White Nationalists March on University of Virginia

[Ben in LA]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/white-nationalists-rally-charlottesville-virginia.html

"Late Friday night, several hundred torch-bearing men and women marched on the main quadrangle of the University of Virginia’s grounds, shouting, “You will not replace us,” and “Jew will not replace us.” "

Fuck that. They're Nazis. Discuss.

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[Stavros]

"Late Friday night, several hundred torch-bearing men and women marched on the main quadrangle of the University of Virginia’s grounds, shouting, “You will not replace us,” and “Jew will not replace us.” "

Fuck that. They're Nazis. Discuss.


The torchlight procession is the confirmation. The only things missing are white sheets or brown shirts.

[Ben in LA]

The torchlight procession is the confirmation. The only things missing are white sheets or brown shirts.

Not needed anymore. They won't suffer many consequences for their actions. Hell, the cops weren't even in riot gear. They've been emboldened by the current administration.

[broncofan]

For those who say that a man cannot control who supports him, listen very carefully to Trump's weak, vague condemnation of these white supremacists. Compare what he says about this disgrace to what he says about CNN or Mika Brzezinski or the news media as a whole.

He says "Charlottesville sad!" but what he doesn't say is "these white supremacists are a disgrace. They believe I am carrying out their will but no genuine supporter of mine promotes race hatred. I condemn without hesitation people who claim that diversity = genocide or that we are weakening this country by making it more inclusive. Making America great means making it great for everyone, including all minorities."

He is able to call the news media the enemy of the people. Would he say the same about people who carry torches and promote race hatred? How hard can that be?

[broncofan]

He is able to call the news media the enemy of the people. Would he say the same about people who carry torches and promote race hatred? How hard can that be?
And I'm sure some people think "well what does it matter if the President issues an effective condemnation, there will always be some racists?" There will always be racists, but they should be outliers and our government should speak with one voice when it comes to denouncing them. If people who are carrying the flag of men and women who committed treason are not "the enemy of the people" then who is? Oh yes, the fake news media.

[flabbybody]

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How can this be happening in America ?

[Stavros]

A) Neither Virginia nor Charlottesville needs a statue of Robert E. Lee to be reminded of the Civil War and what it represents in US history.

B) Charlottesville to most Americans ought to resonate with the Presidents who lived there or or close by -Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe.

C) :
David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, hailed the rally as a sign of Mr Trump’s success. “This represents a turning point for the people of this country,”
“We are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/12/state-emergency-declared-white-supremacists-neo-nazis-bring/

D) Charlottesville is named after the consort of George III (the king who lost America), Queen Charlotte (born in what is now Germany), married at 17, mother of 15 children...attempts that have been made to 'prove' she was of African ancestry are weak, but it would be a hoot if the Queen after whom the city is named is claimed as 'their own' by racist cretins who can't spell or point to North Korea on a map of the world. I guess most of them only got to the place via GPS anyway.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/12/race-monarchy

[broncofan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbfzjSxP064

Listen to what he says. "On many sides"....this is straight out of the playbook of every racist enabler in history. There was hatred and bigotry from only one side. If this isn't complicity nothing is. Even Bush Jr. would have the decency after a display like this to talk about the legacy of racism and make clear who he is condemning, instead of pretending like there are multiple sides worthy of condemnation.

[Stavros]

Here is a link to an interesting article that argues that the statues of Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Charlottesville were deliberately placed on the fringes of Black neighbourhoods in the town-

What has been missing from this fight, though, is the specific history of Charlottesville’s Confederate statues. Intimately tied to Charlottesville’s city planning projects and its persistent displacement of black residents, that context is emblematic of the relationship in the South between urban renewal and gentrification, Confederate memorialization and Lost Cause white supremacy, and the town-and-gown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_gown) dichotomy inherent in university communities.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2017/06/how_charlottesville_s_confederate_statues_helped_d ecimate_the_city_s_historically.html

[broncofan]

It seems that the violence at the rally was worse than I thought initially. In addition to Heather Heyer being killed by a crazed white supremacist who drove his car into a crowd of people there were numerous assaults and in the age of social media many of them were captured on camera.

Several accounts on twitter have done an excellent job of breaking down the footage and putting out pictures of assailants who have been identified.

Where it gets more controversial, though not for me, is that pictures of the tiki torch mob who were not involved in crimes are also being disseminated. The people are being identified and at least a few have been fired from their jobs. This is one of the reasons that back in the day Klansmen covered their faces. These men in Charlottesville marched openly and promoted an unambiguous message of hatred. One of the things that shocked me when I went on twitter was the sheer number of stealth neo-nazis...some of them decided they had nothing to hide anymore.

[Stavros]

There is the wider issue of public monuments, when and why they were erected, and whether or not the individuals turned into Bronze or Stone should now be removed. In the UK in 2015 there was a lot of controversy over an attempt to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes from an Oxford College, and many might be aware that a former MP (Ann Widdicombe) was amongst others who are offended by the statue of Oliver Cromwell that stands right outside the House of Commons an want it melted down or removed. Origins are important here, as the Cromwell statue was erected in 1895 to a fanfare of applause -and public hostility from Irish Catholics and Conservatives.

I ask myself what the statue or Robert E. Lee was supposed to commemorate and why it is in that place and not another. I am not an American so I ought not to care one way or another, but it does seem to me that a residual bitterness at the fact they lost the War, has enabled -for some people, and not all of them from the 'South'- a contemporary resentment at the reality of American life in Virginia and the 'South' to use the Civil War and its symbols as if the war never ended, even if neither 'States rights' nor slavery are the precise issue today. It appears to be some odd nostalgia for an America that maybe never existed, but which when cast in Stone or Bronze summons up what might have been as a replacement for what is.

Perhaps the most curious monument to an American is in Saratoga National Park, the 'Boot' monument that celebrates -but does not name or depict (other than his Boot, 'coz he broke his leg in the battle)- General Benedict Arnold, the man who defeated the British at the Battle of Saratoga before taking the King's gold and becoming one of 'the most hated' Americans of the revolutionary wars...
http://www.neatorama.com/2014/01/01/Americas-Monument-to-Its-Most-Infamous-Traitor-Benedict-Arnold/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35161671

[trish]

I would think very few countries have dedicated statues and memorials to treasonous generals or have allowed the citizens to fly and celebrate the flag of a treasonous rebellion. Our public schools teach that both sides of the Civil War fought bravely and honorably and that each side had heros that deserve the recognition of the nation as a whole. That such memorials exist is testimony to the will to set aside the grievances that led to (and accumulated throughout) the war between the states and heal the rift between the two opposing sides. It is worth noting that this reduction, (designed to placate the ‘two sides’) to some extent, leaves aside the newly freed slaves and their descendants.

These symbols of the attempt to knit together and forget old wounds have been corrupted by neo-nazis, white-supremacists, the alt-right and various amateur militia who imagine that they’re being oppressed by current civil rights laws, current immigration policies, a non-existent censorship on free speech, unfair taxation and threats to the second amendment. Others of them even complain their natural supremacy is neither recognized nor respected. Long thriving in the backwaters of the internet, these pathetically ignorant entities have come into some prominence thanks to the fact that our toddler in chief is all but one of them.

