Hate speech doesn’t mean what you think it means. Sure, if the targets were German, then calling them Nazis could be hate speech. Calling them Nazis because you think their beliefs are similar to that of Nazis? Not hate speech.
Hate speech is attacking someone for the race, religion, nationality, sex, sexuality, or similar classes. Verbally attacking someone for their speech is not hate speech. It doesn’t just mean insults that you think go too far.
And, anyways, you’ve made it clear you do not support the idea of hate speech as a concept. Which is a good thing–a lot of what you get into with Islam can cross the lin there. (Disliking the religion is one thing–insulting the people for their religion is another.)
As for your other claim, Sanders is not an authoritarian. Authoritatianism, disguised as populism, is what is similar to Hitler and Naziism. Supporting extending libel laws so that people will not say bad things about him–thus removing that freedom of speech you guys talk about so much–that’s more like Hitler.
And, while you don’t have to sit there and take it when someone insults you, you don’t get to be violent in response, either. And you don’t get to whine about people offending you when your entire political platform is about deliberately offending the people you don’t like.
To be honest, the protesters are really just taking a play from Trump’s playbook–saying shit to make their opposition angry, so then you can claim that you are being persecuted. Trump brought this stuff on himself.
It may have been true of the Chicago crowd, (and has been true of a couple of subsequent events), but I would have to say that such disruption has been a reaction against the actions of Trump and his followers. This has been a growing situation and your first paragraph that I quoted is not correct. There have been increasing stories over the last couple of months of people peacefully attending a Trump rally being hustled out–forcibly hustled out–for the sin of silently wearing the wrong clothing. As those stories have increased in number, there has been an increase in the number of people who have felt lured to the rallies in order to be disruptive. The violence began with the Trump supporters. Several people who were not protesting have noted that they were hustled out by Secret Service agents. I am not sure whether this is true, but no effort was made by the Trump people to distinguish between hired crowd control people and people who were supposed to be supplying protection to the candidate, so the impression left with people reading/hearing the news is that Trump is using Presidential bodyguards to violently close his rallies to only those who favor his violence.
Of course I could engage in a point by point of the inaccuracies and silliness of your list but none of that is necessary or worth any effort.
The simple fact is that the movement Bernie is a figurehead for is of no danger to anyone. The Sanders fans here will of course disagree with me but it is, at worst, a paper tiger. The “other” demonized by them - the 1% and Wall Street - is under no serious threat from them.
Be that as it may be. Acknowledged that you see out of bounds attempts by students to enforce excessive campus “correctness” mostly via protest as a great danger to society as a whole.
Step back from the immediate politics for a second. Reread my recipe for an authoritarian thugacracy again. In the abstract, not applying it to anyone concretely, what about it do you disagree with, if anything?
Is this some kind of defense? If so, it’s a pathetic defense. He did call for violence, even if at the same time there were contrary announcements (and which message will Trump supporters pay more attention to – PA announcements, or the words of Trump?); he did imply he’d pay for the legal fees of violent people.
Because the ‘Trump is the sympathetic victim of America-hating Leftists’ storyline is, quite possibly, the best he’s ever had. It has the potential to let him move beyond the hardcore 15% of Americans he’s had for months–the disaffected, xenophobic, authoritarian-adoring, often white-supremacist base–and pick up large numbers of new voters, among people who are genuinely shocked by the concept of denying a candidate his right to speak.
‘I can’t help being on Trump’s side because of all this’ is the sweet music he is hoping to hear.
Yes! It’s not as if he’s the kind of person who would hire people to do things at his rallies:
The reason I was asking your source is because you mentioned getting him to the podium, which the Chicago police statement does not, so I thought maybe you had different info.
Anyway, you seem to somehow have become even more confused.
Trump never claimed to have shut down the rally due to concerns for his own safety. The statement from the Chicago police is about their assurances that they had the resources to get him in and out of the venue.
His concerns were not about getting to and from the rally, but on the danger of holding the rally with thousands of protesters present who were intent on disrupting it.
That’s his claim, and it is fully plausible in all respects. We can guess on what undisclosed motives he might have had, in addition to (or instead of) the safety concerns.
The point is that you have to have some kind of minimum standard of what it takes to make a Nazi. Trump doesn’t make the cut by a long shot. A belief in racial supremacy is a core component of Nazism. It’s like trying to call a canoe a car because it goes, even though it doesn’t have wheels or a motor.
Calling the Trumpers Nazis in the first place is what is insulting and inflammatory. Objecting to the comparison is not.
Yes it absolutely is. There is a bit of American narcissism going on here. Yes, Trump is talented and charismatic. But he is just a regular old demagogue selling a brand of nationalism that is pretty mild by historical standards. And the fact is, his nationalism, as any nationalism that has any hope of ever succeeding here will be, is multi-racial and explicitly inclusive. This makes the comparison to Nazism not just wrong and silly, but divisive and counterproductive.
