I like the phrase Unite the Right. What have we got? Bereft the left? Nothing.
NM - refusing to get caught up in this hijack, and still too angry.
It’s only a hijack if we’re done talking about suppression of speech we don’t like.
This is the best post I have seen on this site. The righties have for years condemned and attacked completely innocent Muslims for “not speaking out against Muslim terrorists”. Of course plenty of Muslims, in fact, have been speaking out. Now the damn righties are showing their prominent spokespeople suppor t terrorism and the righties are whining about being measured how they have measured. There, literally, is exactly zero of the Words of Christ those so-called Christians honor other than in the breach.
And you righties, you jackasses, next time, vote intelligently so we don’t have a fucking incompetent imbecile beholden to damn Nazis in the most important office on Earth.
As I said, I don’t condone violence, including the scuffling that took place yesterday by the antifas or whatever the hell they’re called. They’re partly to blame for helping to escalate the situation.
But frankly, this is exactly what the white nationalists wanted. They wanted a violent outcome, because it gives them more attention and exposure, and it makes them more attractive to other dumb, down and out white guys who don’t really know what they want to be when they grow up and those who don’t know what they want to be now that they’re having a mid-life crisis. and now this dumb redneck sap from Ohio is probably looking at a good chunk of his life in a Virginia prison because he was too stupid to realize that he was getting played, as are all of the others who join this movement thinking it’s simply a matter of protesting a perceived national identity crisis.
America will be just fine without Confederate statues and monuments. But America needs to confront the fact that, unlike other democracies, it is somewhat unique in that it is a country that was founded on the rather twisted values of white supremacy and inequality. Although I think we’ve tried to evolve, the political events of the past 1-2 years (or more) make it clear that the white majority in this country isn’t comfortable sharing power with others, and a high tolerance for economic, social, and political inequality is still very much in our fabric. Until this changes, we’re going to keep revisiting our past sins. We’ll always be divided -at times, bitterly so.
You’re correct. I do not like speech from Nazis who advocate genocide. I do not feel that suppressing such speech is a bad thing.
Now, if you want to extrapolate from that some sort of insane slippery slope argument, feel free.
My contention, however, that Nazi ideology has no place in any society that calls itself a society of laws and freedom.
Is suppression of speech something that should be done carelessly or casually? Of course not.
But can you tell me any reason why Nazi speech, specifically, should be tolerated for any reason at all? Is it only from the idea that all speech must be tolerated?
If so, that is patently absurd; free speech is not unlimited, and I am quite fine with Nazism being excluded from free speech.
There’s no slippery slope. If we suppress Nazism, we suppress left wing extremism as well. That’s just how it works.
That’s the idea. And yes, we do have an obligation to speak out, and many of us are. National Review has nothing nice to say about these extremists and that’s our flagship magazine.
If they wanted to unite the right, they failed. We’re more divided than ever.
… so you’re equating those who protested against the Nazis with anarchists and expecting them to be unable to stop the fascists from passing?
Because that’s where your line is from.
Who’re they? Have they been holding rallies lately? Have they been murdering Americans? Do they have the ear of the president?
Nah. You hate folks who declare themselves Nazis. You fuckin love the ideology and defend it every chance you get, and there’s no doubt which side you’d have chosen in 1930 Germany. But you don’t want to be seen with the actual swastika.
Well, if someone has the ear of the President, suppression is impossible. You’re the one who should be worried about being suppressed in that case.
If we’re going to take the fairly radical step of banning political groups and their speech, there has to be a rule beyond, “We don’t like those people!” That rule would read something like, “It shall be illegal to advocate for ideologies which have enslaved or committed mass murder.”
“Fairly radical”, you say.
Do you believe it should be legal for ISIS or al-Qaeda to hold a public rally in this country?
It’s just more weaselly, false-equivalence from a right-winger winking at his Nazi brethren.
Nazism and white supremacy are ideologies with bedrock principles aimed at depriving people of their liberty. Fuck them and their speech by all means necessary.
Can we start by suppressing false equivalency?
Okay, first let’s get some terms straight here. The Nazi Party, as in Hitler’s Nazi Party is dead. Likewise, ISIS and Al Qaeda do not exist as coherent organizations in the US. Both Islamic terrorist groups and Nazis can only have sympathizers in large numbers. ISIS can’t hold a rally in the US because there aren’t enough ISIS members to do so in the first place, and if there was, we’d have much bigger problems than peaceful rallies. That’s why we had an Un-American Activities Committee, because it was believed that Nazis and Communists had fifth columns here. It wasn’t an unreasonable fear. They had them all over Europe, and what existed here tended to take orders from Berlin and Moscow.
So what we’re actually talking about when we talk about Nazi rallies or ISIS rallies is people who sympathize with them. And yes, people are free to advocate for ISIS or Nazis, as long as they don’t cross the line into material support for the real thing. I’m comfortable with that.
And… this does not describe communism? False equivalence? Stalin’s victims might disagree. You might want to ask some Chinese or Vietnamese immigrants as well. Or some Cubans who fled Castro.
Are we going to ban speech in favor of anti-American ideologies, or aren’t we?
I do. Not for their sake. For mine.
As long as the rally is peaceable. If there’s one thing this event has clarified for me, it’s that weaponry should be banned from rallies. You don’t get to march around with semiautomatic weapons and call your assembly peaceable. Say all the vile shit you want to say, and I’ll defend your right to say it, not because I have any respect for you, but because I have respect for the institution of free speech. But leave your weaponry at home.
“Both sides do it” is the nastiest bullshit. Only one side passed laws making it okay to run down protestors in the street (“accidentally” reads the fine print, which nobody reads); only one side ran down protestors in the street.
Antifa showed up ready for a fight. They didn’t show up at a meeting of the UVA Young Republicans. They didn’t show up at city council. They didn’t even show up at a Trump Rally. They showed up when Nazis with torches and weapons were gathered. Blaming them equally is dishonest as hell.
I know exactly where my quote comes from. It’s, it’s Spain isn’t it? 
But it has slightly moved out of the exact context in the English-speaking world.
Hate to break it to you, but it isn’t— not anymore. Hence the problem.