5 ms·

My grandfather fought in WW2 and was such a gentle, honest, and hard-working man. It pains me to think that, if he were alive today, he would be heart-broken to

My grandfather fought in WW2 and was such a gentle, honest, and hard-working man. It pains me to think that, if he were alive today, he would be heart-broken to see the country under the spell of the same fascist ideologies fueled by bigotry and hate that he fought against, and lost good friends to. I remain hopeful that we will come out on top of this stronger and more resilient, but the events from this last weekend are unsettling and hard to understand.

sparklingwines 9y ago
"Don't be a Sucker" If you think America is falling under the influence of neo-Nazism, then you're a sucker to the media propaganda. These idiots are such an extreme fringe that I wouldn't even say they represent the "far right." And it's naive to think the FBI isn't half-way up the colons of every one of these fringe groups. Outside of our unfixable segregated ghettos, where serial killers are murdering people every day, America is fine. And the ghettos are easy enough to avoid. As is the news. Turn off the TV, talk to your neighbors and co-workers, and you won't have to understand why some super-extreme idiots met up with the opposite extreme idiots and it got out of control.
- chasing 9y ago
  > Outside of our unfixable segregated ghettos, where serial killers are murdering people every day, America is fine. And the ghettos are easy enough to avoid. "Everything is fine for me, therefore everything is fine!" But you're right: The neo-Nazis seem mostly to be buffoons, more-or-less. We have some people in the White House who are having a very difficult time taking the obvious moral stance against them, though. Decrying Nazis is literally the most no-brainer thing a politician can do. This is the softest softball of national crises. And our President completely whiffed it.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Didn't he release a statement decrying the racists and suggesting we come together? I've seen it quoted over the past two days. I suppose I could seek an official source.
    - chasing 9y ago
      He did today. Seems like his handlers convinced him: His tweets about it seemed pretty crabby. But over the weekend he definitely came off as completely tone-deaf -- to the point of neo-Nazi groups actually wondering if he was supporting them. I actually don't think that means he supports Nazis. But he's the President. And part of the job is helping the country deal with situations like this.
    - GeneralMayhem 9y ago
      After a literal Nazi literally killed someone at a literal Nazi rally, the President issued a statement in which he said that violence is bad and that both sides were to blame. Two days later, after basically everyone on the planet (including GOP leadership, because even spineless gutter-feeders can tell what an obvious political slam-dunk this is) had had a chance to suggest to him that maybe the literal Nazis literally killing people were maybe a tiny bit more at fault than the woman that they had killed for standing across the street from them and peacefully counter-protesting, he finally issued another statement saying that white supremacists maybe aren't so great after all. You'll forgive me for not putting too much stock in the second statement, given the circumstances.
      - ams6110 9y ago
        Not all the counter-protesters were peaceful. Best thing that could have happened would be for everyone to ignore this small fringe wacko group of people. This was instead taken as an opportunity to create a crisis, which could then be used to advance a narrative.
      - aaron-lebo 9y ago
        Disclaimer: I'm not defending nazis, murderers, or nazi murderers. Trump's statement seems thoughtless but it's not completely incorrect. For months we've had antifa protesters who have gotten into violent fights with nazis and alt-right supporters at rallies. There's a lot of people very proud of that. At the very least at this rally there were antifa protesters carrying bats and wearing helmets, using pepper spray, etc. Now whether that's justified is another issue, but a lot of us would like it if the fringes of both sides would chill out, before violence they can't control breaks out as it so often can do.
  - spaginal 9y ago
    Both groups were behaving violently, and he addressed it exactly as such. Unfortunately it ended with the death of a young woman, but the event didn't go from zero to 100 with the car incident. A lot was happening between the two groups to the lead up. The media wants to build the case that anything against their messaging is extremist, they don't mention Antifa as being a huge instigator in the violence in this event as well, but we don't need them to tell us when we've witnessed it multiple times in California and other cities. Trump in this situation was literally the only adult in the room on this one. Just because he didn't get on board with the manufactured and editorialized talking points doesn't insinuate some nefarious connection to racism and the kkk. It's pretty obvious to most people that he doesn't harbor that ideology. Fact is, in our country we have a right and an expectation to peacefully assemble in the public square, short of calling for insurrection or openly instigating a riot, Americans are allowed to get on their soapbox and other Americans can choose to ignore or listen. What happened in Charlottesville was a travesty for civil rights and a complete mess where multiple violent hate groups in conjunction with an all too eager media put an embarrassing show on display.
