How many of these white-right yahoos actually made it over there? The best I could tell was a suggestion of “hundreds” in an Al Jazeera report I think. I’m getting the feeling that’s closer to the truth than “thousands”.
Looks like this time the right-wing fanatics were more than the left-wing ones, I think it’s a first (at least in recent times).
As a Virginia resident, it was pretty surprising to see this entire debacle on the news. Charlottesville isn’t far away from Richmond or DC. From what I’ve seen on the news it appears some pro-Republican groups met with some “alt-right” groups, and white supremacists crashed the entire party. Being a pretty liberal part of Virginia, “counter protesters” decided to crash what was already a crashed party.
It looks like people from all over came to attend. The lunatic being charged with murder was all the way from Ohio. I wasn’t there, but, knowing the area and looking at the footage it was more likely to the hundreds estimate.
I know everyone is focusing on the neo-nazis, but, it looks like every flavor of shit decided to show up. Apparently even anarchist groups. Also, against the news trying to spice up what happened, I’ll reiterate this was originally just advertised as a pro-republican rally.
Since I know how this forum works. No, I wasn’t there. No, I don’t support any group in attendance. I’m just saying the estimate of hundreds is more likely, and more than just one hate group showed up to stir the shit slurry.
100% correct. It was a melting pot of people who if they were all obliterated by a meteorite, society would greatly benefit from it.
No way. Hell, I might go counter-demonstrate peacefully against a bunch of neo-nazis and such efforts are well justified no matter what the number. Having said that, a sky-is-falling narrative seems pretty prevalent in the media right now, and that doesn’t seem justified based on the apparent scale of this movement.
In an ideal world, neo-nazis would be allowed to have their own rally to show how retarded they are, anarcho/communist/antifa would be allowed to have their own rally to show how retarded they are, and if the two clashed against each other the police would kick them in the ass and send them back to school where they belong.!
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I know what you mean but I disagree. I kinda like that hate speech is banned and punished. I mean, if some idiot goes to the street and expresses his “opinion” that yellow people should be punched in the face, I would like to see him paying a nice fine.
OTOH you have the real problem of pressure groups and idiots in general boycotting anybody who thinks different from them, and if you let them issue policies, they tend to make illegal to express opinions different from the mass’. An example of this is what I brought here the other day about Google and the “sexist” letter…
The problem is how you define hate speech. ANTIFA seems to think its ‘anyone who isnt 100% onboard with their ideology’.
It’s the definition of “hate speech” that is the most problematic because it has a political bias. If by “hate speech” we meant “speech that incites violence”, then I’d be fine about making sure that no rallies can be made supporting such thing. But when in Germany you have people writing on social media things like:“Hey, we sure had many trucks of peace this year, what’s up with that?”* and then the police goes to their place and arrests them…well, that’s pretty messed up.
The “sexist” memo generated so much butthurt, I love the guy who wrote it. I’ve seen an interview and while not surprised by the fact he got sacked, he was quite upset because apart from the ideological circlejerk within Google he enjoyed working there.
- = not LITERALLY the things that people wrote, just because I know that someone will now look it up, paste a link and say:“HURRRRRRRRR THOSE WERE NOT THE EXACT WORDS, I TOOK YOUR ARGUMENT IN A LITERAL WAY THEREFORE YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID”
Yes, that’s a problem, but… Antifas use violence against fascist, and these are violent against… Just people.
Don’t like either, but they aren’t the same thing.
So what is it that they actually wrote?
fffffffuuuuuuuuuuu…
Germany has some pretty tough anti-hate laws, and they apply them with a very broad brush. Weren’t some of these postings made by known hate groups, and those sympathetic to them?
Giving any hate group a voice and a box to spew from, even if the intent is to allow them to display their stupidity, allows for them to gain a foothold. I call it “political creep.” Creep in that it grows in little spurts, a little here, a little there, and then the next thing you know you have Heil to get your driver’s license renewed.
[group] supremacism (or the new euphemism for such, “[group] exceptionalism”) should be stomped out at its rooft.
It doesn’t matter who makes those postings. Thought crimes shouldn’t exist in a civilized society. There’s a huge, clearly distinguishable difference between:“I have a problem with the group X because Y reason” (or something along those lines) and:“All people belonging to group X should be shot”.
You use the slipper/slope argument to justify the fact that if you let neonazis do their stuff then you may end up with Nazism #2, yet fail to realize that hate speech laws lead to even worse slipper slopes, with the ruling class being in a position where prohibiting free thought is seen as something socially acceptable.
I’ll take some neonazis strolling around and saying nonsense, over a system where the police can arrest me for something harmless that I wrote on Facebook,
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Found this most entertaining on that subject:
https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera/videos/10155897809698690/
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Hate speech can be difficult to nail down, and no matter what, someone is going to get their toes stepped on. One’s hate speech, is another’s words of enlightenment. Then we get to harassment.
Should a group be able to surround a group, otherwise doing their own thing, and hit them with speech that would be considered as, hateful? Should a Muslim girl in a chador be allowed to be subjected to negative speech directed at here by an individual, or individuals? Again, what someone views as harassment, could just be another’s view of encouragement.
If we need to nail down really specific situations in which “free speech” can be considered harrassement, I think it’s fair to say that in the vast majority of circumstances then freedom of thought/expression should be protected.
Should freedoms be a “to” or a “from”?
Should any individual have the right to say what they want, when they want, where they want with no protections to anyone against anything (safe places)? As soon as we begin defining what is harassment and advocating violence, then that would be a slippery slope as well.
The bottom line is, you either have all the freedoms, or none. As soon as someone is given a right, someone loses theirs. In this light, the basis of freedom is denying others of theirs.
Yes, phuck safe places.
To me the line between harrassment and normal speech/expression of ideas (regardless of what they are) is very easy to identify. I wouldn’t mind to open an helicopter rides agency to give free rides to anyone who’s apologetic towards communism, but that doesn’t mean that the police should be allowed to arrest me based on the sentence I just wrote.
What about “Free parachuteless sky diving lessons for neo-nazis! Inquire within.” Would that be allowed?