So it is not surprising that the statue of General Lee in Charlottesville came to be seen as representing a kind of racism and white nationalism that is repugnant to this largely liberal place. And so the town voted to relocate General Lee to a less prominent venue. There is some question as to whether the Charlottesville the authority to do so, or whether the authority rests with the State of Virginia. This is now being settled in the courts.

Why neo-nazis from Ohio, Missouri and elsewhere care about where General Lee stands in the town of Charlottesville is a question that unveils the symbolism behind the the statue. General Lee is no longer symbolic of the healing process between the states. He is no longer the heroic general of a vast and tragic war. He now represents racial purity, white-supremacy, hatred of immigrants, of Muslims, of Jews__ of everyone who isn’t white and Christian.

This why we can no longer have nice things.

[trish]

Correction: There is some question as to whether Charlottesville has the authority to do so, or whether the authority rests with the State of Virginia. This is now being settled in the courts.

[broncofan]

I have not encountered a Trump supporter who has any reason to support him other than intense dislike for large segments of society. I could not say that about any other politician without feeling I was being unfair. But think of his torch-bearers on this site: one posted Pepe with a swastika in front of Auschwitz, one posted about Muslims as though they are subhuman and called Ruth Bader Ginsburg a hooknose, and one claims that while she doesn't support neo-nazism she finds Pepe cute and wants Trump to build that wall.

The phrase white supremacism is one that describes the most extreme form of racial bigotry. I did not used to think it existed on a continuum, but it cannot just refer to people who carry the confederate flag or who believe all non-white people are innately inferior. It must also refer to those people who hear someone providing cover for it and cannot condemn them. Who react with the same outrage to rowdy antifa supporters as they do to Nazis. Who want to see black people arrested for protesting but don't even shrug when they see openly armed white men in military fatigues carrying flags of treason or symbols of genocide. For an example of this, check out the disparity in the number of people arrested in Ferguson and Charlottesville.

The white house bears responsibility for this outbreak of white supremacism because they have not condemned these supporters with the requisite force. They bear responsibility because they employ racist ideologues, namely Steven Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Jeff Sessions. They bear responsibility because they allow their views to subtly appear in speeches asking us to cherish our history after a march about the continued prominence of confederate statues turned deadly. And they bear responsibility because they first considered the political cost of denouncing racists before they considered racism's victims.

The reason I posted about people being fired from their jobs for appearing at this rally is because leadership is not coming from the top. If people want to live in a civilized society, then they will have to actively ensure they do not employ barbarians. Germany deserves a lot of credit for their refusal to allow any commemoration of the Nazis. We cannot take quite as strict an approach to racism as they do because some of their laws would violate our first amendment, but we can say that if you march with a torch yelling racist slogans, you can be excluded from fraternizing with the civilized people.

[broncofan]

http://www.inforum.com/opinion/letters/4311880-letter-family-denounces-teffts-racist-rhetoric-and-actions

Thought this was in interesting letter from a father about his son stating that he's no longer welcome in his home as long as he's a white supremacist.

[blackchubby38]

I have always had an interest in history. I constantly read and watch documentaries about it. When it comes to American history, you have to accept the good with the bad. I also believe that the great things that this country has accomplished should not be diminished by the ugliness that has been part of our history. At the same time, that bad shouldn't be rationalized or defended as "well that's the way things were done back then".

When it comes to the symbols associated with the Confederacy, I think they need to be taken into context. When the Confederate flag is being used by the Klan, White Nationalists, or Neo Nazis during a march, it becomes a symbol of hate. The flag decal on the General Lee on the Dukes of Hazard television show, was no big deal and is not a reason to have a show that ran over 30 years ago yanked from a cable network. While I wasn't personally offended by the Confederate flag being flown over the South Carolina statehouse, it was time for it to come down.

When it comes to the people that were associated with the Confederacy, I think you have to look at them with historical perspective. While obviously I'm glad that the Union won the war, I can understand why certain people fought for the other side. As a person who likes reading about military history, I can appreciate their brilliance and valor in battle. But since they did lose the war, they shouldn't have been celebrated with monuments or have parks named after them.

[filghy2]

I would think very few countries have dedicated statues and memorials to treasonous generals or have allowed the citizens to fly and celebrate the flag of a treasonous rebellion. Our public schools teach that both sides of the Civil War fought bravely and honorably and that each side had heros that deserve the recognition of the nation as a whole. That such memorials exist is testimony to the will to set aside the grievances that led to (and accumulated throughout) the war between the states and heal the rift between the two opposing sides. It is worth noting that this reduction, (designed to placate the ‘two sides’) to some extent, leaves aside the newly freed slaves and their descendants.



I agree with your other points, but I think you're presenting a rather rose-coloured view of US history here. Rather than being an honourable struggle fought in a gentlemanly fashion, the civil war was characterised by many atrocities, eg http://listverse.com/2013/03/17/10-war-crimes-of-the-us-civil-war/. In particular, captured black Union troops were routinely executed by the confederates.

Setting aside of grievances after the civil war largely took the form of the North acquiescing in the continuation of institutionalised racial discrimination in the South for the best part of 90 years. In effect, there was a Faustian bargain - don't try to secede again and we'll give you a free hand in the treatment of blacks (short of bringing back slavery).

I'm not raising this for academic reasons, but because understanding the present requires understanding the history that led up to here. Too many well-intentioned Americans want to believe in a 'shining light on the hill' version of their history that minimises the darker aspects. I think this may have contributed to an overly-complacent view that overt racism is an aberration at the margins that would naturally face away over time.

[Stavros]

A sequence of fascinating posts above. What occurs to me is that while I can see how the process of reconciliation may have dulled the ferocity of the division between the Union and the Confederacy and thus tended to reduce Confederate monuments to a benign status, in fact this obscures the latent hostility that appears to linger as a contemporary reflection on society rather than maintaining a direct link to the Civil War -I wonder how many of the alt-right activists who descended on Charlottesville have roots in the Confederate states. Critically, the Confederacy had more than one flag, and the flag the militants wave is the Battle Flag, which implies that the people waving it are prepared for 'war', and that is anything but benign, but a deliberate provocation to law and order and government.
At what point does free speech defend the right to display a flag of war, and at what point does waving the flag of war threaten free speech?

[broncofan]

I know it's better to get it right than to get it first. I did not watch Trump's most recent statement but I'm sure whatever he said will be compiled into an article shortly to summarize. I only opened my twitter feed and rational people are aghast.

From what I can gather he compared statues of Robert Lee to George Washington, saying about their removal, "what's next we remove statues of Washington." Apparently he also said that he is sure there were good people on both sides and then blamed the "alt-left" for much of the violence. Let me remind you a white supremacist plowed a car into a crowd of people and an African-American man was beaten with heavy sticks by multiple assailants who had shields with fascist insignia on them.

Just based on this it must be a breaking point. The rally was very obviously a white nationalist rally. There were not good people on both sides as the rally was organized by white supremacist haters. There is no alt-left and since Charlottesville Trump has been retweeting alt-right figures saying stuff like "nobody is talking about shootings in Chicago", which is racist code in my opinion.

Any company that remains on his business council must be boycotted. We'll find out more.

[filghy2]

This is the full statement, most notable for the claim that the 'alt-left' came charging at the people in the rally with clubs. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662?lo=ap_b2
I guess the only positive is that Trump just ripped off the fig leaf put in place by his previous statement, so that mainstream Republicans can't just pretend the issue has been dealt with and try to put it behind them.