    - unhumanrights 9y ago
      Fact is, in our country we have a right and an expectation to peacefully assemble in the public square Peacefully. Peacefully. The torches were not a great idea, but I suppose they're not un-peaceful. The shields and the helmets ... well, self-defense is peaceful, right? But the clubs? The guns? Occupying an area with weapons while making threats is not "peaceful assembly".
      - spaginal 9y ago
        I fail to see the violence in torches, regardless, I'm not going to get into specifics of clothing choices, but you can wear a super man outfit, open carry if state laws allow, or put on a dildo helmet if you feel like it. In our country you can protest in costumes if you'd like. Nothing states suit and tie only. If a first response is to assault someone for what they are saying or wearing instead of acting civil, maybe this country and it's constitution isn't for them. This goes for anyone involved.
    - 9y ago
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    The "both sides do it" argument misses historical context. As little as 50 years ago, the KKK was still lynching people, and lynched about 4000 African Americans totally according to figures. After they couldn't lynch anymore, the moved on to terrorizing African Americans by burning crosses on people's lawns, and bombing churches. We just ended Jim Crow, an Apartheid system, only a half century ago, and today black people still face intense racism. I see people saying "it's a fringe" yet I can still hear people making racist comments in my own family, none of whom go to Nazi/KKK marches. That historical context makes these bold marches a larger concern, because for every buffoon you see in that march, there are 10 "moderate buffoons", and 100 "moderate moderate buffoons", who walk around thinking because they're not a Nazi or KKK member, and don't own slaves, they're not racist, but who do hold very bias views. These views translate into more convictions for black people faced with juries, they translate into more loan or job applications denied. That's why a re-emboldened KKK/NeoNazi group is a concern. Dailystormer has 300,000 registered accounts, how many does Antifa have? The US has never had a communist revolution, we haven't had people sent to Gulags or "reeducated" for failing to support The Party, or Marxism. But we have sent 150,000 people to camps for the crime of being Japanese. So radical leftists aren't exactly a scary threat, they seem even more buffoonish by far, the dead-enders still calling for communist ownership of everything. So when I read right wing media reports about the so-called history of left-wing violence, I'm not very phased. I would be scared if say, I lived in eastern Europe. But white supremacists are much more realistic threat to the US social fabric because so many people hold racist views, either overtly, or implicitly. Imagine an Islamic theocracy which turned secular over time. Suddenly, religious conservatives are emboldened and start huge marches, and some violent opposition groups emerge. Should the majority of the population be fearful of the opposition, or a retreat back to a religious theocracy which say, 50% of the people in the rural areas aren't opposed to? Historical context matters a lot, and the giant racial scar that still hasn't healed in America means that Antifa and the KKK are no where near equal in concern or guilt for damage to the social fabric.
    - chasing 9y ago
      Very well put.
- empath75 9y ago
  The president of the us has multiple white supremecists and literal nazis working in the White House.
  - snakeboy 9y ago
    > literal nazis Oh give me a break with the Trump hyperbole. Can I ask for a source?
    - chasing 9y ago
      Seb Gorka? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Gorka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Gorka
      - leereeves 9y ago
        Every reference to Nazis on that page is about his father's association with the Hungarian Historical Order of Vitéz. Apparently, that group worked with the Nazis during WW2, but "this Order granted Gorka's father, Paul Gorka, their title in 1979 in recognition of his resistance to the post-war Soviet occupation of Hungary". Do you have some reason to believe he or his father is (or was) a Nazi? There's no evidence of that on that Wikipedia page.
