https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/who-were-the-counterprotesters-in-charlottesville.html Who organized the counterprotest? A Charlottesville-based network of activists and clergy members called Solidarity Cville called attention to the “Unite the Right” rally and urged people to show their opposition. The group includes ministers from local churches, as well as racial justice activists. Did they expect violence? Yes. Brittany Caine-Conley, a minister at Sojourners United Church of Christ in Charlottesville who is part of Solidarity Cville, sent a warning message in advance of the rally. “There is an extremely high potential for physical violence and brutality directed at our community,” she wrote. “We need your help — we don’t have the numbers to stand up to this on our own.” Organizers of the counterprotest said it was important to turn out even with the threat of violence. “We cannot ignore them away as their numbers grow and their influence expands,” Matthew Owens of Showing Up for Racial Justice, a local group that is part of Solidarity Cville, said in a statement. “We cannot let their worldview normalize.” ... The scholar and activist Cornel West told the newscast “Democracy Now!” that anti-fascists saved his life and the lives of other nonviolent clergy members in Charlottesville. “We would have been crushed like cockroaches were it not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists,” he said on the show. “You had police holding back and just allowing fellow citizens to go at each other.” ... Where will counterprotests go from here? Groups that say they feel compelled to stand up for the rights of white people and for free speech insist that they will not be cowed by anti-fascists. Counterprotesters, including antifa groups, have, in turn, vowed to continue to confront them. Some on the left say confronting the far right gives white nationalists exactly the attention and violent street theater they want. But with several far-right demonstrations planned, there is no indication the counterprotesters are going away.
This is why it's important to call these people out. There's no one that doesn't realize Nazis and white supremacists are bad but for whatever reason you've got the media producing puff pieces like this portraying violent radical groups like AntiFa as some kind of heroes......and sadly there's plenty of people stupid enough to believe it.
Sounds like you're implying that violent radical groups can't also be heroic at times. I don't agree.
Certainly not in situations where they caused the violence they "saved" someone from. That's not really heroism. If not for AntiFa and similar groups showing up, there's no violence in Charlottesville and the whole ordeal probably doesn't make national news. Instead, they showed up with weapons and attacked the people having the protest and things continued to escalate till people were killed. AntiFa are no heroes.....but if you are a Marxist apologist like Cornel West, of course you'd see a Marxist group like AntiFa as heroes and would have no problem spreading that propaganda. If you interview an Alt Right type, they'd probably call the violent assholes on their side heroes too....but I wouldn't defend a puff piece for them either.
Show me a "good person" who willingly marches with a tiki torch with people chanting, "Jews will not replace us" and I'll show you a ****ing moron or shockingly a racist. Trump lost the plot and this nail will sink deep into the coffin
Did some reading on Antifa. Learn quite a bit. Didn't realize their deep global history over nearly a hundred year (opposition to Mussolini, to Hitler, fight in the Spanish Civil War, ...). I'm always against violence as I think it's very counter productive, but when facing Nazi, I understand why. Yes - some of them can be hero if all they did was defend and not instigate. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/antifascist-movements-hitler-nazis-kpd-spd-germany-cold-war https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...16/who-are-the-antifa/?utm_term=.92df613fcd1c The vast majority of anti-fascist organizing is nonviolent. But their willingness to physically defend themselves and others from white supremacist violence and preemptively shut down fascist organizing efforts before they turn deadly distinguishes them from liberal anti-racists. Antifascists argue that after the horrors of chattel slavery and the Holocaust, physical violence against white supremacists is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective. We should not, they argue, abstractly assess the ethical status of violence in the absence of the values and context behind it. Instead, they put forth an ethically consistent, historically informed argument for fighting Nazis before it’s too late.
Being against fascism isn't radical. Being against fascism means you have a functioning moral compass. Being against fascism should simply be normal. Once upon a time in this nation, that was the case.
what about the thugs from the "center- alt/delete " movement chanting saving grace? not acceptable either. MEAN! (one of the most inspiring events during this crap infested administration.)
Glad people are actively combating racism. Shows America heading in the right direction, just need to get the "bad ones" outta here.
These young men are ****ing up their future. I don't think they understand the consequences of such decisions like supporting white supremacisy. I can ride believe this many white kids feel this way. This has to be a counter culture phase but they will pay with their careers.
I don't agree with meeting non-violence with violence, and any individuals on either side who did this should be ashamed. However, once the situation has turned violent and you have two mobs of people going at each other, the issue shifts to the larger question of what these groups are fighting for. You and your president apparently think that the causes of both sides have equal merit, given your insistence that we shouldn't favor one over the other. I strongly disagree with that view. Your appeal to moral relativism doesn't sway me.
Thank the internet and parents who convinced themselves computers and TV were just as good a babysitter as people.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ft_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html Rabbi Rachel Schmelkin Congregation Beth Israel There was a group of antifa defending First United Methodist Church right outside in their parking lot, and at one point the white supremacists came by and antifa chased them off with sticks. Rebekah Menning Charlottesville resident I stood with a group of interfaith clergy and other people of faith in a nonviolent direct action meant to keep the white nationalists from entering the park to their hate rally. We had far fewer people holding the line than we had hoped for, and frankly, it wasn’t enough. No police officers in sight (that I could see from where I stood), and we were prepared to be beaten to a bloody pulp to show that while the state permitted white nationalists to rally in hate, in the many names of God, we did not. But we didn’t have to because the anarchists and anti-fascists got to them before they could get to us. I’ve never felt more grateful and more ashamed at the same time. The antifa were like angels to me in that moment.
Makes me wonder how history could have been different if this type of movement was around in Germany in the 1930's. Those brownshirts didn't have anyone opposing them back then like they do today. I get the argument that protesting these nazi buffoons just gives them the attention they want, and if we just ignore them, they will just become irrelevant. But I wonder if we're past that point now. If you ignore a cancer, it doesn't just become irrelevant, it only gets worse. You have to fight it even if it's unpleasant.
LOL @ conflating this group with Antifa. These people are gigantic social justice warriors with a white guilt complex you can see from space, but rioting anarcho communists they are not.
The right-wing echo chamber has given rise to this new white victim/grievance cult. Some half-truth (to be generous) gets published by Breitbart/Fox/Drudge, it gets circulated to freeper idiots, elected officials see it and parrot it (thus whipping up more freeper idiots), and then Breitbart/Fox/Drudge report on the elected official's statements about the bogus original half-truth, and the cycle continues. This is culture rot, and it has been a very lucrative enterprise for the propaganda machines of the right wing news media. Unfortunately since Trump came into power the left wing news media has completely pooped their big boy pants falling all over itself to smear him (as if you need to lie to make Trump look bad) to the point where their words have no weight anymore. Abandon hope. All is lost.
