Right-wing vs. Left-wing Clashes [MOD NOTE POST #1]

marcus001

super_furry wrote: »

"Evidence"? Sounds like your trying to put the victim of a racist attack on trial here.

Why? Is all evidence naturally going to work against the alleged victim here? How do you know my evidence doesn't strengthen his case? Why so afraid of evidence? Is it because the photograph was enough to let you make your mind up, and now it's made up it would be too painful for you to backtrack? That's the problem with making your mind up too early, you'll just shut out all new information.

vetinari

marcus001 wrote: »

What is your point exactly? have you never heard of antifa before? :pac:

I thought it was clear enough. 99.99% of people on this site have probably not heard of Antifa. It's pretty unusual to see them mentioned so much on this thread. Hence my comments about bots.

marcus001

vetinari wrote: »

I thought it was clear enough. 99.99% of people on this site have probably not heard of Antifa. It's pretty unusual to see them mentioned so much on this thread. Hence my comments about bots.

99.99999999% of people on this site have heard of Antifa. Some of them are actually IN Antifa. You haven't a clue what you're on about.

Chips Lovell

I'm going to lock this thread for a little while to give everyone an opportunity to re-read the charter (or read it if you haven't already). Because its quite evident that a lot of people aren't aware of it or are choosing to ignore it.

Chips Lovell

Reopening now. If you haven't read the charter, be it on your own head.

Danzy

It might be an idea to repaste pages 18-30 ahead and save us all a lot of time?

The Legend Of Kira

[font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Peter Tefft the fellow who has being named in the media & reported that his family disowned him and that, I watched him in this interview he gave last night, I will say straight out after watching him + hearing him out he,s very extreme in his views & I would disagree with him on his political views regarding identity politics the " pro white "  he said , now regarding no platforming people if he was no platformed I wouldn,t of being able to hear him out in an interview[/font][font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif] & see 1st hand what he,s really like + really all about, but because he wasn,t no platformed & left do that interview I have being able form my own opinion on his political views once I heard him out, if you no platform people its harder to form an opinion on someone cause you haven,t heard them out to see what they re really all about and all that .[/font]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8iGXW7USPw

[font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8iGXW7USPw
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The Legend Of Kira

[font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]I was at two minds whether to post this or not, I don,t like being misrepresented by anyone, someone recently said I retweet stuff from certain people about " white supremacy " here are 4 screenshots of 4 retweets.[/font]
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[font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]For clarity people will see there is no context of " white supremacy " in any of those retweets, the last retweet screensave is a linked news article about coverage of this past weekends events, I retweet various political people of various political views.[/font]

The Legend Of Kira

Talk of escalation now, "  Seattle has a statue of Lenin, a man who sent thousands of innocents to die in labor camps.

So I'm just gonna go pull it down. Cool? " .

https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/897483294874488832

This whole row over confederate statues that lead to last weekends rally + counter rally etc-wouldn,t it of been easier to put issue to local referendum/direct democracy & let people vote on it ? I would refer to Switzerland holding referendums/direct democracy on different issues each year, How often are there political street protests or political violence in Switzerland ? hardly any because the people get more of a direct say on issues .

hatrickpatrick

Silver Lynel wrote: »

There is even an impression that the left are these stuffy humorless authoritarians and the right are so edgy and alternative and funny. This is probably attractive to young people. It's worrying.

Used to be that the right would be trying to ban video games or Pokemon or Harry Potter and the young people would laugh at them and seek out ways to rebel against them. Now it seems like the impression is that the right are the rebels and the left are the authoritarian, no fun, censorious, establishment.

Bingo. I identified as liberal / left wing for my entire young life because "conservative" was synonymous with "cultural authoritarian". Now that "liberal" is synonymous with "cultural authoritarian", I pretty much support nobody. There seem to be very few left wing cultural libertarians like myself - everyone these days seems to be either left wing and pro-censorship, or right wing and anti-censorship. So much so that the very existence of people like myself is denied by a lot of people - they will bracket me in and accuse me either of being a closeted alt-right supporter, or a closeted cultural authoritarian concern troll.

It's very, very sad.

For Reals

The Legend Of Kira wrote: »

[font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]I was at two minds whether to post this or not, I don,t like being misrepresented by anyone, someone recently said I retweet stuff from certain people about " white supremacy " here are 4 screenshots of 4 retweets....

