All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[aja_christopher]

I went to a black metal festival in Montreal where one (singular) out of a dozen bands was purported to have sung fascist lyrics in the past. Antifa harassed, threw smoke bombs at, and assaulted numerous people attending the show, myself included. When I complained about the incident on social media (on the feed for a friend who is in Antifa) her more radical friends called me a fascist and detailed elaborate ways that they would attempt to kill me if they saw me. That shook even my Antifa friend and she eventually cut ties with the person and most of the Montreal cell because they were nut-jobs.

I reported the threats and got the standard, 'We'll look into it,' which never amounted to anything.

I prefer fact to anecdotal evidence with regards to harassment, threats, and actual violence from said groups.

I don't condone violence on either side but it's false to suggest that left-wing groups like Antifa are as much of a threat to safety as the right-wing.

It's also worth noting that these groups often become active in reaction to far-right racism and fascism on the rise in our society, so the key to reducing Antifa activity is reducing the number of neo-Nazis and white supremacists/nationalists marching through our streets and residing in the White House.

------
"FACT CHECK: Is Left-Wing Violence Rising?"

"Antifa are not new. They're a latter-day version of the anarchists and "black bloc" groups who, over the years, have often challenged police and broken windows during May Day protests in Seattle and Portland. Their membership is hard to track, but it appears to be expanding beyond the West Coast. They are also embracing other leftist causes beyond just fighting white supremacists.

Still, their numbers are tiny in relation to the mainstream political left. And, say experts, it's misleading for right-wing groups to suggest that the Antifa are more violent than right-wing extremists.

"The far left is very active in the United States, but it hasn't been particularly violent for some time," says Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.

He says the numbers between the groups don't compare.

"In the past 10 years when you look at murders committed by domestic extremists in the United States of all types, right-wing extremists are responsible for about 74 percent of those murders," Pitcavage says.

You have to go back to the 1970s to find the last big cycle of far-left extremism in the U.S. Both Pitcavage and McNabb say we have been in a predominantly far-right extremist cycle since the 1990s — the abortion clinic bombings and Oklahoma City, for example. And, more recently, racially motivated attacks such as the one at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C., and last month's stabbings on a commuter train in Portland."

https://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/53325...iolence-rising

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"All of the extremist killings in the US in 2018 had links to right-wing extremism, according to new report"

"The extremist-related murders in 2018 were overwhelmingly linked to right-wing extremists," the report states. "Every one of the perpetrators had ties to at least one right-wing extremist movement, although one had recently switched to supporting Islamist extremism. White supremacists were responsible for the great majority of the killings, which is typically the case."

Guns were involved in the vast majority of the killings - 42 of out 50.

Correspondingly, a November 2018 analysis from The Washington Post on global terrorism data showed that far-right violence has been on the rise since President Donald Trump entered the White House.

"Over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist," the report stated.

The report said this has occurred alongside a "decades-long drop-off in violence by left-wing groups," which were considered the top extremist threat in the US three to four decades ago."

https://www.businessinsider.com/extr...-report-2019-1

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"White supremacist violence responsible for spike in US domestic terror arrests, FBI says"

"An increasing number of arrests related to domestic terrorism is being fuelled in part by white supremacy, FBI director Christopher Wray said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the director said his agency has already made nearly 100 domestic terrorism-related arrests this year, a figure already higher than that of the entirety of 2018.

“A majority of the domestic terrorism cases we've investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call [far right-wing] white supremacist violence," Mr Wray said during an exchange with Senator Dick Durbin."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a9017986.html

[ed2962]

Trump Complained About Baltimore Years Ago But Blamed The ‘African American President’

Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a Maryland congressman since 1996, but back in 2015, Trump claimed the man in the White House was responsible for issues in the city. But now that HE'S president, Trump blames someone else for Baltimore's problems. Meanwhile....