[filghy2]

Unintentional duplicate - why do they let us edit posts, but not delete them?

[filghy2]

Meanwhile, in the land of make believe, it's all the fault of Obama and George Soros. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/15/16148144/alabama-conservatives-on-charlottesville
How did Trump miss that?

[broncofan]

Meanwhile, in the land of make believe, it's all the fault of Obama and George Soros. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/15/16148144/alabama-conservatives-on-charlottesville
How did Trump miss that?
This is a maddening read. Hard to add anything to that. I can't believe people are so unevolved. These people are real dipshit fucking cretins.

[broncofan]

I wonder how hard these people were to find and whether people who express views like this are openly racist with each other. Can't help but read this article and think we have a much bigger problem. Yuck.

[filghy2]

Interesting article on the timing of construction of these confederate monuments. https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/15/16153220/trump-confederate-statues
The big peaks were in the early 20th C, when the Jim Crow laws were being put in place in the South, and to a lesser extent in the 1950s and 60s when they were trying to defend these laws against the civil rights movement.

[hippifried]

What's all this "alt" crap? Alternative to what? The right? The left? The somewhere in between? Honesty in general? Why can't we just call the Klan/Nazis what they are? Oh, that's right. They're not enemy combatants unless they're in uniform.

Now admittedly, i've been out of touch for a while. But I hadn't seen the term "alt left" before today. Who the hell are they supposed to be? Are they pink? Are they a bunch of spiteful thugs who attack poor defenseless stand-your-grounders for no discernable reason? Boo hoo. They're such meanies. Better tune up the car.

Huh? I don't get it. Does anybody really think that twisted language makes things better? That it justifies being an asshole and doing harm to those who may not agree with somebody's bullshit? I hope an epidemic of rational thought sweeps the country soon.

[Stavros]

What's all this "alt" crap? Alternative to what? The right? The left? The somewhere in between? Honesty in general? Why can't we just call the Klan/Nazis what they are? Oh, that's right. They're not enemy combatants unless they're in uniform.
Now admittedly, i've been out of touch for a while. But I hadn't seen the term "alt left" before today. Who the hell are they supposed to be? Are they pink? Are they a bunch of spiteful thugs who attack poor defenseless stand-your-grounders for no discernable reason? Boo hoo. They're such meanies. Better tune up the car.
Huh? I don't get it. Does anybody really think that twisted language makes things better? That it justifies being an asshole and doing harm to those who may not agree with somebody's bullshit? I hope an epidemic of rational thought sweeps the country soon.

Welcome back, Hippifried, I hope your absence was not due to illness as it once was before, and if it was I hope you are in good shape. The 'alt-right' invented themselves with this moniker, they only have themselves to blame for it.

As for a rational discussion, on this specific event, the First Amendment rights of the Unite the Right rally are not at issue. The organizer, Jospeh Kessler, who blames law enforcement not the 'alt-left' for the breakdown on August 12th, applied for a permit to hold the rally in Emancipation Park where the statue of Robert E. Lee is situated, but Charlottesville wanted it to take place in another park, McIntrye Park so Kessler took the City to court and won his case, on the basis that the whole point of the rally was to protest against the removal of the equestrian statue of Lee -and Kessler was supported in his legal case by the ACLU.

I am not sure if the torchlit procession on the evening of the 11th through the University of Virginia had a permit, but the argument is that a couple of hours before the rally was due to be held on the 12th violent confrontations caused the City to declare a 'state of emergency' and thus shut down the rally, so I guess it could be argued this was a matter of 'public order' rather than a First Amendment issue, which is how Ann Coulter described in on BBC-2's Newsnight the other day, blaming the left for trying to 'shut down debate' and so on.

But the most rational response came from the President himself, who offered his first unscripted and thus honest feelings in New York some hours ago:

“I mean, I know a lot about Charlottesville,” Trump said, walking out of the press conference. “Charlottesville is a great place that's been very badly hurt over the last couple of days. I own, actually, one of the largest wineries in the United States; it's in Charlottesville.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/15/16153238/5-moments-trump-charlottesville-press-conference

So head off to your nearest liquor store and put more money into his pockets -why else is he President?

[broncofan]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/videos/a57009/charlottesville-vice-documentary/

This is a documentary by vice. It follows a white supremacist through the torch lit rally. It is only 22 minutes but is extremely powerful...watching this puts the President's words in perspective. It's hard to watch and think there are good guys and bad guys equally on both sides.

[broncofan]

I should put a warning with the vice documentary that at about 11 minutes in they show the car running into the crowd. If anyone wants to avoid that I just checked, the scene with the car in the crowd starts at 11 minutes 15 seconds and is over at 15 minutes in. I think it's worth watching even if it's disturbing but that's just my view.

[filghy2]

This is a documentary by vice. It follows a white supremacist through the torch lit rally. It is only 22 minutes but is extremely powerful...watching this puts the President's words in perspective. It's hard to watch and think there are good guys and bad guys equally on both sides.

I watched the video and I have no idea how you reached this conclusion. On the one side, we have a bunch of people spouting hateful bigotry and clearly setting out to intimidate and provoke. On the other, we have bunch of people trying to resist this, some of whom (understandably) lost their tempers and may have overreacted at times. Hating people because they do hateful things isn't morally equivalent to hating people simply because of their race or religion.

Also, the video is necessarily only a partial record and seems to have missed the violence instigated by the white nationalists, which has been widely reported elsewhere.

[broncofan]

I watched the video and I have no idea how you reached this conclusion. On the one side, we have a bunch of people spouting hateful bigotry and clearly setting out to intimidate and provoke. On the other, we have bunch of people trying to resist this, some of whom (understandably) lost their tempers and may have overreacted at times. Hating people because they do hateful things isn't morally equivalent to hating people simply because of their race or religion.

Also, the video is necessarily only a partial record and seems to have missed the violence instigated by the white nationalists, which has been widely reported elsewhere.
Yes I agree with you. I didn't express myself very well. I have no idea why I said the video puts his words into perspective when I meant showed them to be incorrect. A mystery except that I probably wasn't thinking while I was typing and just wanted to say something before I put the link up.

I meant the video shows how wrong Trump's comments are. Trump seemed to say that on each side there were both good and bad people. I think the video makes it very clear that one side is very bad and the other side was just there to express their opposition to extreme bigotry. In other words, there were not any innocent Nazis and there weren't any bigoted anti-Nazis.

[broncofan]

Hating people because they do hateful things isn't morally equivalent to hating people simply because of their race or religion.

This is especially true and has been lost on Trump. The white nationalists came with a message of hate while the counter-protesters were there to express their opposition to bigotry.

The video shows that no innocent person would have happened to find themselves among the white supremacist protesters. Nobody would have walked into that rally on Friday night to protest a statue and thought to themselves "I wonder why some people think this was about white supremacism?". The video did show some counter-protesters losing their temper as you said but the entire confrontation should be blamed on the people who came out to assert their ethnic superiority, not those who opposed them.

Edit: The premise that someone could be innocently protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue is debatable. I personally think the idea of such a protest is probably premised on racist nostalgia. But even if it were possible, the people were chanting like a bunch of unhinged racist idiots.