    - dTal 9y ago
      Sure: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/14/donald_trump_s_ties_to_alt_right_white_supremacists_are_extensive.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/14/donald_tru...
      - leereeves 9y ago
        Milo Yiannopoulos is a white supremacist? I mean, he's a troll who is intentionally offensive, but either Slate doesn't know what they're talking about or they're lying. One thing he isn't is a white supremacist. And Seb Gorka? According to his Wikipedia page, his father, Paul Gorka, was awarded a medal by Vitézi Rend in 1979 "in recognition of his resistance to the post-war Soviet occupation of Hungary". Slate seems to consider that evidence that he's a Nazi.
- taurath 9y ago
  Fringe and emboldened. This is their closest shot in the modern era and there are more tools than ever to get people split and propagandize them. I'd say their chances are approaching nil, but if there is some supreme fuckup even the chance is scary.
- aphextron 9y ago
  >If you think America is falling under the influence of neo-Nazism, then you're a sucker to the media propaganda. These idiots are such an extreme fringe that I wouldn't even say they represent the "far right." And it's naive to think the FBI isn't half-way up the colons of every one of these fringe groups. This was precisely the common sentiment surrounding the SA in 1920's Germany. Ernst Röhm was a borderline mentally retarded street thug until Hitler gave him a uniform. When these idiots are allowed to run amok awful and unforeseeable things happen because, being losers already, they have nothing to lose.
  - 0x8BADF00D 9y ago
    The problem is that the Weimar government legitimized the brown shirts while denouncing the remnants of the Spartacus League. That's how Hitler came to power. When you legitimize one group and denounce another, it leads to further instability.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- spaginal 9y ago
  The stock and trade of our national media and the federal government with the participation of both political parties is identity politics and division. The event this weekend was a classic example of this and now every 12 year old on the internet is screaming nazi and kkk. If this country wasn't solidly middle of the road, you wouldn't have Bush two terms, Obama two terms, followed by Trump, with an ever changing congress. Americans aren't the racist bigots the media and government claims, but judging by the news, Reddit, and internet articles, everyone right of Bernie is now KKK. Americans want privacy, freedom, respect for our civil liberties, rule of law, and economic opportunity, and everyone else outside of that wants our money while egging us on to fight.
  - ignoramceisblis 9y ago
    Spread the message far and wide.
- dTal 9y ago
  >some super-extreme idiots met up with the opposite extreme idiots and it got out of control. This sanctimonious false equivalence is extremely disrespectful to the murdered woman.
  - hyperdunc 9y ago
    Maybe, if you're going by body count over the last year or so. Look a bit further back and the equivalence is fair. If anything, far left ideologies are responsible for more deaths than far right ones.
    - dTal 9y ago
      I do not think the distinction is meaningful in the extreme. Are we really going to claim that Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia were in some way polar opposites? The correct distinction is bigotry vs inclusiveness, freedom vs slavery, rights vs oppression. The murdered woman was a civil rights activist, peacefully protesting white supremacists. To lump her in with her murderer as an "extreme idiot" is to do violence both to her memory and to the entire history of civil rights in America. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms, and I respectfully invite the downvoters of my previous remark to explain why they disagree.
      - hyperdunc 9y ago
        Of course there is no excuse for her death. And yes, the far left and far right are very similar, which is why I've previously argued that framing all this in terms of an authoritarian-libertarian spectrum is more useful than using a left-right one.
- refurb 9y ago
  I have to agree. The neo-nazis you saw this weekend were always there. They just weren't cover by the media so it didn't get that much attention. You want to see how powerful the media is? It's a great example. Whatever the news covers immediately becomes a national crisis. And vice versa, if the media doesn't cover it, nobody cares.
