On Charlottesville
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Aug 30, 2017
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It's been a few weeks since the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and the ensuing protests. I have a few thoughts I wanted to write down. I'm relatively ignorant about a lot of things, so these are partially formed opinions. I'm probably wrong about some things. - Expressing positive views on white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan, and Nazism is protected by the first amendment as far as I can tell. It's offensive, disgusting, misguided, ignorant, dangerous, and wrong, but it's legal. I'm partly in favor of changing the constitution to restrict stupidly hateful shit like that. Germany did it. Several other countries too. But it's hard to know where to draw the line. Maybe we could just start with Nazi stuff. We fought a war against Nazis, and we won. That issue and that side should be dead.
- It's unfortunate that antifa got involved. Or rather it's unfortunate that the protesters were viewed as anti-free-speech. Being anti-free-speech in general is bad, but being anti-fascist is good. I think it's good when a Nazi gets punched in the face. Since the law allows Nazis to exist, I don't have a problem with people punching them. Sure it might be physical assault, but that argument doesn't fly in post-Hitler Germany. Germans wished they punched Nazis when they had the chance. Again, we fought a war over this and won. Nazis shouldn't exist. That said, restricting the speech of Nazis is equated with restricting the speech of right and left speakers on college campuses, which most people agree is a pretty childish way to conduct yourself at an institute of higher learning. The opposite of alt-right shouldn't be alt-left.
- Trump had an opportunity to say the right thing, and he specifically didn't. He could've said, "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence" and left it at that. But instead I believe he ad-libbed the words "on many sides" which completely negated the point of that sentence. Sure, antifa is viewed as bad and there was some violence and whatnot, but the thing which should be universally condemned is white supremacy and Nazism. Hands down. It's not a gray issue; it's black and white, pun not intended but appropriate. Saying there was blame on both sides is the definition of a false equivalency. "The Nazis shouted about their hatred of Jews and black people, but the antifa people shouted mean things too." Those things aren't equal, and if you can't see the difference, that's a problem on your end.
- Confederate monuments are Civil War participation trophies given to the losing side. They should be torn down. They should've never been put up. It doesn't change our remembrance of history to remove a statue commemorating a traitor. We still remember.
- On a positive note, it's literally astounding to me that there was no gun violence that day.
- Some dude drove his car into the protesters and killed a person. When this type of thing happens in any other country on earth, we call it terrorism. It's strange that that narrative hasn't entered the mainstream in this instance. It's almost like people only associate terrorism with brown people.
- The Vice documentary about the incident provided a pretty good assessment of the agenda of the alt-right and why we as human beings should oppose them. It's not a free speech thing, it's a white supremacy thing.
It's disappointing to talk about this stuff with people in person. Part of it is that I think I'm right about everything, so that's an issue. But one side of this argument is so obviously wrong, it's sickening. History won't look back at this time period or this event kindly. #politics
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