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First, let me say that I know the troll twins are going to be all over this, and I can't prevent that. Okay. But, AS A COURTESY, if you're going to tell them they're morons with reprehensible views, please do so by commenting on their posts, not replying. This should prevent the main thread conversation being drowned out by pages and pages of "[horrible opinion backed up by nonsensical claims]" "your opinions are horrible, and backed up by nonsensical claims!" ad infinitum. If you want to do that, I accept that such is your right, and only ask that you don't do so in a way that renders the thread unusable for any other purpose. Thank you.
With that said: I don't really understand why any part of the Charlottesville brawl needed to happen. So, these Nazis/Confederates/People too stupid to see inconsistency in identifying as Nazifederates (hereafter "Nazis") are butthurt about people wanting to wreck their treason monument. Right? So they plan a protest march where they'll all hang around yelling slogans to . . . okay, I'm not totally clear on why people bother to protest either, it doesn't do anything, but it makes sense to them, because they're Nazis, and Nazis are by and large ****ing idiots (some are not stupid, only grossly immoral and fond of causing trouble or selling swastika merchandise to their idiot friends). They announce in advance that they are going to be milling around pretending they represent more than 5% of the American population (generous estimate). If left alone, at some point, they would have gotten bored and gone home to be doxxed and lose their jobs (I assume they would be dumb enough to post their own footage), the statues would have come down anyway, and the Nazis would have gone back to their online slimeholes to whine about how persecuted they are. If instead they had chosen to cause trouble or attack black people, it would have been relatively simple for police to stop them.
But this did not happen. Instead they had a whole horde of other people who said it was necessary to stand up to these Nazi punks. There is ample past precedent to show that whenever hard-leftists and alt-rightists get together in big angry crowds, violence results. So, unless the anti-Nazis were even dumber than the Nazis, they should have expected more or less exactly what happened. Which is to say, chaos. There was an enormous front of people edging together and periodically throwing punches/rocks/pepper spray. The counterprotesters seem to have outnumbered the protesters by two to one or thereabouts. Fifteen hundred people in conflict. Police couldn't contain them, and they had to be broken up by soldiers.
It's not that it's okay for Nazis to beat up people who get in their face. But . . . they got right up in the face of a large, angry group of people who hated them, in a situation that has happened many times before. They couldn't have expected the car attack, but any time that much raw anger is sloshing around, violence will result. What the hell did they expect to happen? What was the purpose of being there at all, if not to street-fight? To send the message that white supremacists are bad? Everybody knows that already. A recent poll found that substantial majorities of Americans across all demographics disapproved of white supremacists, white nationalists, and the KKK. There was variation based on the term used, but this appeared to be caused by poorly-informed respondents not knowing what the specific term used (e.g., "alt-right") entailed and saying "not sure."
With that said: I don't really understand why any part of the Charlottesville brawl needed to happen. So, these Nazis/Confederates/People too stupid to see inconsistency in identifying as Nazifederates (hereafter "Nazis") are butthurt about people wanting to wreck their treason monument. Right? So they plan a protest march where they'll all hang around yelling slogans to . . . okay, I'm not totally clear on why people bother to protest either, it doesn't do anything, but it makes sense to them, because they're Nazis, and Nazis are by and large ****ing idiots (some are not stupid, only grossly immoral and fond of causing trouble or selling swastika merchandise to their idiot friends). They announce in advance that they are going to be milling around pretending they represent more than 5% of the American population (generous estimate). If left alone, at some point, they would have gotten bored and gone home to be doxxed and lose their jobs (I assume they would be dumb enough to post their own footage), the statues would have come down anyway, and the Nazis would have gone back to their online slimeholes to whine about how persecuted they are. If instead they had chosen to cause trouble or attack black people, it would have been relatively simple for police to stop them.
But this did not happen. Instead they had a whole horde of other people who said it was necessary to stand up to these Nazi punks. There is ample past precedent to show that whenever hard-leftists and alt-rightists get together in big angry crowds, violence results. So, unless the anti-Nazis were even dumber than the Nazis, they should have expected more or less exactly what happened. Which is to say, chaos. There was an enormous front of people edging together and periodically throwing punches/rocks/pepper spray. The counterprotesters seem to have outnumbered the protesters by two to one or thereabouts. Fifteen hundred people in conflict. Police couldn't contain them, and they had to be broken up by soldiers.
It's not that it's okay for Nazis to beat up people who get in their face. But . . . they got right up in the face of a large, angry group of people who hated them, in a situation that has happened many times before. They couldn't have expected the car attack, but any time that much raw anger is sloshing around, violence will result. What the hell did they expect to happen? What was the purpose of being there at all, if not to street-fight? To send the message that white supremacists are bad? Everybody knows that already. A recent poll found that substantial majorities of Americans across all demographics disapproved of white supremacists, white nationalists, and the KKK. There was variation based on the term used, but this appeared to be caused by poorly-informed respondents not knowing what the specific term used (e.g., "alt-right") entailed and saying "not sure."
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