Am I the only one who saw the two sides clashing in Charlottesville as similar to the arguments in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian between The People’s Liberation Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Liberation Front? OK, maybe it was just me, but the two groups clashing are a lot more alike than they would care to admit. The biggest difference is really how the mainstream members of the ideologies they claim to represent treat their radicals. I’ll get to that over the course of this post, but for the most part this will be a link roundup of some of the best stories similar to my “Week in Radical Leftism” that you can see here every Saturday morning. So to jump right in:
Antifa and #WhiteLivesMatter deserve each other
Here’s my overall take:
Robert E. Lee is one of the important and fairly-honorable figures in American history; traditional statues of him either should not, or at least need not, be taken down. As such, the #WhiteLivesMatter types may have a point on that one, little issue.
Having said that: I run with #AllLivesMatter. I have no problem denouncing white nationalism or white ethnic identitarianism (like I did, here). Especially if the people turn violent. I hereby denounce it again.
And of course, I denounce Antifa and #BlackLivesMatter, especially if they turn violent.
An ideal outcome might be if any/all of those who committed crimes Saturday, on either side, will have to spend some jail time together. Paired in cells, if possible.
To the extent that many people (on either side) did NOT commit any crimes and expressed themselves peacefully: Kudos. Although, again, I probably don’t agree on many issues with either side.
President Trump has condemned hatred, bigotry and violence coming from any side…whoa, looks like I agree with Trump again! How does that keep happening?
There Were Not One but Two Supremacist Groups from #Charlottesville.
However, another supremacy group showed up as well. Only rather than the superiority of their skin color or nationality, this group believes in the superior morality of their cause.
These are the moral supremacists, and they’re every bit as toxic as the racial supremacists. They want to silence the speech of anyone who dares challenge their self-righteous beliefs. They’re also very willing to use violence to promote their supremacy.
Moral supremacists rose up right after the election of Donald Trump. They’re the people who rioted at Berkeley in February when Milo Yianopoulos was scheduled to speak on campus. They deemed his speech immoral, so they shut him down. Here’s one of their leaders, Yvette Felarca. She’s a real piece of work.
#Charlottesville: The Left Unexpectedly Falls in Love With the Word ‘Terrorism’
Because the media knew that Black Lives Matter was a Democrat Party propaganda operation, they went out of their way to suggest that the Dallas shooting was an aberration — the deed of a lone madman — whereas in Charlottesville, it is being suggested, James Fields was basically a drone, programmed by Republicans to kill black people. The more obvious conclusion is that James Fields was a dimwit loser:
WHAT IS WRONG WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP’S STATEMENTS ON CHARLOTTESVILLE?
The reality is that there is far too much political violence. It is all unacceptable–fascist “antifas” rioting at the inauguration of President Trump, left-wing students and hangers-on rioting and committing assault at places like Berkeley, Middlebury and Claremont, mainstream Democrats like James Hodgkinson trying to assassinate political opponents, murderers inspired by Black Lives Matter killing policemen, and fringe fanatics like James Fields similarly committing murder. I am evidently in the minority, but I think President Trump is right to condemn all political violence rather than singling out the one incident that Democrats want to talk about, while whitewashing the rest.
Shannon Watts, Moms Demand Action blame Charlottesville violence on NRA, gun laws
Women’s March Blames Vehicular Homicide on NRA
ABC News’ Roberts, Dowd say Trump Shares Blame for Protester’s Murder
Chicago Tribune: Angry White Men Fueling Racial Violence
Charlottesville mayor blames Trump for violent weekend
Anyone notice a trend here? How about this:
It did not take long for President Trump to be blamed for the violence in Charlottesville. Yet, President Trump did not invite white nationalists to the White House and give them legitimacy as President Obama did with Black Lives Matter. President Obama’s equating attacks on the police with police brutality certainly provided a justification, if not a motivation, for these attacks.
No one in their right mind will blame the victims of Charlottesville for what happened to them, but in the aftermath of Islamist violence, it is quite common to blame the victims. In the aftermath of 9/11, far too many of my university colleagues blamed “our foreign policy.”
No responsible commentator will say that the manifestations of white hatred, as in the indoctrination of “white privilege,” so evident on our campuses and in our media, are the causes of death and injury at Charlottesville. To do so gives legitimacy, if not license, to violence. It would follow the left’s orientation of blaming the victim when it suits its agenda.
