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Charlottesville Violence Not Our Fight
This weekend’s violence at the University of Virginia’s campus in Charlottesville, VA, was a clash between tribes. Inevitably, the opposing factions tried to prove their superiority by force, which is, fundamentally, the only argument that can be made for the supremacy of one tribe over another.
The fight was between two socialist factions – socialist because collectivism is the pathology of socialism, whether the national socialism of the right or the Marxist socialism of the left. Neither conservatives nor libertarians have a dog in this fight.
Published in General
I hadn’t read much about this story, which is why I posed my post as a question.
@umbrafractus
I like pedant as a verb. Do we change the emphasis, as with record (n) and record (v)? I like the sound of “A pedant’s gotta pedant.”
Our junior high newspaper was called the “The Voltairian.” That expression was on it’s masthead. Are you trying to say I was lied to all those years ago?
Hello, no, am not trying to say anything, just displaying my own ignorance; in earlier comments on this thread, Salvatore Padula says that the quote was incorrectly attributed to Voltaire by one of his biographers, so apparently it’s not clear who created that brilliant quote, but I wasn’t even on the right planet in thinking it was one of the Founding Fathers. I could have and should have googled it before posting the comment, but oh well :)
Where did I give leftists a pass? The “counter-protestors” went there to cause trouble. They hold views and use tactics which I find repellent. But they are associated with the Democrats and are a problem for that Party just as the perceived association between the Neo-Nazis and the Republican Party is a problem for the GOP. There is a political element to all this. The fact is that the GOP/ Trump can will be slaughtered if they don’t distance themselves sufficiently. Which will be to the benefit of the Democrats and their Antifa buddies.
I have said that I believe in the right of Neo Nazi scum to protest and in the right of others to defend that right. You seem to say that because the defender of Neo Nazi scum is exercising that defender’s right to free speech that is the end of the matter and others who are appalled by the Neo Nazi scum and their defenders should keep their opinions to themselves. That’s a pretty selective interpretation of the right to free speech
Cruz was also the only Presidential candidate to speak out against the Nazification of Southern heritage in the wake of the Charleston massacre. I like Trump’s statements better in this instance, but calling Cruz weak on BLM is ridiculous.
True, but the GOPe will nonetheless use this as an excuse to start openly supporting the removal of Confederate heritage monuments. Rich Lowry at National Review has already started:
“—I’ve been skeptical of the rush to pull up Confederate monuments, and Robert E. Lee—the focus in Charlottesville—is not Nathan Bedford Forrest. But if the monuments are going to become rallying points for neo-Nazis, maybe they really do need to go.”
Trump and the GOP will be slaughtered on this regardless, but I agreee that they should distance themselves from and condemn the alt-right, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, etc. in the strongest possible terms.
We know that the election of Trump empowered these people, because they say that they feel empowered by the election of Trump. That means Trump needs to lead the charge against them. I was glad to hear him strongly condemn them in his speech, and I think he needs to keep at it (and stay on script while he does it).
Careful, you might start saying that people with wrong opinions also have a right to self defense as well.
Untrue. If that were true the narrative of this rally would be about violent extremists attacking a peaceful rally with the tacit support of the Governor of the State of Virginia, and local law enforcement.
Political extremism and violence isn’t a problem for the left, because they either approve of it, or the right doesn’t make it painful for them.
The failure of the mainstream right to make the left bleed on these issues is (one of the reasons) why the alt-right is growing.
I would feel differently if BLM were peacefully assembling in the park and reading their slam poetry, and a bunch of Nazis descended on them and started beating them up too.
I live in a coastal city in NC. In the part of town where my wife plays tennis at her country club, the streets are
Longstreet
Lee
Hill
Jackson
Stuart
and I kid you not
Bedford Forrest
Why are we letting the Left define the terms?
All the Alt Right are white supremacists?
You want to throw people like John Derbyshire, Mike Cernovich, Stefan Mollieuneux, Voxday etc etc into that basket?
With a guy like VoxDay specifically, people don’t have to be Antifa to get the impression he’s done quite a bit lately to throw himself in that basket. When VoxDay tries to draw distinctions like,
what a lot of perfectly ordinary people get out of that might not be that VoxDay sincerely believes that “Alt-West” is distinct from “Alt-White”, but that VoxDay considers Naziism “semiotically useful”. When a guy tells the world Nazi bull puckery is useful rather than useless, is it wrong for ordinary people to wonder whether that’s getting a little too close to actually allying with white supremacists, neo-nazis, and others who seem to think the Nazis had the right idea?
