By David Futrelle
Donald Trump will blithely threaten nuclear war in hair-raising off-the-cuff remarks. But his milquetoast statement on Charlottesville today — referring vaguely to violence “on many sides” — was clearly carefully scripted, seemingly to avoid offending the white supremacists who have been some of his most fervent supporters.
Whatever his intent, White supremacists are cheering his evasive non-response as a sign that “he loves us all.”
it worked pic.twitter.com/ekSZnw6FCK
— Ashley Feinberg (ashleyfeinberg.bsky.social) (@ashleyfeinberg) August 12, 2017
Trump's remarks today were deliberately vague to send a wink and nod to white supremacists, and the alt-right is aware and clearly thrilled. pic.twitter.com/TbQGpdxVed
— The Darkest Timeline Numbersmuncher (@NumbersMuncher) August 12, 2017
White supremacists cheer Trump’s response to Charlottesville violence https://t.co/0G4Wnqw2Rx pic.twitter.com/umc1fJQyzD
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 12, 2017
by condemning hatred "on many sides," the president of the United States just handed an immensely valuable gift to David Duke
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 12, 2017
And to Richard Spencer, and “Baked Alaska,” and all the other Nazis and quasi-Nazis and “oh-no-I’m-not-a-Nazi”s who marched in Charlottesville.
The closest Trump came to condemning the terrorism was this bizarre tweet, posted late in the day.
Condolences to the family of the young woman killed today, and best regards to all of those injured, in Charlottesville, Virginia. So sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2017
BEST FUCKING REGARDS!?
Not that any of this should be a shock at this point, given that during his campaign Trump deliberately and repeatedly incited his supporters to attack those protesting him.
On the campaign trail Trump reminisced about "the old days" where protestors would be "carried out on a stretcher."
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) August 12, 2017
Trump is the one who made it okay to "Beat the crap out of 'em."
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 12, 2017
And he’s not the only one to encourage violence. One commenter reminded us that right-wing columnist and University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds literally urged drivers to plow into Black Lives Matter protesters in a tweet last year
https://twitter.com/bax_books/status/896443189669666816
None of this bodes well for the future.
Make no mistake. When Donald Trump loses election or is impeached he will incite these most fanatic supporters to violence. https://t.co/dr0fjzkgj9
— Richard Schiff (@Richard_Schiff) August 12, 2017
Sadly, I think this is almost certainly true.
Remember that the skulls that the Left were breaking in Cable Street weren’t those of fascists, but of the Metropolitan Police. The actual fascists were sitting back and waiting for the Met to do their violence for them (as happened in Lewisham, too.) It’s a detail which often gets omitted from the histories of the event.
I say this not to condemn those who fought at Cable Street, but to remind people that violence against the police is often vindicated by history.
@EJ:
Well, so much for my hypothesis of “peaceful better vs. police, non-peaceful necessary vs. paramilitaries like militias, KKK, Boko Haram, etc.”; must be the “peaceful better vs. reality-based, non-peaceful necessary vs. those who have willfully divorced reality” hypothesis that’s correct then. 🙂
@Ohlmann
If the French Antifa ever did anything worthwhile ?
So I live near Clermont, aight. A few years ago we had to carry an Antifa out on a stretcher after he took a shot from something akin to a BB gun (but with much more kick) to the head while running security for an event we’d been organizing.
That was the first time I actually saw, with my own eyes, Antifa doing “anything worthwhile” but it certainly wasn’t the last.
That’s what they do. They keep the rest of us safe. They ain’t a “folkloric” part of demonstrations or support concerts, they’re a vital part of it.
@ Alan Robertshaw
the only thing that brings to mind is Barry Shitpeas, on one of Charlie Brooker’s Wipe (2016 I think) saying that it’s lucky Trump has silly hair and tiny hands because we can laugh at him, like how Hitler wouldn’t have got started if he’d had a silly hairstyle and moustache and… Oooh dear!
@Surplus to Requirements:
Your desire to adopt nonviolence wherever possible does you credit.
I think, however, that you need a third category: the reality-based, the non-reality-based, and those who will follow orders regardless of the reality that informs those orders. An individual police officer or soldier may be a lovely person and may have severe misgivings about being ordered to tear-gas peaceful Black protestors while protecting violent White ones; but if they carry out those orders then their misgivings don’t absolve them.
Unfortunately, many of those people have the choice of “obey orders or get fired”, which is often a situation in which people are willing to conveniently forget their morals. I have sympathy for this situation, I really do, but the moment they end up acting violently towards another human being my sympathy disappears. If their morality is for sale then they had none to begin with.
I would suggest a use-of-force heuristic that goes as follows:
1. Decide which side future generations are likely to take. If that isn’t the side you were born to, you have a moral duty to commit treason. If you are at all unsure of which side will be vindicated by history, remember that uncertainty; we’ll need it later.
