This is exactly how white supremacy will get the "both sides" normalization. When you have every single media outlet and people like Pelosi bringing attention to it and framing the whole national discussion around it, it just makes it look like trump was right when he did the "both sides" for charlottesville.
When bad optics is the primary argument against something, you need to step back and think about who are the ones that are really creating those optics. Places like The Daily Show don't have to draw attention to it, and if their biggest worry is optics then they need to look in the mirror here.
Every large political movement will have its kooks that does bad things in its name. What's important is what the movement represents.
I am not concerned about optics, or destroying property damage.
I am concerned about the posters who in-between-the-lines-are-excusing violence on these people because they are hateful. I don't want to underplay them, but to me they look like a bunch of inbred redneck losers- Not literal nazis.
The concern I have is that these guys don't exist in a vacuum.
If the argument is that I should be blessed by liberals to take a tire iron and go destroy some nazi scum / kill him, because he is hateful, then why doesn't that argument extends to other hate groups? What about far right islamist and christian sects who preach death to others with all their bigoted bullshit? Am I not in my right to go hurt them?
Secondly, lots of republicans and conservatives in general are hateful. 48 million of them are neo-nazi sympathizers- How many of them are we allowed to hurt?
What I don't like about antifa is what I've seen in protests I've been when I was younger- anonymity inevitable breeds violence, as your self is deduced in uniform. You stop being a responsible individual, and becomes much more free of consequences- That is why weak people will try to amp each other in groups like the fucking losers they are. But you see it everywhere. The war crimes of the soldiers in Iraq. Police officers who commit brutality- football hooligans who beat the living shit of the opposite team. It always plays out the same way.
I don't trust civilians to have the unbiased morale compass to dictate what is hate speech and what isn't. You have people like far-right jewish pro-Netanyahu groups who accuse everyone who oppose them of being anti semetic and of hate speech. That term itself is getting thrown so much as a hail marry to dismiss someone you don't want to argue with completely, and I don't want to see a scenario where someone can accuse someone of hate speech, and the then appropriate response being that I can physically hurt them.
In my old neighbourhood, there is a conclave of sunni muslims running for office to instate sharia laws that would have homosexuals be put to death- I don't see how own violence on white supremacists wouldn't extend to these people.
But it's not that simple, because who is the hateful one? Particularly when there is hate hateful infighting between so many sub communities here. So the shias do something fuck up and heckle and do hateful shit when a powerful sunni clergyman has passed away- Is violence then made okay on those people? And who the fuck is it, who is going to decide what is right with regards to violence here?
We're talking about here ultimately is that the people, not the police should have the authority to pass judgment. the slippery slope of the past is brought into to argue that this is an imminent threat and 250 inbred rednecks is directly comparable to the rise of Hitler in the 1930s.
There is no fucking comparison, and if you want to argue that these people are "literal nazis" because they wave these fucking flags, then you wouldn't have a problem with people making similar leaps to excuse violence on fundamental radical religious and ethnic groups due to what their types have done in the past at some point.
I don't give a shit about destroying property, setting cars on fire or whatever. But the insinuation that the collective should be okay with violence against those who they feel speak hate because their liberal values are about peace and love, are fucking hypocrites. Don't forget that half the country believes that abortion is baby genocide. You cannot fucking argue with that leap in reasoning, and it stands to reason that if they feel that strongly (150 million+ people) about that, then the idea that violence towards people you hate and who you see as a threat to your existence and way of life, is going to have a ripple effect.
white supremacists do not exist in a vacuum, so stop arguing like this is just some provisional thing that antifa is only going to take advantage of. If the left wants to trade a violent response as a go-ahead against the intolerant, then it only hinges on who you are and who you deep intolerant and insufferable. You cannot walk a line where you get to be violent and not expect others to.
As soon as white people start getting lynched in mass beatings, it wont be 250 fucking losers marching with suspenders, but many many white people who'll respond with racial xenophobic from the snippits they see on fox news.
Fox News orchestrating right-wing damage control regardless of what antifa does or doesn't, doesn't mean its a fucking good idea to lynch these assholes in public and not expecting PR.
The US (and Europe) are deeply racist and this is something that is deeply rooted in power structures way way way before the founding of the US. Nazi idioms are totally besides the point. It's just loaded symbols that give people who wear them, notoriety and attention. It's a cheap way to get people to notice you and get them to talk to you- Something that leftists in the US keep getting played into.
Throughout all of human history, if you didn't like someone you'd go over them and shove a spear through their fucking neck. The only reason we don't is not because we're above our primal violence today, but because we have a mutual understanding and domestication to obey the rule of law, and we've decided that chaos emerges when civilians start acting out justice on their own whim, because it's an eye of the beholder situation. People in the US cannot even agree on what a fucking life is, never the less what righteousness, freedom or hate speech is.
So, no, it has nothing to do with optics or this centerist garbage or property damage. People need to think about the long term impacts of what physical violence against [whoever you hate] means.
Many people on this forum have expressed the idea that everyone who voted for trump is a neo-nazi sympathizer, so it begs the question of how many of those 48 million people deserve to be utterly destroyed.
The problem is that you cannot say "but its just the nazis!" like that fucking means anything. Nazis are not in some parallel dimension who are abide by different laws.
Joe Shmoe sees that we solve problems through violence, and he is completely within his right to think about what really separates this hateful being from the countless terrible groups and organizations that also serve hate and bigotry.
All this is, is just an exercise on where you want to move the goal post, and AFAICS lots of people in this thread only looks at white supremacists in a vacuum, like a isolated thinking exercise where it's easy to encourage violence against conservatives behind their computers and root for masked edgy revolutionaries with ski masks.
I worry a lot about some Baker Vs Carr type analogy, where it makes sense and feels convenient to ostracize those we hate with violence, because when verbal communication (and all fails) good old physical beatings is always there to help save the day.
But while you get results on a superficial level immediately, it tends to have backwater consequences later, and it's seriously concerning that not a lot of people are willing to take this serious or at least think about it.
Am I really the only one who is worried that this could come back to bite them in the ass? we fuck them up today, what if in a generation or two, this morphs into something else that betrays everything, and then we'll truly have normalized mass violence?
Posters here have pointed out narrow specific examples to where violence historically helped make the country better.
But there are so many anecdotes from history you can take, where a rebel mob fighting against hateful beings, turned out to be a bad plan down the road.
It's really easy- And it doesn't require a lot of thought to just run on the emotional response of wanting to be violent against those you hate.
I feel it too.
But we must not forget that the rift between the left and right is so large that there is little to no understanding, and the right wont respond to left wing arguments.
It will fall on deaf ears, just like nobody on the left can seriously comprehend why they would think that anti abortion laws are needed to save babies from being killed. It's not going to register in the way, the left wants to be understood, and that lack of understanding when the left wants to go off rogue and endorse violence from beyond the scope of the police force or government, is going to have ramifications.
If I was a right-wing person, and I saw the left was engaging in violence, there would be no reason for me not to do it too. The left arguments fall on deaf ears, and my feelings of what is genocidal hate and mass murderer falls on deaf ears for them too, so there is no point in having any debate. Fuck them all. They opened this, now we do what we must against those violent leftist pricks.
I believe democracy is the best system we have. It's an unsatisfying truce between various groups of people who cannot tolerant each others existence, but decide to not kill each other under the understanding that if they don't harm them for whatever shit they say, the opposite won't happen to them. If you take that away, then what are you left with?
There is no way that the other side will hold back. A majority of republicans are happy with trumps decisions. A majority of conservatives got him elected. This is not just about violence on a few nazi cosplaying losers. Those people are in it too.
