ANTIFA attacks peaceful right wing protestors in Berkeley CA.

[spacejunk]

I don't know who ben shapiro is, so i'm not going to pass judgement there - i'm more interested in local issues when it comes to engaging in antifascist actions.

But i will happily defer to the people over there that are involved in the struggle against fascism; i suspect that they have their reasons for different tactics, and for the most part i trust and respect their choices.

I will point out, however, that certain "alt right" elements in Berkeley have a history of booking inflammatory right wingers to speak at their campus - then cancelling the event (some of which weren't ever officially confirmed bookings - i'm trying to find a link to back this up but can't find where i was reading this recently) - and claiming their views are being "suppressed", that they are being "censored" and so forth.
It's a publicity stunt on their behalf to book an "alt light" provocateur, then cancel, sighting protests - and use the whole thing to claim some kind of left wing oppression. Or to use one of my favourite absurdist right wing lines "left wing fascism" (lol)

It plays well in the various right wing online echo chambers, as it does the more traditional reactionary perpetual outrage machines that keep the murdoch tabloids (and the like) ticking over.

It also has the added bonus of free publicity for the nazi provacateurs that pretend their views were created by the left.
One would think "the master race" would have better founding principles than just blaming their opponents for their toxic worldview - but apparently not.

Whether or not the speaker is a "nazi" may be beside the point, if they are speaking/publicising/fundraising for an alt right group (alt right/nazi - there is clearly no distinction between the two that i can see, post charlottesville), i can see why people would counter-demonstrate and seek to disrupt the event.
That's a perfectly legitimate tactic. Disruption and counter-protest has been used to make political points for centuries.

I'll condemn antifascism when my comrades start firing rounds indiscriminately into crowds, massacring church-goers or plowing cars into crowds of people.
Those are some examples of far-right violence and terrorism - and you won't find antifascists behaving in that manner, because we are not driven by the same impulses as those we oppose.

This isn't just tribalism for the sake of it - though that's what much of the MSM wants people to believe.
We oppose fascism because it's a dangerous, murderous, violent ideology.
There are lots of people i know who attend antifascist demonstrations because they hate violence.

I think a lot of hard line right wingers are especially confronted by condemnation from the left, because they have this distorted view of us "snowflakes" as being somehow acquiescent to their hypermasculine bullshit - which i suspect is why "antifa" has been so widely condemned by white middle-class liberals and conservatives alike in recent times.

I mean - people standing up to violence, rather than just bowing submissively to it?
How is that even possible?
Might doesn't make right, and there is no authority in violence - only the power of fear.
Fear is what the far right thrives upon, so the irony of these bully boys being emasculated by a bunch of pro-diversity, pro-queer, mixed gender activists is too sweet.

Racism is "identity politics" reduced to its lowest common denominator. It's the sort of bullshit "infowars" trades upon, yet even those charlatans claim it's just performance art.
A lot of these nazi/"alt right"/white supremacist internet celebrities are getting rich pedalling this absurd bullshit to vulnerable and disenfranchised people.
The sad thing for people who buy into it is that many don't seem to have any idea of the danger - and very real violence - they're advocating, and the deep wounds they are opening up.

Don't believe the hype

 

[JessFR]

In truth a lot of what I'm seeing that makes me worry that the antifascists aren't much better is coming from what I've heard you say rather than the media.

Say some nazi or whatever tells you how he'd love to see you and everyone you love dead, and you punch him in the face. I wouldn't hold that against you on an individual level. But I can't be ok with coldly deciding in advance, to go to a group of any sort and use violence against them no matter what they're saying provided talk is all they're doing at the time.

It doesn't matter what others, or even the same people are doing at other times. You obviously have a right to defend yourself. But what you can't do is use violence against people because of what they're saying. Or use violence against people because of what you feel they have done or will do at a time when they're not doing it. I keep hearing what sounds to me like you endorsing the use of violence against people you claim are fascists or nazis or whatever, now apart from having some concerns about how true that really is, I haven't really been focusing on if the claims of what these people are supposedly doing are true or not, because I don't feel it matters. It is NOT ok to use violence to try and stop people saying what you don't like, no matter what it is. Even if they're doing other shit at some other time that IS illegal, you use force then. But you don't use it just to stop them saying what they wanna say, that's not ok.

And it's exactly the kind of behavior I think of as fascist. The very thing you're supposed to be opposing. The whole argument is kinda scary. Because it is basically giving yourself power to enforce your view of morality with violence with absolutely NO legal authority to do so. What you're saying is vigilantism. Which I'm not ok with. You can use force to defend yourself when you are threatened but only when you are threatened. And you need to be made to answer for it after you do it.

But that doesn't sound what you're talking about. What you're talking about sounds to me like you're enforcing your own idea of right and wrong, using force, with no lawful authority to do so, for whatever crimes you decide against whomever you decide. Even if I ultimately agree with the intentions and the underlying morality, that behavior is wrong. It's the wrong way to go about it. And it is exactly what fascists and nazis do before they come into power. They execute their own version of the law, and make themselves judge and jury. You decide what the crime was, you decide guilt, you decide punishment. You don't have the right to do that, that's not ok.

