Ed Dueling protests spark state of emergency in Virginia.

phiwum said:
Sorry?

Okay, if it was not clear before, let me say it now. Running over pedestrians on purpose is a bad thing.
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Don't worry, you in no way implied otherwise.

Although if I follow the trend here, I might jump to the conclusion that you consider accidentally running over a pedestrian as a good thing.

Any other obviously bad things that I should point out are bad?
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I haven't seen you repudiate Rasputin. Sketchy.
 
JoeBentley said:
I can't believe people are even entertaining the idea of letting actual Nazis bait us into falling for the "Lookit what you made me do" defense.

I get that a large percentage of this board lives and dies under the "I'm a too cool for the squares freethinker because I'm just a kneejerk contrarian about everything" angle but at this point it is so impossible to make any statement that someone is going to argue against just for the sake of arguing that discussions have no context.
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I can't even stand that "fighting words" defense actually exists.

Nobody 'forces' you to punch them short of being a physical danger to you (themselves, others, etc). Saying they are going to do violence imminently is a communicated threat, illegal, and you can defend yourself. But the idea that "their school-ground taunting just made me so mad I snapped!" argument is a joke. Even further is a mob of people chanting and baying for violence claiming they were "baited."

But in this atmosphere of mutual reactionism, they have to posture. So "you baited us! Unfair!" is retorted with "Damn right we did, you suckers fell for it! Neener-neener!" and again with the total lack of messaging control on the left.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I agree and the counter attackers defeated their own message as far as I'm concerned, especially the victimhood feeding.

It's one thing to be ready to defend oneself should the 2x4 wielding nazis start to attack a counter protester. But I fail to see how street brawling helped the counter-protesters.
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Also - the Nazis and their allies LOVE to fight. They love it, love it, love it. They live for it, it's what they want to do.

Self defense by anti-Nazi counter-protesters is one thing - but I see no value in counter protesters initiating physical violence with people who massively get off on violence. It makes the Nazis happy. They go home and brag about it amongst themselves, wearing the cuts and bruises as badges of honor.

Shame the Nazis, KKK, and other retrogrades publicly; identify and out them to their communities, families and employers - absolutely. Hound them into personal and financial ruin - I've got no problem doing that (so long as their identities can be confirmed and we don't hound the wrong people).

But don't initiate violence with them.

I see no value in giving Nazis what they crave the most.
 
Darat said:
And?
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Let's revisit:

I'm surprised that more people aren't concerned about the reports of being being sacked simply for exercising their legal right of free speech. That to me is a very chilling of free speech.
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What is there to be surprised about? People who behaved in ways contrary to their employer's interests were dismissed by those employers from further interactions and relations. I am not aware of any claims active about uncompensated pay or any potential contractual clause disputes, but for the most part, the U.S. operates an "at-will" employment policy that either party can walk away from at any time. The judiciousness of their termination may impact their ability to draw unemployment, make civil claims, etc. But it's damn hard to force a company to resume your employment if they don't feel like it.

There has been no chilling effect on free speech. They are free to speak, write, communicate in sign language, publish and propagate their message on platforms that will accept doing so. These are all private affairs of private citizens and private firms. I suspect there are plenty of job opportunities open places where bigotry is tacitly approved of, so one can in fact be a bigot and keep a job. There may be some "opportunity costs" in balancing those priorities, but that's called "life."

I exercise the same freedoms when I knowingly research places I want to work for so I don't end up awkward and biting my tongue all day or getting into arguments with my co-workers. My desire for professionalism (I don't need everyone to have my political bent, I want everyone to respect not openly rubbing political/social issues in others faces at work) means I accept that some lucrative opportunities are closed to me.

ETA: Now the opposite, in this specific instance, is not available. A business bowing to public pressure to fire a black man because "Look at him!" just ********** the dog.
 
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ponderingturtle said:
No the nazi's were smart enough to have enough heavily armed members to intimidate the police out of action. Black lives matters clearly needs to have more open carry protests.

And any way the cops love these guys why would they want to stop their march just because they violated the terms of said protest? Keeping to such things is for the untermensch.
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I'm not so sure the police felt out-gunned. Someone said it and people just went with it.

The police chief had a much more reasonable explanation that I found credible. He said two things, they had planned on keeping the groups separate. The nazis/racists ignored the plan to enter the park from a single direction and began arriving from all directions.

And two, the police did initially underdress for the occasion and retreated to add body armor and related equipment/arms. That does not mean they didn't act because they were out-gunned or intimidated. It means they misjudged and had to reassess.

Police in riot armor does intimidate the crowd. The chief's actions were reasonable.
 
JoeBentley said:
I can't believe people are even entertaining the idea of letting actual Nazis bait us into falling for the "Lookit what you made me do" defense.