The Constitution dies in darkness too. McAuliffe and Signer wanted this violence.
This is going to be a turning point. It was all part of the plan. The Mayor and the Governor let the violence play out to score political points against Trump. The DOJ has rightly launched a civil rights investigation into the Charlottesville violence. Hopefully part of that will be investigating why the police and National Guard were not allowed to prevent the worst of it.
Stolberg quotes Corinne Geller speaking on behalf of the State Police. “It may have looked like a lot of our folks were standing around,” because of the sheer number of officers on the scene, but “there were other troopers and law enforcement officers who were responding to incidents as they arose.” Can this quote be squared with McAuliffe’s?
Glenn Reynolds infers that the police were ordered to stand down. He wants to know “who ordered the police to stand down in the face of mob violence, and why. A decision to allow citizens to be assaulted in the exercise of their constitutional rights is a federal felony.”
Fighting White Supremacy Means Owning Up to American History
This was offered by the geniuses at The Nation, who advocate owning up to our history by destroying every display of it – you know, as in the crud that started this whole mess
The Alt-Right Is The Mirror Image Of The New Left
This was written back in September, and this somewhat lengthy philosophical piece hasn’t lost a bit of relevance and is well worth a read:
Declaring that the alt-right is on the Right in “both the American and European sense of the term” is utter rubbish, and you can no more declare that you are “on the right” than you can declare that your gender is fluid and not expect people to raise an eyebrow. You are on the Right because of what you believe, how you act, and what impulses and ideas undergird your philosophy.
The alt-right is a European-style right-wing movement that is at odds with the classical liberalism upon which our country was built, and which the Left has redefined as “Right.” That is to say, the European “Right” is mapped onto a political spectrum different than our own. Our “right” — conservatism or classical liberalism —is dead-center on our spectrum, no matter how persistently the Left tries to claim otherwise. It is constitutionalism, which incorporates federalism, republicanism, legal equity, and a separation of powers.
As you might have noticed, unlike my weekend updates where I usually offer my own comments, today I’ve just let the authors do the talking. But there is one angle to this story that’s particularly disturbing. It’s how the Radical Left only discovered their voice in condemning violence when it’s not being done by someone they sympathize with or fear. Over the weekend, but prior to Saturday’s events unfolding, the Washington Post offered sympathy for violent scum:
WaPo Shows Human Side of Anarchists
Except it’s not your property, jackass. Muhammad Ashraf, whose 2015 Lincoln super-stretch limousine was burned by rioters on Inauguration Day, took a $60,000 hit on the loss. “When that car becomes a source of your livelihood, it becomes a part of your life. I don’t know if the protesters understand that when they destroy something — the way I felt when I saw my car burning, it really hurt me deeply even though it’s just a car.”
Sammi LeMaster has embraced anarchism for its sense of “community.” She said, “It takes awhile to get used to the label because it comes with a lot of baggage. People assume that anarchism is so extreme. But I associate it with wanting everyone’s needs to be met.”
She’s caring, not like those evil capitalists like Muhammad Ashraf and Donald Trump!
And in a separate article justifying the Radical Left’s assault on campus free speech, WaPo also gives this wink and a nod of rationalization for violence:
Rejecting free speech only undercuts the left. And from a liberal point of view, there’s an irony that goes largely unnoticed. The intense hatred of racial “microaggressions” is flourishing on campuses just as state and national Republican officials are zealously practicing macroaggressions: infringing on voting rights, affirmative action and progressive advances in criminal justice. While shortsighted activists focus on slights (real, imagined and arguable) at hand, the political powers that be are indisputably rolling back equal rights directly and profoundly where most people live — off campus. Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter court easy martyrdom as President Trump’s legions cheer them on. When defenders of racial equality take the bait and obsess about a few loathsome provocations, they plunge into their adversaries’ trap, diverted from the political arena where democracy and equality badly need them.
And this is the biggest difference between our two sides. The worst elements that claim to represent the right really don’t, and Conservatives reject that fringe. On their side, their radical crazies are their mainstream. And I don’t have a solution to this morality gap between our sides.
But for as unhappy as the events from this day were, I’d like to close on a positive note – via the great Roger Simon of PJ Media:
For the next week or two — assuming we’re not at war with North Korea — we will hear non-stop geschreiing from our media about what a racist nation we are, how we have to come together, rend our shirts, investigate this and that and endlessly discuss how bad we are until we’re finally forgiven at some undetermined point in an ever vanishing future that seems never to arrive.