It's not even just about the young woman who was murdered, but that is the story garnering most attention. That's unfortunate, I know. But that's how the media works. As white supremacist apologists look to the distractionary tactic of ''whatabout' antifa, all fine and dandy. The racists are upset on the media coverage. But the alternative, if we'd African American or Muslim Americans preaching hate against whites the police/national guard would have been mowing them down and if not there would have been calls from these very people concerned about media bias to do so.
The young lady murdered did nothing aggressive or hateful towards the man who murdered her. She was there to protest against hate. He showed it.

All the cries of bias media, justified or not don't disguise or excuse the KKK/Alt right.

You can be left leaning and against some PC initiatives, but if you're waving a sawstika, you are beyond 'saving Christmas' or whatever the Fox Alt-Right campaign was, you're a terroist and a criminal.

hatrickpatrick

The Legend Of Kira wrote: »

This whole row over confederate statues that lead to last weekends rally + counter rally etc-wouldn,t it of been easier to put issue to local referendum/direct democracy & let people vote on it ? I would refer to Switzerland holding referendums/direct democracy on different issues each year, How often are there political street protests or political violence in Switzerland ? hardly any because the people get more of a direct say on issues .

The authoritarian left would never stand for that. Look at how many of them have denigrated the very concept of democracy after the election of Trump and the passing of Brexit.

They'd either oppose it outright, or they'd demand some set of criteria to be eligible for voting, which would conveniently (and totally coincidentally of course :rolleyes:) bar right-leaning folk from voting. This was also widely discussed on social media after the Brexit vote - everything from an upper age limit ("because old people don't have to live too long with the consequences of their votes") to minimum established education requirements, etc.

The Legend Of Kira

For Reals wrote: »

The Legend Of Kira wrote: »

[font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]I was at two minds whether to post this or not, I don,t like being misrepresented by anyone, someone recently said I retweet stuff from certain people about " white supremacy " here are 4 screenshots of 4 retweets....

It's not even just about the young woman who was murdered, but that is the story garnering most attention. That's unfortunate, I know. But that's how the media works. As white supremacist apologists look to the distractionary tactic of ''whatabout' antifa, all fine and dandy. The racists are upset on the media coverage. But the alternative, if we'd African American or Muslim Americans preaching hate against whites the police/national guard would have been mowing them down and if not there would have been calls from these very people concerned about media bias to do so.
The young lady murdered did nothing aggressive or hateful towards the man who murdered her. She was there to protest against hate. He showed it.

All the cries of bias media, justified or not don't disguise or excuse the KKK/Alt right.

A lot of people think + feel regarding condemnation of extreme groups that its all 1 sided, extreme groups be it extreme right/extreme left etc need to be all condemned equally .

Danzy

This is the problem with identity politics, it becomes a pissing contest.

You could start ripping down every statue of Washington for slavery, Engels for his frankly genocidal views on Slavs, Mao, Stalin, Lenin for the 100 million + that died at their hands.

Identity politics thrives on division, us, them, me, me, me, it is the opposite of class politics, it is the opposite of We.

Every sub group can be further broken down and the rest then become the enemy, ever further balkanization where the person you were campaigning with yesterday finds out that they are part of an oppressive identity group as far as you are concerned today, if there is not new division created then it just fades away.

For Reals

The Legend Of Kira wrote: »

A lot of people think + feel regarding condemnation of extreme groups that its all 1 sided, extreme groups be it extreme right/extreme left etc need to be all condemned equally .

They do.
It's difficult to see folks bypassing the swastika waving hate mongers to balance with complaints against the AntiFa, like one counters the other. It's dismissive and goes nowhere.

Chips Lovell

You shouldn't mistake something randomers on Twitter say as in any way representative of mainstream opinion.

For Reals

Jep Gambardella wrote: »

You shouldn't mistake something randomers on Twitter say as in any way representative of mainstream opinion.

Unless you're the President of the United States.

Danzy

For Reals wrote: »

They do.
It's difficult to see folks bypassing the swastika waving hate mongers to balance with complaints against the AntiFa, like one counters the other. It's dismissive and goes nowhere.

Fire both their authoritarian, violent asses into space.