I understand you're trying to do what's right, hell, I largely agree with you about the underlying sentiments. But even good causes can become corrupted by extremism and turn bad. And I fear that is where the kind of mindset you're displaying leads. And why I keep saying you should be careful. Passionate beliefs can be good, but they need to be kept an eye on, you need to be vigilant that they don't corrupt your reason. I've seen it happen, it's happened to me when I was a lot younger before I had further established what I believe in.

There's lots of things I used to believe that I now realize I was wrong. I was blinded by loyalty to other people with similar views, started letting my beliefs warp to theirs without really deciding if it's what I truly morally believed was right. Even then I still had a little voice in the back of my mind telling me I didn't really think it was ok. And that thought kept growing stronger till I'd find myself arguing more and more with the people who's side I felt I was on. Until I realized that while I agreed with a lot of what they believed in, I'd let myself be taken in and let my views be decided by the group consciousness.

It's not exactly abnormal, it's completely normal. We have evolved to do that, to preserve social cohesion and work well together with the people we see as "us" as opposed to "them". Like I said, I was a lot younger at the time. Bout 16 or so. While I don't agree with the things I would have said back then, it was a useful experience. It helps me stay vigilant against it in future. And helps me understand how people believe what they believe today. Republican, democrat, the existence of these labels and so many others is built on this phenomenon. Our tendency to form into a group of us and them and blindly adopt whatever "we" believe.

I think people should work out the most basic underlying principles of their morality, the belief system that all other beliefs are built on top of. The most basic, subjective, core values that you can use to determine everything else you believe in. Stuff like "I wouldn't want X to happen to me, and so I should try and keep X happening to others in the hopes that as a group we all do that" X is usually something painful or unpleasent.

Most people don't do that, they don't really put that much thought into what they believe. Most people are sheep. Again, this is how we've evolved. For society to work, in the long term historical evolutionary sense, you need a few born leaders, and a large number of born followers. People who decide for themselves, and people who believe whatever their peers believe.

My point is, you should think about these things. Make sure all your beliefs are really yours, if anything you say or think has even the tiniest bit of doubt in the back of your mind, it's worth thinking about more. Don't be a sheep. You're a smart person space junk, that's obvious. But even the smartest people can fall into the kind of traps I'm talking about, it's such an innate part of how we work as a species.

I bring this up cause like I said, I can see that you're not stupid, I don't think you're a sheep, a born follower. But I do wonder to what extent your beliefs might be influenced by the people around you. And it's not just other people, we can do a great job of radicalizing ourselves too. Getting a little more extreme each time you see something you know is wrong or are frustrated by other people. Until your whole belief system is corrupted away from those basic fundamental values.

When you start believing that violence is called for, in any situation, that's when it becomes dangerous. That's when you can't afford to be wrong. I know you're saying what you believe is right. But so have many people who have wound up doing terrible things. And granting yourself authority to use force against other people, when you are NOT directly defending yourself from an imminent and present threat from the person you are using the force against, is not something that can be condoned as a society. It must be held accountable.

EDIT: One more thing, I was thinking earlier about free speech. There are lots of people who believe in free speech the way I do, but even among them, there are few who will really to the extra mile and speak out against violations of the free speech of those they absolutely hate. That will defend the rights of people like Westboro baptist church or pedophiles or whatever. They do believe in the rights, and they know violating them is wrong, but in those particular cases, they choose to remain silent, to feel it's not their problem or their right, to selectively choose NOT to speak out in that circumstance.

And that's wrong, such situations are tests of if you REALLY believe in it or not. If you do, you must defend it even MORE strongly in those situations. Because that's where the eroding of those rights will always begin. It'll never start with the cases where everyone agrees, it starts in cases everyone despises. Those are the times when it's more important than ever that people speak out.

Your enemies freedoms are the ones that matter most of all. Space junk, I think you should keep that in mind. Even if you disagree with the use of force in such situations, you can't just look the other way. Not even if it's minor. Again, it's the minor situations that matter most of all.

If someone gets riled up, provoked, and lashes out, while that's wrong, it can be justified and understood from a moral perspective. But it still can't be allowed or condoned more broadly. And it doesn't apply when you start LOOKING to be provoked, and go out of your way to find those situations.

What you keep talking about IS vigilantism and it can't be condoned. And frankly, it is bad for your beliefs. It undermines any moral authority they had. This is not world war 2, we are not at this point. You keep suggesting such action is justified in such cases but it's NOT justified to prevent them. Because it doesn't prevent them. You can't use the tactics and rules of a war to prevent a war.

Nobody has said you can't counterprotest, that's what you CAN do. What you can't do is use force to try and disrupt the free speech of others.

 

[spacejunk]

Believe me, jess - i've been poltically active for a long time. I think it's a tad condescending to respond to my detailed and lengthy replies by telling me to think for myself.
Activists don't put ourselves in harm's way without firmly believing in what we are doing.

