White supremacy run amok

[jennypenny]

I was thinking polite.

Whatever. You and everyone else who's overreacting can carry on with your forum-clearing rant. I have a plane to catch.

[C40]

In the video we've all seen, it is a bit hard to tell how fast the car is going as it enters the crowd. One picture of the car from behind on CNN and it looked like the brake lights were on. But this picture shows how fast and hard the guy drove into some of the people:



Note that when a picture is taken with a very long lens, as this one was, it can compress things that are far away and make them look like they are closer together than they actually are.. so it's a little hard to tell exactly how dense the crowd of people in front of the car really are - but obviously, he's hitting least 6 or so people at that very moment and he's hitting them hard, and clearly he drove really hard into that crowd. That's such a disgusting thing that it's only possible when you have extremely strong motivations - probably way more than just wanting to kill a couple people there or being really angry in the moment - and is even something that most complete lunatics would never do. In my mind that's enough to think it was clearly a terroristic act.

To try to close out the pedantic discussion we've been having on whether something is terrorism or not, we have the definition of terrorism as being a combination of two things:
1 - the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians
2 - (Being done) in the pursuit of political aims.

We all knew from the start that #1 was definitely true... So then.. if we have:

1 - The violence - [Yes, True]
2 - The political motivation - [Not sure yet]
Than we have ---> Not sure whether it's terrorism yet.

If a guy lost his head in anger, totally flipped out, and attacked people because he was just so pissed off at those specific people in that specific moment
1 - The violence - [Yes, True]
2 - The political motivation - [No]
Than we have ---> Not terrorism

Let's say a witness shares that yesterday before that driver got in the car, he said "I'm gonna show the world what happens when you fuck with my KKK rally"
Then:
1 - The violence [Yes, True]
2 - The political motivation [Yes, true]
----> Definitely Terrorism

For me, seeing that picture of how many people he drove into and how hard he hit them makes me quite certain that the guy had really strong political motivations, and that those were a motivator here, and thus, yes terrorism. It's such a horrible thing to do that the likelihood of doing it because he was simply mad at those specific people in the moment is very close to zero.

[C40]

@C40: Picture this: Islamic radicals with guns hold a rally about installing Sharia law and violently killing white people or whatever--a demonstration which in itself could be construed as terroristic in nature. People show up to protest it. One of the Islamic guys gets in a fight with some of the counter-protesters. When he gets his ass kicked, he goes back to his car, gets in, starts it up, drives back to a group of counter-protesters, and plows into them from two blocks down the road. Or opens fire with a gun. Either way would be pre-meditated murder with a deadly weapon.

(Here's the footage in case you need to see it again for visualization purposes: https://twitter.com/brennanmgilmore/sta ... 6260212737)

Still not terrorism?

I agree it is ridiculous that we're arguing this. It seems so fundamentally obvious.

Changing "white supremacists" to "Islamic radicals" does't change anything for me.

I'm not a white supremacist, so the bad guys being the white supremacist rather than terrorists wasn't the issue. I was looking at the situation detached from which specific views the groups had.

I'm not trying to make you an opponent. I'd like to make you an ally.

As happens so easy on the internet, we've spent 5 pages focusing only on the very small parts of the situation that we disagree on. I think if we were talking in person, we'd find agreement quickly, or at least get past stupid kind of word technicalities that we've been going on about, and get to talking about the interesting stuff: what can actually be done to make the world better. (which we did actually talk about a bit in the first couple pages in relation to whether it's better to ignore the KKK as idiots, or to ~confront them)

[Campitor]

My credentials (because it seems to matter in this topic): I'm Hispanic and have been the victim of violence because of my ethnicity. I've been punched, kicked, beaten by whites AND by non-Hispanic minorities, had bottles thrown at me while getting yelled at for being a "Spic on the wrong side of town". All of this happened in a Democratic bastion in the Northeast. I've also accidentally booked a hotel in South Carolina (I was driving to Florida for vacation) not knowing there was going to be a major KKK recruitment drive while I was there - the fear I felt was real to the point of not leaving my hotel and checking out at 4AM the next day for fear of being attacked - the KKK was all over the place including my hotel.