**********

Trump Accuses Democrats Of Playing ‘Race Card’ In New Attack On Cummings, Baltimore

The president also went after Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco, warning “something must be done before it’s too late.” So, lemme see if I've got this right: Trump launches racist attacks, but calls Democrats racists for calling him out on his racism. Jesus! What the **** has this country come to?

**********

Something Trump-Bashed Baltimore Area Would Like To Ditch: ‘Kushnerville’ Homes

If the president wants to see “disgusting” maybe he should check out some of his son-in-law’s Maryland apartments. Will Trump mention this problem? Hell no!

**********

Dad Charged With Homicide After Infant Twins Found Dead In Hot Car

Juan Rodriguez, 39, had just worked an eight-hour shift at a New York City hospital when he discovered his twins lifeless in the back seat. It's unimaginable that horrors like this happen.

**********

Marianne Williamson Admits First Debate Left Her ‘Vulnerable To Mockery’

The 2020 presidential candidate is hoping to be taken more seriously during round two on Tuesday. Good luck with that pipe dream. I suspect that won't happen.

There's actually pretty funny clips of Marianne on the Dave Rubin show making the rounds these days. For people who don't know, Dave is a former liberal TYT employee who now does a show where he mostly interviews right of center guests. It's clear that Dave had her on just to have fun with this kooky lady, but when they started taking about substantive policies, Dave clearly didn't know what he was talking about and she made him look quite foolish.

[InformationGeek]

So, after a massing shooting, we look to the people above for help or guidance... oh well, after just one tweet about the shooting, Trump just keeps lashing out. I'm not linking but will quote everything he "thought" was "important" right now.

I have known Al for 25 years. Went to fights with him & Don King, always got along well. He “loved Trump!” He would ask me for favors often. Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing. Must have intimidated Comcast/NBC. Hates Whites & Cops!

Baltimore, under the leadership of Elijah Cummings, has the worst Crime Statistics in the Nation. 25 years of all talk, no action! So tired of listening to the same old Bull...Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest. Nothing will get done for the people in need. Sad!

If the Democrats are going to defend the Radical Left “Squad” and King Elijah’s Baltimore Fail, it will be a long road to 2020. The good news for the Dems is that they have the Fake News Media in their pocket!

Al Sharpton would always ask me to go to his events. He would say, “it’s a personal favor to me.” Seldom, but sometimes, I would go. It was fine. He came to my office in T.T. during the presidential campaign to apologize for the way he was talking about me. Just a conman at work!

Kid is dead and Trump can't bother to send out of a word of sympathy. Oh right, the kid wasn't White so it didn't matter to him.

[ed2962]

So, after a massing shooting, we look to the people above for help or guidance... oh well, after just one tweet about the shooting, Trump just keeps lashing out. I'm not linking but will quote everything he "thought" was "important" right now.









Kid is dead and Trump can't bother to send out of a word of sympathy. Oh right, the kid wasn't White so it didn't matter to him.

Ha! It doesn't matter to him when white kids do get killed.

[worstblogever]

Ha! It doesn't matter to him when white kids do get killed.

Unless a person of color is a suspect in the crime, and then he'll exploit it and put out ads calling for them to get the death penalty.

[aja_christopher]

The real threat to our nation is the one Republicans want to pretend doesn't exist so that they can work with them to subvert our democracy -- again.

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"Trump's intelligence chief resigned after the White House repeatedly suppressed his warnings about Russian interference"

"Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats in recent months saw his warnings about threats posed by Russia watered down by the White House, The New York Times reported Sunday.

According to The Times, a dossier by Coats on Russian interference in the 2018 midterms was altered by the White House to contain less critical language.

Coats' resignation was announced Sunday in a tweet by President Donald Trump, who wants a loyalist, Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, to replace him.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats repeatedly found his warnings about the threat posed by Russia suppressed by the White House, The New York Times reported Sunday amid his resignation from the post.

According to The Times, Coats has often found himself at odds with President Donald Trump over Russia, a situation that worsened in recent months. Coats saw Russia as an adversary to the US, The Times wrote, and pushed for closer cooperation with European countries to counter it, but the White House did not agree. Several times Coats saw his language on the Kremlin's activities watered down by the White House, according to The Times.