I get that a large percentage of this board lives and dies under the "I'm a too cool for the squares freethinker because I'm just a kneejerk contrarian about everything" angle but at this point it is so impossible to make any statement that someone is going to argue against just for the sake of arguing that discussions have no context.
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The worst thing about our resident Anarchist Revolutionaries is that their rants have become so predictable and boring.
 
crescent said:
Self defense by anti-Nazi counter-protesters is one thing - but I see no value in counter protesters initiating physical violence with people who massively get off on violence. It makes the Nazis happy. They go home and brag about it amongst themselves, wearing the cuts and bruises as badges of honor.
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It increases the threshold for joining organized street actions and thereby makes recruitment more difficult. Plenty of people wanna have a nice hang around doing nazi LARPing, fewer want to do so under a rain of bottles and rocks.

But don't initiate violence with them.
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It's by far the best strategy. Ask Hitler:
Hitler said:
Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.
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phiwum said:
Carrying weapons in public isn't against the law in Charlottesville, but attacking people is. If it's the brandishing of weapons that concerns you, then Charlottesville could make a law without restricting free speech.

Banning certain forms of political speech because public demonstrations have led to violence is a blunt instrument at best and violates the very reason we have a First Amendment: to allow for political speech quite broadly.
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The first time one of those open carry guys starts shooting instead of driving his car through a crowd, open carry at protests is going to cause a Constitutional crisis.
 
As for the "Violence is the only way to deal with Facists" argument, that depends on the level of threat. As nasty and as violent as they are, the Neo Nazis and Kluckers in the US do not pose the kind of threat that the Nazis did in Europe in the 1930s. It is nothing that law enforcement cannot handle.
And, frankly, Extreme Left wing groups tend to see anybody not as militant as they are as being "fascist" and therefore an enemy .
In other words they are just like the fascists they hate in one respect:they want to surpress anybody who disagress with them.
This is why I am not getting on the Antifa Bandwagon. Too many Authoritarian type Extremists in it who in the end hate REAL Democracy (they dismiss it as "Bourgeosis Democracy) as much as the Fascists do.
 
dudalb said:
The worst thing about our resident Anarchist Revolutionaries is that their rants have become so predictable and boring.
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The best example of pure improvisational resistance I can think of is Tienanmen Square.

For all the courage and defiant nobility that are evoked from a man to staring down a line of tanks, the results of the movement in total are rather bare in their implications.
 
I am opposed to the growing habit of re-labeling any negative repercussion from any direction to someone's public speech as wrong because of a "chilling effect".

Government repercussions are wrong. SLAPP lawsuits are wrong. Beyond that? Firing an employee who has openly engaged in infamous activity is itself a form of expression on the part of the employer; it's not substantially different from pulling ads from a show whose host has crossed a line.
 
dudalb said:
As for the "Violence is the only way to deal with Facists" argument, that depends on the level of threat. As nasty and as violent as they are, the Neo Nazis and Kluckers in the US do not pose the kind of threat that the Nazis did in Europe in the 1930s. It is nothing that law enforcement cannot handle.
And, frankly, Extreme Left wing groups tend to see anybody not as militant as they are as being "fascist" and therefore an enemy .
In other words they are just like the fascists they hate in one respect:they want to surpress anybody who disagress with them.
This is why I am not getting on the Antifa Bandwagon. Too many Authoritarian type Extremists in it who in the end hate REAL Democracy (they dismiss it as "Bourgeosis Democracy) as much as the Fascists do.
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That gets into the whole "we stood up to them" argument basically defining that term as "being violent" which, I'm sorry to say in some cases is more about getting a badass cover photo on Facebook and scoring social justice points. Whereas a dead silent lining of the streets or a sit-in blockade and peaceful mass arrest is every bit as much "standing up to them", creates a massive optics divide (underdog points), and the most important: it positions that state itself as taking a position (which it isn't, but movements are beholden to the rules of politics).*

When both sides are violent, the state gets to say "public safety, restoring order, had to snag people as we saw them, sorry for the mess."

*which is to say, this is the extreme 20% playing for the support the 80%.

10% <- 80% -> 10%
 
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Upchurch said:
That's a little like saying they are being fired simply for being in the open air and enjoying a nice walk.

Freedom of speech is protected. Freedom from private consequences due to the things you say is not.
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To play devil's advocate here, does that mean you would have agreed with the blacklisting of the McCarthy era?

And does it matter if the jobs one is being fired from involve access to the public speech sphere like being a famous actor does?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I'm not so sure the police felt out-gunned. Someone said it and people just went with it.

The police chief had a much more reasonable explanation that I found credible. He said two things, they had planned on keeping the groups separate. The nazis/racists ignored the plan to enter the park from a single direction and began arriving from all directions.

And two, the police did initially underdress for the occasion and retreated to add body armor and related equipment/arms. That does not mean they didn't act because they were out-gunned or intimidated. It means they misjudged and had to reassess.

Police in riot armor does intimidate the crowd. The chief's actions were reasonable.
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They shouldn't anymore than people should find nazi's in riot armor threatening. Armored vehicles, body armor and machine guns should have been used to start with. Nothing threatening about them.
 
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