I don't know how others pronounce it. If you want to sound like a local you say "Cal." As folks here and in the media continue to believe something went down there, I keep coming back to the OP event.
Well you pronounce George Berekeley's surname as Barkley, basically, but you pronounce the name of the University, as I understand it, the way it is spelled (i.e. the 'er' after the B is pronounced the same as the 'er' in the word 'her').
THat may certainly be. I don't disbelieve that you've met left-leaning fellow college students who espouse their intention to burn the place down; that's kind of what white people in college do. Twenty years ago, I knew them too, maybe more intimately than you. Ten years ago I laughed as they were pepper-sprayed while I attended grad school (it made national headlines, and some good memes). To my knowledge, they haven't burned anything down since the sixties; they definitely haven't shot up a church in the name of their ideologies, such as they are, or organized violent rallies where they fired weapons into crowds and targeted people of specific races for beating.
These are people who are organising and attending counter protests on behalf of students. They claim to have attacked people, they express their intention to attack people. I don't follow them to their rallies and see it for myself, but they make these claims in the company of people who attend these rallies with them and nobody is turning around and saying 'you are full of shit'. At some point, you have to take peoples claims to having committed violence and/or intending to commit further acts of violence at face value.
THe media in the United States continues to put forward a picture, best illustrated in Mr. Neck's spam cartoons, that there is actual violence being perpetrated by leftists. There is not.
I can't speak to the US. There is actual violence being perpetrated by leftists here, according to leftists themselves. This may be less frequent than the violence being perpetrated by those on the right, but leftist violence does occur. This fact has been acknowledged by proponents of antifascism on this board, though, it generally comes with the excuse that it is 'necessary', or that the putative Nazi's 'had it coming'.
If you have ever been on the UC Berkeley campus, you would join me in chuckling at the idea that Cal undergrads are vigilante thugs committing violence in the name of leftist ideology. Their Asian parents would be very disappointed with them. What if the Harvard Medical School finds out and they lose a point despite perfect MCATs!
As I remarked in my previous post, my comments are about militant antifascism more generally. I know less about the situation in America than I do in Australia; though, Vice does occasionally publish some pro-Antifa pieces which are based in the United States, and the few I have read generally acknowledge that elements of this movement use violence sometimes.
Perhaps elements of the media are blowing leftist violence out of proportion, if they are I agree that they should immediately stop and correct any falsehood's which they have spread. However, whether the media is exaggerating things has little to do with i) whether the practice of militant antifascism as I understand it (as related to me by people I know in person, and spacejunk's posts in this very forum) is actually
effective, and ii) whether militant antifascist activities are morally justifiable. Both of those questions are more interesting to me than how the media portrays antifascists, because for the most part I am getting my information from the antifascists themselves.
Most of the people who come out to counter a neo-nazi parade can't discuss the nuances of fascism versus white nationalism. I don't think it's a requirement. What the people who turn out to counter these marchers know, is that they're racist killer scumbags.
Well, on that I must respectfully disagree. How can you be 'anti
fascist' if you don't know what fascism is? How can you justifiably use that word to label other people if you don't even understand what it means. If people are
so concerned about fascism, why aren't they concerned to learn what it actually is? This is how fucking ridiculous politics has gotten.
Don't you see that this kind of lazy, broad-stroke labeling using these highly charged and offensive terms actually drives some of the semi-moderates on the other side into the arms of extremism? There is this huge group of people on the relatively far-right (with whom I disagree on just about everything morally and politically, for the record), a small number of which are actual fascists, when you start labeling that whole group 'fascists' or 'Nazi's' I am of the opinion that you drive them further to the right - it isn't helpful, at all.
Would you like to discuss with me the actual differences I see? Are you worried that I'm using terminology incorrectly?
I am worried that these terms are being thrown around without any caution whatsoever. In some cases, the shoe fits, in many others it does not. Frankly, if you don't know what a fascist is and you apply the label correctly, you are doing so by luck; it isn't clear to me why I should take someone who is so uneducated about something they claim to be so passionate about seriously. It certainly doesn't inspire any faith that their political conclusions have been formed through any kind of intellectual rigor. Sorry, if people want to claim a right to be a vigilante they should at least start by getting a fucking clue about the very thing they are supposed to be a vigilante against. (Not that I condone informed vigilantism, either.)
For all we know some random asshole punched Richard Spencer in the face. Whether or not I condone that is not part of the discussion. You yourself need to support the claim that "many on the far-left support this and similar", preferably without referencing a hashtag.
Richard Spencer was punched in the face twice that day. I think only one was caught, and I seem to recall that he
was a member of Antifa, but maybe my memory is failing me or the report I read was wrong. Certainly, many people were celebrating this incident. Whether Richard Spencer is a good example or not is beside the point (not that you shouldn't pull me up for it, assuming it was a bad example); I have encountered people from various walks of life who claim to participate in militant antifascism - and these people have frequently expressed the view that violence against 'fascists' (a term at least some of them are applying incorrectly) is perfectly fine, some have told me they participate in it directly. Perhaps you don't take me at my word, that is fine - I am a stranger to you, after all. But from where I sit, I don't need any further proof that elements of this movement are violent.
Even if you could prove that antifascism is completely non-violent, and that a leftist has
never done any violence to anybody, this would do nothing to undermine the point that so-called 'counter-protests' are anathema to free speech and democracy.
I'd add that when you use qualifiers like "far-left" you could be referring to the animal liberation front, that set fire to a car lot twenty years ago.
Well, in my experience, Antifa are a pretty broad church. They have people who fit under all sorts of political labels, about the only thing you could say holds true of them is that they are on the far-left.
No, nazism is about more than just racism, and racism doesn't require a government. But as I said previously, we're talking about white nationalists. They are racists. They are fascists. WHat else do you want me to call them?
Why can't you just call them white nationalists? If white nationalism is so bad then you shouldn't need to use other, more loaded, terms when talking about them.