[filghy2]

Yes I agree with you. I didn't express myself very well. I have no idea why I said the video puts his words into perspective when I meant showed them to be incorrect. A mystery except that I probably wasn't thinking while I was typing and just wanted to say something before I put the link up.



Okay, I see what you meant now. I think I read the bit about putting Trump's words into perspective and subconsciously assumed there was a missing word in the next sentence.

[trish]

Just an aside: Before the advent of graphical interface web-browsers people navigated the internet using a language known as UNIX. Back in those days (pretty much before my time) people interacted with each other on the web in discussion groups which were known as use-groups and/or newsgroups. These appeared in a menu with names like alt.music, alt.astronomy, alt.transsexuals, etc. One group that was dominated by neo-nazis and white supremacists appeared in the listing as alt.right. I'm guessing the current 'movement' can trace it's origin directly to this use-group. What the alt means-I don't know (I suspect it has more to do with UNIX than anything else). Was there an alt.left? Probably, I don't know - but if so I doubt it was populated by militant commies. Alt.left is certainly not a thing in modern politics. I'm guessing there are some people here who are old enough to confirm or correct my fuzzy view of ancient internet history.

[fred41]

I don't think there is an official alt.left. I think it's pretty clear what the pouting imbecile refers to is the Antifa movement.Hard to believe he's that stupid, especially since we know damn well that folks like Bannon probably know all the proper terminology (because of his work with Breitbart...and because of his fevered mutterings to himself in the dead of night). It's far more likely that he calls it an alt.left movement to create a moral equivalence, which of course is ludicrous because, although they can sometimes be a massive thorn in law enforcement's side, the Antifa movement is mostly reactive. With the usual inclusion of anarchists there may be some violence (and certainly property damage) but it is not anywhere near the organizational level of the proactive alt.right hate groups.
You can't compare a loosely organized group of counter protestors, usually well intentioned, mostly non-violent...with this massive alliance of race hate groups.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-alt-left-fact-check.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/what-trump-gets-wrong-about-antifa/537048/

[trish]

Thanks fred.
___________________

Just read the Vox piece on “Barack Obama is to Blame” (linked above in post #22)

I blame myself for the violence in Charlotte. I blame myself for being identifiably brown while performing well and holding down a well paying job in a competitive field. White-supremacists shouldn’t be forced to live in a world where so few people seem to notice how superior they are. Nor should they have to face the evidence that all people have pretty much the same natural potential to think, thrive, work and and love regardless of skin color, facial features or ethnic origins.

The violence was not Obama’s fault in particular: he just happened to be president eight months ago. Any black president could’ve and would have been sited as the spark the lit the tiki-torches in Charlotte last weekend. Of course, it doesn’t help that Obama is a Christian, goes to church and was born an American citizen in the state of Hawaii thereby collapsing the bizarre quantum-superposition of impossible realities in which alt-right groups attempt to build their castles of purist fantasy.
_____________________

I wanted to say earlier (partially in answer to filghy2‘s post#17) that I don’t particularly subscribe to the logic of memorializing and celebrating the confederacy in order to placate the ‘two-sides” to promote healing. I’m not even sure that is the actual logic behind the placing of statues and memorials. The “two-sides” reduction, as I said, leaves out a significant third party. But it is a logic that is out there. It’s taught in schools (or at least it was when I went to public school). And to some extent it does have that effect.

There are places (I think) where confederate statues and memorials are appropriate. I grew up very close to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battlefields there are stuffed with both Union and Confederate memorials celebrating the troops who fought there. When I walk through the place and stand exactly where a Confederate sharpshooter had stationed himself more than a century before, I don’t admire him. I don’t despise him either. I’m filled with a kind of incredulity, a creeping sadness, a profound sense of deep causality and utter chaos. I weep inside for the ghosts that have not yet been laid to rest. It’s a worthwhile experience. Of course the place is always filled with tourists and many from the south (judging by their The South Shall Rise Again bumper stickers) take away an experience that’s entirely different.
______________________

What I don’t need is a statue to remind me of my proper place every time I walk down to my local coffee shop.

‘Should we tear down the statues of George Washington?’ our toddler in chief asks. No, but let’s not erect any more statues of anybody on town squares or in city parks. They’re fucking boring. And for Pete’s sake let’s especially not erect any statues in honor or 45, the fat man is just too disgusting. Who could possibly eat their lunch on a park bench next to that?

[broncofan]

You can't compare a loosely organized group of counter protestors, usually well intentioned, mostly non-violent...with this massive alliance of race hate groups.
Of the counter-protesters you see mostly students and well-intentioned people. But the two groups are not only separated by their objectives but also by the way they conduct themselves away from the protest. The white supremacists frequently talk about the violence of their enemies while they call them savages and use other terms meant to dehumanize them. They say this while they are wearing military clothing and talking about how they might have to use deadly force. To me it's clear that their end game is to bait people into a confrontation and use a disproportionate amount of force, more than is required for self-defense so that they can satisfy their blood-lust.

Before WWII the Nazis constantly discussed how they were more civilized than the Bolsheviks and would never resort to exterminating people. They frequently spoke of how their hand was being forced, and that they would reluctantly use violence if the other side continued to threaten them. They justified Kristallnacht by a single violent act on the other side and used it to commit violent acts against hundreds. You can hear echoes of it in Christopher Cantwell's statements about how he will "kill these people if he has to". What are the chances that his definition of necessity is not strict necessity?

So I guess what I must reluctantly acknowledge is something I consider noise, but which is worth saying. There are a few violent antifa people who come to rallies with their faces covered and try to get in fights with Nazis. If you look at the footage of the rallies, they are probably less than one or two percent of the people there. The other people are students of every ethnic background, religion, and sexual orientation trying to show they will stand against the menace of bigotry. On the side of the Nazis, every single individual was a bigot, used a language that contained inherent violence, used symbols meant to convey violence, and were looking for the opportunity to say violence was necessary.

[Stavros]

A) My recollection is that most rallies and marches have taken place in the US without incident, or with minor incidents. Louis Farrakhan is to many people an extremist, yet I don't recall much violence during his 'Million Man March' a few years ago. Many causes arrange rallies and marches to Washington DC that don't descend into violence, even the Westboro Baptists ridicule and abuse people in public but do not appear to provoke a violent response.

The KKK, and the various small groups associated with that kind of white supremacist politics relish violence, in the case of the KKK because that was their modus operandi in the past. They use violence to provoke but in the case of those seriously intending to take over the state, violence becomes part of a 'strategy of tension' as it was used by both the Red Brigades and the Fascist right in Italy in the 1970s-80s, the intention being to provoke so great a crisis that the Italian state would suspend parliament and rule as a dictatorship. A long term intention of the alt-right could be to make the USA ungovernable in some if not all areas, to provoke precisely the kind of breakdown in conventional politics that Bannon has hinted at, that would polarise Americans into an 'us and them' where the definition of who an American is, and who belongs in America would be at the core of the debate, the assumption being that White Christians made America for themselves, and nobody else.

Thank you, Black people, for the cotton, the music and the sports, but it is now time for you to go home to Africa.

B) The concept of 'left and right' emerged in the period just before and after the French Revolution when supporters of the Monarchy sat on the Right of the National Assembly and the Republicans on the left.
So there you are, George Washington was a lefty.