I've repeatedly pointed out that neo-nazis have killed a number of people recently for disgreeing with them - or for the colour of their skin.

Do you have anything to say about that?

It's what i'm talking about when i mention the privilege of complacency.
It is easy to ignore this shit if you don't feel like a target. I can assure you lots of people don't have this luxury.

Would you also call other types of community activism "vigilantism"?

Say, pickets to protect the destruction of forests or wetlands?
Or people that travel to Israel to document atrocities on the West Bank and try to stand in the way of soldiers killing Palestinian children?
Those are just two examples that spring to mind.
Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by apartheid South Africa, and the British conservative party called for him to be hanged in the 1980s.
Does that make him a bad guy - or do you think his public image after he was released from prison was appropriate?

If antifascism is vigilantism, who do you think does have the right to stand up to nazis?

If you'll accept for a moment that nazis are violent and have a long history of murdering their political opponents, how can you possibly expect people to confront them "peacefully"?

It seems to me you are either not following what is going on, or arguing from an entirely hypthetical viewpoint.
That's great - but the people that resist fascism in the real world are fucking corageous people.
They do what they do because they care about people, not because they lust for violence.


Do you know why i don't trust legal framework or the justice system or judiciary to protect our communities from
fascism?
Because it's not their job to do so - and it's never worked before.

The holocaust - and most other atrocities of nazi germany - were done legally, because the nazis were the lawmakers.

Similar things could be said about the heyday of the KKK - many of their rank and file, even their leaders - were lawmakers and law enforcement.

I could expand on the long history of links between police and fascists, but i presume that it's not really worth it. I've made the points i wished to make, and i need to get to bed.

But the fact is, the only people that set and enforce community standards are communities themselves.
We don't stand back and wait for paternal Big Brother figures to step in and say "hey - that's not right, you can't use fear and prejudice to gain a mandate to commit acts of state violence" - because
a) it's not the role of the state
and
b) i don't trust the police force.

I'm not naive; i've been 'round the block a few times, and i've learned to treat police with suspicion.

They don't decide what is right and wrong - it is not in their jurisdiction. Police just enforce laws, and have the monopoly on violence in society.

Communities on the other hand, do very much decide what is right and wrong. That is what our elected officials are for, in representative parliamentary democratic societies.

Some issues are too urgent for the political process.

Now - i don't believe that activists shutting down a hate group's demonstration is censorship.
My understanding of censorship is that it is carried out by the state.

I don't support the state banning any political affiliation or ideology. That is oppression.

But communities banding together and telling nazis to get the fuck out of town?

That's beautiful. It's community solidarity and resistance to fear, hate and violence. To me - and to a lot of people - they're very different things.

I understand people not watching videos people post in here - i rarely do, as most of it is total garbage (imho).

I would really recommend the short doco i posted above, about the 43 Group.
Like i said - antifascist action is nothing new. It's just people standing up against demagogues and bullies.

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

Spacejunk you are blatantly ignoring the fact that all western countries have LAWS to bring violent offenders to account. If someone kills or attacks someone, they can be charged, brought before a court and if their guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt they are convicted and punished.

If you are attacked, you have a legal right to defend yourself with reasonable force. Some US states go further with "stand your ground" laws. If you see someone being attacked, you can use reasonable force to protect them and you will likely be dealt with lightly by the courts.

Anything outside this is vigilantism and cannot be tolerated. It's against the law. Designating some speech as violence and attacking the speakers is just ludicrous. It opens up a whole can of worms that can only end in more violence.

Spacejunk, most people ARE NOT NAZIS. They don't sympathise with them. They don't want to support them.

To be honest I'm not liking what I've seen of either side.

The more I learn the more it looks like it's just two groups of fascists fighting eachoher. One might be less bad than the other but neither strikes me as good. Spacejunk, this kind of thinking is very dangerous. When you get to this kind of extreme it's usually not long before the tactics get more and more aggressive, and what it deemed to be a nazi grows broader and broader till it's just anyone you don't like. And then, you are your enemy.

Tread carefully.

I agree with all of the above quoted text that was posted. Both groups are not good and just as extreme as the other one.

They are both full of hate, bigotry, and hypocrisy.

 

[spacejunk]

^ i love the moral relativism of saying that people who punch nazis are just as bad as nazis that murder people in terrorist attacks, in mass shootings and in targeted racially motivated homicides.

Plenty of antifascists have been killed by nazis. A few nazis have been roughed up by antifa.
Same thing, yeah?

It's almost as bizarre as claiming "black lives matter" (a protest group) is just the same as the ku klux klan (a racist terrorist organisation).

As I JUST said, you can counter protest. You just can't use violence. And no, I do NOT care about the killings you refer too. Or rather, I do care, but it is completely irrelivent. It does NOT justify using force to prevent the exercise of free speech by anyone you deem to be nazis. No matter what crimes you hold them accountable for rightly or wrongly.

Claiming that racially motivated murder is not related to neo-nazism - when the people involved are active nazis seems a bit disingenuous to me.

I'm repeating myself too, because there are a lot of ridiculous claims made against antifascist activism.