Lots of people would end up against the wall if either ever came to power, there would be no end to the corpses, that is the tradition that both of them come from, that is the mindset of the type of individual that group like that appeal to.

InTheTrees

The Legend Of Kira wrote: »

Talk of escalation now, " Seattle has a statue of Lenin, a man who sent thousands of innocents to die in labor camps.

Thats pretty funny. I'm about a mile north of Fremont (in Seattle) right now. Its privately owned and its for sale. Its been moved a few times too. $250,000 and you can have it.

I also have no doubt that if anyone had any serious objections to it then it would be removed.

"Fremont was considered a quirky artistic community, and like other statues in the neighborhood (such as Waiting for the Interurban), the Lenin statue is often the victim of various artistic projects, endorsed or not.URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"]citation needed[/URL A glowing red star and sometimes Christmas lights have been added to the statue for Christmas since 2004.[11] For the 2004 Solstice Parade, the statue was made to look like John Lennon. During Gay Pride Week, the statue is dressed in drag. Other appropriations of the statue have included painting it as a clown, painting the hands blood-red, and clothing it in a custom-fitted red dress by the Seattle Hash House Harriers for their annual Red Dress Run.URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"]citation needed[/URL"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Lenin,_Seattle

https://goo.gl/maps/B1mZsQcihkM2

20Cent

The Legend Of Kira wrote: »

[font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Peter Tefft the fellow who has being named in the media & reported that his family disowned him and that, I watched him in this interview he gave last night, I will say straight out after watching him + hearing him out he,s very extreme in his views & I would disagree with him on his political views regarding identity politics the " pro white "  he said , now regarding no platforming people if he was no platformed I wouldn,t of being able to hear him out in an interview[/font][font=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif] & see 1st hand what he,s really like + really all about, but because he wasn,t no platformed & left do that interview I have being able form my own opinion on his political views once I heard him out, if you no platform people its harder to form an opinion on someone cause you haven,t heard them out to see what they re really all about and all that .

He has a platform. They have their publications, websites etc. Just because certain privately owned platforms don't want to be associated with them isn't censorship.
Why would anyone need an interview to figurs out if nazism is wring surely everyone has read some history or for the non book readers Shindlers list.

Rjd2

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450469/campus-conservative-organizations-alt-right-platform-free-speech-milo-yiannopoulos-charlottesville-terrorist-attack

Superb piece of journalism from a hard left site.



Conservatives gave Milo the spotlight for reasons which sadly were wrong, to troll the "enemy" a truly dreadful reason to give anyone no matter their viewpoint.

The people who have given him and his ilk spotlight deserve a lot of criticism, there is numerous conservatives they could have focused on, but they went for the one whose main skill was his ability to generate headlines if for the wrong reasons.

Of course Antifa are clowns, but Milo and his ilk are not entirely the creation of the left and their prominence definitely have helped Antifa. The damage the likes of Milo and even Trump may have done to genuine conservatism for the next few decades is frightening.

But heh, at least at least a few Social Justice Warriors were triggered, so swings and roundabouts.:pac:

For Reals

Can someone explain the goal, gripes, concerns of the 'ALT-Right' or if not fond of labels, right wing folks who feel hard done by? There's a broad spectrum, one would hope.

InTheTrees

20Cent wrote: »

He has a platform. They have their publications, websites etc. Just because certain privately owned platforms don't want to be associated with them isn't censorship.

I agree. The idea that if Google doesnt want to host nazi websites then its censorship is positively childish.

marcus001

Why is it that when an atrocity is committed by a right winger their entire ideology and its followers are dragged over the coals by the left, but when a member of a certain religion commits the same the left defends the religion. Not just the followers of the religion mind, but often the religion itself.

The right is also guilty of this although I think to a lesser extent. Only the alt right is actually trying to downplay this attack. Mainstream conservatives are behaving like leftists with regards to the attack, which shows a level of consistency in their views when it comes to terrorism.

Could it be that identity politics is what causes people to react differently to similar events from different groups?

Professor Moriarty

marcus001 wrote: »

Why is it that when an atrocity is committed by a right winger their entire ideology and its followers are dragged over the coals by the left, but when a member of a certain religion commits the same the left defends the religion. Not just the followers of the religion mind, but often the religion itself.