[Aticus100]

It's bizarre watching from the outside. I mean sure, we have some oddballs and some crackpots in the British political system too but Trump is literally a raving fucking lunatic.
I can't imagine any other political regime in the free world where the combined members of his own party would not have said "right, enoughs enough".
After Comrade Trump fucks off/gets impeached/resignes in a fit of indignation the members of the Republican Party are still going to be career politicians who will need to justify allowing this freak show to continue.
I don't know if the USA's standing on the world stage will ever be viewed the same again.

[trish]

This graph from the Southern Poverty Law Center (reprinted by Mother Jones) tells us something of the original and current intent behind all those confederate memorials.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/the-real-story-of-all-those-confederate-statues/

[filghy2]

Unfortunately, I fear that the people quoted in the "Barack Obama is to blame" article might be fairly representative of the Republican base these days, which is why Trump thinks he can keep getting away with this stuff. This is why I don't feel confident that the party will recognise that it's gone down the wrong path and decisively reject Trumpism. If the Republicans don't spend a long time in the political wilderness as result of this debacle there is something very rotten in the state of the union.

[hippifried]

This isn't a southern problem. Back in the 50s, the Ku Klux Klan was able to muster up massive crowds for rallies and marches (in full regalia) across the northern and central tiers. Am I the only one old enough to remember how nasty things got over busing in 1970s Boston? It's been what? 10 or 15 years since Cincinnati was ripped apart by race riots? Let's not forget LA, & I'm amazed Oakland hasn't exploded. Coeur d' Alene, Idaho has a huge concentration of reactionary supremacists. Until recently (not sure if it's still true), upwards of 90% of printed Nazi literature was published in Lincoln, Nebraska.

This problem is all over the place. By concentrating on one region, you ignore the rest of the country, where things are just as fucked up, if not more so. Contemplate the fact that every city in the USA is segregated by race and/or ethnicity.

[Stavros]

This isn't a southern problem. Back in the 50s, the Ku Klux Klan was able to muster up massive crowds for rallies and marches (in full regalia) across the northern and central tiers. Am I the only one old enough to remember how nasty things got over busing in 1970s Boston? It's been what? 10 or 15 years since Cincinnati was ripped apart by race riots? Let's not forget LA, & I'm amazed Oakland hasn't exploded. Coeur d' Alene, Idaho has a huge concentration of reactionary supremacists. Until recently (not sure if it's still true), upwards of 90% of printed Nazi literature was published in Lincoln, Nebraska.

This problem is all over the place. By concentrating on one region, you ignore the rest of the country, where things are just as fucked up, if not more so. Contemplate the fact that every city in the USA is segregated by race and/or ethnicity.

I agree with most of what you say, but the present situation is generated by the tussle over monuments to the Confederacy, so as far as day to day news goes, it has become, if temporarily, a 'Southern' specific issue.
Next week, however the focus could shift to Phoenix Arizona where the President plans to hold a rally -organized by his re-election committee (!). Will you be going? For the Do-nuts, if nothing else?
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/arizona-rally-donald-trump/index.html

[Stavros]

Donald Trump (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) on Thursday again lamented the removal of Confederate statues from US cities, saying these removals “ripped apart” the country’s history and culture.

He then compared statues of Confederate leaders like Stonewall Jackson to monuments of US founding fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

“The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” Trump tweeted.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/17/trump-neo-nazis-antifa-moral-equivalence-tweets-charlottesville


If he has the balls, General Kelly should take his boss to one side and tell him that he is in a hole, and to stop digging it deeper, and deeper. But let's face it, this is a President who will tell it like he sees it, even if he is blind to history, and seeks to invent it, rather than to 'rip it apart'. I even wonder if he knows what the Civil War was and why it was fought, he hasn't shown much interest in the history of his country before.

[filghy2]

He can't stop digging because, aside from underlying sympathies for white nationalism, Trump seems to have a pathological aversion to being seen to have been pressured into backing down. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/16/trump-charlottesville-temper-chaos-241721
It's scary that a man so driven by these motives has his finger on the nuclear button.

[blackchubby38]

To be fair, I do think there is a segment of the left that has been violent. Destroying public property on the campus of Berkley because they don't want someone speaking, throwing eggs at Trump supporters, or what occurred during the riots in Charlotte last summer. Lets not forget the cops that have been assassinated over the past 2 years. While the murderers themselves didn't have any political affiliation, they targeted a specific group that they they felt was part of the establishment. The 1960s' was filled with leftist violence as some thought that was the only way to enact social change.

The difference between the groups that I have mentioned and white supremacists and Neo Nazis, is that we have seen what happens when the latter comes to power and they're able to achieve their final solution.

[Stavros]

To be fair, I do think there is a segment of the left that has been violent. Destroying public property on the campus of Berkley because they don't want someone speaking, throwing eggs at Trump supporters, or what occurred during the riots in Charlotte last summer. Lets not forget the cops that have been assassinated over the past 2 years. While the murderers themselves didn't have any political affiliation, they targeted a specific group that they they felt was part of the establishment. The 1960s' was filled with leftist violence as some thought that was the only way to enact social change.

The difference between the groups that I have mentioned and white supremacists and Neo Nazis, is that we have seen what happens when the latter comes to power and they're able to achieve their final solution.

You need to prove that the people responsible identify themselves as 'left' -and are 'left' by a more objective set of criteria- with the problem that it is not clear to me what it means in the USA. The kind of people who smash windows are mostly anarchists, who are not thought of as 'left-wing', so I am not sure who it is you are talking about. We have had plenty of demos in the UK which resulted in the smashing of windows, defaced monuments, violent acts against the police -though none intended to kill or even severely injure. The socialist movements of Europe have existed for a long time and are embedded in our politics in a way that did not take root in the US notwithstanding the wobblies and occasional examples of union militancy such as in the auto industry in the 1920s. A large grouping of anti-fascists again might lead people to assume they are all left-wing, but this also may not be true. The ACLU is often derided as a left-wing organization by its critics 'on the right' yet it supported the right of the rally to take place in Emancipation Park as a defence of the First Amendment.

It seems to me that a diverse group of people opposed to nationalism, white nationalism, white supremacy etc may not by definition be 'left' as the default position to 'the right', not in the US. In Europe the left bases its programme on a critique of the state and capitalism, it has an agenda in which control of the state apparatus is used to re-structure the economy so that the benefits of production are distributed more evenly, and believes that public services should be provided by the state rather than the market. The left is also opposed to nationalism replacing it with the belief that international co-operation is the only guarantee of world peace. There is a lot of laziness and obscurity in the use of labels, but few which can mistake what the groupings under 'alt-right' intend, and that is also because of the additional dimension in the USA of its deeply woven divisions between ethnic identity groupings which make it hard to place them on the left. The UK may have been deeply involved in the slave trade, but we never had slavery in the form it existed in the US, and that has created a profound cultural difference. Again, consider the Black Panther Party in the 1970s which attempted to fuse Marxism with Black Nationalism, even though the two are in contradiction. Is Black Lives Matter a left-wing organization? It is a complex problem but I don't know if a more nuanced definition of terms will make a difference when people become polarized by differences around which they gather for solidarity even when they don't actually agree on a lot of things. Another example would be feminism -are all feminist movements left-wing? I hope you see the problems of definition here.

