But its the left! They would never do that. They’re just good metropolitan types that are looking out for the greater good. The only reason the beat people down is because the people they beat down deserve it. After all, they are morally superior. And more educated(smarter) than the people they beat up. There’s no way that they could make a mistake.
(my emogies aren’t working, but obviously I’m being facetious).
There is no “underlying ideology” for what I’m referring to by the term ‘loony left.’ As I stated previously, they comprise a hodgepodge of various and sundry perceived sleights and injustices.
Seeing the various responses from the Right on the events of Charlottesville (here and elsewhere) to me confirms the (unfortunate) direction of conservatism into nothing but being mad at “the Left”. Here we have Nazis - not metaphorical Nazis, but actual damn Nazis - emerging at a protest and one of their own killing a young woman…and a large number of folks associated with the Right are saying “but, but, but, you know who’s awful, though? THE LEFT.”
Nazis. The sworn enemies of freedom, the vile enemy we vanquished in a world war. A murderous, anti-American ideology spewing its hate, pointing to the White House for cover, kiling an innocent young woman, and saying “we’re the real face of the Right in America.”
But the Left, tho.
A nickel’s worth of unsolicited advice from one voice, conservatives - know, identify, and defeat the real enemy when it shows up.
A compelling case could be made that many of these share the same totalitarian tendencies - stifling of free speech and debate, demonization of their alleged “enemies”; extremist views…
I think this paragraph from the article succinctly sums up what I’m trying to say:
But the nightmare of the Trump administration is the proof text for why all of this matters. We just saw what happens to legitimate political parties when they fall prey to movements that are, at base, anti-American. That is true of the populist, racist alt-right that helped deliver Mr. Trump the White House and are now hollowing out the Republican Party. And it can be true of the progressive “resistance”
Setting aside whether the case is compelling, what you’re describing is/are tactics, not ideology.
No. How about calling it historical context instead of whataboutism?
This stuff has been building for a while. The far left has been agitating in a number of ways, and now the most reactive of the disenfranchised left, aka Alt Right are, surprise- reacting!
In that vein- A lot of the people carrying out this violence would actually be blue collar die hard dems. But having been disenfranchised by the push toward globalism and loss of work, diversity at all costs, and an attack on both the first and second amendments, they have jumped ship and are fighting back.
I think that the worst part of this whole debacle is that they are operating under the misnomer of alt right, when what they should be called is the disenfranchised left.
Just my opinion of course, so take it for whatever you feel it is worth, or leave it where it lays. Either way it had to be said at some point. Its just impossible to listen to some of this crap about “Sowing the wind…” without looking at that part of it.
Why not just call it Whataboutism, since that is what it is?
Disaffected old-school, blue collar Democrats are not latent Nazis. The group in Charlottesville wasn’t marching to protest bad trade deals - they were marching in support of white nationalism.
I see a bunch of pathetic sexually frustrated young men stuck in shitty jobs who blame black men, Jews, lesbians and liberals for not getting laid. If one has the stomach to peruse the alt-tright sites, their hatred towards women would be pretty high on the list of things that stand out.
The exact same faces one can see at Hamas funerals in Gaza, although there the “no future, no women” sentiment is much more pronounced.
They believe that if they establish the Umma/white nation state they’ll be on top of the hierarchy and get those women…
Okey dokey. You can just continue to act like all of this blew up on the night that Trump was elected.
We can erase history and restart the calendars now. There will be BT and AT.
Everything that happened BT is whataboutism, and everything that happens AT is an incontrovertible fact. Unless an antifa disagrees with it. Then you get a skull fracture with a bike lock.
Which is the standard, time tested and proven formula for people to carry out violence in the name of a political ideology.
Actually, I don’t have the stomach for browsing those things and really don’t need to end up on a watchlist.