- mnm1 9y ago
  neo-Nazism? No, America has had its own racist fascists since before the civil war. These are the same type of people who started the confederacy, fought for the south, implemented jim crow, lynched blacks, prevented civil rights legislation, and now have infiltrated our government all the way up to the president. There's nothing neo about American fascism and it's very fucking real. Just because you don't encounter them in everyday interaction doesn't mean they don't exist. Every asshole flying a confederate flag, apologizing for the south's disgusting actions, or trying to preserve the "heritage" of their slaver ancestors contributes to this, but some, including the president, are now taking it further, inciting violence and spewing hate in the name of free speech. There's very little neo about the nazis in this country. They've been around forever and now all these scumbags are coming out of the woodwork. It's only media propaganda, to these stupid idiots who believe that because they want to believe it, because hate drives them. And there's millions of these people.
GuiA 9y ago
My grandfather also fought in World War 2 - in fact, he abandoned the family farm in the middle of the night at 17 to go defend his nazi occupied country. He'd spend the following 4 years living in forests and trying to blow up german trains at night, and seeing his closest friends die. He fought at the liberation of Royan, and received a fairly prestigious decoration for it. After the war, he married my grandma - whom he had met through a postal service that matched young soldiers to young women so as to keep them motivated - just by showing up to her house, as he had nowhere else to go to. He then worked in a chemical plant, starting from the bottom, and ending up in a very respectable managerial position. His first child became a surgeon, and his second child a chemical researcher for the very company he had worked for. Sadly, he spent the last 15 years of his life becoming more and more racist, frequently disparaging arabic/black people, and voting for extreme right political parties. He died never knowing that my cousin was gay, and that he had been breaking her heart with all of his anti gay rhetoric. He taught her to count, drive, and was basically a second father to her. For him, Americans were always the liberators, coming from a country of justice and respect. He was very proud when I moved to the US. And now people are marching with nazi flags in the open streets. What fucking weird days we live in.
angersock 9y ago
It's pretty easy to understand. We already had this discussion nationally, back in Skokie and Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am... The ACLU, on behalf of honest-to-God neo-nazis who wanted to march in a place where 1/6 of the folks were Holocaust survivors, stood up for the 1st amendment. Notably, it established that icons of a hate group were not themselves fighting words--rather different than the "everything is violence" position taken by the myopic today. I'm equally unsettled that few seem as principled or dedicated to basic freedoms today.
flyinghamster 9y ago
The fascists never really went away. They've been quietly biding their time, building up their propaganda machine, sabotaging the educational system, disrupting civil society, and waiting for their chance to strike. Now that the World War II vets who experienced fascism firsthand are dying off, they see their golden opportunity.

sparklingwines 9y ago

"Don't be a Sucker" If you think America is falling under the influence of neo-Nazism, then you're a sucker to the media propaganda. These idiots are such an extreme fringe that I wouldn't even say they represent the "far right." And it's naive to think the FBI isn't half-way up the colons of every one of these fringe groups. Outside of our unfixable segregated ghettos, where serial killers are murdering people every day, America is fine. And the ghettos are easy enough to avoid. As is the news. Turn off the TV, talk to your neighbors and co-workers, and you won't have to understand why some super-extreme idiots met up with the opposite extreme idiots and it got out of control.

chasing 9y ago
> Outside of our unfixable segregated ghettos, where serial killers are murdering people every day, America is fine. And the ghettos are easy enough to avoid. "Everything is fine for me, therefore everything is fine!" But you're right: The neo-Nazis seem mostly to be buffoons, more-or-less. We have some people in the White House who are having a very difficult time taking the obvious moral stance against them, though. Decrying Nazis is literally the most no-brainer thing a politician can do. This is the softest softball of national crises. And our President completely whiffed it.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Didn't he release a statement decrying the racists and suggesting we come together? I've seen it quoted over the past two days. I suppose I could seek an official source.
  - chasing 9y ago
    He did today. Seems like his handlers convinced him: His tweets about it seemed pretty crabby. But over the weekend he definitely came off as completely tone-deaf -- to the point of neo-Nazi groups actually wondering if he was supporting them. I actually don't think that means he supports Nazis. But he's the President. And part of the job is helping the country deal with situations like this.
