophy is the removal of all inferior races. The nazis who started WWII cost the lives of 60 million people.
So, if you are looking at a per capita, per year, or per geographic area, then you would see that nazis caused the death of far more.
It is only when you rather disingenuously lump together the regimes of several countries over many decades, and try to compare that to the number killed by nazis over a small period of time, that the death toll of communism grows greater.
Put it this way, you can have small communes, right? People who work together for a common cause, only taking from the group what they need? How many people do you think a group of a couple dozen people living in a commune threaten? Do you feel threatened by people who live in a commune?
Now, when you get a few dozen nazis together, do you think that their primary goal is to plant some sustainably harvested organic arugula, or do you think that their primary goal is the eradication of all lesser races?
Like I said, the philosophy of communism, while possibly unworkable on large scales, is one of fairness and equality. The philosophy of nazism is hatred and bigotry.
If it comes to a choice, I will happily side with the communists over the nazis (as the allies did in wwII), and I will do what I can to prevent nazi philosophy from ever gaining a foothold. Meanwhile, you will be naively equivocating a “both sides are the same” message.
It’s an ideology that was one of allies in World War II. The Communists shed a river of blood during World War II versus the small cuts the United States took in order to defeat the Nazis. It is appropriate that their symbols be held up as example and a warning to those who would resurrect the Nazi cause.
That’s non serious, come on. Even your own subsequent posts have equivocated about communists, and other posters from your general side of things much more openly say communists are not a big problem in the face of the far right.
The street left does not particularly try to distance itself from communists. It does not adopt the concept of the immortal philosopher Chris Rock that 10 guys hanging out with a communist makes 11 communists. It makes the same kind of distinctions among communists (‘these ones aren’t advocating the particular atrocities of governing communists in the past’) it refuses to accept in case of the far right (neo-Nazi groups in general do not say they want to replicate Hitler’s crimes, they often don’t even admit those occurred, they are not entirely different from latter day communists in that respect).
Left leaning people have a biased view of this based on their own politics. Note, I don’t mean by ‘biased’ bad, immoral, etc. I just mean people shouldn’t pretend they are laying out indisputable axioms when in fact they are making judgement calls.
My judgement call is that the current street left in the US is a negative and dangerous force, not the good guys just because Nazi’s are worse. Nazi’s are worse IMO, but minuscule in number. The radical left is less minuscule, and that matters. The fact the radical left has so many more apologists within the supposed mainstream (even if you claim the president is a Nazi/KKK apologist, it would still be true) also matters, in my view.
No, the American left (correctly, IMO) does not view communists as nearly as dangerous as nazis and white supremacists. This is because in America, white supremacists have been by far the most damaging and harmful ideology. Communism in America just hasn’t hurt that many people – certainly not anything more than a tiny fraction of the people harmed by white supremacism.
But more than that, I don’t think the left, even the radical left, identifies very much with communism. Socialism, sure, but not communism, except on the fringe of even the far-left fringe. The Green party gets hundreds of thousands of votes – the Communist Party of the USA hasn’t even had a presidential candidate since the 80s.
So I don’t think the fact that there might have been a few communists at the counter-protest, especially since most of them were not displaying or chanting any clearly communist symbolism or slogans, says that the far-left is cozy with commies.
Maybe the far-left should be a little more concerned about communists then they are. But I think it’s entirely reasonable to believe that in the US, white supremacists/neo-nazis/alt-right/white nationalists are a far larger group, and are a far greater danger, than communists.