Just a few thoughts:

1) What happened yesterday is inexcusable and cannot be condoned. Violence other than in self defense is never justified.
2) Despite all the violence I experienced I never once felt that White People are the devil, privileged, or that their opinions are lessened because they may or may not hold a position of power.
3) Minorities are in a position of power and privilege when they are kicking and punching you for being the only Hispanic in their part of town.
4) Despite all the violence and fear I've experienced, it hasn't colored my opinion of any ethnicity because for every punch I received I also received a helping hand and friendship from the same groups who happened to contain a few bad actors.
5) The bedrock of democracy in America is the ability to speak openly and freely even if what your saying is reprehensible. I'll defend anyone's right to speak as long as it remains non-violent.
6) I don't consider harshly spoken words to be violent nor should it be curtailed - see bullet#5 - and it helps identify who may need to be persuaded or avoided.
7) The guy who hit people with his car should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But I doubt when he committed this heinous crime that he was trying to have a political influence - calling it terrorism gives it a certain sophistication of political machination which it lacks - and I doubt his actions are swaying the votes of reasonable and mild mannered Caucasians - even those who voted for Trump.
8) POTUS saying/not saying anything should not determine the behavior of policing conducted by the local/municipal authorities - I doubt bad or indifferent cops wake up in the morning and determine which police actions they are going to take based on who is in the White House or what opinion the POTUS may hold.
9) Loss aversion - its a powerful thing. If you're white and used to having things and are being told that your advantages are being curtailed because you're white - well that isn't going to go over well. Logic dictates that an opinion is misguided if it lacks universal truth. I would be highly insulted if I was told that the outcomes of my efforts was being systematically curtailed politically, economically, morally, and philosophically because of my ethnicity. If it was wrong to do it to People of Color then it's wrong to do it to Caucasians.
10) Whites are the majority in the USA so I expect them to have greater representation in all aspects of our country where ethnicity isn't the center of its operating culture - a.k.a I don't expect many whites to get ALMA awards.
11) I don't dispute that disparities exists based on color/ethnicity but I do dispute the underlying causes.
12) Stop dog-piling on the people in this thread who NEVER stated that being a white bigot and being violent is okay.

[slsdly]

I think the comparison the Islamic terrorists is quite apt, in a way. What did Canada do in response to these sorts of attacks? We condemned them for sure. But the authorities did something very smart -- they worked with the local Muslim communities, on how we can prevent radicalization, and what to do when we fail at that. Radicalized individuals have been turned on by their own mosque by notifying the authorities of their actions before it gets serious.

This is becoming a cancer in American society, and you can see the beginnings of it elsewhere in the west. Merely cutting away the tumor is not going to be enough though. It feels like critical mass has been reached. While there is always going to be a certain percentage of racists in the world, I refuse to believe that one day these people woke up and said "fuck non-white people." They became radicalized, but how? Why?

I am only speculating here, as an outsider to American society, but rural areas are economic backwaters (hey, hey I grew up in a similar area donchayaknow). There isn't much satisfying work. People begin looking for an outlet and opportunistic individuals with their own agenda say it is the fault of the Mexicans or African-Americans. Humans love to rally behind something. My experience of living in urban centers in Canada, and working with many Americans on the west coast, tells me that most of these urbanites have no idea how they casually insult rural people in ordinary conversation. The fundamentals need some resolution and I don't know what that is. At the very least, I believe Democrats suck at messaging, but ultimately have superior policies for quality of life, in general.

In Canada we had the gun registry controversy, which the long gun piece finally got scrapped by our last conservative government. For people in cities, guns are generally perceived as bad and used to commit crimes. I can see why they really want gun control and tracking. But long guns were really a wrong target -- they were predominantly owned by individuals outside urban areas, and were very rarely used for crimes (and the registry actually helped in solving a crime even less often -- billions spent over a handful of murders! I think we can prevent/solve more murders per dollar more effectively in other ways.). From their perspective they are being treated like criminals for no good reason. Both sides are reasonable IMO, and both sides get demonized. We support policies in certain regions of the country, without regard for how those affect other regions, and claim it is righteous, true and anybody who disagrees is a problem.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@C40: I agree, it was terrorism.

@Campitor:

> "The guy who hit people with his car should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But I doubt when he committed this heinous crime that he was trying to have a political influence - calling it terrorism gives it a certain sophistication of political machination which it lacks - and I doubt his actions are swaying the votes of reasonable and mild mannered Caucasians - even those who voted for Trump."