Don’t play that game. What happened in Charlottesville isn’t us. It’s just a small group of real bad people. Indict them, convict them, and lock them up for a long as possible. The rest of us should move on. We have a lot better things to do.
When is this coming down in Seattle? pic.twitter.com/DsrFcGG9Y1
— ₿ Michelle Ray ₿ (@GaltsGirl) August 15, 2017
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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
Image at the top of this post appears via The People’s Cube
The left was (faux) furious with Trump because he did not single out the white supremacists for the descent into violence that happened. Yet, what Trump SHOULD have done would be to have called out the white supremacists for being racist as well as ANTIFA for initiating the violence and BLM for being racist and keeping the violence going. Of course, accusing ANTIFA and BLM of being racist and violent would be… well, racist.
Trump denounced them all, which explicitly included them ALL. He could not have been any more accurate or fair than that for no doubt there were sub-groups associate with each side that were involved as well whose names were not known at the time.
But the left always wants everything 100% their way. They want to be the only ones committing violence and they don’t want to be recognized for it.
@Bill… Deplorable Me: Couldn’t agree more, and I’m kind of surprised he didn’t. One thing our president isn’t known for is pulling punches or not being specific when criticizing anybody
There are two (at least) alt-rights.
One includes people of all colors who MAGA by electing Donald Trump President.
The other is a fringe group who obsess about whiteness, Hitler and Jews. This group didn’t help elect President Trump.
But the media focuses on the latter, not the former.
Technically our Founding Fathers were radical men.
They drew a red line (over taxes) against the UK and fought, won then founded our country based on some of the most liberal and new thinking on earth.
So many people here in the Colonies were shocked by the radicalness of their Constitution that they were forced into adding the 1st Ten Amendments just to get enough signatures to create the country.
Now, more recently, we’ve been under the influence of Revisionist Historians who propagandize away our past in favor for a made-up version.
In science, during the same time period, peer review lost its luster, then the very foundation of science: cause & effect and the observable scientific method!
In both history and science the very idea of denigrating “old white men” and their work product has been moving forward.
The Antifa movement is based on the communist party (which NEVER worked).
People are openly paid to show up and act out under the Antifa banner. They might be actors, sadists, broke losers, or even communists.
Black Lives Matter is based on a lie made up by Michael Brown’s buddy, Dorian Johnson. His hands weren’t up, he was still charging the officer.
On the other side….
I’ve combed through the footage and seen about 5 members of KKK in C’Ville.
I also saw odd symbols but no actual swastikas.
These odd symbols were attributed to the American nazi movement.
Again, they were the minority of the 400 who showed up to protest taking down the statue.
In other words, both sides were ASTROTURFED.
There were sincere people on both sides, but Jason Kessler is a phony who not a white power person. He led and organized the Unite The Right protest against the statue coming down. But he is an Occupy Wall Street leader and Obama and Democrat supporter….hardly on the right.
One thing the Left will never understand is that the more you vilify white people, the more white people will fight back.
Because we are reaching the line of “At this point in time, what difference does it make?”
If I am going to be attacked no matter what I say or do, I have no reason to not say and do what I think is proper.
I just want to be left alone to attend to the things that are important to me.
@Brother Bob: In President Trump’s first comment he did condemn ALL violence. For me that was good enough. But the insane Commies want to be seen and the sane moderate voice of reason so they demanded President Trump specifically denounce the so called White Nationalists, led by a former Occupy leader. This whole thing was a setup. PERIOD
Absolutely, Antifa/BLM/counterprotestors= all same group
white nationalists/white supremicist = all same group
Both of these groups = all same group.
This whole show was organized and carried out by WWP.
As I recall, you were also trying to sell the proposition that the Civil War had nothing to do with an intention to abolish slavery.
Fine comment.
I hope no white person votes for a Democrat ever again after this.
Today, in Utah, a Mormon blogger (female) weighed in on the LDS (Mormon church) PR dept’s statement deriding the idea of valuing one’s whiteness.
She started out saying it was not church dogma or it would have come from their 7 leaders.
Then she said she LOVES her white culture.
I am sure she meant some Irish, German, French, etc., European legacy rather than her whiteness.
Whites don’t have A culture, they have many, each of the various European cultures.
But whites, and all other people, can love pizza, which is Italian.