The people we "deem to be nazis" are the guys with swastika flags, chanting nazi sloglans, seig-heiling.
It's really not as cryptic as you make out.

You seem to think i'm always being deceptive in the way i write, which i don't really understand. I'm being totally frank when i discuss this topic (and others) because i believe that tyranny thrives when good people are indifferent towards it.

Politics is fucking depressing, and keeping up to date with current events can be pretty damn crushing - especially at the moment.

As rough as things are at the moment, i don't think it's time to start acknowledging nazism as an ideology we can coexist with peacefully.
Fascism is like cancer in a healthy body - if we stand back and support its rightful place in the spectrum of political views, it may very well spread and kill its host.

I don't support the right of ISIS to operate with impunity in the West (or anywhere, for that matter) and the same goes for nazism.

Nobody in the western world seemed to shed any tears when bin laden or other murderous terrorists were killed by american or coalition forces in afghanistan, iraq, syria, etc.

Is that violence ok?
Why?
Because it was state sanctioned?
Because wealthy miltary forces make the violence and brutality seem clinical and appropriate?

Why is it ok to turn a blind eye to these terrorists - and even to pretend that the homocides are irrelevant to their political affiliations?

I'm not sure whether that's cognitive dissonance, if you're being deliberately obtuse - or if it is because they are white, "christian" americans?

What's the difference between a nazi terrorist and a muslim terrorist?

 

[Scrofula]

That's a good one, actually, in my quest to have JessR see my perspective, whether she agrees or not: for Klan rallies and whatever this thing in Berkeley was, let's say we swap in ISIS recruitment. The law says we have to allow Islamic extremists access to public venues the same as everyone else. They don't call themselves ISIS when they have parades and rallies, but they're all openly members. They don't talk about violence on stage, but it is filled with hate for Christians and Western traditions.

Now, as ISIS begins bombing things here and Sharia law really does start taking over, the law continues that Islamic extremists must be allowed their free speech.

Soon ISIS is taking Christian Americans as slaves or executing them. People outside the areas start asking the government to take action, but many inside are sympathizers or outright ISIS members, including the Attorney General, who has found weird loopholes to allow Sharia Law.

Jess, when do you draw the line for fighting for their right to "speak"? I agree that the Klan hasn't started a bombing campaign (though they've done plenty of bombing), but they and other fascist groups have a clear history that tells you what comes next. I don't think we're at the vigilante stage yet, but would you agree that at some point, there is one?

ETA: that's not much overstating, that is how I and others view these groups, and their eventual goal.

 

[LiquidMethod]

(Hi guys, hope y'all missed me. Plz excuse the tardiness of my replies)

EXPOSED: Hillary Clinton Moved 800K From Her Campaign To Help Fund ANTIFA

Hillary, who long during the campaign trail condemned “dark-money” Super-PACs, has funneled over 800K from her Campaign over to one of these very same outfits. It has been revealed that the failed presidential candidate’s Super-PAC, “Onward Together”, is heavily backing “resistance” and Alt-Left extremist groups such as ANTIFA.

Antifa running amok in Austin, TX - @ 9:37 anti-fascists repeatedly yell at a black officer: "you're a traitor to your people". Nice to see Antifa out in the park combating facism and racism, with communism and racism.
^btw when I first started posting here I stated that Liberals have adopted Communism and my credentials were attacked, well look at how many of these antifa leftists are brandishing communist emblems. History lesson: if we're judging symbols by how much death and destruction they've caused then what ANTIFA are doing here is far worse than brandishing swastikas. The irony.

I mean that the 4th amendment (the government needs a reason to search you) applies to poor black people in New York being stopped and frisked, as well as rich Manhattanites walking past, even if the mayor disagreed.

Obama signed away everyone's 4th amendment rights (and 14th amendment) when he signed the 2012 NDAA. He signed away virtually all our constitutional rights. The Posse Comitatus law that since 1878 prohibited US military from interfering with civil matters on US soil was repealed. Now members of the armed forces can break into our homes and arrest us without a warrant as our Fourth Amendment search and seizure laws requiring arrest warrants to enter our homes have been abolished. Americans' habeas corpus rights from the 1215 Magna Carta acting as the oldest human right in English-speaking civilization legally protecting citizens from government tyranny by prohibiting the feds from detaining us without just cause was wiped out. Under habeas corpus, the government must either charge us with a crime at the time of arrest or simply let us go. Yet the 2012 NDAA instantaneously turned our supposed democratic republic into a bonafide totalitarian police state. So now without being charged, any US military or law enforcement personnel can break into our homes and arrest us without warrants or charges and imprison us for an unlimited length of time without trial or legal representation, further violating our Sixth Amendment rights to a fair and speedy trial as well as denying us the right to due process.

something is once again quite fishy with American Culture / Society .... just like when OCCUPY WALLSTREET happened, much of it was instigated via the internet ... the elites were hoping to get a revolution underway so they could declare war on certain americans with a predisposition to extremism

Hang on, one of the organizers of the Charlottesville Nazi rally was previously an Occupy activist and Obama supporter. I don't believe anyone from the Left has addressed this.