A secret report by Coats on Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2018 midterms by spreading disinformation was reportedly altered by the White House. A public statement on Coats' conclusions contained less critical language than the original, The Times said...

During his time as director of national intelligence, Coats had publicly contradicted Trump on the president's claims regarding Russia and North Korea.

In a statement released after Trump's summit in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2018, Coats rebutted the president's apparent acceptance of Putin's claim that Russia had not interfered in the 2016 election."

https://www.businessinsider.com/dni-...ngs-nyt-2019-7

[aja_christopher]

"Conservative Nationalists, Not Immigrants, Are Having Trouble Assimilating in America"

"The restrictionist right's standing rap against non-Western immigrants is that they come from statist countries and lack the cultural DNA to assimilate into America's system of free enterprise, democracy, and individual liberty. But it is the new right, following President Donald Trump's lead, that is taking a hammer to the system. Conservatives who care for their movement's integrity and their country's identity ought to worry less about imaginary external threats and more about the real ones emerging from their own camp.

Restrictionist conservatives have long insisted that their problem with "mass immigration" from Mexico, Asia, and the Middle East isn't that their natives are racially different but that they're culturally different. They believe that Latinos come from statist polities and are therefore too susceptible to the lure of Big Government social programs and handouts, if not outright socialism. "Most of the millions of immigrants we have welcomed came from countries where the only government they knew was one that made all the decisions about economic and social policy," lamented the late conservative doyen, Phyllis Schlafly. "The current level of legal immigration to America adds thousands of people every day whose views and experiences are contrary to the conservative value of limited government." Meanwhile, conservatives warn that letting in too many Muslims will lead to blasphemy laws and fatwas dooming America's commitment to religious liberty and free speech.

Even someone like the National Review's Charles C. Cooke, a libertarian-minded British immigrant who is far from a reflexive restrictionist, finds such concerns sufficiently compelling that he thinks it is entirely appropriate for the U.S. citizenship test to ask new entrants to attest that they are not communists or subversives and would respect religious liberty, even though, arguably, such inquiries about personal beliefs violate the spirit—if not the letter—of the U.S. Constitution.

Given how zealously the American right has guarded America's core freedoms from foreigners, it is beyond ironic that it elected a president who tramples on them on a daily basis. While conservatives have been worrying about importing socialism from abroad, Trump is foisting on the country what Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek, a conservative hero (until now), considered its equally dangerous collectivist twin, economic nationalism.

Under the guise of America First, Trump has basically given up on the free market. He has dedicated his administration to concocting manifestly bogus national security rationales to slap tariffs on America's trade partners that don't agree to his terms for doing business. And then he has tried to placate American farmers and industries hurt by retaliatory tariffs with billions of dollars in countervailing handouts. He has tried to order companies such as General Motors to desist from shuttering unprofitable plants to keep his jobs numbers up. And in an even bigger affront to free market capitalism, Trump has tried to strong-arm companies such as FoxConn to set up shop where his base resides.

In short, Trump is going beyond crony capitalism to command capitalism.

But it isn't just the free market that Trump is trampling. He's trampling free speech. Even as he lambasts immigrants from "shithole" countries, he echoes tinpot Third World dictators that call the press the "enemy of the people." He routinely questions whether news he deems to be "fake" or "crooked" or "dishonest" ought to be constitutionally protected. And he has repeatedly fantasized, including at a recent social media conference at the White House, about siccing the regulatory state on big tech platforms that allegedly "censor" conservative viewpoints — a fantasy that his Department of Justice acted on this week when it opened an antitrust investigation against Google, Amazon and Facebook.