The right is also guilty of this although I think to a lesser extent. Only the alt right is actually trying to downplay this attack. Mainstream conservatives are behaving like leftists with regards to the attack, which shows a level of consistency in their views when it comes to terrorism.

Could it be that identity politics is what causes people to react differently to similar events from different groups?

Good point. However, I think (or like to think) that most people believe in the principles of openess, tolerance and inclusivity. So religions that have a very small minority of adherents who are violent extremists will be defended by most people under the aegis of those principles. For the very same reasons and principles, those same people will not support supremacists and fascists as they do not subscribe to openess, tolerance and inclusivity.

Samaris

For Reals wrote: »

Can someone explain the goal, gripes, concerns of the 'ALT-Right' or if not fond of labels, right wing folks who feel hard done by? There's a broad spectrum, one would hope.

Oh crikey, where to start.

First-off, there's the alt-right and then there's right-wing folks (who feel hard-done by), and they rather need to be taken separately. It also varies by country, but it might be easier to keep it firmly to America for now.

The left-behind
- A natural move (caused by the state of society and the wealth of American society) away from primary (agri, mining) and secondary (manufacturing) industries and into tertiary (services, tech). This hit the mid-western states badly - think of gold-rush towns being abandoned when the gold ran out, but rather than shanty-towns, these are towns and cities that had housed people for generations. Many of them were almost entirely reliant on just one or two big businesses in the area. If those businesses relied on fossil fuel production or, more often, manufacturing, well...

- Those jobs were not coming back. They couldn't. Obama saved the American automobile industry - for a time. But American manufacturing was also being outcompeted by the forces of globalisation - cheaper, more efficient foreign cars for example. Retraining was offered, but I very much have sympathy for a coal-miner with ten years left to retirement being aghast at being told he should retrain for the tech sector.

- As the big industries closed down, young people followed the jobs out of the states, leading to your usual brain-drain and labour-drain.

- Democratic politicians (and bear in mind that these would actually have been part of the Democrats' base) failed them. It was inevitable, but they were their elected leaders and things were still going to hell in a handbasket and all they could offer was retraining. Coupled with this, the Democratic base was widening to encompass the previously disenfranchised voters - black people, Latinos, gay people, encouraging women, etcetera. So you have a large sector of people who are desperate for help, seeing their leaders deal with it ineffectually and in insult to injury, focus their attention on other groups instead. They felt abandoned. And the whole religious issues and the historic racial tensions in the US boiled away.

- Women in the workforce also played a roll in the tension. Many men felt frankly under attack. Their strongholds were dying out and women were moving into the new sectors - and if you (as a man) had lost your job at the factory and had to live on your wife's earnings, that could still be seen as shameful in the rather pro-masculine society that was the United States, particularly the regions most under attack. There was a lot more competition for a steadily decreasing number of jobs. Good old religion didn't help here either.

- Environmental issues also started to play into this. Now, the Democrats weren't the only ones to be pushing for clean air and water - Nixon signed in the Clean Air Act in 1970 for one. But on top of the struggles of the manufacturing industries, further sanctions were being placed on them in terms of having to clean up after themselves. While this was neccessary and reasonable, it didn't help the sense that they were being attacked. Then climate change started to come to the fore - more of the same. Certain vested interests, by which I loudly and clearly mean the fossil fuel industries (but also manufacturers) played up the idea that it was a load of nonsense and it was a scam to force the industries - and the jobs of many people - out. This boiled away too as things continued to keep going generally downhill.

- As we have seen in the last year or so, when things get bad, the natural thing to do is to find someone to blame. There was quite a bit of muckstirring regarding the racial tensions, religion and the rest of it - bear in mind that a lot of this was only just under the surface - but it helped add to the divide over various issues - gay rights, evolution, abortion, even environmentalism (all of which had been the abode of those eejity hippies and probably communists at universities in the cities and more liberal states and all of them were consistantly regarded with suspicion even as the Democratic party tended to lean more liberal and roughly even embrace these ideals. Spottily, at least.

- The worst of those tensions boiled out into fundamentalism here and there. There'd always been some, it never went away. But with the rise of the internet and the vast amounts of information that could be put out by anyone regardless of their agenda and consumed by anyone, things went a bit mad altogether.

