The President just addressed the Charlottesville attack for the second time (his first statement on Saturday condemned the violence, but didn’t address white nationalism). Here are the key lines from today’s statement:
•“To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend’s racist violence, you will be held fully accountable. Justice will be delivered.”
•“Racism is evil – and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
•“We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal. We are equal in the eyes of our Creator. We are equal under the law. And we are equal under the Constitution. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.”
•“In times such as these, America has always shown its true character – responding to hate with love, division with unity, and violence with an unwavering resolve for justice.”
Your next opportunity to do (say) the right things in this regard is about a month away, Mr. President:
He’s been browbeat over this for the past two days. This was damage control.
His first announcement of the day was to criticize the CEO of Merck, Kenneth Frazier, for quitting the Manufacturing Council. Frazier happens to be black; Trump had no such criticism of Elon Musk (who is African…lol) when he resigned from the Advisory Council.
Indeed. Would have been nice to hit it right off the bat. He made the speech there I wanted to hear first.
Maybe the loonies will stop viewing him as a hero? Doubtful. Would be nice to hear him revise this over and over again for a few months so the alt-right can crawl back into the holes they used to hand out in
Sounds like a Second Amendment violation. “Created,” “our Creator?” Really, Trump?
How about fixing that shit: “We are a nation founded on the idea that all of us have been randomly created by chance and time. We are equal in the eyes of chance. We are equal under the law, according to the Supreme Court. And we are equal under the Constitution. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.”
The comments were more than 140 characters and coherent. So that’s good. He didn’t do it soon enough would be a fair critique.
I guess the question is… Now what?
The white supremacists meet again soon. Who will die then? Retaliation? How does it stop? How did the lynchings and counter violence stop in the late 60’s?
And now used by leftists to describe anyone who disagrees with them. I’m amazed at the people being labeled alt-right these days. It’s become a tactic for the left to try to smear Conservatives and Libertarians.
Not at all. This is nothing new. Call it the illiberal left, or the authoritarian left, or the regressive left, the alt-left. Whatever. We have leftist protestors standing behind the hammer and sickle, with their lefty professors cheering them on and joining in. The hammer and sickle is embraced by the SJWs and Antifa type groups on our university campuses. That’s where it’s found a place to proliferate. Pay attention to what they say. It’s all the same rhetoric at those murderous totalitarian regimes, and the extreme left, intellectual elites, often ignore or embrace it. You know how many people were killed under the ideologies they espouse. White privilege is the new name for “class guilt” used by the Soviets. Get it. Intersectional theory feeds it. It’s neo-Marxism, under a new banner, and I find it utterly repellent. Swastika or Hammer and Sickle? Pick your poison. I dislike Hitler, and Stalin, and Mao, and everything they stand for. Right or Left. Murderous extremists, except some of the people on your side of the aisle have yet to distance themselves from their own violent extremists. You’re in denial if you think it’s not the exact same ideologies. I scares the hell out of me.
You need to get out more.
A great deal of anti-Semitism now comes from the left, and they find allies with the SJW movement. Defense of Muslims or Palestinians as an oppressed group. Throughout Europe and at US college campuses we’re seeing a rise in leftist anti-Semitism. We have a large Muslim Student Union, and they find themselves allied with the alt-left groups on campus, with accusations of anti-Semitism from our Jewish students. The radio station at Berkeley that uninvited Dawkins? The people running that show were found to be making hateful statements about Jews. These are leftists.
A couple more examples of anti-Semitism on the left. Some of the quotes are chilling.
And this kind of bizarre reasoning.
“According to an account by the Anti-Defamation League, Ture said in his speech on UM’s campus that ‘the Zionists joined with the Nazis in murdering Jews, so they would flee to Palestine.’” http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/politics/kfile-keith-ellison-nation-of-islam/
Edited to correct one of the links about the Women’s March Organizers.
I’m not seeing the same thing as you - I don’t see (or read) people overincluding center-right folk generally. I’ve personally seen it used as it applies - to the folks attempting to transform the GOP into National Front.
I’d seen a few of their rallies on the news in Pittsburgh through the late '80’s and '90’s. At that time it was well known that showing up and fighting with them was taking the bait and giving them more power than they were worth.
This generation doesn’t seem to understand that. As a stand alone, they just look stupid and sad standing there by themselves with police protection. Its when a big counter crowd shows up and everybody starts swinging that it becomes much bigger and more powerful than it should be.
I don’t think that publicizing their antics helps at all. Even if they’re getting their asses kicked, a disenchanted social reject watching this stuff sees them as standing their ground and fighting for what they believe in. Removing their platforms for publicity and making them look like a bunch of lonely jokes would go a long way.
Charlotte was horrible, and there’s no excuse for the violent White Supremacists there. Let’s set that aside for just one moment. The timing of this conversation would be better a month from now, or a month earlier. Anyway, since I’ve waded in…
The attacks at Berkeley were premeditated. And coordinated. And violent.