Neo nazism is very real. Ignore and deny it at your peril.

What is more real are these agents co-opting your cause and sending both groups into a civil war. Ignore and deny it at your peril.

If you're more disturbed by people fighting back..

If someone hasn't fought first then you are not fighting back. You are instigating violence and committing crimes. Call the cops.

But given you're willing to use the transparent trick of trying to make it seem like I'm defending nazis when I've made it clear I'm not,

-This is a disgusting and blatantly hateful tactic used by someone who is unable to debate. Taken right out of Saul Alinsky's playbook.

Basically, I think most people who believe what you believe are naive. Well intentioned, and certainly not dumb, but naive. And frustrated with the status quo to such an extent that they're biased in how they see today's flaws but not the flaws in their solution.

People who promote socialism have zero grasp of the psychopathic mind and its macrosocial effects. Their socialist utopia may sound perfect (and even possible) in theory, but it's not taking into consideration the 3-6% of the population that will inevitably infiltrate your government, shit all over your perfect system and then systematically murder you and your people. We've seen it time and time again and we obviously have not yet evolved much, so there is no reason to believe the same shit will not occur again.

 

[LiquidMethod]

The Left think that their right to free speech includes the caveat that they can prevent others from speaking. The reason the Left cannot and will not allow the free exchange of ideas and opinions is because their ideology cannot stand up to scrutiny or challenge. In the open debate of ideas and philosophies the better idea wins, which is why the Left must shut others down (the way to counter Nazism is with better ideas). The far Left in America have crappy ideas. These ideas will not work, they are bad on an objective, political and historical standard (not so much a moral standard because that's always subjective). They support screwy economic systems and bland, boring, non-satirical no-joke-allowed-style speech (acceptance speech which is whatever they decide to find tolerable). They won on the progressive issues in the past that they actually had good ideas on but now they don't have much to talk about. Now it's all: micro-aggressions, somebody said something mildly offensive on a gaming stream, somebody said something we don't like and we don't want to tolerate it. Shitty issues that they'll be on the wrong side of history for. They've exhausted all the issues where they can make a positive impact. They're screwed now coz they're all about social progress but people are more or less treated well in the Western world. There is already equal possibility (not equal outcome as that's communism). So now the Far Left's idea of social progress is apparently going after the First Amendment... I wish they'd go back to protesting war.

So upon the realization that their ideas are shitty and that they should not debate anyone, they've created an echo chamber, attacking free speech and free press. The corporate press is not the free press, the free press is now the online world.

If the very small, very vocal, very angry, easily offended minority of people within the country came out and told everyone their beliefs, the basic platforms of what they believe in, their message would be rejected by virtually everybody. They're also incoherent and incapable of debating. Anytime these people debate someone who's not part of their movement (conservative, libertarian, some progressives) they lose 99% of the time. They're babies and cowards that don't want to have public discourse. They're already continually fucking themselves without realizing. When they say things like Milo or Ben Shapiro are Nazis (when they're Jewish), that becomes problematic for a lot of minority voting blocs. Better start thinking about what you're saying.

The Alt-Left are now the enemies of freedom.
It used to be the hyper-religious right-wingers years ago, now it's a bunch of social Marxists.
It's fucked up because I used to stand with the Left on some of their issues. Now they are collapsing in their echo chambers and won't be in great shape in a few years. The fact they're getting more vicious, violent and intolerant is because they're beginning to die off and lose favor. Trying to silence the views of respectable, reasonable mainstream conservatives, claiming that they are racist, bigoted, sexist etc, is destined to backfire. It's always going to fail because it veers so far from the truth and so far from people's understanding of common sense and reality. And there are always going to be people who want to stand up for your right to express yourselves however you like.

I even wonder sometimes if they're acting this way to legitimately sow disorder in society to bring about something like martial law. Because if nothing major happens during Trump's presidency, then all these people will be proven completely wrong that Trump is Hitler. Yet if they commit enough domestic terrorism to a point where the government needs to step in and clamp down, then they all can say "see I told you - Trump is authoritarian!"

spacejunk - Now if you were actually out there fighting Nazis, I would support you. But you have failed to differentiate Nazis from non-Nazis - I've attempted multiple times to get you to specify who you consider a Nazi and each time you refuse, which is extremely worrying and also proves that you don't actually care who is a Nazi or not. You've created the justification of not allowing Nazis to speak publicly, the problem is you are very loose with who you put into that bracket, it seems that anyone who simply disagrees with you ideologically is a Nazi (everyone to the right of Bernie). This is why people think that your kind are immature, ignorant, reckless and dangerous. If you're willing to discuss who is a Nazi or not, so that we can all fight the legitimate Nazis together, then let's break it down and unite the country against the (realistically negligible) threat against Nazis. If you refuse, then your agenda is transparent and we are going to continue to point out how ironically hateful and bigoted you are acting.

 

[LiquidMethod]

Conservatives vs Leftists - how each side reacts to people with differing views.