And now he's getting personal. He attacked Somali-born Rep. Ihan Omar (D–Minn.) by name at a campaign rally and invited her to return to her country for criticizing his policies, beaming as the conservative faithful issued their own fatwa with chants of "send her back...."

https://reason.com/2019/07/26/new-na...ation-problem/

[Dalak]

I went to a black metal festival in Montreal where one (singular) out of a dozen bands was purported to have sung fascist lyrics in the past. Antifa harassed, threw smoke bombs at, and assaulted numerous people attending the show, myself included. When I complained about the incident on social media (on the feed for a friend who is in Antifa) her more radical friends called me a fascist and detailed elaborate ways that they would attempt to kill me if they saw me. That shook even my Antifa friend and she eventually cut ties with the person and most of the Montreal cell because they were nut-jobs.

I reported the threats and got the standard, 'We'll look into it,' which never amounted to anything.

Somehow I don't think you'd get death threats for mild complaints alone, at least not from people who are serious about being anti-facist. What that means is that I don't know if you were overly offensive or if they were the kind of cowards who are just internet hardasses. The band in question seems to have done more than 'sung facist lyrics in the past' as well, but I'll never support unprovoked assault regardless of whom. I might laugh at it when someone like Richard Spencer gets clocked, but that doesn't mean I support it. However there are actual mass-murders perpetrated by the facists on the other end of the political spectrum, and they aren't being treated as terrorists if at all possible here in the US.

I've been assaulted and abused by folks browner than me and folks just as pale as me, and I don't hold it against others who share their mindset or skintone. I advise you to do the same.

[Mister Mets]

Indigenous people demand an end to detention on stolen lands

Would you change your mind about detention if indigenous groups in favor of it?

Liberals on Fox News are there to be punching bags, like Alan Colmes was and to punch leftward like Juan Williams being Islamophobic and saying black people play the victim.

Conservatives on MSNBC get to be the "good" conservatives. They slobber all over shitheels like John Mccain while the liberals agree with them, and have had their own shows. Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham got their start in the TV news as hosts on MSNBC. Tucker Carlson had a show on MSNBC for four years.

MSNBC is biased towards the Democrats but it was created to make money first and foremost. Fox News was created to be a propaganda machine.

Politically, MSNBC is center-right.

Fox News was created to make money as well. The original idea was to be a news channel for the people who thought the mainstream media was too left-wing.

I'm very sorry to hear that. I went through a similar thing with my extended family when I moved in with my husband. (I'm bi.) But I think it's important to remember that not all conservatives are like that. You can't just demonize millions of people and assume that they all have the same views. Hell, I've gotten WAY more **** for being bi from my gay progressive friends than from my friends who lean right. If you're involved in the gay community, I'm sure I don't need to tell you about bi-erasure and the 'choose a side' insults.



If anything, I'm fairly liberal by the standards of 20 years ago, but by today I'm apparently moderate as my views range a bit back and forth. Not sure why I have to prove anything to you or why the insular tribe on this thread have the need to see credentials, but here-goes: I've been pro gay rights since I became politically active in the 80's. That might not seem like a big deal now, but it sure as hell was back then. I'm anti-war, and spoke out against and protested the Iraq war as well as Obama's escalations. (I talked about that in an earlier post on this thread.) I've been consistent on this and protested no matter which administration is in power. I'm generally pro-choice, though I believe that as a man it's not really my place to have much of an opinion. On the other hand, I'm generally pro-gun, though I've never owned one and I also believe that immigrants should immigrate legally or be deported. No, I do not agree with the way the detention centers are run, before that gets lobbed at me. I think the whole situation is a disgrace, but I have yet to hear anyone come up with a viable solution to the massive influx of migrants (I'm still hoping to hear one.) I call out white supremacists when I see them, and I also call out the violence of Antifa (both groups have sent death threats my way, so I have no love for either extreme.) By the general public's standards, I'm pretty damn middle-of-the-road, leaning left on some issues and right on others.



I'm sorry that you find reality so disagreeable. Even the obviously left-leaning article posted earlier clearly states that MSNBC can sometimes have that effect. I mean, if you're going to call me a liar, at least have the spine to spell it out directly. I'd assure you that I'm not, but we're all anonymous people on a bulletin board, so you're either going to take or leave my lived experiences and there's not much I can do about that.