2. People on your side or the opposing side who are harmless should be permitted to continue being harmless even if they’re non-reality-based.
3. Peaceful means should be used against those of your opponents whose harmful actions can be turned aside by peaceful means (and most people can, if you’re vigilant and willing to act early enough.)
4. If you experienced any uncertainty in step one, stop here. Do not take any violent means if you have any uncertainty as to whether you’re on the side of right or not.
5. If you are in a situation where you have too little information to make complex moral philosophy decisions, or where you do not have enough time to consider, stop here.
6. Consider the greatest harm that your remaining opponents could do; not just to you and those like you but to the whole of humanity, including people yet to be born.
7. Against those whose harmful actions cannot be turned aside by peaceful means, consider whether you would need to inflict more harm to stop them violently than they’re likely to inflict if not stopped. (As before, consider harm to all people, not just to you and people like you.)
8. If you passed step seven, then go ahead and use that violence.
@kupo:
Hate speech itself is morally indefensible, certainly. But should we be so quick to give up on defending the fundamental right to free speech defined broadly enough to include hate speech?
Because if we do, who gets to make the call about what counts as “hate speech” that doesn’t deserve to be defended? Realistically speaking, are those decisions going to be made by the likes of you and me? Or by, say, all the Republican governors that have been accusing Black Lives Matter of being a “hate group”?
If we were to give Chris Christie and Nikki Halley and their political ilk the power to legally shut down the public expression of certain statements for being “indefensible hate speech”, do you really think it would be the Nazis and white supremacists that they’d primarily be going after? I think they’d be picking some very different targets.
Yes.
CERD has defined hate speech pretty well. Other countries manage to make it illegal without issue. I think we need to give power to people who can be responsible before we push any laws (which you’ll note I wasn’t even discussing, so I’m not sure why you brought it up), and I don’t think ACLU should spend their limited resources defending hate speech.
Call me an extremist but I don’t believe in a right to free speech that extends to and includes hate speech.
Only thing evil needs to prevail, yadda yadda. If we don’t, as a society, systematically crack down on hate speech and punish its proponents, we get… well, we get Charlottesville. We get fucking Trump.
So yeah. Take down their flags, their statues, torch their hate-buses, punch more nazis, call out anyone defending their “right” to free speech, do whatever.
The very idea of free speech has to be defined clearly, so as to prevent it from being abused like that. Remember that the whole point of free speech is to allow for people to stand against the bullshit.
Remember that laws limiting hate speech are likely to be enforced, like all other laws, in such a way as to oppress minority groups while ignoring the misdeeds of the privileged.
@EJ
There have been several such attempts in France even recently, so that’s a fair point.
They failed rather hilariously though.
Yes.
Then again I live in Canada and we have hate speech laws, which I totally agree with.
In human society absolutes are rarely a good thing, and the absolute right to free speech, even if it’s hate speech, is yet another demonstration of that.
@kupo
You mentioned, on the last page, about ‘both side-ism’, another one that I can’t stand is ‘well they’re entitled to their opinion/belief’, which it seems to me is yet another example of taking thing to extremes.
When someone expresses an opinion/belief about something that facts clearly contradict…’well they’re entitled to their opinion’..no they’re bloody not. Or…
One I saw on my fb feed this morning..
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/officer-on-fatal-charlottesville-crash-hahahaha-love-this-1.3544671
One comment: “and obviously he is allowed his opinion have seen other comments like that are those people being investigated too”
And one more contained in that comment:
“have seen other comments like that are those people being investigated too”
When the fuck did this happen? Just because someone else has done something does not mean that anyone else has a bloody right to do it too. “But they did it (..therefore I should be allowed to do it too)” is a goddamn child’s excuse.
OK, let’s remember that we’re not talking about legislation here. We’re talking about the allocation of resources by a non profit, non governmental organization. The idea that the ACLU not defending nazis will lead, inexorably, to the repeal of Amendment I is hyperbolic and missing the point. The question of whether hate speech laws are a good idea is separate from the question of who the ACLU should defend
As a rule, in the US, you should expect laws against hate speech to be used against the Left first. Certainly they are more likely to be used against people who make the Establishment uncomfortable.
Back in the early 60s, when we elected a friend of my father’s as the first Democratic governor in several decades, my father supposedly was in line to be appointed to a judgeship. But the governor really really wanted a bill to bar Communists from speaking at the University of New Hampshire, and my father opposed it very strongly, because he felt that college students ought to be able to hear them and think for themselves. (In that era it was thought that Communism was contagious, like a disease — if you were exposed to it, you’d probably get it.) So he didn’t get to be a judge — which was probably for the good, but that’s another story.