Terrorism is not limited to swaying votes, nor is that the sole purpose or method of "political influence". Terrorism, as the name implies, is quite literally this: "the fear I felt was real to the point of not leaving my hotel and checking out at 4AM the next day for fear of being attacked".

> "If you're white and used to having things and are being told that your advantages are being curtailed because you're white..."

But no white people are losing advantages because they are white. We already covered this and no one chose to continue the line of discussion so I assume there was no argument. The essential difference is one of capital. Poor white males are losing advantages because they're poor, not because they're white or male.

If an idea is both false and harmful, why should it be defended? Is false and harmful speech even covered by notions of free speech? We don't allow people to spread false fire alarms, do we?

At what point does "We are going to kill you and your entire family" cease to become "harshly spoken words" and cross the line into violence?

@slsdly:

> "I am only speculating here, as an outsider to American society, but rural areas are economic backwaters (hey, hey I grew up in a similar area donchayaknow). There isn't much satisfying work. People begin looking for an outlet and opportunistic individuals with their own agenda say it is the fault of the Mexicans or African-Americans. Humans love to rally behind something. My experience of living in urban centers in Canada, and working with many Americans on the west coast, tells me that most of these urbanites have no idea how they casually insult rural people in ordinary conversation. The fundamentals need some resolution and I don't know what that is."

I agree. I believe the fundamental problem that needs resolving is global inequity in capital as an inevitable result of capitalism, a system that served its purpose three hundred years ago but has long since outlived its efficiency once you get to an environment when five old white dudes hold half of all the world's resources and control the world's most powerful governments with their wealth. What that solution looks like, though, I don't know exactly.

I do believe part of the solution is getting working class white males to start blaming the 0.1% white male elite for their troubles rather than other poor people who happen to have darker skin. Which is why, rather than ceding this forum's ideological space to the right, as I had more or less done, I'm back (which evidently seems like trolling). Because if there's any place where the liberal solution to fascism--"rational discussion with their alternate viewpoints"--might actually work, I'd think it would be a forum of INTJs detached (theoretically) from the situation by capital privilege.

> "At the very least, I believe Democrats suck at messaging, but ultimately have superior policies for quality of life, in general."

I think they have band-aid solutions to the fundamental problems that "need some resolution". Admittedly, this is probably better than nothing for the majority of people, but not good enough to change the direction things are moving.

[CS]

it just got an innocent white man fired from Google for no reason.

Nope. He got himself fired, as Swift would say, "from his own actions". (She kicked ass this week, on a separate note.)

Spartan_Warrior, thanks for expressing things so well on this thread. Waiting for the supremacist group to go out and harm people is the wrong thing to do. It would have been better to stop them without violence, but stopped they must be.

This pitting of poor white people against minorities has been a thing since slave days when plantation owners kept the landless and poverty stricken groups from aligning themselves together to overthrown the oppressors. It is maddening how effective, and persistently, this tactic has worked.

[Spartan_Warrior]

BTW, while we're on the subject of solutions.

I've been hearing reports that the person killed in the white supremacist's terrorist attack was a wobbly--a member of the International Workers of the World union.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8 ... -World-IWW

If we want to solve the trends that drive inequity and lead us toward fascism, perhaps it's best to start with the most fascist place of all: the workplace. Support unions and workers' rights.

https://www.iww.org/content/join-one-big-union

[CS]

This: "Even if it is because the person is pissed off in the moment, that doesn't mean it's not terrorism. Terrorism doesn't have to be rational or calm. If the person is there for political reasons and then gets angry and kills people...it would be terrorism. It might be stupid terrorism, but that wouldn't change what it is." You guy to a rally that wants to kill Jews, blacks and others, and keep a monument to slavery, then your mere presence is frankly a terrorist act. Now go driving a car through a crowd....

Free speech in this country is LIMITED. Inciting violence is not allowed. Creating existential threats for entire groups is certainly not allowed.

[OTCW]

Free speech in this country is LIMITED. Inciting violence is not allowed. Creating existential threats for entire groups is certainly not allowed.

Be careful with this line of thinking. Who gets to decide what is and isn't allowed or what is inciting violence or not or what groups are not ok to ascribe a real or imagined threat against?

