The time to SPEAK is before they start disappearing.
Then you have no problem with groups like the SPLC using their freedom of speech to call hate groups what they are, right?
ucb: Of course not. Why would I? I’m nothing if not consistent. Let the SPLC do its thing. As well as everyone else.
Or people making comparisons between modern day Nazis and the Nazis of 1920s-1940s Germany, right?
Um, am I silencing them? Taking away their right to speak? Removing them from this forum? (Not that I’m the government, but following the analogy).
No, people are permitted to speak what they like, as am I. I can call it as I see it as well. They can be as right or as wrong as they like.
Yet you consider that someone screaming in your face, apparently even in the context of protests and counter protests where that can be expected, automatically to be assault and battery, in reply #332.
"You are mistaken. The only issue here is free speech. The most vile group on earth (NAMBLA, anyone?) has the right to speak freely without governmental restriction. And it needs to be this way, if you want your own rights to free speech protected.
This is only about free speech. Now when and if it tips over into criminal behavior, all bets are off. But speech must be protected, no matter how you feel about it."
BS. No one on this thread or (anywhere) has said that the racists and nazis didn’t have the right to march and no one is denying them their right to espouse their vile hatred. However, they are not free from the consequences of their speech from the rest of the citizenry.
The real issue has been those trotting out “whataboutisms” and trying to equate those protesting racists and nazis as just the other side of the same coin. They are doing that to try dupe people into normalizing them and their beliefs.
This poster seems entirely consistent to me. Anyone can express views, vile or sublime. Screaming in someone’s face can be criminal behavior if a threat is stated or implied.
Is this tangent related to whether or not we or our kids should join in public protests?
Arguing our children should stay home could be interpreted as an attempt at silencing.
There are nine upcoming alt-right protests. Some young people are already distancing themselves from these groups after the events of the last few days. This makes me hopeful. Maybe those young people will join a counter protest instead.
A person might think they are joining a protest againt the KKK and the neo-Nazis but I would advise that person to look around at the signs that are being carried on ‘your’ side too. In Charlottesville the counter-protesters were carrying signs that read ‘Cops and Klan go hand in hand’. Once you see something like that, a person should know this is no peace march. Go home.
@TranquilMind Go back and read @magnetron’s post #246 if you feel we are inflating things. His/her experience and thoughts mirror my own. It’s not just “disaffected” losers who think this way.
“Now when and if it tips over into criminal behavior, all bets are off”
Ask Heather Heyer’s family if it has tipped into criminal behavior.
“This poster seems entirely consistent to me. Anyone can express views, vile or sublime. Screaming in someone’s face can be criminal behavior if a threat is stated or implied.”
Does that include the “Blood and Soil” chant the Nazis and White Supremacists were shouting in Charlottesville?
@emilybee, it might if you walk up to me and scream it in my face.
But if you work with the local government to obtain a permit to assemble and scream whatever vile things you want to scream while surrounded by your friends and partners, then as long as you aren’t specifically inciting violence you can do that. It’s a pretty important right.
News flash: These racist bastards did incite violence and actually carried it out in Charlottesville.
Here is a story with video about a college student who is a person of color being attacked at a memorial for the woman who died at Charlottesville.
Maybe some of the pro-antifa posters here will want to comment on the nature of the people that assaulted him.
There are no “two sides.”
Pro-antifa? What garbage is that, @zinhead? People here are talking about the right to counter protest. People have talked about doing so peacefully. People have talked about not conflating equivalency to white supremacists and counter protestors.
If someone really wanted to connect and show their respect for the woman who died at that memorial, how about leaving their YAF wear aside for a few hours and just come as a person with no political statements expressed in their clothing? Seems like what common sense, decency, and respect would dictate to me.
Care to comment on the assaults made by the white supremacists this weekend? Haven’t heard your voice on those. You just chime in with posts like the one above. There is no equivalency.
If he didn’t want to be attacked he should have dressed less provocatively. Oops, wrong thread.
And I hope there are at least 2 sides. Otherwise, we’re all on the same side as the racists. And let’s face it, the antifa are just there for the fights. I don’t want to be on their side either.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: I am closing the thread because we are getting lots of reports about political posts. I know that if we take the time to wade through posts and delete several, we will then get complaints that we’re not being fair. So that’s why we’re just closing the thread instead.