To people not already intimately engaged with the alt-right, an insider’s careful taxonomizing of the alt-right is much harder to follow than the provocative nuggets asserting stuff like racist, fascist thugs still serve a “semiotically useful” purpose from his perspective.
What are you going to do about them? They’re prepared to use force and intimidation. During the Obama years and in many jurisdictions around the country they had and still have the tacit support of the political power structure and law enforcement.
And please don’t ask a question in return – Answer the question.
The problem with the position that Lowry takes is that it wasn’t the monuments that have been rallying points, it is the removal of the monuments that has generated the rallies. That would suggest that Lowry’s proposal would make the problem worse, not better.
How have we not distanced ourselves sufficiently? You seem to be saying that unless we take away the free speech rights of neo nazis, or look the other way when said rights are violated, that we are not distancing ourselves sufficiently.
In my first comment, I pointed out that at least two people who appeared on Fox News were using these riots as a call to take all free speech rights away from Neo Nazis; one of them said that Neo Nazis should have no voice; the other one said that “hate speech” is not protected by the First Amendment. When people want to silence those they disagree with, that is an attack on the Constitution, and it doesn’t matter how despicable the people they disagree with are. I see this as a much bigger problem than white nationalism; you, obviously, don’t.
I don’t know how much you actually know about America; maybe you have been led to believe that there is a neo nazi here under every rock and behind every tree, but that is not the case. Neo nazis are a very tiny group of people, and they are losing numbers all the time. To act as if they are some kind of huge threat is dishonest; those who want to silence them are just getting their nose into the tent so that they can silence others. Sorry if you can’t see this.
Most intelligent comment I’ve read on this topic in two days. People have been putting on the other team’s uniform and behaving badly for a very long time. Sadly, it is a tactic of the commie/progs that continues to work. Who knows what really was going on or why? Perhaps only the ones who planned it. We should know by now it takes 48 to 72 hours to get any information remotely close to the whole truth from any sources these days about almost anything.
Some other questions I have: How does anyone know in advance that these events are even going to occur? Who did the planning, coordinated the people, dealt with the logistics, paid the bills, provided the compensation? What was the purpose? Why now? Why there? Why was it “advertised”/ promoted so heavily? and, by whom? I don’t believe any of it went down the way it looks to have happened — too produced to be authentic. Press, cameras, everyone was set-up and prepared at just the right spot, at just the right moments, etc., etc. ready to roll as soon as the director shouted Action! Although, it may have gone off script once it got going, or not. Who knows? Maybe it all happened just as hoped. The city, the county, and the state knew it was going to be “produced” and agreed to allowed this event to happen. I would like to know why. Who, so far, is gaining the most from this tragic nonsense?
Three people died?
Actually, I suggested that because those who organized the march called themselves that. I was referring specifically to the march.
One person from the car attack, and two police officers whose helicopter crashed in an apparent accident.
Oh, my.
Hi Judithann, Please read my comments and tell me where I have tried to silence anyone or advocated that anyone be silenced?
I’m not going to respond to your personal comments other than to say that I have been a member here for seven years now and I follow American politics very closely. I believe that I have a pretty good understanding of those politics.
Oh, and I agree that the term “hate speech” is grossly abused by the left to shut down arguments they don’t like or can’t handle.
When I brought up the people who are using this tragedy as an excuse to try to take away free speech rights, you accused me of “clutching at free speech straws”. You have not explicitly advocated that anyone be silenced, but you remain silent wile others do, and you attack people like me who are trying to protect free speech; you have also suggested that people like me have not denounced neo nazism sufficiently, though you have given no details about that, even though I asked you to. You seem to believe that neo nazism is a huge problem in America that is not sufficiently denounced, which leads me to believe that you don’t understand America all that well.
I would encourage you to read this post by @johnkluge; he articulates this much better than I do, and he is saying everything that I have been trying to say
I confess being unfamiliar with some of these names, but John Derbyshire was a speaker at a white nationalist convention last month and Mike Cernovich recently alleged the HR McMaster is being controlled by the Rothchilds, so I’m not sure I’d rule it out.
I’m sorry to see John Derbyshire go around the bend, if indeed he has. He was always entertaining.
Yup.
I feel like he went at least five years ago, after his infamous essay and firing from NRO. Admittedly, I have a very low opinion of VDARE and their ilk.
To be fair to Cerno, I get the impression he’s speculated favorably on so many conspiracy theories at this point that his clan is more Infowars than anything else. He might, quite colorblindly, just consider paranoia an equal-opportunity employer.