dckingsfan wrote:montestewart wrote:dckingsfan wrote:Interesting - you are tacitly endorsing violence if it suits your views? Or are you saying all violence should be criticized?
Saw an interesting discussion on the off topic board regarding the limits of free speech. While some drearily dredge up the "fire in a movie theater" scenario to illustrate limits on free speech, there is speech that is intended to threaten, with an implied physical component. The playbook of American Aparthied involved relentless hate "speech" accompanied by systematic violence: brutal and discriminatory enforcement of the "law," along with extrajudicial beatings, arson, rape, and murder. The "speechmakers" (often grinningly) denied any connection with the violent acts, but the acts and the speech were a coordinated public-private partnership of oppression.
Why is "stalking" illegal in many places? If it's trespassing, assault, fraud, etc., charge them with that, otherwise a stalker is just exercising freedom of speech and movement, right? If someone points a gun at you and says, "I'm going to kill you!" isn't that protected speech? They haven't hurt you, have they?
To many Americans, the rise of the White Power movement represents a normalizing of philosophies tied to the justification of legal slavery, of legal murder. At what point do you stop talking and start acting? Not intended rhetorically, it's a real question for which I have no answer. Free speech is not as simple as it seems.
Wow, a lot to this post. Yes, harassment, intimidation & threats are illegal under the law in the US. So, no. Someone can't point a gun at you much less say they are going to kill you. If they do it is illegal and they should be prosecuted under the law.
I think the question you are asking is when do you start acting offensively. When do you organize and hunt down those you don't agree with? In this case with the justification that the are harassing, intimidating & threatening - I'm not going to that protest with you.
If the question is when do you get to defend yourself. That is a different question, no? Organize your protest and make sure you can defend yourself. I am right there with you.
I think MLK and Ghandi set the standards:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Sorry it wasn't obvious; the stalking and gun pointing examples were for effect, but they are useful comparisons when you consider how the rise of white supremacy would be perceived by people who are the objects/targets of the racist hate. The tiki torchlight marchers were chanting "Jews won't replace me" and various explicitly Nazi slogans. The videos appear to show all of them chanting, but anyone who wasn't was marching with those who were; they were all joining in the same message, aligned with Nazis and the KKK, two groups who terrorized and murdered-both legally and extrajudicially with tacit approval--blacks, Jews, and other groups.
The message they carry is, "This is what we bring, this is what's coming: enslavement, rape, and murder." Any members of that march that didn't realize the history and impact of their messages and imagery was employing the deceit of willful ignorance. And Trump did the same. Or he's just an idiot. Much more understandable is anyone who heard the threat of murder in those messages.
The right wing disinformation machine--including the White House--is going with a narrative of violence started by the so-called Antifa. With so many cameras there, you would think there would be some footage showing that, but the footage I've seen has shown both sides in the midst of skirmish (alt-bart types show still, or the end of videos, but it's pretty clearly in the fray) or has shown the racists, armed with shields and clubs, crashing into non-violent demonstrations, arm locked chains, etc. Where's the evidence that the lefties started it (answer: no evidence needed, it's fake news). The guy who crashed his car was but an extreme example of a mind set the White Power rally brought with it to Charlottesville: We Shall Overcome By Eventually Crushing You All.
I'm not advocating or even condoning violence, but why pretend violence isn't an understandable reaction among some people to the obvious threat to non-whites (including Jews), a steadily rising threat under Trumpism. The Germans were
defending themselves from the Jews in Europe, and those
threatening Jews turned the other cheek, so to speak, accommodating because they felt powerless to do otherwise, and looked where it got them. The KKK
defended the white
race from blacks, and blacks, having little or no power, accommodated as best they could. That accommodation brought them little, because only a return to slavery or a return to Africa will satisfy a white supremacist, and so the violence and oppression continued.
It's only ignorance and fake news that separates these blatant White Power rallies from slavery and the Holocaust, that separates states rights from racism, that acts like it's just a few bad apples on both side. And Trump, don't forget Trump. No longer funny and surely the worst president in my lifetime, now competing for title of worst president in the history of presidents. Ali G would do a better job.
Our president is a puppet of a racist movement (actually, of a lot of movements; he's No. 1 in the No. 2 business), his very words will increasingly incite violence on both sides, angering people on the left and further emboldening the white supremacists, along with big business lawlessness under the guise of "streamlined regulation." Look for a rapid increase in climate change, the poisoning of America and the world, heated up arms races, privatization of schooling, selling off national parks...if it sucks, he's all for it. A total dick.