  - GeneralMayhem 9y ago
    After a literal Nazi literally killed someone at a literal Nazi rally, the President issued a statement in which he said that violence is bad and that both sides were to blame. Two days later, after basically everyone on the planet (including GOP leadership, because even spineless gutter-feeders can tell what an obvious political slam-dunk this is) had had a chance to suggest to him that maybe the literal Nazis literally killing people were maybe a tiny bit more at fault than the woman that they had killed for standing across the street from them and peacefully counter-protesting, he finally issued another statement saying that white supremacists maybe aren't so great after all. You'll forgive me for not putting too much stock in the second statement, given the circumstances.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      Not all the counter-protesters were peaceful. Best thing that could have happened would be for everyone to ignore this small fringe wacko group of people. This was instead taken as an opportunity to create a crisis, which could then be used to advance a narrative.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      Disclaimer: I'm not defending nazis, murderers, or nazi murderers. Trump's statement seems thoughtless but it's not completely incorrect. For months we've had antifa protesters who have gotten into violent fights with nazis and alt-right supporters at rallies. There's a lot of people very proud of that. At the very least at this rally there were antifa protesters carrying bats and wearing helmets, using pepper spray, etc. Now whether that's justified is another issue, but a lot of us would like it if the fringes of both sides would chill out, before violence they can't control breaks out as it so often can do.
- spaginal 9y ago
  Both groups were behaving violently, and he addressed it exactly as such. Unfortunately it ended with the death of a young woman, but the event didn't go from zero to 100 with the car incident. A lot was happening between the two groups to the lead up. The media wants to build the case that anything against their messaging is extremist, they don't mention Antifa as being a huge instigator in the violence in this event as well, but we don't need them to tell us when we've witnessed it multiple times in California and other cities. Trump in this situation was literally the only adult in the room on this one. Just because he didn't get on board with the manufactured and editorialized talking points doesn't insinuate some nefarious connection to racism and the kkk. It's pretty obvious to most people that he doesn't harbor that ideology. Fact is, in our country we have a right and an expectation to peacefully assemble in the public square, short of calling for insurrection or openly instigating a riot, Americans are allowed to get on their soapbox and other Americans can choose to ignore or listen. What happened in Charlottesville was a travesty for civil rights and a complete mess where multiple violent hate groups in conjunction with an all too eager media put an embarrassing show on display.
  - unhumanrights 9y ago
    Fact is, in our country we have a right and an expectation to peacefully assemble in the public square Peacefully. Peacefully. The torches were not a great idea, but I suppose they're not un-peaceful. The shields and the helmets ... well, self-defense is peaceful, right? But the clubs? The guns? Occupying an area with weapons while making threats is not "peaceful assembly".
    - spaginal 9y ago
      I fail to see the violence in torches, regardless, I'm not going to get into specifics of clothing choices, but you can wear a super man outfit, open carry if state laws allow, or put on a dildo helmet if you feel like it. In our country you can protest in costumes if you'd like. Nothing states suit and tie only. If a first response is to assault someone for what they are saying or wearing instead of acting civil, maybe this country and it's constitution isn't for them. This goes for anyone involved.
  - 9y ago
- cromwellian 9y ago
  The "both sides do it" argument misses historical context. As little as 50 years ago, the KKK was still lynching people, and lynched about 4000 African Americans totally according to figures. After they couldn't lynch anymore, the moved on to terrorizing African Americans by burning crosses on people's lawns, and bombing churches. We just ended Jim Crow, an Apartheid system, only a half century ago, and today black people still face intense racism. I see people saying "it's a fringe" yet I can still hear people making racist comments in my own family, none of whom go to Nazi/KKK marches. That historical context makes these bold marches a larger concern, because for every buffoon you see in that march, there are 10 "moderate buffoons", and 100 "moderate moderate buffoons", who walk around thinking because they're not a Nazi or KKK member, and don't own slaves, they're not racist, but who do hold very bias views. These views translate into more convictions for black people faced with juries, they translate into more loan or job applications denied. That's why a re-emboldened KKK/NeoNazi group is a concern. Dailystormer has 300,000 registered accounts, how many does Antifa have? The US has never had a communist revolution, we haven't had people sent to Gulags or "reeducated" for failing to support The Party, or Marxism. But we have sent 150,000 people to camps for the crime of being Japanese. So radical leftists aren't exactly a scary threat, they seem even more buffoonish by far, the dead-enders still calling for communist ownership of everything. So when I read right wing media reports about the so-called history of left-wing violence, I'm not very phased. I would be scared if say, I lived in eastern Europe. But white supremacists are much more realistic threat to the US social fabric because so many people hold racist views, either overtly, or implicitly. Imagine an Islamic theocracy which turned secular over time. Suddenly, religious conservatives are emboldened and start huge marches, and some violent opposition groups emerge. Should the majority of the population be fearful of the opposition, or a retreat back to a religious theocracy which say, 50% of the people in the rural areas aren't opposed to? Historical context matters a lot, and the giant racial scar that still hasn't healed in America means that Antifa and the KKK are no where near equal in concern or guilt for damage to the social fabric.