[hippifried]

I agree with most of what you say, but the present situation is generated by the tussle over monuments to the Confederacy, so as far as day to day news goes, it has become, if temporarily, a 'Southern' specific issue.
Next week, however the focus could shift to Phoenix Arizona where the President plans to hold a rally -organized by his re-election committee (!). Will you be going? For the Do-nuts, if nothing else?
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/arizona-rally-donald-trump/index.html

Well... Not being part of the secret society, I don't know where the rally's being held. Has to be indoors because it's still over 100 degrees (37.7c) here. Without an invitation (aka $$$$$), I'd get stuck outside between the cops, antifa, Klan/Nazis, & Mexicans. Could be dangerously entertaining, butteye'm an old cripple with a flat screen in my air conditioned cave. I'll wait for the reruns. Riots are a young man's game. I did my part in the '60s & '70s. It's y'all's turn.

[Yvonne183]

This isn't a southern problem. Back in the 50s, the Ku Klux Klan was able to muster up massive crowds for rallies and marches (in full regalia) across the northern and central tiers. Am I the only one old enough to remember how nasty things got over busing in 1970s Boston? It's been what? 10 or 15 years since Cincinnati was ripped apart by race riots? Let's not forget LA, & I'm amazed Oakland hasn't exploded. Coeur d' Alene, Idaho has a huge concentration of reactionary supremacists. Until recently (not sure if it's still true), upwards of 90% of printed Nazi literature was published in Lincoln, Nebraska.

This problem is all over the place. By concentrating on one region, you ignore the rest of the country, where things are just as fucked up, if not more so. Contemplate the fact that every city in the USA is segregated by race and/or ethnicity.

In most cases the cities you mentioned that are segregated, it is white liberals who segregate themselves from blacks. Go to Baltimore and go to the white enclaves and you'll find mostly liberals.

From George Orwell:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. History has stopped. Nothing exists except in an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

[Stavros]

In most cases the cities you mentioned that are segregated, it is white liberals who segregate themselves from blacks. Go to Baltimore and go to the white enclaves and you'll find mostly liberals.


Hi Yvonne, loved the Orwell quote!

Here is the curious thing about Baltimore, dominated by Democrats since the 1960s - consider this from Newt Gingrich:
All Americans should care enough about their fellow citizens trapped with bad leadership, bad government, selfish bureaucrats, and misleading news media. All of us should care about creating a much better future for poor Americans. That future has to start with a fact-based analysis of how we got here and who has been responsible.

In Baltimore City, the answer is Democrat officials, who for a half century have crippled and weakened what was once a great and vibrant city.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/05/18/who-caused-baltimores-collapse/

-then ask -so why don't citizens in this failing city vote Republican?
Gingrich could answer that in view of the industrial decline of the city and a significant loss of its population, leaving behind a largely Black and unemployed population, the Republicans offer nothing but more of the same, so they may as well vote Democrat. His own version of capitalism is in fact responsible for the economic decline that has had such a devastating impact on Baltimore, but he won't accept any responsibility for it, and blames it on Democrats instead.

Here, for example, is a snapshot of what happened in a city which was once the 6th largest in the USA and an important source of steel, shipbuilding and motor manufacture:

In 1971, when Sparrows Point was the largest steel mill in the country, a surge in steel imports led to massive layoffs among domestic producers. Three thousand workers at Sparrow Point lost their jobs that year, followed by another 7,000 in 1975.6 By the late 1980s, the workforce had dwindled to 8,000, accompanied by a decline in wages and benefits as the union conceded on many pay and benefits issues.7 Baltimore workers could no longer look to steel as a source of middle-class wages and job security.
The story of Bethlehem’s steel mill at Sparrows Point is a microcosm of economic changes that profoundly affected Baltimore and other “rust belt” cities across the US during this period. The manufacturing industries, having long been the economic base for employment and output for nearly a century, dwindled and disappeared.
Baltimore lost over 100,000 manufacturing jobs between 1950 and 1995, 75% of its industrial employment — not to mention most of the jobs with union representation. Currently, only 6% of all jobs in the City are in manufacturing. The collapse of industry led to a number of changes in the demographic makeup of the City and the surrounding region, contributing to a crisis in urban poverty that lingers today.
http://www.nathanielturner.com/robertmooreand1199union3.htm

-And note that this decline began in the early 1970s when Nixon was President. Somewhere in these stories of the US and the rage against a system that has not provided secure well-paid jobs is a simple fact about capitalism: it has no nationality, it has no colour, and it has no mercy. When it is more profitable to produce in Sector B than Sector A, then production will move from one to the other, and is unlikely to return.

[hippifried]

I agree with most of what you say, but the present situation is generated by the tussle over monuments to the Confederacy, so as far as day to day news goes, it has become, if temporarily, a 'Southern' specific issue.
Next week, however the focus could shift to Phoenix Arizona where the President plans to hold a rally -organized by his re-election committee (!). Will you be going? For the Do-nuts, if nothing else?
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/arizona-rally-donald-trump/index.html

Apparently, the Klan/Nazis have been hard at work here in the desert too. But the fruit of their labor got vandalized Wednesday night. The bronze statue, dedicated to the soldiers of the Confederacy, in the park across the street from the front door of the State capital building, got a coat of white paint. Then out on US 60, a roadside monument (bronze plate set in stone) to Jefferson Davis was tarred and feathered. Those horrible liberals are making it harder and more expensive to use State funding to appease the knuckle draggers who moved here from the eastern cities, during the "white flight" of the'80s.

This is the southwest. We're not a southern state. Arizona didn't even exist when the plantation owners attempted to steal a big chunk of the country.

[broncofan]

In most cases the cities you mentioned that are segregated, it is white liberals who segregate themselves from blacks. Go to Baltimore and go to the white enclaves and you'll find mostly liberals.

From George Orwell:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. History has stopped. Nothing exists except in an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Hi Yvonne, nice to see you back. I'm not sure the critique of white liberals is fair. I am very familiar with Baltimore and some of the areas you refer to are dangerous enough that neither white liberals nor white republicans would want to live there. In fact, the neighborhoods are not considered desirable by African-Americans or anyone else.

The reason is that they are very poor areas where there is drug trafficking and other crime. It is likely that these areas are the way they are because of structural racism and the effects of generations of bigotry. But if a person's reason for avoiding an area is safety, it's not really hypocrisy.

Either way, you seem to be equating the failure of liberals to single-handedly eliminate the effects of generations of structural racism with active racism. In fact, most of the more aggressive efforts to address these problems are opposed by Republicans and supported by Democrats.

You're right that white liberals avoid certain areas in Baltimore but is that really worse than equating people who march yelling "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us" with people who came out to oppose them? Why is it you think Republicans tend to poll so badly with African-Americans? I'm not suggesting that because African-Americans tend to vote for the Democratic party that we cannot be better on civil rights, but there is clearly a perception among minorities that Republicans do not care about these issues.

You also seem to indicate that removing a statue of Robert Lee is historical erasure. But there are museums which contain artifacts from both sides of the civil war and there are books that meticulously and accurately document what happened. The statues themselves only glorify people who fought to dissolve our nation and came closer than any other enemy to doing so. Their motivation for engaging in that fight was to preserve the ownership of other human beings. Nobody should feel obligated to memorialize an enemy or to venerate racism and its defenders.

[Ben in LA]

Hi Yvonne, loved the Orwell quote!