 

[Scrofula]

Can you print that all out on a pamphlet in little tiny print, with frequent font changes, and hand it to me? I stopped at "Obama signed away our 14th amendment rights . . . "

 

[JessFR]

That's a good one, actually, in my quest to have JessR see my perspective, whether she agrees or not: for Klan rallies and whatever this thing in Berkeley was, let's say we swap in ISIS recruitment. The law says we have to allow Islamic extremists access to public venues the same as everyone else. They don't call themselves ISIS when they have parades and rallies, but they're all openly members. They don't talk about violence on stage, but it is filled with hate for Christians and Western traditions.

Now, as ISIS begins bombing things here and Sharia law really does start taking over, the law continues that Islamic extremists must be allowed their free speech.

Soon ISIS is taking Christian Americans as slaves or executing them. People outside the areas start asking the government to take action, but many inside are sympathizers or outright ISIS members, including the Attorney General, who has found weird loopholes to allow Sharia Law.

Jess, when do you draw the line for fighting for their right to "speak"? I agree that the Klan hasn't started a bombing campaign (though they've done plenty of bombing), but they and other fascist groups have a clear history that tells you what comes next. I don't think we're at the vigilante stage yet, but would you agree that at some point, there is one?

ETA: that's not much overstating, that is how I and others view these groups, and their eventual goal.

Sorry I took a break from this thread, apart from frustrating me at the time my reply would have been too long to comfortably write on a tablet.

Anyways. I think you should be able to draw the answers to this question from my previous posts.

You can say whatever you want in protests provided you aren't basically giving instructions to people to carry out violence to people andor groups. So you can't incite terrorism.

If you're a terrorist organization obviously you have already broken the law so while if you were to protest, you can't be charged for that, you can be arrested for other crimes using the protest as an opportunity to take you into custody.

You can't use freedom of speech to shield yourself from being taken into custody for other crimes you've committed or other legitimate reasons. You can use it to express your views and those views alone aren't justification for stopping you. But if you're a part of a terror organization, at the very least the cops will probably want to talk to you, and you can't use freedom of speech to protect yourself from being arrested on a separate matter.

As for, is there a point where vigilantism is warranted. Well, no, but it's a complicated no.

You absolutely have a right to defend yourself against an imminent threat to your well being. But stopping a terrorist group is the job of law enforcement. You have the standard powers of any citizen. Citizens arrest, right to bare arms where applicable. But you don't have the authority to do anything else like searching people etc. you don't have the authority to suppress protests. You can counter protest, but you can't use force to stop them.

So no, you can't use illegal vigilantism. It can't be tolerated because there is no oversight. What happens when a community decide to run black people out of town because that's their values they're protecting? Who decides when it's legitimate vigilantism and when it's not?

It's this simple. You can't use force to suppress free speech of any sort. That's what I believe. My views are pretty much the same as what the law says on this one. So odds are if it would be illegal, it would be against my beliefs. My views aren't always in line with the law, and I don't think morality should be decided based on what's lawful or not. But I'm this case my moral views are pretty similar to what the law says.

I will fight for their right to say what they want to say. Now if "they" is a terrorist group, domestic or foreign, then obviously they've committed lots of other crimes. So it's not really a question of protesting, why would they be protesting when it would get them arrested for their other crimes?

I'm not saying you're wrong about what these groups want or what these people are like, cause I don't really know. You might well be right. But I won't compromise on the most basic rights.

You can use free speech to advocate for any political view you like, you can say anything so long as it isn't direct instructions for violence. What that means is you can't tell people to drag black men out of their homes and lynch them. You can say you think that should happen, you can say the government should do that. But you can't tell people to do it.

Yes, free speech can be used to enact drastic changes to society that make the world a worse place, I'm not saying you fears are entirely misplaced. I don't think it will happen, but I don't think you're entirely wrong to have such concerns either. I just don't think it's a good enough reason to compromise on free speech. To me that's the same outcome. A worse world to live in. Once we start doing that, who decides where the line is with free speech? It's one thing for the line to be instructing violence or not, now we're drawing the line in the actual political content of the free speech.

It's just as valid a fear of how free speech could become corrupted and the government suppressing whatever they don't like as a result of opening the door for them in this way.

It's a question of what you're more afraid of, and what you find the bigger concern, and what you consider the more important basic principle of right and wrong. And we don't agree on that. To me, free speech is absolute. It's unfortunate that people are retarded, you don't think there aren't piles of things that drive me crazy and that I know are bad for society and get people hurt or killed that result from free speech? But to me the alternative is a lot worse.

Look at how many die from shit like alternative medicine, id love to be able to shut those idiots up cause their bullshit kills people. Stupid people who buy into their crap. But it's not worth the risk. The slippery slope is real.

We both ultimately more agree than we disagree, we agree on free speech, we agree this kind of shit is wrong, we agree about racism about all this shit. We just don't agree on how all those different things mesh with each other. And what is acceptable and what isn't in terms of what can be done about it. And I doubt that'll change. At its core a lot of it comes down to subjective questions. And I don't think this can be argued to a constructive end without pretty much starting all over, and going point by point, one on one. Discussing it like this doesn't work cause it gets distracted and points get misunderstood, answers misinterpreted. I'm still not actually sure what your question here was, but I did my best to answer how I interpreted it. Let me know if I didn't answer your question cause if I didn't it's cause I honestly didn't follow it.

