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Perhaps this would be a good time to point out that neither the article nor I were talking about Nazis. There's a lot of room to disagree before we hit Nazi.

paulmd 8y ago
"Extremists on both sides" is literally always a coded way to complain about Antifa fighting back against Nazi street gangs. And that's what your original comment was getting at - the top comment responded perfectly to your dog-whistle. It's really not a mystery where that talking point came from - that's Trump blaming Antifa after they beat up a bunch of torch-wielding supremacists at the Charlottesville rally. It's not like Antifa is going into people's houses and beating up 50% of the country. If you're marching under torches and hate symbols you don't get much sympathy from me when someone gives you a black eye for it. Antifa doesn't make you march around with torches and swastikas, you chose to march under the symbols that have been used for centuries for symbolizing intent to murder, lynch, and exterminate "lesser" human beings. Hopefully at that point most people would have a think about "Hans... are we the baddies? We're marching around with torches..." There are a lot of people who are susceptible to fascist/"alt-right" slogans and thought, even if they're not the ones currently going out in the streets and attacking people. Some of them can be convinced to go a bit farther. "Hey guys, bring tiki torches to the rally tonight!" and so on. It's an active phenomenon with the alt-right to radicalize and recruit additional members - they call it "red-pilling" (after the MRA thing, although many right-wing groups use the term). It's not dissimilar to the radicalization tactics that Muslim extremists use, which shouldn't be surprising - providing a home and an ideology for the disaffected is a highly effective radicalization tactic. http://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/red-pill/ http://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/red-pill/ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnk3bm/how-to-tell-if-your-alt-right-relative-is-trying-to-redpill-you-at-thanksgiving https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnk3bm/how-to-tell-if-you... http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/05/the-online-radicalization-were-not-talking-about.html http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/05/the-online-radicalization... Remember, the actual Nazis were a minority in Germany too, and that took decades to build up.

paulmd 8y ago

"Extremists on both sides" is literally always a coded way to complain about Antifa fighting back against Nazi street gangs. And that's what your original comment was getting at - the top comment responded perfectly to your dog-whistle. It's really not a mystery where that talking point came from - that's Trump blaming Antifa after they beat up a bunch of torch-wielding supremacists at the Charlottesville rally. It's not like Antifa is going into people's houses and beating up 50% of the country. If you're marching under torches and hate symbols you don't get much sympathy from me when someone gives you a black eye for it. Antifa doesn't make you march around with torches and swastikas, you chose to march under the symbols that have been used for centuries for symbolizing intent to murder, lynch, and exterminate "lesser" human beings. Hopefully at that point most people would have a think about "Hans... are we the baddies? We're marching around with torches..." There are a lot of people who are susceptible to fascist/"alt-right" slogans and thought, even if they're not the ones currently going out in the streets and attacking people. Some of them can be convinced to go a bit farther. "Hey guys, bring tiki torches to the rally tonight!" and so on. It's an active phenomenon with the alt-right to radicalize and recruit additional members - they call it "red-pilling" (after the MRA thing, although many right-wing groups use the term). It's not dissimilar to the radicalization tactics that Muslim extremists use, which shouldn't be surprising - providing a home and an ideology for the disaffected is a highly effective radicalization tactic. http://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/red-pill/ http://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/red-pill/ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnk3bm/how-to-tell-if-your-alt-right-relative-is-trying-to-redpill-you-at-thanksgiving https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnk3bm/how-to-tell-if-you... http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/05/the-online-radicalization-were-not-talking-about.html http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/05/the-online-radicalization... Remember, the actual Nazis were a minority in Germany too, and that took decades to build up.