There seem to be two types of responses to the piece about Fox News watching conservative relatives, and it largely depends on whether you're the type of person who believes that decent people can hold different views on issues with high consequences (every political argument is essentially about which view will help more people reach their full potential and anyone who is wrong is likely advocating for policies that will kill more people than otherwise.) It's a different problem if someone is so pissed off about what they see in Fox News that they cut off ties with friends and family who have different views than if friends and family are so passionate about their views that they cut off ties with Fox News viewers.

Cool, so you're solidly right-wing with some views that fall on the left. You lose any credibility as being politically moderate when your reaction to ICE's abuse of immigrants boils down to "It sucks, but what else can you do about them?"

You can go take a seat next to Meghan Mccain, Pat Buchanan, and Rand Paul.

Moderation simply means that you fall in the middle politically in an American context.

Not wanting any increase in immigration at all in the United States is a moderate view.

Moderation isn't necessarily a good thing, as something that makes the world worst can be popular with voters.

[Mister Mets]

Mets, maybe you can find any politician from your Party that has denounced Trump's racist screed against Cummings and Baltimore.
I can't. I hope you are proud of the Party you have aligned with. Do you think they all agree with Trump, or are just cowards?

Trump seems to hate many places in the US.

https://www.boston.com/news/politics...g-infested-den

Cops are such babies

What should the cops have done?

You are mistaken the media putting "scary, black, foreign, Muslim Congresswoman" on TV for "promotion from the left".

I'm looking at how the left-wing media covers her. She seems pretty popular on NowThis Politics.

I wonder if Ted Cruz and the rest feel galaxy brained right now, now that one of them has come up with the idea to just make it illegal not to be fascist.

That's really not the argument here.

They want it to be illegal to be part of a group that wears masks, threatens violence and sometimes engaged in violence against the people they disagree with politically.

I prefer fact to anecdotal evidence with regards to harassment, threats, and actual violence from said groups.

I don't condone violence on either side but it's false to suggest that left-wing groups like Antifa are as much of a threat to safety as the right-wing.

It's also worth noting that these groups often become active in reaction to far-right racism and fascism on the rise in our society, so the key to reducing Antifa activity is reducing the number of neo-Nazis and white supremacists/nationalists marching through our streets and residing in the White House.

------
"FACT CHECK: Is Left-Wing Violence Rising?"

"Antifa are not new. They're a latter-day version of the anarchists and "black bloc" groups who, over the years, have often challenged police and broken windows during May Day protests in Seattle and Portland. Their membership is hard to track, but it appears to be expanding beyond the West Coast. They are also embracing other leftist causes beyond just fighting white supremacists.

Still, their numbers are tiny in relation to the mainstream political left. And, say experts, it's misleading for right-wing groups to suggest that the Antifa are more violent than right-wing extremists.

"The far left is very active in the United States, but it hasn't been particularly violent for some time," says Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.

He says the numbers between the groups don't compare.

"In the past 10 years when you look at murders committed by domestic extremists in the United States of all types, right-wing extremists are responsible for about 74 percent of those murders," Pitcavage says.

You have to go back to the 1970s to find the last big cycle of far-left extremism in the U.S. Both Pitcavage and McNabb say we have been in a predominantly far-right extremist cycle since the 1990s — the abortion clinic bombings and Oklahoma City, for example. And, more recently, racially motivated attacks such as the one at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C., and last month's stabbings on a commuter train in Portland."

https://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/53325...iolence-rising

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"All of the extremist killings in the US in 2018 had links to right-wing extremism, according to new report"

"The extremist-related murders in 2018 were overwhelmingly linked to right-wing extremists," the report states. "Every one of the perpetrators had ties to at least one right-wing extremist movement, although one had recently switched to supporting Islamist extremism. White supremacists were responsible for the great majority of the killings, which is typically the case."