Or we can all appreciate art, music, clothing from Europe.
What is there in Antifa’s culture worth valuing?
Communism?
No.
Anarchy?
No.
Emotional snowflaking?
No.
Sexual abberations?
No.
Multiculturalism w/unithought?
No.
Violence?
No.
Tantrums?
No.
Revisionist erasing history?
No.
Antifa is morally bankrupt.
Without paid actors joining their (Soros) paid leaders they are non-existent.
@Petercat, #4:
The left consists of white people, along with people of every other race, ethnicity, and religion. It’s not whiteness that’s being criticized.
—-
Seattle’s Lenin statue has an interesting history. It wasn’t put on display there as a political statement, but as a 16-foot-tall art object and historical curiosity. It’s there because it’s interesting, and a tourist attraction. There a Nazi-era German submarine on permanent exhibit in Chicago. It’s no more a political symbol in it’s present context than the Lenin statue is. If you want to think of them as such, consider them war trophies.
None of this is really about statues. It’s about what they represent. Personally, I think the idiots who pulled down statues unlawfully should be prosecuted for vandalism.
@Greg: #9
I find myself agreeing with you for the most part.
My one clarification would be to look at any liberal website that addresses a problem in society, and almost invariably, white people are claimed to be the root cause.
We get no credit for the things we’ve accomplished or the people that we’ve freed.
While many liberals are white, I will argue that they are like abused women who defend their abuser (which is an all-too- common occurrence).
The right consists of many people of different ethnicities, beliefs, etc. The common thread is a desire to be left alone to pursue our own desires without anyone getting in our faces or throwing roadblocks in our way.
@Greg:
sell? Only ignorance can deny that there was still legal slavery in the North for a long time AFTER the civil war was over. It was clearly abolished in the south before it was in the North, so if slavery were the issue, why weren’t the northern states attacked also. When you can say that all states that had legal slavery were attacked equally because they had slaves, then you might start to convince someone that slavery was the driving issue.
@Greg:
Not really. white? maybe. People? hmmm….Trannies, Lesbians, bi’s, gays, KKK’s Antifas, LDN’s
You wanna put them in the ‘people’ category? questionable.
@Greg:
Interesting to those that died in the Siberian labor camps? Interesting to the parents or children of those killed fighting his dictatorship? Interesting in that a human can be so evil? It’s humorous to read a KKK party member (Greg) trying to justify how great the founder of Communism was. It’s ‘only’ history, but the civil war ‘wasn’t’ history? Right? Next we’re gonna have to read you justifying how ‘interesting’ a person Stalin was. I’ve decided that the Dimocrats want to keep the concentration camps in Europe to remind the Jews that if they don’t kiss the butts of the KKK(dimocrat)party that they might just send them back.
Yep, you Dims have really got it figured out; George get your check to you on time, with all this commotion going on?
@Redteam, #13:
Lenin died before all that. He was a Marxist idealist. Siberian labor camps, purges, and the reign of terror under a totalitarian Soviet police state were Joseph Stalin’s doing.
People enjoy the Seattle statue.
@Greg:
Oh well, that’s a lot of comfort. The evil guy that succeeded the evil guy did it. Well, I feel better already. So using that reasoning, I doubt Hitler ‘put’ anyone into a gas chamber, it was probably actually somebody else that was just doing what he wanted. It is rather humorous how Dimocrats can justify evil by claiming someone else was ‘more evil’. Yep, those people that died in those camps are probably feeling better already. Kinda like the Dims founded the KKK but it was those people that came later that made it bad. Can’t beat that Dim reasoning.
More Lenin statue silliness:
Light-up Abraham Lenin
Christmas Lenin
Halloween Lenin
Lenin Pride
Conehead Lenin
Political Lenin
John Lenin
@Greg: I didn’t bother to check them out. Somehow they seem more appropriate for KKK members,(Dimocrats) so I’ll leave them for them.
@Greg:
Odd how you can make that clear and accurate distinction about everything but Civil War monuments.
@Deplorable Me: That’s how the WWP works.
American+=evil/ Communist/socialist=good
Multiculteraisms a pluague in america being used by the left to ruin america and bring america down and such sinister groups like the CFR,TLC, and the ORDER OF Skull & Bones and the UN as well as ISIS and ANTIFA and wealthy socoa;sists like George Soros and Mircosofts Rupert Murdock