Here is the curious thing about Baltimore, dominated by Democrats since the 1960s - consider this from Newt Gingrich:
All Americans should care enough about their fellow citizens trapped with bad leadership, bad government, selfish bureaucrats, and misleading news media. All of us should care about creating a much better future for poor Americans. That future has to start with a fact-based analysis of how we got here and who has been responsible.

In Baltimore City, the answer is Democrat officials, who for a half century have crippled and weakened what was once a great and vibrant city.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/05/18/who-caused-baltimores-collapse/

-then ask -so why don't citizens in this failing city vote Republican?
Gingrich could answer that in view of the industrial decline of the city and a significant loss of its population, leaving behind a largely Black and unemployed population, the Republicans offer nothing but more of the same, so they may as well vote Democrat. His own version of capitalism is in fact responsible for the economic decline that has had such a devastating impact on Baltimore, but he won't accept any responsibility for it, and blames it on Democrats instead.

Here, for example, is a snapshot of what happened in a city which was once the 6th largest in the USA and an important source of steel, shipbuilding and motor manufacture:

In 1971, when Sparrows Point was the largest steel mill in the country, a surge in steel imports led to massive layoffs among domestic producers. Three thousand workers at Sparrow Point lost their jobs that year, followed by another 7,000 in 1975.6 By the late 1980s, the workforce had dwindled to 8,000, accompanied by a decline in wages and benefits as the union conceded on many pay and benefits issues.7 Baltimore workers could no longer look to steel as a source of middle-class wages and job security.
The story of Bethlehem’s steel mill at Sparrows Point is a microcosm of economic changes that profoundly affected Baltimore and other “rust belt” cities across the US during this period. The manufacturing industries, having long been the economic base for employment and output for nearly a century, dwindled and disappeared.
Baltimore lost over 100,000 manufacturing jobs between 1950 and 1995, 75% of its industrial employment — not to mention most of the jobs with union representation. Currently, only 6% of all jobs in the City are in manufacturing. The collapse of industry led to a number of changes in the demographic makeup of the City and the surrounding region, contributing to a crisis in urban poverty that lingers today.
http://www.nathanielturner.com/robertmooreand1199union3.htm

-And note that this decline began in the early 1970s when Nixon was President. Somewhere in these stories of the US and the rage against a system that has not provided secure well-paid jobs is a simple fact about capitalism: it has no nationality, it has no colour, and it has no mercy. When it is more profitable to produce in Sector B than Sector A, then production will move from one to the other, and is unlikely to return.
And THAT'S why trump's bullshit promise of bringing manufacturing jobs back won't happen. Companies have no insentives to do so.

On the topic of the monuments, not only are they monuments to traitors, they're also intimidation pieces. Many of them were erected during the Civil Rights era, with spikes around the time major civil rights legislation was being passed. The chart below shows this. Just look at the time around the decisions of Plessy vs Ferguson and Brown vs Board of Education.

Another angle. Imagine if Jews of today in Germany had to attend a high school called Hitler High or Goebbels's Elementary. If Italians had to attend Mussolini University. Not cool, right? Yet that's EXACTLY what's going on right now.

Some on the right are now complaining about the timing of the calling for the removals. They obviously haven't been paying attention Because said call has been going on for YEARS. Charlottesville just accelerated it and made it louder.

1024451

EDIT: A larger version of the photo can be found at this link (https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/whoseheritage-timeline150_years_of_iconography.jpg).

[fred41]

You need to prove that the people responsible identify themselves as 'left' -and are 'left' by a more objective set of criteria- with the problem that it is not clear to me what it means in the USA. The kind of people who smash windows are mostly anarchists, who are not thought of as 'left-wing', so I am not sure who it is you are talking about. We have had plenty of demos in the UK which resulted in the smashing of windows, defaced monuments, violent acts against the police -though none intended to kill or even severely injure. The socialist movements of Europe have existed for a long time and are embedded in our politics in a way that did not take root in the US notwithstanding the wobblies and occasional examples of union militancy such as in the auto industry in the 1920s. A large grouping of anti-fascists again might lead people to assume they are all left-wing, but this also may not be true. The ACLU is often derided as a left-wing organization by its critics 'on the right' yet it supported the right of the rally to take place in Emancipation Park as a defence of the First Amendment.

It seems to me that a diverse group of people opposed to nationalism, white nationalism, white supremacy etc may not by definition be 'left' as the default position to 'the right', not in the US. In Europe the left bases its programme on a critique of the state and capitalism, it has an agenda in which control of the state apparatus is used to re-structure the economy so that the benefits of production are distributed more evenly, and believes that public services should be provided by the state rather than the market. The left is also opposed to nationalism replacing it with the belief that international co-operation is the only guarantee of world peace. There is a lot of laziness and obscurity in the use of labels, but few which can mistake what the groupings under 'alt-right' intend, and that is also because of the additional dimension in the USA of its deeply woven divisions between ethnic identity groupings which make it hard to place them on the left. The UK may have been deeply involved in the slave trade, but we never had slavery in the form it existed in the US, and that has created a profound cultural difference. Again, consider the Black Panther Party in the 1970s which attempted to fuse Marxism with Black Nationalism, even though the two are in contradiction. Is Black Lives Matter a left-wing organization? It is a complex problem but I don't know if a more nuanced definition of terms will make a difference when people become polarized by differences around which they gather for solidarity even when they don't actually agree on a lot of things. Another example would be feminism -are all feminist movements left-wing? I hope you see the problems of definition here.

I see the problems with definition, I think many people do. But for the purposes of argument and news articles the simple labels work easier. When you are willing, perhaps even chomping at the bit, to use violence as a form of protest, then you are an extremist. You are not a violent moderate. So that leaves the middle out of it. The alt. right and the antifa movement are not two extreme right groups going at it. What you probably need is an in depth study of what the different sides are composed of, but that is left to the scholarly and not going to always come up in your average news article. The left fringe is going to be anti establishment (which a lot of the extreme right are also...I wouldn't be surprised if there were some occasional cross over) with a smattering of more extreme socialism (feel the Bern...you will probably get more of this added to the group).
The reality is what motivates a protestor? If a protestor gets off mostly on the adrenaline rush caused by breaking the law...and then really gets off even more on the violence, then ideology really doesn't matter. It's then simply a rationale. It makes you an extremist with only two side to choose for simplicities sake. Right or Left.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/unmasking-antifa-anti-fascists-hard-left/index.html

[Stavros]

On the topic of the monuments, not only are they monuments to traitors, they're also intimidation pieces. Many of them were erected during the Civil Rights era, with spikes around the time major civil rights legislation was being passed. The chart below shows this. Just look at the time around the decisions of Plessy vs Ferguson and Brown vs Board of Education.


This is a key point because even on the BBC yesterday or the day before their North America correspondent made a passing reference to the monuments as a 19th century legacy, whereas if more people were made aware of these dates, they might be shocked into realising the context in which they were erected -often with no direct connection to the Civil War-, and not feel so bad about seeing them go, assuming that is their preference.

By contrast, one of the most intriguing and in its own way, moving of monuments is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. I had read an article on it a few years before I saw it, but was surprised at how effective it is, I would even go so far as to say that it is one of the finest memorials of its kind I have seen, using memorials in London, Paris, Rome, Moscow and St Petersburg as comparisons. In part it is because of the quality of the stone (sourced from Bangalore in southern India for its reflective qualities), in part the symbolic position of the wall whose edges point at one end towards the Washington monument and the Lincoln Memorial at the other, and because there is no ornamentation, it is 'simply' a wall covered in names.