I can certainly acknowledge the similarities that do exist, but I can’t take seriously the suggestion that Trump’s insurgent campaign is more indicative of a prelude to historical disaster than the Sanders campaign, and the crowds of his supporters organizing actions to shut down their opponents and chase professors out of town for saying bad words or sending emails they disagree with. When you factor in how much power they have on college campuses, in the media, and among some of the political establishment, it’s clear that they are the Goliath to Trump’s David. The public is seeing this, and we know how that will likely turn out…
In which example did he condone violence against peaceful protesters (keeping in mind, of course, that even the old peacenik Sanders uses force to eject people who disrupt his rallies)?
I love how the racial component suddenly disappears when it’s a necessary condition of membership in a class afforded special protections against vilification. What happened to Trumpism being all about the angry white people?
So once Trumpism becomes a religion then calling Trumpists Nazis will be hate speech? The distinctions involved in defining hate speech, and thus the laws against hate speech, are idiotic.
If calling people Nazis is not hate speech, after 2/3 of a century of making it clear that violence towards Nazis is not only justified but heroic, then another term needs to be adopted for whatever it is, and there needs to be just as much objection to it as there is to hate speech (but no laws against either, of course).
That’s a often a one way distinction, in practice. If someone believes their religion to be a perfectly true, divine, fundamental, and essential part of themselves and their heritage, it is nearly impossible for them not to understand criticism of it to be a personal insult.
I disagree wholeheartedly. He is currently quite open about his eagerness to shut up the voices of those who’s influence he considers dangerous. He has advocated nationalizing entire industries, in the past. He has spoken fondly of authoritarian governments, in the past.
Does Trump advocate anything stricter than what Britain has? If not, is Britain Literally Hitler? Personally I find both the laws in Britain and Trump’s suggestion to be abhorrent.
He does get lied about in the media constantly, though.
Not only were the Trump supporters not violent towards the woman who implicitly called them Nazis, she described them as “lovely”, and said that while they did throw hateful insults, she never felt like she was in any kind of danger, because she was sure that the people there would have stopped anyone who tried to hurt her.
The objection is not that the anti-Trumpists message is offensive, but that they are insisting on disrupting Trump’s rallies in order to communicate it.
The difference is that Trump supporters do not care whether Bernshirts hold rallies, but the Bernshirts consider themselves justified in shutting down Trump’s, because Hitler.
“Peaceful” doesn’t have anything to do with it. If I went to a play and decided to accompany the stage-whispered dialogue with some loud impromptu singing of my own, I would be* forcibly hustled out*, because those putting on the event get to decide on the level of audience participation that they will tolerate. And people can dress and act in ways that communicate messages too. Those putting on the event have every right to decide whether to allow that audience participation, as well. They certainly do not have to allow the people who came there in support to be insulted and implicitly called Nazis by those who come to protest and disrupt.
Cite?
I am not sure why this distinction is important.
Favor what violence? Your statement seems ridiculously hyperbolic.
I can recall only two reported instances of protest at Sanders’ events, and as I understand it, at no point was force ever applied to anyone.
In one case (last August, in Seattle) activists identified with Black Lives Matter were not only not ejected, they were allowed to address the crowd from the stage, despite some hostility and even calls for “arrest” from a few in attendance. (Contrast this with a later Clinton event.)
In the other (October, in Boston) pro-Palestinian demonstrators were told to put their signs away or leave; here security staff, acting on a cue from a Sanders campaign aide, reportedly threatened arrest, and the demonstrators left. The Sanders campaign later said this treatment had been a mistake, “a poor decision by a low-level staffer and doesn’t reflect campaign policy.”
I’m not so sure, though I get your point and agree with you that his targets are more powerful, while Trump’s are more vulnerable. And that is significant, and why I would never vote for Trump but will for Clinton even though she is pragmatically singing the eat-the-rich song a bit, herself.
But regardless, that’s not how it works anyway. The demonization of corporations and the wealthy sets up a culture of resentment and entitlement in which just about anyone can be seen as “the man”, in the right circumstances. Once people are convinced that their having less than others is the result of unfairness, anyone with more than them can be imagined to be a beneficiary of this unfair system and thus a valid target. I have been on the receiving end of this myself before, and I am no where near the top 1%.
They are actually running professors off campus for using the wrong word, or sending out an email or tweet that they disagree with. Our entire society and culture is enabled by and based on the principle of an open and free exchange of ideas, and our universities are supposed to be the epicenter of the process.
And now of course they are shutting down political rallies of their opponents.
So, yes.
For now, at least.
Ok. I assume you mean this:
Nothing at all. Bernie scores higher on some of the above criteria, and Trump higher on the others.
It’s just that the public voice that the mob Bernie is currently personifying is enormous in comparison to the current public voice of the Trumpers and Trumpettes. It’s a huge lopsided ratio, a ratio similar to the ratio between the mob of protesters in Chicago, and the one lone Trump supporter who got kicked out of the Bernie rally.
What’s funny is how Trump is the one that gets attacked by the media with baseless insinuations that he is singling people out for ejection from his rallies due to their race, while Bernie kicks out the white Trumpist but allows the BLM girls to take over, and apologizes for muting the pro-Palestinian protesters. Some good, trendy ethnic flavor doing it’s job! So hot right now.
Am I missing something here? Those thousands of protesters people keep talking about were OUTSIDE THE BUILDING. There were nowhere near that many in the event itself.