Guns were involved in the vast majority of the killings - 42 of out 50.

Correspondingly, a November 2018 analysis from The Washington Post on global terrorism data showed that far-right violence has been on the rise since President Donald Trump entered the White House.

"Over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist," the report stated.

The report said this has occurred alongside a "decades-long drop-off in violence by left-wing groups," which were considered the top extremist threat in the US three to four decades ago."

https://www.businessinsider.com/extr...-report-2019-1

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"White supremacist violence responsible for spike in US domestic terror arrests, FBI says"

"An increasing number of arrests related to domestic terrorism is being fuelled in part by white supremacy, FBI director Christopher Wray said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the director said his agency has already made nearly 100 domestic terrorism-related arrests this year, a figure already higher than that of the entirety of 2018.

“A majority of the domestic terrorism cases we've investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call [far right-wing] white supremacist violence," Mr Wray said during an exchange with Senator Dick Durbin."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a9017986.html

It's possible to believe that both Antifa and right-wing terrorism are serious problems, and even that right-wing terrorism is a more serious problem, but that Antifa should be dealt with as well.

A distinction with Antifa is the view that they should be supported is more socially acceptable than the view that the view that a given far-right terrorist group should be supported.

[aja_christopher]

It's possible to believe that both Antifa and right-wing terrorism are serious problems, and even that right-wing terrorism is a more serious problem, but that Antifa should be dealt with as well.

I already pointed that out in my post as well as how the best way to address "antifa" is to prevent racists and fascists from marching in our streets and protecting a criminal authoritarian white nationalist our White House -- as usual you're just deflecting from the fact that right-wing terrorism has been factually proven to be much more of a "serious problem" by anyone with any real knowledge of the matter, including the FBI.

Meanwhile, your Republican president continues his racist attacks on non-white Americans, while you sit here and try to equate the "threat" of Antifa to that of Dylan Roof and Timothy McVeigh.

Honestly, I'd prefer you not reply to my posts if you're not going to bother to address the issues raised directly -- at a certain point I have to simply assume that you are in league with those who would demonize people of color take our rights away, and with that in mind it serves no purpose to assume that you are replying in "good faith" when you continue to dodge the truth.

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"Donald Trump has launched an unprovoked attack on beloved black civil rights leader Al Sharpton after days of repeated racist insults directed at Baltimore and its congressman of colour.

The president tweeted a number of insults towards Mr Sharpton, all of which were posted without accompanying evidence, prompting a public spat between the pair.

Mr Trump’s posts on Monday morning represent his latest in a series of attack directed against people of colour in recent weeks.

In addition to his series of racist posts about Baltimore and its congressman Elijah Cummings, the tweet about Mr Sharpton was immediately followed by another attack on “the squad”, a group of congresswomen of colour who he has repeatedly targeted with racist rhetoric.

In the new post, the president said he had known Mr Sharpton for 25 years and had been friends with him, before labelling him a “troublemaker” and saying he “hates whites and cops”, while providing evidence for neither claim."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a9025121.html

[JCAll]

That's really not the argument here.

They want it to be illegal to be part of a group that wears masks, threatens violence and sometimes engaged in violence against the people they disagree with politically.

That's good stuff, but then the big "But". But Antifa isn't a cohesive group. There's no dress code or code of conduct, they all act differently trying to protest fascism in their own ways. Some are violent, yes, they think since fascist are violent they have to be violent too. But there are ones who don't approve of violent, like the people who bring cameras to take pictures of fascists and dox them, counting on social pressure to keep them down; or one who bring milkshake machines just to troll fascists, hoping making a mockery of them will keep fascism down. They're still "antifa" in the very loosest sense. The violence is already illegal, the GOP just wants to make it harder to protest right-wing violence.