The controversial question could be why should there be a memorial to a conflict that so damaged the reputation of the USA, was a military failure, and one that caused so much unnecessary destruction of human life and the environment in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia? Yet on another level, the Vietnam war became a conversation, or an argument, in the USA about the USA by the people who live there, and though it was not a civil war that challenged the integrity of the USA, there was -perhaps has always been- a need for 'closure' because the wounds that were opened by the war and its conduct were at their most sore in the USA itself.

I wonder if the moral interrogation that followed the Vietnam war has since been replaced by something more dangerous, because it is so cynical -the acceptance of the unacceptable in Iraq, not once but twice, and the ease with which the armed forces intervene directly or by drone in numerous countries without a trace of regret. I don't know if it is 9/11 that changed the moral agenda as well as the old arguments about the causes of war, and the conduct of war, but it seems there is an assumption that wars can now be fought without accountability or oversight, and that is a world away from Vietnam, and I can't see how any monuments would help, which may be why I believe US administrations have so far resisted creating monuments for veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Stavros]

I see the problems with definition, I think many people do. But for the purposes of argument and news articles the simple labels work easier. When you are willing, perhaps even chomping at the bit, to use violence as a form of protest, then you are an extremist. You are not a violent moderate. So that leaves the middle out of it. The alt. right and the antifa movement are not two extreme right groups going at it. What you probably need is an in depth study of what the different sides are composed of, but that is left to the scholarly and not going to always come up in your average news article. The left fringe is going to be anti establishment (which a lot of the extreme right are also...I wouldn't be surprised if there were some occasional cross over) with a smattering of more extreme socialism (feel the Bern...you will probably get more of this added to the group).
The reality is what motivates a protestor? If a protestor gets off mostly on the adrenaline rush caused by breaking the law...and then really gets off even more on the violence, then ideology really doesn't matter. It's then simply a rationale. It makes you an extremist with only two side to choose for simplicities sake. Right or Left.


I agree because it is always easier to collapse complex arguments into a slogan, and the news at the pace it goes today is not really going to pause to unravel the true idenity of the participants in demonstrations and riots unless they do a 'deep background' piece aired at 11pm when most people have gone to bed.

I think the violence at demonstrations may be a symptom of the deeper problem that we rely on established political parties to manage the state, yet they have presided over change that has not brought or sustained prosperity for most of those in work while the political system itself seems gridlocked and unable to make clear decisions, with no new policies and no new parties emerging to 'break the mould' and take us in a new direction. Meanwhile, capitalism continues to innovate rather than collapse, but creates new ways of making money without creating millions of new jobs to do it. Most people do not support the violent fringe, but do wonder if change is going to happen, if it will be positive, and where it will come from. And will it bring jobs and economic growth to places like Baltimore? A question to which I don't have an answer, but I suspect any economic revival there will never again create jobs in the volumes it once did, though it does mean some will benefit.

Or, the US could end the 'war on drugs', and legalize narcotics so that all those gangs selling drugs on street corners can go legit, open shops and factories and make an honest buck from something that, like alcohol a century of so ago was also illegal and integrated into organized crime.

[filghy2]

It seems that even Robert E Lee may not have been keen on building these monuments http://econospeak.blogspot.com.au/2017/08/i-agree-with-robert-e-lee.html

[blackchubby38]

You need to prove that the people responsible identify themselves as 'left' -and are 'left' by a more objective set of criteria- with the problem that it is not clear to me what it means in the USA. The kind of people who smash windows are mostly anarchists, who are not thought of as 'left-wing', so I am not sure who it is you are talking about. We have had plenty of demos in the UK which resulted in the smashing of windows, defaced monuments, violent acts against the police -though none intended to kill or even severely injure. The socialist movements of Europe have existed for a long time and are embedded in our politics in a way that did not take root in the US notwithstanding the wobblies and occasional examples of union militancy such as in the auto industry in the 1920s. A large grouping of anti-fascists again might lead people to assume they are all left-wing, but this also may not be true. The ACLU is often derided as a left-wing organization by its critics 'on the right' yet it supported the right of the rally to take place in Emancipation Park as a defence of the First Amendment.

It seems to me that a diverse group of people opposed to nationalism, white nationalism, white supremacy etc may not by definition be 'left' as the default position to 'the right', not in the US. In Europe the left bases its programme on a critique of the state and capitalism, it has an agenda in which control of the state apparatus is used to re-structure the economy so that the benefits of production are distributed more evenly, and believes that public services should be provided by the state rather than the market. The left is also opposed to nationalism replacing it with the belief that international co-operation is the only guarantee of world peace. There is a lot of laziness and obscurity in the use of labels, but few which can mistake what the groupings under 'alt-right' intend, and that is also because of the additional dimension in the USA of its deeply woven divisions between ethnic identity groupings which make it hard to place them on the left. The UK may have been deeply involved in the slave trade, but we never had slavery in the form it existed in the US, and that has created a profound cultural difference. Again, consider the Black Panther Party in the 1970s which attempted to fuse Marxism with Black Nationalism, even though the two are in contradiction. Is Black Lives Matter a left-wing organization? It is a complex problem but I don't know if a more nuanced definition of terms will make a difference when people become polarized by differences around which they gather for solidarity even when they don't actually agree on a lot of things. Another example would be feminism -are all feminist movements left-wing? I hope you see the problems of definition here.

Black Lives Matter could be definitely considered a far left wing organization. Just look at the political platform they tried to push forward last year.

As for the people who destroyed public property on Berkeley, they did it in response to Ann Coulter having a speaking engagement on campus. Considering Coulter's politics, some of the people who did it would identify themselves as being left wing.

Look do I see the problems with definitions? Yes. Many discussions are more nuanced more than others. Feminism is a great example of this because depending on you ask, you will get a different answer as to what it means.

But sometimes the definition does fit and not just because of simplicity and the brevity that comes with an article on the internet. Sometimes its just simple common sense.

[Stavros]

Black Lives Matter could be definitely considered a far left wing organization. Just look at the political platform they tried to push forward last year.
As for the people who destroyed public property on Berkeley, they did it in response to Ann Coulter having a speaking engagement on campus. Considering Coulter's politics, some of the people who did it would identify themselves as being left wing.
Look do I see the problems with definitions? Yes. Many discussions are more nuanced more than others. Feminism is a great example of this because depending on you ask, you will get a different answer as to what it means.
But sometimes the definition does fit and not just because of simplicity and the brevity that comes with an article on the internet. Sometimes its just simple common sense.

I would not describe Black Lives Matter as a 'far left' organization, but that is because I would consider its attitude to the State to be a key factor and I don't see any challenge to state power in their manifesto though it does challenge the way in which power is shared in the US- in this context it is less 'left-wing' than the original Black Panther Party. It is probably the difference in definition that comes from a European rather than an American perspective. Saul Alinsky would see BLM as a radical movement, and I see BLM in this context and in that American tradition of protest rather than from a 'left-right' viewpoint. The BLM website does help in this regard.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151006034352/http://blacklivesmatter.com:80/guiding-principles/