Carrying baseball bats and hitting cars or people, as well as throwing water bottles or paint balloons at people, or breaking windows of businesses or houses, is violence, as is using a vehicle as a weapon. It's not too complicated.
You've conflated property damage with violence against people. I don't believe the two should be legally or morally judged the same, even if we may agree that both are crimes.
Hitting people in the head with bike locks is not speech either.
Do you have examples of right wing violence at modern day right wing protests that don't have counter protesters?
Why would you want white supremacist rallies to not be counter-protested? If there's a white supremacist rally going without protest anywhere in this country, I will be horribly disappointed in my fellow Americans.
Nazis must be protested, everywhere they show their angry entitled faces. Sometimes they become violent when criticized. Violence is core to Nazi beliefs, so it's not surprising when they become violent. Antifa is a defensive tool against that violence, to make it safer for others to protest against Nazis.
Sometimes, antifa goes too far, perhaps. But, you're never going to make me feel sympathy for people who literally actively seek the death and degradation of millions of Americans.
> For instance, someone waving a nazi flag might feel to me like an incitement to violence, while to them it might feel like an expression of free speech, with no intention to incite violence. Disregarding how you both feel about it, waving a nazi flag legitimizes and strengthens an inherently violent ideology of ethnic cleansing. Intent - real or pretend - doesn't matter.
Neat. Curious to hear your position on waving Communist and Jewish flags.
Is Jewishness "an inherently violent ideology of ethnic cleansing"?
For that matter, is Communism? Marxist-Leninist governments don't have a great track record, but there are plenty of individual pacifist hippie commies; the ideology of common ownership of production is not inherently violent and racist like Nazism and the Klan are.
This post doesn't blacklist any specific organizations, but rather any case that involve violence. The ACLU will likely continue[1] to defend peaceful white supremacists. The ban will go for any situation or organization that involves violence. As for Antifa, I've been unable to find any videos/pictures/unbiased reports that Antifa started any of the violence this past weekend. I don't understand the need to equate t…
I looked at some of the other articles on that site and would encourage others to do the same, before deciding whether to trust its contents. It appears to be a right wing propaganda rag with a very loose definition of "truth".
You've conflated property damage with violence against people. I don't believe the two should be legally or morally judged the same, even if we may agree that both are crimes.
Hitting people in the head with bike locks is not speech either.
On that, we are agreed. And, that is clearly violence against a person, by my definition and pretty much everybody else's.
Maybe the LA Times is better: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-charlottesville-witnesse... With witness testimony of antifa violence. In my own home town, I've seen the militant left engage in violent protest of "bad people". The "bad people" weren't actually doing anything other than talking. But OMFG we all know they're evil, right? So violent suppression of their free speech is a Good Thing. While I live in a g…
I don't understand how one can read that and come away with the gist of it being that antifa caused the violence in Charlottesville. The only people saying that are members of right wing extremist organizations that have, as their guiding principle, the genocide of non-white people. These are groups that planned and trained to wage war against counter-protestors, and for weeks leading up to the event posted to their…
> But, I'm on team antifa in Charlottesville. I sure as hell don't want to be on the side of the Nazis who murdered someone.
Which is a thinly-veiled ad homimen directed at me.
The truth is that in my experience, the authoritarian left (antifa included) have engaged in violent suppression of speech they find distasteful. As a result, I believe that they are amoral cultists.
A slightly bit off topic, but as a European I would love to hear some intelligent, well thought, non provoking theories on why is America going through so much turmoil and polarization the last few years. Or has it always been like this?
Two party political systems almost always eventually lead to extreme polarization. There's been multiple studies showing this. Once polarization happens, the center quickly fades and fringes collect more and more of the populace. You're seeing the end stages of this trend now.
I think the Supreme Court has ruled on similar questions, in that there's a distinction between how the "speech" is intended and how it is construed. For instance, someone waving a nazi flag might feel to me like an incitement to violence, while to them it might feel like an expression of free speech, with no intention to incite violence. In that sense it would be protected speech, despite how I feel. So the question…
> For instance, someone waving a nazi flag might feel to me like an incitement to violence, while to them it might feel like an expression of free speech, with no intention to incite violence. Disregarding how you both feel about it, waving a nazi flag legitimizes and strengthens an inherently violent ideology of ethnic cleansing. Intent - real or pretend - doesn't matter.
It is worrisome that you are not horrified by what you just said. YOUR view of what is and isn't "inherently violent" is your rule? What of people who view this differently?
You DO know that the Nazi party of Germany was democratically elected right? It did plenty of good for plenty of innocent people who simply lived in Germany at the time.
Also, you know, by your logic almost ANY flag shouldn't be waved. All countries have been to horrible wars and killed aplenty.
I really wonder if all this turmoil could have been avoided if members in Congress actually knew the laws that they passed, and Law Enforcement would actually enforce the laws. This has just led to a lot of hysteria. For example, Pelosi, who is desperately trying to maintain relevance, going all Pelosium on the National Park Service to cancel a permit for a conservative “white supremacist” group Patriot Prayer’s pro-Trump for fear of violence. The problem is, they are not white supremacists, all but one of the speakers is ‘white’, and the organizer is not ‘white’. Unless Pelosi is outstandingly ignorant, if not, is she just trying to suppress Freedom of Speech? Side Note: I will sit and flip from one news channel to another, and from what I observe, I think I know why unemployment is down. These news broadcasts cannot get enough contributors, analysts, and so-called experts on to fill up the screen. Where do they find these people? More importantly, do they get paid and how much? Because if the money is good, if there is a list, I want on it.