White supremacy run amok

[Dragline]

That's why I lean more in support of the efforts of the citizens of Charlottesville and all other good-hearted civilians who took it upon themselves to stand together in protest of the rally and in protection of those most threatened. The streets of their city belong to the people, not to out of state white supremacists nor to the government that sanctioned their presence.

And in fact, this is what people living in Charlottesville had to say about the experience:

From an actual resident of Charlottesville:

"There seems to be a perception from people outside of Charlottesville that what is going on here is two opposing groups coming to town and fighting some ideological battle that has gotten messy. That is not what is happening here. What is happening here is that several hate groups from the extreme right have come together under the "unite the right" banner here in our town and basically started acting as terrorists. This may seem like an exaggeration but it's not.

A church service was held over because they had surrounded the building and police had to disperse them. People had to be escorted to their cars. My friend was there with her daughter. Everywhere they meet, businesses close. We had drive by shootings yesterday from a van marked kkk.

A car plowed into a huge group of people. I'm sure you saw that on the newsfeeds. What you probably didn't see is that some of those people were on their way back from helping to repel a white supremacist march to predominately black housing development a few blocks away where they were attempting home invasions. I guess they were unfamiliar with the neighborhood.

So, basically, what I'd like you to understand is, this IS NOT two side egging each other on to unavoidable violence for more attention. This is one side of terrorists declaring that they can and will hold a town hostage (they've been saying it for over a month now, actually) and the town responding to that threat. The car that killed and injured people yesterday? Ohio tags. The medic tents (which treated both sides... turns out the alt right erst didn’t bring any medics. Guess they planned on doing all the injuring), water bottles, snacks, shade tents (all volunteer, donations, none shut down by police... all manned by that radical left you keep hearing about) yeah, we all live here. I saw a lot of people I knew yesterday, none of them were speaking for unite the right. None of them were escalating violence, most of them were offering some kind of aid and defending."

Does anyone here have any other eye-witness account from anyone they have communicated with who lives in Charlotteville?

[C40]

it is hard to compare these effects, of course, but brute is actually convinced that the aggregate negative effect of white supremacy is far below the aggregate negative effect of political correctness. nobody has directly died from PC, but brute isn't convinced that 1 death is worse than, say, lowering the GDP by 1%, or making 100 million humans miserable every work day, and so on. this has indirect effects on actual lives too - more money to be spent on health care, food, foreign aid, could have saved way more than 1 life.

[....a post only about deaths...]

BRUTE wasn't comparing deaths from far right with deaths from PC.

That report is interesting, and there was this one little gem in it:

Neo-Nazi killed sex-offender priest --- 8/23/2003 ---- Shirley Massachusetts

Well, I shouldn't call it a gem, but it definitely stood out. It could make for an interesting drama movie plot. And what's the deal with white supremacists killing the homeless? they just want an easy target to kill?

[C40]

That account from the resident is startling. Particularly the part about them heading to the black neighborhood to invade houses.

These days, with shitty short news articles being spewed out, it's hard to tell what actually happened.

For example, when I looked at a set of pictures on a CNN article the day that it happened, there were I think 7 different violent scenes shown in the pictures. 1 was the car hitting the crowd. And ALL THE OTHER pictures with violence showed violence being done by the counter protestors against the white supremacists (including stuff like a counter-protestor swinging what looked like a metal pipe or a baton to hit the face/head of an old white supremacist who had a cane and was laying on the ground).

Often, gatherings of white supremacists (and other groups that end up fighting with their counter protesters) go this way, with a step by step increase in tensions and aggression:
- The bad guys gather to have a demonstration
- Other people come to counter-protest
- The two groups line up and start yelling at each-other like idiots
- Somebody throws something from one side at the other
- A few people push each-other
- A bunch of people get into crazy 'fight mode'
- Then they start fighting

(this is also how 95% of fist fights also start.. they only happen when both people act like idiots through a number of steps of increased tensions)

Assuming that resident's account is accurate, this event was a whole lot different. The police (and national guard?) should've have taken much more action

[Spartan_Warrior]

Thanks Dragline. That's interesting and backs up what I've seen and heard. The part about the break-ins in the black houses actually gives me context to something I saw in a live-stream that day. I'm curious whether I witnessed part of that incident, or the aftermath of it, but it'd be hard to find the particular footage now.