I think it’s actually a good thing for haters to spew their hate, because it’s better to have it out in the open. As a general thing, cockroaches abhor sunlight. Sometimes we act as if hate speech will win out over our counter-speech. I don’t think it will. If you think you’re right, you need to be confident enough to rise to the challenge. I think that Charlottesville has damaged the alt-right and damaged Trump by making clear exactly who these people who support him are.
I am pretty sure we are on the winning side of history, and we should act like we believe it. We should want to expose, not suppress, hate speech.
About Pratchet:
I am suprised nobody mentioned Small Gods yet, a standalone and one of my favorites of early Pratchet.
God Omens has nothing to do with Discworld (exept that Death is very similar to the Death in Discworld)
@mildlymagnificent
1) Many antifa are not white
2) White antifa are, as you note, in the best position to beat down fascists, because they have less risk of dying in police custody afterwards
3)It’s white people’s mess, it’s our job to clean it up. White people need to stand up and put down these fuckers, because all of their bullshit is enabled by our ambivalence, silence, and failure to break fascist skulls before they started killing people (again; keep in mind that murderous white supremacist mobs have been a constant feature of life in this country from day one, and part of the reason you didn’t hear much about them for a couple decades is because antifas have been out there whupping on them.)
@EJ
FTFY
@Ohlmann
Dr. Cornel West says anti-fascist and anarchist protesters protected clergy from being “crushed like cockroaches” by white nationalists Friday night in Charlottesville: “They saved our lives, actually… I will never forget that.”
Re: Discworld
My recommended starting points are any one of Pyramids, Small Gods, Wyrd Sisters, Mort or Guards! Guards!. Unless you are a fan of Moorcock, Howard, Lieber, and their contemporaries, I do not recommend starting with Colour of Magic
@Redsilkphoenix
*Blinks*
American history is not my strong point, but Jefferson probably did worse things than many of these Nazi-wannabees, and was as racist. That is not the example I would have chosen.
*Oogh!* You can say that, again. I give him an A for effort, though. I commend him for his outrage.
To lighten the mood, I found this….
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/08/14/york-protesters-greet-trump-chant-hes-orange-gross-lost-popular-vote.html
….and Trump Tower is guarded by White Garbage Trucks!
This is going around from one of the Charlottesville antifa:
@Dali
Pyramids was my first Pratchett book way back, I had to grequently pause to catch my breath I was laughing so much!
In regards to Hate Speech laws. I’d say we should compromise and ban only hate speech that explicitly incites violence and murder.
Otherwise; Allow the hate speech (so the world can see what’s out there) but have a strong counter-voice against it!
Have the whole culture such that “Bigot” will equal “Complete outcast to be SHAMED”….even more so than now.
In order to succeed, we need to be united and if there’s a big disagreement over opposing methods, it’s best to meet in the middle in those situations….Instead of “Ban hate speech” or “Allow ALL hate speech”, go with “Ban only VIOLENCE/HATE CRIME-PROMOTING hate speech and provide counterpoints”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/08/15/after-charlottesville-trump-retweets-then-deletes-image-of-train-running-over-cnn-reporter/?utm_term=.ed9e2e737a46
I can’t believe this asshole.
@ spukikitty
The problem there is that you can still incite harm implicitly.
http://www.historygallery.com/books/1777%20English%20Kings/CIMG0503.JPG
This is something I have to consider a lot when I do legal stuff for our animal rights things. There’s often a spectrum…
highlighting an issue > legitimate pressure > stochastic terrorism
Where words (or other statements, including visuals) fit on that can often be ambiguous. Part of my role is ensuring we can justifiably say we only meant things in a particular way.
But if there’s one tactic the alt-right and adjacent groups are fond of, it’s plausible deniability so they can and will abuse that ambiguity.
I’m not certain that “plausible” deniability is the right word. That implies that it has to be, well, plausible.
Watching alt-Righters try to be covert is at once pathetic and hilarious. They take it so seriously, and are so proud of themselves for their attempts.
EJ:
Thanks for sharing that, @Dalillama. I grinned when I got a mental image of a herd of dumpy fascists in airsoft gear running scared from a group of Antifa a quarter their size. I’m also really glad for the narrative that sums up the whole event, including the attack itself. I’m fairly doused in anti-Antifa bullshit where I live, so it’s good to get some perspective. Fists and flags against armour, clubs, shields and spray. Pretty obvious to see who the actual bullies are.
As for @Alan and @Spukikitty’s arguments – yeah, having legitimate hate speech laws won’t stop the Alt-Right from doing what they’re doing. Heck, even the name Alt-Right is an evasive word for who they really are. Up here in Canada we’ve got fairly robust hate speech laws, and we’ve still got militias organizing under our noses to fight “sharia law”. F’n Three Percenters.
Short form of that is: Hate speech laws don’t restrict a lot unless you also have gun restriction laws.