[TheManInBlack]

Somehow I don't think you'd get death threats for mild complaints alone, at least not from people who are serious about being anti-facist. What that means is that I don't know if you were overly offensive or if they were the kind of cowards who are just internet hardasses. The band in question seems to have done more than 'sung facist lyrics in the past' as well, but I'll never support unprovoked assault regardless of whom. I might laugh at it when someone like Richard Spencer gets clocked, but that doesn't mean I support it. However there are actual mass-murders perpetrated by the facists on the other end of the political spectrum, and they aren't being treated as terrorists if at all possible here in the US.

I've been assaulted and abused by folks browner than me and folks just as pale as me, and I don't hold it against others who share their mindset or skintone. I advise you to do the same.

I'm glad you looked into the incident, since another poster claimed it was just anecdotal when it's easily verified by a quick google search. I'm not a fan of the band Graveland, but my understanding it that it's just the frontman has these views, but the band itself isn't a vector nor are the lyrics. Either way, it's not okay to assume a bunch of festival goes are nazis because one band in the entire festival has a nazi in the band that most people don't even know about. And it's certainly not okay to assault people for attending the show. I just went to see music with friends, not go to a non-existent nazi rally.

As for the complaint, I never claimed it was mild. Would you issue a minor complaint after being assaulted by a horde of black-clad thugs in the street for no reason? Saying that these people were dangerous, violent imbeciles shouldn't warrant death threats.

Edited to add: Also, you seem to be equating race with ideology at the end, which I vehemently disagree with. Race is immutable. Violent ideology is not. I would never hold someone's race against them, but if a person advocates escalations in street violence, I'll say what I think of them, especially if they're cowards dressing in black masks and hiding in 'black blocks'.

[Dalak]

I'm glad you looked into the incident, since another poster claimed it was just anecdotal when it's easily verified by a quick google search. I'm not a fan of the band Graveland, but my understanding it that it's just the frontman has these views, but the band itself isn't a vector nor are the lyrics. Either way, it's not okay to assume a bunch of festival goes are nazis because one band in the entire festival has a nazi in the band that most people don't even know about. And it's certainly not okay to assault people for attending the show. I just went to see music with friends, not go to a non-existent nazi rally.

As for the complaint, I never claimed it was mild. Would you issue a minor complaint after being assaulted by a horde of black-clad thugs in the street for no reason? Saying that these people were dangerous, violent imbeciles shouldn't warrant death threats.

Edited to add: Also, you seem to be equating race with ideology at the end, which I vehemently disagree with. Race is immutable. Violent ideology is not. I would never hold someone's race against them, but if a person advocates escalations in street violence, I'll say what I think of them, especially if they're cowards dressing in black masks and hiding in 'black blocks'.

I saw no reports of them plowing into peaceful crowds just waiting in line, so if you were out in the street counter-protesting the protestors that's not exactly 'no reason' depending on how you were acting. If anyone is going to **** on people engaging in street violence they shouldn't engage in street violence themselves.

As for Race vs Ideology, it applies equally. Not All Democrats are for everything the national party espouses, and Mets chimes in saying how much he disagrees with what's going on in the name of the GoP regardless of anything else involved in those schenanigans. Not every LGBT person is out there like those on Ru Paul's Drag Race, and not every person who sees themselves as Anti-Facist thinks shutting down a metal concert in Canada is a good use of effort or violence in any form other than self-defense is justified in the end. An unrelated observation along the same note: I'm sure not every single person who voted for Trump in 2016 is a bigot, but I'm confident that anyone who votes for him in 2020 is perfectly fine with bigotry as long as it's not aimed at them.

[Farealmer]

A distinction with Antifa is the view that they should be supported is more socially acceptable than the view that the view that a given far-right terrorist group should be supported.

Yet only one side has many enablers/supporters in the white house and in a major political party that can actually pass legislation to support that side. That's the more serious problem and shouldn't the more serious problem get the most attention and resources to address it? Much of far-left terrorism tends to be against legit or perceived far-right terrorism. While much of far-right terrorism tends to be against certain genders/ethnicities/sexual orientations existing or having any kind of agency.