White supremacy run amok

[Spartan_Warrior]

@FFJ: Importantly, though, it wasn't really a "rash conclusion" or a "wild accusation". It really was immediately obvious what the situation was to anyone with 1) all of the facts and 2) no reason to deny or mitigate the situation. Clearly Nazis fail the latter as the alt-right now has something of a media shitstorm on its hands (hopefully) and all the reason in the world to deny association and/or downplay the severity of the incident. On the other hand, I fully and without sarcasm accept that your reason for raising speculation and doubt really is simple devil's advocacy and/or temperance of judgment. I already said so, if I recall. Again, my main reason for linking to Daily Stormer was to clarify why some could be upset by your words and perceive them as mounting a defense of the terrorist. Which, again, technically it was, but I get the motivation.

Much like I'm sure @Brute just loves cars.

I apologize if I implied otherwise. My intent was mainly to highlight the optics, the similarity in the statements, not necessarily the similarity in motivations. And I did ask if that similarity was concerning to any of you. I read you there, too.

It's all only secondarily related to the point of the thread, though, and irrelevant now that it's pretty indisputable the incident was exactly what it appeared to be.

[Spartan_Warrior]

And sorry, but I have to push back a little more against this insinuation that this thread's purpose needs to be justified somehow.

A woman was killed by a Nazi on US soil in the year 2017.

The US was just attacked by a terrorist organization operating in broad daylight.

The same or similar terrorist groups have killed nearly twice as many Americans since 9/11 as Jihadists.

That's also far more than political correctness has killed, to whoever called that a more widespread problem. Other popular topics on this subforum include Venezuela, climate change, Trump, Obamacare, political ideologies, and poverty. I don't see how discussing white supremacy is jarringly different in quality, significantly more or less important, or significantly more or less charged, in and of itself. Beyond what each of us brings to it.

And I'm sure I brought some baggage into the conversation. It's an emotional conversation. Again, we just experienced a terrorist attack.

I apologize if my tone has been discouraging or divisive, but I have to note again the irony of the optics when my tone is enough to question the need for this topic, while at the same time others are advocating the importance of free speech for literal Nazis.

So if this isn't the right place or time to talk about it, then where, and when?

[OTCW]

Free speach is important to everybody in the US. Limit it because the majority find it repugnant, and every other topic is fair game. Screw that.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@OTCW: That's a slippery slope fallacy with little basis or precedent in reality that I am aware of. There is, however, evidence to the contrary. Germany--which presumably has the most experience dealing with these people--managed to "de-nazify" and ban Nazi symbols and open gatherings while retaining robust rights to free speech and assembly for everyone else.

Shouldn't that fact alone be sufficient to defeat the slippery slope argument?

[OTCW]

@OTCW: That's a slippery slope fallacy with little basis or precedent in reality that I am aware of. There is, however, evidence to the contrary. Germany--which presumably has the most experience dealing with these people--managed to "de-nazify" and ban Nazi symbols and open gatherings while retaining robust rights to free speech and assembly for everyone else.

Shouldn't that fact alone be sufficient to defeat the slippery slope argument?

The ACLU disagrees. As does the constitution. You clearly have good intents, but it doesn't work that way in the US even if you want it to. Banning speech because you don't like it wouldn't make it through the courts. Nor should it.

[Spartan_Warrior]

You sure?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_ ... ed_theater

[OTCW]

You sure?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_ ... ed_theater

1. Not liking people is not a crime.
2. Doesn't apply to rallies or speech where the purpose is to say (no matter how vile) your peace. They had a permit to do so. The ACLU backed them up on this. Theaters are public places open to anyone. Different deal altogether.

It's a bad precedent. I'm against it, so yes I'm as sure as I can be on this. I Don't want to go down that path for any reason. I Don't want to argue it on a message board either. I've said my peace.

[BRUTE]

A woman was killed by a Nazi on US soil in the year 2017.

The US was just attacked by a terrorist organization operating in broad daylight.

The same or similar terrorist groups have killed nearly twice as many Americans since 9/11 as Jihadists.

terrorism works by making humans irrational, assigning way too much importance to a few deaths compared to their actual impact. cigarettes kill more than terrorists. so do car crashes. terrorism is just very dramatic.

just as brute disapproved of the frothing at the mouth over jihadist terrorism, he also doesn't approve of similar outrage over white supremacist terrorism. attention is what terrorists want, and over-size reactions that aren't rationally warranted. like all the TSA bullshit after 9/11.

effective policing to prevent these terrorist plots, sure. but dramatic displays of fear over the whole population, making everyone's life miserable? no.

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.

also, interestingly, brute takes a similar position to this to the one Dragline had towards the Trump election: the fault of the white supremacist attacks lies with the white supremacists. no discussion needed. it's not whites, males, white males, enablers in the white house (ZOMG! coincidence?). it's simply aggressive assholes that are looking for an excuse to be violent.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@FFJ:

Video: "We should want Nazis to march in the streets."

Um... no thank you? LOL.

Aside from that, I obviously don't have the patience to go piece by piece through every line of argument in a 22 minute video. The gist, however, seems to be that people ideologically opposed to Nazi rallies inherently represent a fringe position "like communism", and that it's self-defeating for anyone with such fringe opinions to look to the government for defense. There are merits to that argument, to be honest.

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?

@OTCW:

I didn't say not liking people is a crime. But there is legal precedent in the US that activities that present a "clear and present danger" of "imminent lawless activity" are not protected by free speech. Once that line is crossed, whether issued a permit or not, your assembly and speech rights are not guaranteed. That would be my understanding of the current case law.

The disagreement and ambiguity seems to be over where the line is between "speaking their peace" and promoting "lawless activity".

Once there are 500 of them surrounding 20 activists with torches, beating them and chanting racial epithets, I'd say the line is pretty thoroughly crossed, though. Regardless of what the ACLU has to say, frankly.

[Dragline]

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.

Well, the data says you are wrong.

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.

In reality, the death toll since 2001 is right winger hundreds and leftist PCers zero.

White supremacists and other far right terrorists commit terrorist acts every year and twice as many as Islamic-related terrorists, although the overall death toll is similar. More important, despite angry sputterings on the internet and elsewhere, nobody died of "PC".

Here is the report from Trump administration in April of this year (I wonder if he read it -- he was warned of this problem in May and did nothing; I am guessing this missed his censor brigade who were focused on suppressing environmental stuff): http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf

These are the terrorists who committed hundreds of murders as described in the report:

"Far right violent extremist attackers are characterized by ECDB [US Extremist Crime Database] as having
beliefs that include some or all of the following:
• Fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in
orientation);
• Anti-global;
• Suspicious of centralized federal authority;
• Reverent of individual liberty (especially right to own guns; be free of
taxes);
• Belief in conspiracy theories that involve a grave threat to national
sovereignty and/or personal liberty;
• Belief that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack
and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent; and
• Belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating
in or supporting the need for paramilitary preparations and training or
survivalism.

In addition, according to the ECDB, many persons having violent extreme
far right views express support for some version of white supremacy, the
Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazism."

Meanwhile, the total casualties of far-left and any alleged "PC" acts is exactly zero:

"During this period [2001 - 2016], no persons in the United States were killed in attacks carried out by persons believed to be
motivated by extremist environmental beliefs, extremist “animal liberation” beliefs, or extremist far left beliefs."

Again, if you have data you would like to present, please do so. If not, I take it your views are either based on selective anecdotes or your own subjective experiences and speculations, correct?

[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.