[Spartan_Warrior]

@CS:

"Waiting for the supremacist group to go out and harm people is the wrong thing to do. It would have been better to stop them without violence, but stopped they must be.

This pitting of poor white people against minorities has been a thing since slave days when plantation owners kept the landless and poverty stricken groups from aligning themselves together to overthrown the oppressors. It is maddening how effective, and persistently, this tactic has worked."

Agreed. Glad you appreciate my comments.


----

Here's a new article on yesterday's events with some more details:

Charlottesville: man charged with murder was pictured at neo-Nazi rally

[Seppia]

This is what comes of coddling the ridiculous narrative of white male persecution.

or maybe it comes from the attitude of "fuck white men".

Judging by the results (share of people in position of power in institutions, corporations, etc VS actual share of population), the "fuck white man" campaign has to be the least successful campaign in human history

I'm a white Caucasian male, and never in life I felt I was at a disadvantage because of that.
Quite the opposite actually, especially when I was living in France and now in Italy to be fair, less so in the USA.
But it was a lesser extent of being privileged, certainly not a disadvantage.
In the USA, by my experience, the bulk of the advantage comes from being a man, rather than white.
This is obviously very anecdotal, but the evidence of people of power is clearly not.

[Spartan_Warrior]

Charlottesville police criticized for slow response to violent demonstrations

Cornel West, the Princeton professor and writer who attended a morning church service at First Baptist Church in Charlottesville with a large group of clergy members, said "the police didn't do anything in terms of protecting the people of the community, the clergy." West said that "if it hadn't been for the anti fascists protecting us from the neo-fascists, we would have been crushed like cockroaches."

[Spartan_Warrior]

‘I’m not the angry racist they see’: Alt-Righter became viral face of hate in Virginia — and now regrets it

White nationalists aren't all hateful.

Oh, it's not a movement of hate.

Meanwhile, here's what white nationalist publication and alt-right mouthpiece The Daily Stormer has to say about the terrorist event yesterday:

(Using donotlink so as not to improve search rankings or link-back from this forum)

Heather Heyer: Woman Killed in Road Rage Incident was a Fat, Childless 32-Year-Old Slut

The woman killed in yesterday’s road rage incident has been identified as Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old overweight slob with no children.

Here’s five fat facts you need to know.

1) She was Fat and a Drain on Society

Despite feigned outrage by the media, most people are glad she is dead, as she is the definition of uselessness. A 32-year-old woman without children is a burden on society and has no value...

Those are just the opening lines. Seems like a totally rational take. Just fellow citizens whose belief systems clearly need indulged with the pretense of rational debate. Definitely no hate to be seen here.

Road Rage Does Not Represent White Supremacy #HugANazi #RoadRageHasNoPolitics

Note the importance to their narrative of minimizing the significance of the terrorist act to merely "road rage".

[Seppia]

Are you actually feeling the need to prove that white supremacists aren't the brightest kind of human beings?
I know this is a very tolerant place, but if in 2017 you still believe one human to be superior to another based on skin tone reasons, I think it's safe to assume you are... uh... stupid?

Was the bar lowered THIS much?

[BRUTE]

@Seppia:

rational arguments are LITERALLY white supremacist

[edit]

jesus. brute is not going to change what he said earlier in this post, but he regretted it almost immediately.

brute tends to fall into the exact same trap that some humans in this thread seem to be falling: reacting emotionally and explosively with short-term tribalism, pouring more gasoline onto the fire, instead of trying to calm down and contribute productively. C40 turned that other PC thread around from a hate-scream-fest on both sides pretty well, so it's sad to see him getting yelled out of this thread.

in an attempt to be productive here:

- brute is very sad that an innocent human woman was killed by a white supremacist, who was likely acting politically, therefore making himself a terrorist
- ditto for 20 hurt innocent humans
- brute has no problem calling white supremacist terrorism just that, but he doesn't care much for a president saying it, just as he didn't care if Obama said "extremist violence" instead of "islamist violence" or whatever. he does realize there's a certain hypocrisy demanding one but not the other.
- white supremacy is racist and brute very much dislikes it
- can't all humans come together in the wake of this horrible tragedy yadda yadda make the world a better place

brute is pretty sure that neither Jean, nor ffj, nor C40, nor himself are actually on the "other side" here. nobody has said a shred in favor of white supremacy, and nobody has been defending it per se. some humans have said that in a free country, assholes are free to be assholes (up to a point). the debate could maybe focus around where that point is. brute is very pro free speech, and would not have a problem with white supremacists assembling and saying their talking points. also not with counter-protests by whomever. until violence or threats thereof happen. driving a car into a crowd of humans definitely constitutes violence, and therefore, brute condemns it. also, such a nice car. what did the car ever do to humans??