On that note, I wonder if we'll continue to get a bigger picture of what happened over time, or if the incident will be quickly forgotten in the mainstream. I don't watch TV much or peruse mainstream news sources. What's the coverage like?

@C40: " [....a post only about deaths...]

BRUTE wasn't comparing deaths from far right with deaths from PC. "

I would assume that you have data to support that PC causes any damage other than to snowflakes who don't like to be criticized/annoyed or see their world changing? I mean along the lines of "lowering the GDP by 1%, or making 100 million humans miserable every work day." Those are fairly serious numbers that I expect would have been documented in some way.

The death toll comparison really should be sufficient though.

[Dragline]

Perhaps you are privy to more information than everyone else, or you are speculating based on pre-conceived bias and projections of what you want this kid to be. Your hunch may ultimately be proven true, or he may have reacted in a fit of rage after a fight or someone damaging his car. I don't know just yet and neither do you, so give the investigation time to play out before you declare complete knowledge on this issue. Put on your attorney hat and pretend this is a case you have to defend or prosecute and look at BOTH sides of this equation.

. . .

Now before you start labeling me a sympathizer understand I am arguing this from a Constitutional standpoint. I don't give two fucks about some idiot with a hood on; neither do I give two shits about some idiot that wants to fight them. What I do care about is we uphold our Constitution and defend American rights, even if scary men with tiki torches chant "blood and soil" around a statue of Robert E. Lee.

They were not protesting. They planned to riot, they brought their riot gear and they were rioting. And now one has been arrested for murder and assault. He's apparently been singing odes to Hitler for a decade. Others probably should have been arrested as well. If the terrorist is smart, he'll plead and join a gang in prison where he belongs. There is no right to riot and murder.

I am not sure why you are debating this. People get killed by these shitheads trying to hide behind their vividly dramatic and erroneous interpretations of "Constitutional rights" every year.

On the other "side of the equation", there are no domestic leftists out there committing terrorist acts and murder in the US on a regular basis like these people. There is no equivalence. Zero. None. Nada. Zippo. No way, Jose. Get it? It's not an equation: its an inequality.

If you continue to publicly deny or question that this is what they were doing in the face of the videos and other evidence, then yes, you are a sympathizer. If you are willing to take their side because they express hatred for some of the same people you dislike, then yes, you are a sympathizer.

There is a place to support the white supremacists on "Hatreon.com" (pronounced "Hate-ree-on") -- they got kicked off Patreon but created a new such platform to promote "creative hate speech" Richard Spencer and the whole gang is there, with Pepe the Frog memes and everything. I am sure they are raising plenty of money for their terrorist compatriot there.

[Spartan_Warrior]

Actually, before that challenge to provide statistics even goes any further, just so we have this discussion in the proper context, the intent is to compare the alleged damage done by political correctness to capitalist productivity metrics and white male feelings during the workday... versus number of people literally murdered.

it is hard to compare these effects, of course

Agreed. If you still insist, do go ahead and back it up.

[C40]

[note that I'd made my previous post while Dragline's was only referring to deaths, before he edited it to contain the part you quoted, so after the edit my previous post is not relevant]

For a population of 300,000,000, 106 deaths over a 15 year period does seem like a small number to me. (of course, what any of us consider small here depends on how precious we consider an individual life)

Way more people die from all kinds of small and odd problems, I'd bet more die from when a left-handed person is using equipment designed primarily for right-handed people and something goes wrong.

I'm not arguing about whether the deaths are more or less significant than PC or anything else. And, of course, 106 is still a lot more than what it should be (zero). We're getting into incredibly subjective territory comparing a small number of deaths to a large number of people suffering a minor annoyance.