  - chasing 9y ago
    Very well put.
empath75 9y ago
The president of the us has multiple white supremecists and literal nazis working in the White House.
- snakeboy 9y ago
  > literal nazis Oh give me a break with the Trump hyperbole. Can I ask for a source?
  - chasing 9y ago
    Seb Gorka? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Gorka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Gorka
    - leereeves 9y ago
      Every reference to Nazis on that page is about his father's association with the Hungarian Historical Order of Vitéz. Apparently, that group worked with the Nazis during WW2, but "this Order granted Gorka's father, Paul Gorka, their title in 1979 in recognition of his resistance to the post-war Soviet occupation of Hungary". Do you have some reason to believe he or his father is (or was) a Nazi? There's no evidence of that on that Wikipedia page.
  - dTal 9y ago
    Sure: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/14/donald_trump_s_ties_to_alt_right_white_supremacists_are_extensive.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/14/donald_tru...
    - leereeves 9y ago
      Milo Yiannopoulos is a white supremacist? I mean, he's a troll who is intentionally offensive, but either Slate doesn't know what they're talking about or they're lying. One thing he isn't is a white supremacist. And Seb Gorka? According to his Wikipedia page, his father, Paul Gorka, was awarded a medal by Vitézi Rend in 1979 "in recognition of his resistance to the post-war Soviet occupation of Hungary". Slate seems to consider that evidence that he's a Nazi.
taurath 9y ago
Fringe and emboldened. This is their closest shot in the modern era and there are more tools than ever to get people split and propagandize them. I'd say their chances are approaching nil, but if there is some supreme fuckup even the chance is scary.
aphextron 9y ago
>If you think America is falling under the influence of neo-Nazism, then you're a sucker to the media propaganda. These idiots are such an extreme fringe that I wouldn't even say they represent the "far right." And it's naive to think the FBI isn't half-way up the colons of every one of these fringe groups. This was precisely the common sentiment surrounding the SA in 1920's Germany. Ernst Röhm was a borderline mentally retarded street thug until Hitler gave him a uniform. When these idiots are allowed to run amok awful and unforeseeable things happen because, being losers already, they have nothing to lose.
- 0x8BADF00D 9y ago
  The problem is that the Weimar government legitimized the brown shirts while denouncing the remnants of the Spartacus League. That's how Hitler came to power. When you legitimize one group and denounce another, it leads to further instability.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
spaginal 9y ago
The stock and trade of our national media and the federal government with the participation of both political parties is identity politics and division. The event this weekend was a classic example of this and now every 12 year old on the internet is screaming nazi and kkk. If this country wasn't solidly middle of the road, you wouldn't have Bush two terms, Obama two terms, followed by Trump, with an ever changing congress. Americans aren't the racist bigots the media and government claims, but judging by the news, Reddit, and internet articles, everyone right of Bernie is now KKK. Americans want privacy, freedom, respect for our civil liberties, rule of law, and economic opportunity, and everyone else outside of that wants our money while egging us on to fight.