what brute finds not helpful is immediately falling back into tribal camps, and countering any arguments by reasonable centrists (C40) with

You. Are. Defending. A. Murderer.

even if it were technically true. in a free society, even a murderer gets representation and a lawyer. and free speech. that's the cost of a free society.

so instead of yelling at each other (and brute, who was born half-troll, is very much part of the problem here), can humans get a productive consensus? really, the line seems to be between "white supremacists should be allowed to hold a rally" and "not". to be honest, brute doesn't know enough detail about this rally to judge if it crossed a line. did they threaten humans? did they start the violence? brute has no idea. brute simply believes that IN PRINCIPLE, as long as it is non-violent and non-threatening, assholes should be allowed to say asshole shit. that doesn't mean they get to threaten other humans or drive into them. that's criminal. or terrorist, whatever.

[OTCW]

Nice post Brute.

[Spartan_Warrior]

Yes, the car, the car, the beautiful car. Is that the second or third time you've mentioned it now?

Others are equally concerned.

"However, the real tragedy is what happened to the car. It was a very nice car, worth much more than the life of whoever died." -- Andrew Anglin, Daily Stormer

See, that's just it. For not supporting white supremacists, it does amaze me how so many of you manage to mimic their words and thought processes. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Brute's flippant concern for the car happens to match the flippant disregard of the Nazis for their violent crime. And that C40 and FFJ's insistence that "hold on, it might have just been road rage" is nearly verbatim the Nazis' go-to self defense argument (as Dragline pointed out, it is pretty much all they've got). And that some other folks' comments regarding white male oppression are exactly the narrative pushed by the alt-right to recruit. Et cetera. I can give you all the benefit of the doubt and suppose you don't actually support these movements despite unconsciously mirroring their arguments and talking points.

But does it not concern YOU how much you sound like them?

Note: I'm emphatically not accusing anyone here of being anything. Nor have I resorted to ad hominem attacks previously... like insinuating my concerns are those of a 24 year old girl from Portland, or that my intent is merely to stir up trouble and troll, etc. Granted, I said a few fucks and I tolerated no nonsense. So what? Nothing that would seem to have earned me the hostility that my comments received from page one.

What I think more likely is my comments, particularly my theory regarding the link between white male persecution complex and the rise in white supremacist hate crimes, struck a nerve.

Perhaps the reasonable course of action would be to ask why that's the case rather than attack me?

Certainly we can discuss the fundamental question of whether Nazis, KKK, and other openly violent ideologues should have the right to gather to speak hate and organize. Meanwhile, the communities threatened by this violence don't have time to wait for your conclusion, nor do they much give a shit when it comes down to their right to existence. Regardless, the "punch a Nazi or let him speak" debate is not really what interests me.

What really interests me is what leads these people to think the way they do, and how to stop it.

[C40]

like insinuating my concerns are those of a 24 year old girl from Portland.

Oh, I'm sorry about that.

I meant it as a lighthearted joke related to the impression that other poster who asked your race/sex/location seemed likely to have of you. I can see how that could be insulting though.

[bryan]

I also give you the benefit of the doubt Spartan_Warrior, especially since having you here increases the diversity of opinion/perspective. For instance, I like that you are against rentier capitalism whereas most of the FI community is complicit.

> But does it not concern YOU how much you sound like them?

I'm scared of people lumping other people together all the time.
...
Also that all this reactionary stuff (both "sides"!) is super short-sighted

Which is not quite the same as being concerned that I might have something in common with someone evil (it can't be helped). It's more like I'm scared that apparently I'm supposed to be scared?

I do agree with C40's earlier comment that you have had a tendency to put words into peoples' mouths or (making and then) taking assumptions too far (not just this thread)..

As for punching nazis or free speech.. the more interesting (and maybe scary) thing to me is how the determination in such matters is made (this guy is a nazi or this subject can be freely spoken and protested for).