[slowtraveler]

Interesting how riled up emotions are on this thread. I grew up during the Bush era so I'm somewhat immune to the label "terrorist", it glamorizes whoever committed the crime and causes reactions that often aren't calibrated to what happened. Someone got murdered by someone doing a hit and run into a crowd of people- murder with deadly weapon and attempted murder on 19 more. No matter what their political agenda, having that happen would be "terrorizing". But the sum of all human murders is still a fraction of what disease cause and we spend more combating terrorism than the biggest disease killers. *This does not mitigate what happened in any way but simply compares it to other causes of death. Perhaps if an extremist-violent group actually began to kill large amounts of people, the momentum would be difficult to stop by that point or it's scarier when a visible person does it rather than accumulated bodily damage or tiny organisms.

Reading Dragline's story illuminates a different perspective. That sounds like an armed group attempting to overthrow an established town. If you want to label the other group terrorists, fine. I call them Nazi's. I agree that inter-human violence is not something to tolerate and this is why a state of emergency was declared-prevent invasion.

This obsession with the word terrorist reminds me of a documentary eco terrorist. Where the one "terrorist" who didn't cooperate got 10 years of jail and the others who did cooperate got to walk away free, even the one who organized the event. But in their attacks, they did seek to minimize risk of harming any humans. So that's a plus about leftist extremists at this point compared to the Nazi's.

[C40]

If you continue to publicly deny or question that this is what they were doing in the face of the videos and other evidence, then yes, you are a sympathizer. If you are willing to take their side because they express hatred for some of the same people you dislike, then yes, you are a sympathizer.

There is a place to support the white supremacists on "Hatreon.com" (pronounced "Hate-ree-on") -- they got kicked off Patreon but created a new such platform to promote "creative hate speech" Richard Spencer and the whole gang is there, with Pepe the Frog memes and everything. I am sure they are raising plenty of money for their terrorist compatriot there.

Dragline, I think it's time to cool it down a bit. I don't see FFJ expressing views sympathetic to supremacists or doing any of the things you accuse him of in the first paragraph quoted.

See https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.co ... =21&t=6780 and particularly http://www.albion.com/netiquette/rule7.html

[BRUTE]

Well, the data says you are wrong.

white supremacy: 106 deaths / 15 years (~7 / year)
cardiovascular disease: 0.86 million deaths / year
diarrhea: 92,000 / year

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... th_by_rate


the data seems to indicate that brute is correct in not thinking too much about white supremacy. white supremacy is less dangerous than melanoma, butt cancer, smoking, car accidents, probably bees, even though bees didn't make the list.

brute will instead save approximately 122875x more lives by talking about the dangers of a high-carb diet.

[Spartan_Warrior]

I thought you claimed that political correctness, not butt cancer, harmed society more than white supremacy. I don't see political correctness on that list either...?

[C40]

I think Brute's showing with that post that in the numbers, the deaths from white supremacy, when compared to other causes, are pretty insignificant. And thus if the deaths are insignificant, other causes (maybe including the PC one, could have a bigger impact). (?)

But anyways, if BRUTE is thinking about improving the world with what he talks about, what are your goals? (Less deaths, better economy, healthier people, people getting along better, more sports cars, ? )

Racial tensions and unhealthy people are probably on two different scales, right? One is related to how well people get along and has some (probably very small) risk of political instability or disaster, and the other is more of how early people die and how much their healthcare costs.

[Spartan_Warrior]

And thus if the deaths are insignificant, other causes (maybe including the PC one, have a bigger impact).

In a world full of maybes... Maybe the nation's largest hate rally in decades isn't a sign of white supremacy run amok. Maybe a white supremacist driving into a crowd of people isn't politically motivated terrorism. And maybe, just maybe, political correctness has a bigger impact than "insignificant" deaths, based on Brute's feelings.

Maybe, just maybe... that's all overwrought bullshit incessantly distracting from the core issues. Gaslighting me. Continuously asking me to justify my position, now with this insistence that I justify how I'm "improving the world". And you've been at it since page one. Why? How do you think that is improving the world?

[Spartan_Warrior]

Oh, I forgot one: maybe the violence is all the fault of the counter-protesters who shouldn't have shown up anyway.