- ignoramceisblis 9y ago
  Spread the message far and wide.
dTal 9y ago
>some super-extreme idiots met up with the opposite extreme idiots and it got out of control. This sanctimonious false equivalence is extremely disrespectful to the murdered woman.
- hyperdunc 9y ago
  Maybe, if you're going by body count over the last year or so. Look a bit further back and the equivalence is fair. If anything, far left ideologies are responsible for more deaths than far right ones.
  - dTal 9y ago
    I do not think the distinction is meaningful in the extreme. Are we really going to claim that Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia were in some way polar opposites? The correct distinction is bigotry vs inclusiveness, freedom vs slavery, rights vs oppression. The murdered woman was a civil rights activist, peacefully protesting white supremacists. To lump her in with her murderer as an "extreme idiot" is to do violence both to her memory and to the entire history of civil rights in America. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms, and I respectfully invite the downvoters of my previous remark to explain why they disagree.
    - hyperdunc 9y ago
      Of course there is no excuse for her death. And yes, the far left and far right are very similar, which is why I've previously argued that framing all this in terms of an authoritarian-libertarian spectrum is more useful than using a left-right one.
refurb 9y ago
I have to agree. The neo-nazis you saw this weekend were always there. They just weren't cover by the media so it didn't get that much attention. You want to see how powerful the media is? It's a great example. Whatever the news covers immediately becomes a national crisis. And vice versa, if the media doesn't cover it, nobody cares.
mnm1 9y ago
neo-Nazism? No, America has had its own racist fascists since before the civil war. These are the same type of people who started the confederacy, fought for the south, implemented jim crow, lynched blacks, prevented civil rights legislation, and now have infiltrated our government all the way up to the president. There's nothing neo about American fascism and it's very fucking real. Just because you don't encounter them in everyday interaction doesn't mean they don't exist. Every asshole flying a confederate flag, apologizing for the south's disgusting actions, or trying to preserve the "heritage" of their slaver ancestors contributes to this, but some, including the president, are now taking it further, inciting violence and spewing hate in the name of free speech. There's very little neo about the nazis in this country. They've been around forever and now all these scumbags are coming out of the woodwork. It's only media propaganda, to these stupid idiots who believe that because they want to believe it, because hate drives them. And there's millions of these people.

GuiA 9y ago

My grandfather also fought in World War 2 - in fact, he abandoned the family farm in the middle of the night at 17 to go defend his nazi occupied country. He'd spend the following 4 years living in forests and trying to blow up german trains at night, and seeing his closest friends die. He fought at the liberation of Royan, and received a fairly prestigious decoration for it. After the war, he married my grandma - whom he had met through a postal service that matched young soldiers to young women so as to keep them motivated - just by showing up to her house, as he had nowhere else to go to. He then worked in a chemical plant, starting from the bottom, and ending up in a very respectable managerial position. His first child became a surgeon, and his second child a chemical researcher for the very company he had worked for. Sadly, he spent the last 15 years of his life becoming more and more racist, frequently disparaging arabic/black people, and voting for extreme right political parties. He died never knowing that my cousin was gay, and that he had been breaking her heart with all of his anti gay rhetoric. He taught her to count, drive, and was basically a second father to her. For him, Americans were always the liberators, coming from a country of justice and respect. He was very proud when I moved to the US. And now people are marching with nazi flags in the open streets. What fucking weird days we live in.

angersock 9y ago

It's pretty easy to understand. We already had this discussion nationally, back in Skokie and Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am... The ACLU, on behalf of honest-to-God neo-nazis who wanted to march in a place where 1/6 of the folks were Holocaust survivors, stood up for the 1st amendment. Notably, it established that icons of a hate group were not themselves fighting words--rather different than the "everything is violence" position taken by the myopic today. I'm equally unsettled that few seem as principled or dedicated to basic freedoms today.

flyinghamster 9y ago

The fascists never really went away. They've been quietly biding their time, building up their propaganda machine, sabotaging the educational system, disrupting civil society, and waiting for their chance to strike. Now that the World War II vets who experienced fascism firsthand are dying off, they see their golden opportunity.