 

[JessFR]

(Hi guys, hope y'all missed me. Plz excuse the tardiness of my replies)

EXPOSED: Hillary Clinton Moved 800K From Her Campaign To Help Fund ANTIFA


Antifa running amok in Austin, TX - @ 9:37 anti-fascists repeatedly yell at a black officer: "you're a traitor to your people". Nice to see Antifa out in the park combating facism and racism, with communism and racism.
^btw when I first started posting here I stated that Liberals have adopted Communism and my credentials were attacked, well look at how many of these antifa leftists are brandishing communist emblems. History lesson: if we're judging symbols by how much death and destruction they've caused then what ANTIFA are doing here is far worse than brandishing swastikas. The irony.


Obama signed away everyone's 4th amendment rights (and 14th amendment) when he signed the 2012 NDAA. He signed away virtually all our constitutional rights. The Posse Comitatus law that since 1878 prohibited US military from interfering with civil matters on US soil was repealed. Now members of the armed forces can break into our homes and arrest us without a warrant as our Fourth Amendment search and seizure laws requiring arrest warrants to enter our homes have been abolished. Americans' habeas corpus rights from the 1215 Magna Carta acting as the oldest human right in English-speaking civilization legally protecting citizens from government tyranny by prohibiting the feds from detaining us without just cause was wiped out. Under habeas corpus, the government must either charge us with a crime at the time of arrest or simply let us go. Yet the 2012 NDAA instantaneously turned our supposed democratic republic into a bonafide totalitarian police state. So now without being charged, any US military or law enforcement personnel can break into our homes and arrest us without warrants or charges and imprison us for an unlimited length of time without trial or legal representation, further violating our Sixth Amendment rights to a fair and speedy trial as well as denying us the right to due process.


Hang on, one of the organizers of the Charlottesville Nazi rally was previously an Occupy activist and Obama supporter. I don't believe anyone from the Left has addressed this.


What is more real are these agents co-opting your cause and sending both groups into a civil war. Ignore and deny it at your peril.


If someone hasn't fought first then you are not fighting back. You are instigating violence and committing crimes. Call the cops.


-This is a disgusting and blatantly hateful tactic used by someone who is unable to debate. Taken right out of Saul Alinsky's playbook.


People who promote socialism have zero grasp of the psychopathic mind and its macrosocial effects. Their socialist utopia may sound perfect (and even possible) in theory, but it's not taking into consideration the 3-6% of the population that will inevitably infiltrate your government, shit all over your perfect system and then systematically murder you and your people. We've seen it time and time again and we obviously have not yet evolved much, so there is no reason to believe the same shit will not occur again.

I often feel like the socialism problem is that socialists fear and mistrust corporations more than government, capitalists fear and mistrust government more than corporations. Way I see it, the problem with socialism is it gives way too much power to the government. And when governments have too much they become corrupt. I also think that since governments have no real economic competition since the money comes from taxes regardless of their performance, they tend to do terribly when they are in control of businesses.

Generally if businesses screw up bad enough, they run out of money and go bankrupt. Governments keep getting tax money regardless of how efficient they are, there's little motivation to run things particularly well.

Now I do think some things should be nationalized. I absolutely do not believe in privately run prisons, I think it's unacceptable. Some things should be a mix of both, like healthcare and education. A public and a private system side by side is what I support.

But most of it should be private if you ask me. I think businesses generally do a much better job than governments. But, that falls apart when they don't have competition, for the same reason it doesn't work with government. So government does need to be involved to the extent that we can ensure companies don't wind up with a monopoly so they can have total control and prevent competition. Or it becomes even worse than if the government ran it. Still no competition but not even elected either.

Which is why I believe in a system of constrained capitalism. Capitalism, but not pure uncontrolled capitalism.

I believe in the same on the social side, democracy, but not pure democracy. I think pure democracy results far too often in the majority persecuting the minority. I believe in constrained, limited democracy. Democracy with certain basic rights and systems in place to prevent oppression by the majority (this is why I support the electoral college).

I believe extremes are almost always bad. I do think at its core, socialism is worse than capitalism, a lot worse, but I don't believe capitalism can be left completely uncontrolled either. Pure capitalism isn't much better than socialism in terms of the interests of the people. Like I said, controlled capitalism. With some things publicly run, some things a mix of both, and the rest all private but with oversight to prevent anticompetitive practice. That's the system I believe in.

 

[LiquidMethod]

I stopped at "Obama signed away our 14th amendment rights . . . "

You tend to make a habit of stopping when facts counteract your beliefs.

Obama Approves Draconian Police State Law

 

[JessFR]

You tend to make a habit of stopping when facts counteract your beliefs.

Obama Approves Draconian Police State Law

You know when I clicked that link I was expecting to be very unimpressed and ready to argue that your point was stupid, then I saw that it was the whole NDAA thing.