Maybe, baby, maybe.

[C40]

And thus if the deaths are insignificant, other causes (maybe including the PC one, have a bigger impact).

In a world full of maybes... Maybe the nation's largest hate rally in decades isn't a sign of white supremacy run amok. Maybe a white supremacist driving into a crowd of people isn't politically motivated terrorism. And maybe, just maybe, political correctness has a bigger impact than "insignificant" deaths, based on Brute's feelings.

Maybe, just maybe... that's all overwrought bullshit incessantly distracting from the core issues. Gaslighting me. Continuously asking me to justify my position, now with this insistence that I justify how I'm "improving the world". And you've been at it since page one. Why? How do you think that is improving the world?

Dude. Chill out. I was asking BRUTE about how he wants to improve the world. Not you. (and that was getting off track from the thread, so ignore that question BRUTE)

Edit - I can see how the way I phrased that could make it look like I was talking to you. I get mixed up on how to refer to BRUTE sometimes since he speaks of himself in the third person, and I should have used "his" or "BRUTE'S" instead of that "your"

[Spartan_Warrior]

> "But anyways, if BRUTE is thinking about improving the world with what he talks about, what are your goals?"

It appeared you were talking to me, but I guess I was thrown by Brute's little pronoun thing?

I'm cool as a snowflake over here. The mental back flips in this thread are amusing to me at this point.

[C40]

Ok, folks, in the interest of helping the thread move forward in a constructive way, I think the latest post that was relevant to moving the conversation forward was Spartan's 7th post on the previous page (I wish we had post numbers), and specifically, the part of it I quote below

How about we pick up from here and drop the other tangents of discussion?

However, my responses would be: 1) anti-fascism in and of itself shouldn't really be a fringe opinion (and I still hope that it isn't). 2) It's still a slippery slope argument that placing limits on the rights of a specified group of violent political ideologies will necessarily lead to suppressing the rights of other groups, fringe or otherwise.

Moreover, I personally don't expect the government to do what's right, not generally speaking and not in the case of suppressing the rise of white supremacist violence. Rather I expect them to enshrine and defend it. All accounts I've heard indicate that had those citizens not been there, the violence done by the alt-right to other citizens would have been worse. The lack of police intervention for the safety of anyone on either side has been reported, by both sides.

I definitely have no illusions that what is legal or Constitutional is necessarily moral either, or vice versa.

That's why I lean more in support of the efforts of the citizens of Charlottesville and all other good-hearted civilians who took it upon themselves to stand together in protest of the rally and in protection of those most threatened. The streets of their city belong to the people, not to out of state white supremacists nor to the government that sanctioned their presence.

The thing is, if you're going to argue against citizens taking direct action through counter-protests and the like, AND you argue against legal enforcement and restrictions that would obviate the need for the former, what solutions to the problem of protecting the marginalized does that leave you?

This guy's proposal seems to be to just ignore them and they'll go away. Again, as I said on page 1, that seems like a demonstrably wrong approach when the metrics that would seem indicative of "going away" are in fact moving the opposite direction.

Ignoring the problem seems like a great way to let their ideology continue to spread to a population caught in one of the crises of end-stage capitalism and thus particularly susceptible to fascism, as history has shown. Especially if it is also taboo to discuss much less dispel the thought processes and motivations that lead these ideologies to thrive.

So is there some fourth option that you would suggest? Not restricting their rights through government, not confronting them as private citizens, and not simply ignoring them in the hopes their ideas will fade?

[Campitor]

I read the GAO report. In the 15 years that the report covers:

• Radical Right Wing violent extremist killed 106 people.
• Radical Muslim violent extremist killed 119 people
• A grand total of 255 people were killed by extremist.

I was surprised that following mass murders weren't part of the GAO report:

• 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers
• 2016 shooting of Baton Rouge police officers

The above excluded murders were appear to fit the criteria of extremist killings since it was conducted by persons who were motivated by racial animus. 255 people killed by extremist - one of them was targeted for being Hispanic.