You’re (incorrectly) equating populist frustration with right-wing ethno-nationalism (RWEN). They aren’t the same. The RWEN movement pre-existed Trump, and may have picked up a few recruits from the ranks of disaffected blue collar types who lost their jobs to outsourcing, but not in a meaningful way. Rather, the RWEN movement has been lurking, spewing their nonsense on the web (even here in PWI!), but not feeling emboldened to stage the kind of event they staged in Charlottesville.
Fast forward to Trump’s election - where, in the runup, he played footsie with racist elements, and married himself to Alt-Right champion Steven Bannon. At that point, the RWEN movement itself didn’t have a bunch of new recruits, but they had newfound confidence they could take their views public. And Charlottesville is the end result.
The true populists didn’t “convert” to RWEN, and still haven’t. The “siege of Charlottesville” isn’t the culmination of populist frustrations at “the Elite” - it’s the amplification of vile right-wing ideologies that have lived among us for some time but were held at bay because what they had to say was unacceptable in national discourse.
I would never expect full agreement, but I gotta say- That was downright reasonable.
Now what the hell am I supposed to do?
Well, also it’s worth noting that part of my perspective is informed from all my battles with the right-wing/libertarian/neo-Confederate/white nationalist characters here on PWI over the years, some who were blatant racists and some who were more slippery but sent some disturbing signals on race (e.g., recall, or do a search for, the thread where folks insisted Irish slaves were the real victims of the slavery in this country).
These folks were pure ideologues, not frustrated working class folks who lost their job to Mexico.
I may have missed a few of those on my hiatus for about a year and some change, but remember a few of them.
I don’t doubt that your viewpoint is valid to the extent that it is well formed and rational. My only exception is with the composition of the crowd.
A lot of the feet on the ground are not ideologues. They’re just pissed off that “that n*@@&r” got elected and ruined their party. These are people I know personally. They’re former co workers, extended family and the like. They may be being lead in some vague way by some opportunistic ideologues but are not themselves invested in any real ideology, which is part of my problem with calling them Nazi or anything else. They aren’t history buffs or philosophers. They’re just pissed off and don’t take too kindly to a bunch of people they don’t like anyways- acting under a banner that they don’t like. So they’ve thrown up their own banners and now we have a Clash of The Idiotic Titans.
edit: I will say this about the whole situation and probably sound like a loon in my own right but- It’s nice that people are finally being honest about what they really think. Unfortunate that it includes homicidal violence, but at least we, as a nation, are finally having an “Oh yeah? Tell me what you really think!” moment.
I mean seriously- do these guys sound like your typical Republicans?
http://americannewsx.com/politics/racism/nigel-krofta-job-charlottesville/
Like "Yeah, when I get done here at the hot dog shop, me and Dick Cheny are heading up to camp David for some fly fishin’ ".
Typical probably not. But being from and around places where seeing a confederate flag happens quite a bit I can tell you all those people are Republicans.
It’s also hard to quantify typical Republican with Trump who is about as far from what a Republican was in 2012 as it gets.
If the people in C ville carrying Nazi flags and confederate ones voted it was for Trump
I thought you guys might like to see a couple of fliers from the C Protest.
Notice the similarities in the rhetoric of the counter protestors?
This Antifa poster being circulated originated at least a couple of months prior to C-Ville, and it looks like a fake, although antifa has certainly been linked to anti-Semitism in Europe and has been listed by the DHS as a Domestic Terror Organization, for anyone who is still under some impression that these are good guys.
They are the same idiots under different banners.
Slow ya roll. I’m not going to carry water for Antifa, but absent corroboration/confirmation, neither am I going to accept at face value the authenticity of this flyer. I’ve spent a while now searching the interwebz looking for anything to corroborate it, and so far have come up with bupkis. (Eg, a search of the ADL website for ‘Antifa’ doesn’t return anything. Neither does a search of the SPLC.) If anyone else has better luck (one way or another), please share it.
Notice some common goals and language with the SJWs and Intersectional Feminists in their propoganda. BTW, there were over 150 of these nice leftists at the Berkeley protests, and several leftist professors waxed poetic about their actions in the press. See picture in link below. That’s one looney guy.