The extreme leftist philosophy professor didn’t roll out of be that morning dressed in black, with a hood and his face covered with a black mask so only his eyes were showing, bent on delivering cookies to widows. And all of his compatriots didn’t just happen to meet up with stick and crowbars and pipes to attend a peaceful poetry slam at Berkeley. At least own your own extremists and condemn them. Dammit. These people who like to gather under the Hammer and Sickle are not harmless.
Bolt, they’ve used that label for the people who founded FIRE, who are old school leftists. They’ve applied it to second wave feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers because she’s attacking Intersectonal Feminism. She’s not a conservative in any other sense. Jordan Peterson has been speaking out against Hitler, and leftist totalitarian regimes for over 30 years, and he recently demanded and got an apology from Business Insider for calling him alt-right. Good for him, for making them detract it. Anyone who doesn’t like the PC, SJW, Third Wave Feminist movements are being characterized as all the isms, obias, and as being alt-right. Rules for Radicals. I’m a Classical Liberal, and about as LOW on the authoritarian scale as you can go, and I really dislike Nazis, Racists, and Ideologies that want to tear down our freedoms, like those SJWs carrying the Hammer and Sickle. I dislike INTENSELY all of them, and I think they’d call me alt-right.
I don’t see it either, and I spend more than my fair share of time on very liberal college campuses and being around very liberal leaning people.
So much this. Taking their voices away from the national stage is probably 90% of the solution. The media frenzy that is stirred up these days isn’t something anyone should underestimate.
They labeled Peterson alt-right? That’s absolutely insane.
The problem with actual Nazis is that, with them being the standard for absolute evil, other unsavory groups try to position themselves as polar opposites. Hence such widespread use of the label “anti-fascist” which would imply that they’re on the side of good. They’re not. Anti-semites, terrorist sympathizers (cough, Linda Sarsour, cough) and self-declared Marxists and other exponents of totalitarian ideologies.
I’m not sure how the antifa spread to the US, but these guys are horrible and there isn’t much to distinguish them from the extreme right in terms of verbal discourse so far.
I read 500 white nationalists and 1000 anti white nationalists.
But reading here and listening in to MSM, I thought it was like the red vs white factions of the Russian Revolutions.
The idiocy I see in both places is the felt need to hear someone else and shame them until they do (read politicians) say how despicable white nationalists are. I am inclined to agree with @SkyzykS and ignore their lunacy. However, in the case of the car driver and his cowardly actual act - murder 1 and fry his ass.
Either we have free speech as long as it doesn’t amount to insurrection, or we don’t.
No, not ‘whatever.’ The alt-right is an actual thing–a fairly organized and coherent entity, complete with websites, unofficial leaders, specific goals, etc. In contrast, the loony-tunes left is not but a hodgepodge of wingnuts with their various and sundry grievances.
The point being, the term alt-right actually means something. Alt-left does not–it’s a rhetorical gambit the purpose of which is to falsely level the moral playing field.
Sigh. I can’t believe we have to talk about this. But if you insist…Allow me to point out that you are now arguing that Nazis–NAZIS–are the less anti-Semitic group under discussion. In response, I will lead with my trump (hardy har har): They (the Nazis) killed 6M Jews. Further, I will point out that you are conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. The two are not the same. One can be vehemently opposed to the actions of the Israeli government vis a vis the Palestinians while simultaneously being utterly free of anti-Semitism. (Unless of course you’re prepared to argue that literally millions of Jews are themselves anti-Semites.)
OK, time to put your cards on the table. You holding anything about the loony left that beats the systematic extermination of 6M Jews?
Agreed. What the organizers of these rallies want, more than anything, is publicity–good or bad, it makes no difference to them. Unfortunately, the sort of spectacle that transpired in Ch’ville is catnip to cable news.
Good Lord, do you hear yourself? You’re talking about ONE INDIVIDUAL, and equating his ‘planning’ to a carefully coordinated attack carried out by HUNDREDS of individuals.
Maybe you need to stay in more.
I don’t need to '“own” them because THEY. ARE. NOT. DEMOCRATS. They do not name-check Democratic elected officials. They do not get their news from a website run by a Democratic president’s chief advisor. They did not vote en bloc for the Democratic POTUS candidate. They. Are. Not. Democrats.
Honestly, in majority of cases that I’ve seen anti-Israeli means anti-Jewish, with the phrase “anti-Israel” being the code word. Before the recent migrant crisis all neo-Nazi creeps in Europe were vehemently pro-Palestinian, the most famous example being “Palestine solidarity marches” regularly organized by Hungarian neo-Nazis (kind of ironic, considering the media spotlight on Hungary)
You can’t compare pure evil to pure evil on a numerical scale, but the phrase “loony left” trivializes the underlying ideology.
As one must not trivialize Nazis, racists nor white power nationalists and thus fall into the “banality of evil” trap, one must also always be vigilant for toxic ideologies coming from the allegedly other side.