Meanwhile in 2015 alone there were 7,039 blacks and 2,028 Hispanics murdered ( 2015 FBI Homicide Table 1). Where the race/ethnicity of the murderer is known/recorded, Blacks and Hispanics were killed by people of their own race/ethnicity in the majority of cases (2015 FBI Homicide Table 6). The likelihood that I will die at the hands of a right wing extremist is super low compared to me being murdered by someone of my own race/ethnicity or by a fellow minority. So where should I base my concern? Should I worry about the 255 extremist murders over a 15 year period (17 deaths per yearly average) or the potential that I will be a victim by someone of my own ethnicity?

Having said the above, I enthusiastically believe that white extremism and any other extreme "ism" that incites violence should be actively discouraged and countered via education, outreach, and aggressive law enforcement. But the "weight" of my worry will go to the statistically proven incidents that drive more deaths than the "yippee-kayeh-mother-f*!#$ers" extremist who showed up to bash heads this past weekend.

[C40]

One suggestion I would have is that it looks to me that last weekend there should have been much more control over the location of the demonstration and separation of the groups.

It seems to me that the Supremacists had a designated area, but that the control of people was extremely poor and that allowed the groups to clash too much, and then people may have just went wherever they wanted (I believe the supremacists were planning or trying to relocate to some park after the initial clashes and the state of emergency or whatever it's called being declared.

Nowadays "free speech zones" and similar cordoning off of groups and control of where they are able to do their assembly are pretty common. I remember a supremacist gathering that happened in a city where I live many years ago. They had the supremacists cordoned off very well, and a large amount of separation between them and the counter-protesters. They were close enough to yell at each-other, but not nearly close enough to touch each-other, and that no-man's land was very well controlled. There was a large group of counter-protestors there to express displeasure. It never got violent. It happened, and then it was over, and there was barely a blip in the news about it. I think it's important to manage these things so that there's barely a blip about it. Basically, all the pictures I saw, and everything I heard about it was limited to the supremacists looking like idiots. That's all that seemed to come out of it.

This last weekend has blown up into a huge deal. No doubt that will "help" in growing the public rejection of supremacists, but it will also "help" in growing the numbers of the supremacists. There are a lot of racist folks who I'd say are now more at risk of joining the supremacists because of all the media coverage and discussion this resulted in, and also definitely because of the violent clashes going down, and the supremacists having some ammo to say they were shut down by [whatever]... For example from those 7 pictures I saw on the initial CNN article depicting violence, 6 of them were violence against supremacists. I just tried to find that article now but it's tough for me to find something from a few days ago on CNN. Here's what the pictures were:
- One of a counter-protestor spraying mace in the face of a Supremacist
- One of a counter-protestor using a metal pipe or baton to strike the (helmetless) head of an older supremacist who uses a cane and was on the ground
- One of a counter-protestor using some kind of aerosol can to spray a stream of fire at the Supremacists (though a couple feet from hitting them)
- One of a supremacist who had his face hit and bloodied
- and one or two more similar to these that I can't recall now

That's a lot of ammo for the supremacists to use as propaganda. Let's say guy A is a supremacists, and this guy he knows, guy B, is "just" a racist. Guy A says to Guy B "Dude, there was an alt-right rally and these fucking liberal commie n****** lovers came and attacked the rally. Look at these pictures. They hit this poor old guy in the head with a pipe, they sprayed fireballs on these guys, look at this shit man, things are going down right now, you need to pick a side"

I think that gives the Supremacists too much recruiting ammo. Compare with the Rally where I'd lived where what came out of it was just pictures of old sweaty white guys looking like idiots in costumes.

I think the government should take more charge in having Supremacists on the "naughty list", where they can have their rally and be allowed their 1st amendment rights, but they're going to be very well controlled in a certain area. The government could also ensure that there's a (maybe bigger) area for counter-protestors, and assuming it is effective, could do things to ensure the number counter-protestors present vastly outnumber the supremacists (in order to help the imagery from the event properly portray the disapproval of the general population. There could some ways of setting up the areas so that recordings of the event properly portray the amount of dissenters and it doesn't look like a giant and popular supremacist rally. You could allow the supremacists a platform or stage to talk from, but not provide or allow super loud audio systems and allow the counter-protestors to be close enough to drown out their speeches.