- Then there's the alt-right. These people are fundamentalists and take hardline positions on most of the above, coupled with a seething resentment at anyone and everyone that can be considered to be to blame. Maybe it all wouldn't have been so bad without the internet, but that helped to polarise things so quickly that there was no time to recover and take stock. For me or against me. There have always been racists, misogynists, people who want a tribe and want enemies to hate. They found each other, aided by a lot of muck-stirring.

- And the trolls. Some of them are home-grown, some of them were foreign and what is nationality on the internet anyway. The kiddish bull**** of the "alt-right" - Kekistan, honestly, that's actually a World of Warcraft reference (from "kek" which for Reasons means "lol"), the pepe memes, an awful lot of lying and/or plain ignorance and all the rest of it. Again with the internet.

I've left out amongst other things; the polarisation of the Republican party, the recession, the fear of Islamic terrorism, the general decline of hardline religious, the chaos in the Middle East, a few refugee crises. (Bear in mind that if you've not been able to get a job in five years and are living on welfare because there is nothing out there for you, the idea that immigrants are coming in, stealing our jobs etcetera is a pretty tempting one.)

And then fecking Trump happened. Now they pretty much have two groups (look at say, Trump's polls. There's not many undecideds) and both get their information from media with very different points of view. I'm gonna just say it - the far right media is owned by a very few people with very strong opinions and they make them clear. There has been a lot of lies there and with the frankly dangerous idiocy of Trump and his fomenting of distrust for the media, they have been easy pickings for muck-stirring and encouraging mistrust and resentment. Now, the media had gotten into a rut of opinion pieces and 24-hour news, so there was an awful lot of rubbish going on anyway and just plain factual news had fallen out of fashion because them airwaves have got to be filled. So the media had a nasty jolt coming, tbh. But there's many who have remembered what it is to be a journalist, not a talking head "media personality" and good on them.

But I think it's worth noting just how many of the factors above play into the sharp divide in American society - climate change, women's rights, gay marriage, religious freedom and what exactly that means, immigration. They've all surfaced in the current American tribes. As someone pointed out in a thread the other day, if you know someone's position on maybe one or two of those points, you can often make a good guess at the rest of their positions too.

Very, very potted history with a lot of holes in it, but really, you'd need a book to go into all of it and there's an awful lot I've left out and/or don't know. I'm sure fifteen people can take issue with every one of my points and flesh them out and they're welcome to it. It's all way too complex for one post and off the top of my head.

Overheal

Danzy wrote: »

You could start ripping down every statue of Washington for slavery, Engels for his frankly genocidal views on Slavs, Mao, Stalin, Lenin for the 100 million + that died at their hands.

People are actually complaining about Lenin and how he has a statue in Seattle. There are calls for its removal...

Danzy

Baron Frankenstein bewailing the destruction his Monster causes.

American progressives created the Alt-Right. What did you think blue-collar Americans were going to do when shunted aside, denigrated, and impoverished in an attempt to create a utopia for those who think like you? The biggest irony being of course that said utopia didn't happen, and your equal, multicultural society never materialised, instead an unequal Balkanised one did, on both sides of the pond.

Minority groups in the US were encouraged to maintain a distinctive group identity and vote accordingly for those who promised to promote their interests, of course White Americans would eventually do the same, why wouldn't they?
British progressives shriek with horror over Brexit yet won't acknowledge had they accepted EU immigration had some negative effects and acted, it would never have happened. Or that current hostility towards Islam and migrants has it's roots in behaviour tolerated too long under the cover of community cohesion and a morbid fear of being called racist.

This is "your" mess,but you will never I suspect own your part in creating it. Instead you'll come crying to those of us in the crossfire to save you, and to be honest, I'm not much inclined to. Whichever of you wipes the other out is much the same to me, hopefully it'll weaken the victor enough for those of us from the sensible Left and Right to put them in their metaphorical coffin and nail it shut.

Danzy

Overheal wrote: »

People are actually complaining about Lenin and how he has a statue in Seattle. There are calls for its removal...

People are burnt out from complaining and self pity.

Samaris

...And then there's the other argument, which is that certain people, particularly white men, have no say in their own ideals or their actions and anything they think or say is purely down to the progressives, who are apparently the only ones capable of thinking or any action. It's not their fault, they were forced into it all by nebulous left-wingers because they have absolutely no agency, choice or minds of their own.

I don't buy it, tbh.