That's actually one of the biggest issues that turned me against Obama. The NDAA controversy. I haven't looked into it in some time, but as I recall the courts ordered the whitehouse to give assurance they wouldn't use it on us citizens. And they interpreted it to mean they won't use it on the specific us citizen named in the court action. That pissed me off.

It's the courts job to interpret law, not theirs, it's not for them to interpret the interpretation.

As I recall the whole thing was dropped cause the defense couldn't show standing. Which is always a concern when you challenge a law on principle. I think laws like this should be able to be challenged without having to show standing concern. I think that's a mistake in how our legal system works.

On the whole I like Obama more than most presidents, but this was one of a couple things that really turned me against him. The president is supposed to protect and defend the constitution. But none of them seem to make any effort at all to do that, they do the opposite. The president is usually the biggest threat to the constitution. It's all fucked up.

I still think Obama was better than most, but he still did more than enough for me to classify him as yet another president to spit on the constitution like all the others.

 

[LiquidMethod]

I liked his psychopathic charm.

He was such a damn cool guy. Almost tricked me into ignoring that he was a narcissistic warmonger that sold out the American people and took it up the ass from the Deep State.

He's so damn cool, though (that's how I base my opinions of politicians)

 

[JessFR]

He was certainly one of the smarter presidents. He did a good job keeping his more questionable actions quiet. I'll admit, with trump in office I sure miss him now.

Why can't we actually have a good president though? Someone who really does defend the constitution and believe in and act with American principles? It's a rhetorical question, I know why. Our system has become so fucked that you can't become president if you're someone like that. Someone with principles like that won't do what you gotta do to get into the Oval Office.

It's a real shame.

 

[LiquidMethod]

Exactly.
There's a reason why psychopaths effortlessly rise to the top of politics and corporations.
Their behavior is rewarded in our perverse society, and too many of us fall under the psychopathic charm so we look up to these monsters.

 

[alasdairm]

The Left think that their right to free speech includes the caveat that they can prevent others from speaking. The reason the Left cannot and will not allow the free exchange of ideas and opinions is because their ideology cannot stand up to scrutiny or challenge.

if bl staff are the bunch of libtards you constantly say we are, if this is true, how on earth are you even posting here?

the very fact you posted that shows that you're demonstrably wrong.

you were complaining against division in another thread. if you sincerely believe it's a problem, i invite you to address the issue by starting with your own divisive comments. be the change.

alasdair

 

[JessFR]

I don't actually think Obama was a psychopath. I think many things he did as president were unacceptable and I don't think he was a particularly good president in general. But I honestly think he probably had good intentions. But I think bush probably had good intentions too. Isn't worth much if it doesn't amount to much. With bush, he was too stupid to get much good to happen and know what the right thing to do was.

Which is why I'm less forgiving of obamas failures. Obamas not stupid, I can't excuse as much from him as I could from bush because he's a lot smarter.

You know one of the big problems we have. The president, and the people, we all have come to believe the job of the president involves making law. It isn't. The president has no authority to introduce bills, or to vote on them. He has veto power but even that is limited. This is th job of the legislative branch, of congress. But as if it weren't bad enough that the president thinks he should be making law and having campaign platforms involving making law, the voters think that too.

That's not how our country was designed, the constitution, the system, wasn't designed for that. It's an overreach of executive power that is so ubiquitous and goes back so long we've come to see it as normal and expected.

The presidents job is to execute the law, make policy within the bounds of the existing law, represent us in foreign relations, negotiate, etc.

Something like obamacare is not what the presidents job was supposed to be. And this isn't just Obama, every president does it. And we actually think that's normal, that that's how the system is supposed to work. It's not. There's a reason the president needs someone else to introduce bills, there's a reason the president doesn't have a vote in congress. He was never supposed to in the first place. The founders put in separation of powers for this reason. The office of president was never supposed to be one involving law making. That power begins and ends with veto power. And even that can be overridden by congress. Congress are the ones in authority to make law, not the president. But almost no one seems to realize that. Should have paid more attention in civics class.

But I always say that our country got off to a bad start when John Adams the second president of the United States endorsed and signed in the sedition act in total violation of the first amendment. The office couldn't even make that long before totally disregarding the constitution. I call spitting on the constitution a presidential tradition that each president finds their own take on.

 

[Scrofula]

I believe Mr. Method's psychopath references come from a specific author, and don't refer to the possible human condition.

I can criticize Obama as well, especially for maintaining an illegal drone war, authorized in those NDAAs.

But the quote of mine you pulled was about due process and equal protection, and admittedly high and in the wrong thread even, and you, Mr. Method, replied with Obama removing our 14th amendment rights. The only connection is "amendment" and "rights", which didn't look good for an essay on "antifa".

ETA: Jess, yeah, I meant just the first line for you, should have been more clear. And to be more clear, double-checked and there's a blogger, some woman with a polish-sounding name, has a book and a big theory about how psychopaths control everything. I believe that's what Mr. Method is referring to? I can dig up a link if not, and anyone's interested.