This may seem like a lot of government kid gloves, and like spending money on helping to organize a supremacist rally is stupid, but, given we've just seen the death numbers, consider the amount we've spend on fighting terrorism abroad over the last 15 years vs. how many deaths we've had from radical Islamic terrorists vs from white supremacists. And kind of things I'm talking about would cost as much as two or three missiles.

This wouldn't be a complete solution or anything like that, but when it comes to how the even happens, controlling the narrative is critical. Doing so can prevent them from getting recruitment ammo, dissuade the "on the edge racists" from joining, make clear how these guys are a joke, make them look like idiots, and so on.

Edit -- I guess all of this is "expecting the government to do what's right" and I am also not the most confident about that working out so well.

[Campitor]

@C40 - okay here it goes:

However, my responses would be: 1) anti-fascism in and of itself shouldn't really be a fringe opinion (and I still hope that it isn't). 2) It's still a slippery slope argument that placing limits on the rights of a specified group of violent political ideologies will necessarily lead to suppressing the rights of other groups, fringe or otherwise.

Until you get someone in power who may feel otherwise. This type of abuse was one of the reasons why we revolted against the established monarchy.

Moreover, I personally don't expect the government to do what's right, not generally speaking and not in the case of suppressing the rise of white supremacist violence. Rather I expect them to enshrine and defend it. All accounts I've heard indicate that had those citizens not been there, the violence done by the alt-right to other citizens would have been worse. The lack of police intervention for the safety of anyone on either side has been reported, by both sides.

Yet we continue to place our trust in government for our own personal safety - maybe we shouldn't do that. Or perhaps municipalities should pass laws against carrying gladiator gear/bats/batons/torches during marches.

I definitely have no illusions that what is legal or Constitutional is necessarily moral either, or vice versa.

That's why I lean more in support of the efforts of the citizens of Charlottesville and all other good-hearted civilians who took it upon themselves to stand together in protest of the rally and in protection of those most threatened. The streets of their city belong to the people, not to out of state white supremacists nor to the government that sanctioned their presence.

I agree the streets do belong to the people but our constitution guarantees freedom of movement so there is no legal justification for barring any out of state entities from marching/protesting peacefully.

The thing is, if you're going to argue against citizens taking direct action through counter-protests and the like, AND you argue against legal enforcement and restrictions that would obviate the need for the former, what solutions to the problem of protecting the marginalized does that leave you?

I defend speech, regardless of offensiveness, as long as it remains peaceful and outside the realm of violent calls to action. I defend counter-protest speech as long as it remains peaceful and doesn't incite violent calls to action. All citizens have the right to defend themselves or prevent harm to the innocent - I don't think anyone is disputing that here.

This guy's proposal seems to be to just ignore them and they'll go away. Again, as I said on page 1, that seems like a demonstrably wrong approach when the metrics that would seem indicative of "going away" are in fact moving the opposite direction.

Ignoring the problem seems like a great way to let their ideology continue to spread to a population caught in one of the crises of end-stage capitalism and thus particularly susceptible to fascism, as history has shown. Especially if it is also taboo to discuss much less dispel the thought processes and motivations that lead these ideologies to thrive.

Bad ideas, regardless the source (private citizen or government) should be actively and peaceful countered and engaged. But how will you know who to "counter" if they aren't allowed to express their ideas? When has banning any kind of speech actually prevented groups from disseminating bad ideas? Better to let these bad ideas see the light of day so they can be countered peacefully than to let them fester and grow in the dark.

So is there some fourth option that you would suggest? Not restricting their rights through government, not confronting them as private citizens, and not simply ignoring them in the hopes their ideas will fade?

Violence begets violence - its a self feeding animal. I would prefer engagement over confrontation. The national statistics would indicate that the risk of "isms' is low enough that we shouldn't risk eroding our constitutionally protected rights to free speech.