Wicked huge anti-fascist march in Boston: Today in tweets

OMG, the Ken Burns treatment:

https://twitter.com/Reetae27/status/899018562647375872

So did Breitbart declare war on the WH or not? Cos the article I read on Bannon’s exit/bumrush suggested that he’s just rejoining the Nazi war.

I really, really wanna see Trump vs Breitbart. Pretty please. I been good… ish this year.

I guess I fell for that fake Alex Jones encounter because I thought why would he WANT to look like a coward? But then again, he probably doesn’t think of it like that. He thinks swearing and running up to random people makes him look tough somehow, and the coffee thing makes a martyr out of him.

@BritterSweet
The whole thing looked staged to me. The other guy was way too much in Jones’ face for it to be a random stranger confrontation. Besides, we Seattlites don’t waste coffee like that. 😉

The Confederate cosplay comment got me wondering. Civil War reenactments and reenactors are a decently big business in the US. Enough people do those that a movie company wanting to shoot a Civil War epic could just call up these guys if they want a ton of authenticly dressed extras.

Should the reenactors be discouraged from doing them anymore, or at least for the time being? Based on the few I’ve met (Northern reenactors, anyway), they seem to be there to celebrate history, not make a comment on the current political scene. These are guys who go to great lengths to figure out things like what and how the original soldiers ate, then recreate it while ‘in costume’.

Which doesn’t mean some of the Nazis haven’t joined some of the reenactment clubs, of course. Just that those groups were supposed to be historical in nature, not political.

Any thoughts?

RE: Civil war reenactment

I think that the Confederate side of history isn’t a thing to be celebrated at all. Someone has to play the Confederates if we’re re-enacting the civil war, but that shouldn’t be a thing people choose.

However…I’ve never heard of a WWII re-enactment that involves folks playing nazis. Even modern video games don’t assign players as “nazis” or has authentic insignia on assets normally used by the Nazis. Empire Earth steps around the issue entirely by not addressing the Nazi party at all during its modern Germany campaign and instead framing the second world war in terms of a response to the first.

I’m not saying that gaming has addressed the Nazis or the 2nd World War appropriately at all, because it hasn’t – anything less than “The Nazis were horrible inhuman monsters and no one ever had any excuse for supporting them” is a failure of a game that involves WWII.

Honestly, passion for history or not, the Confederacy should have the same cultural and legal prohibitions from showing its ideals and insignias as Nazis do. Because fundamentally speaking, the Confederates and the Nazis have the same ideals. Just slightly different end goals.

@Axecalibur

…. Well that’s fucking depressing. Both of these things need to be stopped. Ugh.

@Sandra

Well that’s fucking depressing. Both of these things need to be stopped. Ugh

^Yep *sighs*

You are what you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be
-Vonnegut

I don’t think especially highly of war reenactment generally. Just not comfortable with it. But when you choose to reenact the roles of slavers and genociders in wars about the morality of slavery and genocide, discomfort grows to suspicion, and I’ll be forgiven for giving such people very little benefit of doubt as far as their actual, OOC opinion of me…

Now if Boston could just change the name of Yawkey Way…

Yay, Boston! Good to see some positive news, and I agree with D that this is a good way to do it.

@Redsilkphoenix
I can definitely see the concern under present circumstances, and have never really felt comfortable with the idea of reenactments of relatively recent history, but in my experience and from my dad’s accounts of attending them (including with old soldiers, which sounded weird as heck to me, but they liked seeing it apparently), the reenactors have just been harmlessly obsessive history geeks. They were just interested in the nitty gritty details and understanding what it was like and stuff, not in celebrating Nazis or anything. I can kind of understand I guess, it’s possible to be interested in/like some things you feel you maybe shouldn’t, from a more detached perspective – I’ve often felt it’s a bit weird and contradictory that I’m deeply anti-war yet instantly fascinated by medieval battle and swords ‘n stuff. I suppose the potential risk of being drawn in by the idea of (sanitised, necessarily) violence might be a reason to avoid reenactments, itself. : /

The Seattle coffee-thrower wasn’t a “crisis actor”. He’s apparently a local heavy metal singer involved in the “amateur wrestling” scene and there are multiple tweets confirming he’s a well-known weirdo who would absolutely dump lukewarm coffee on Alex Jones for the lulz.

Military stuff. I used to enjoy the history of it all. Dude friends of course we all about “ahmigah look at how cool this tank is” and whatnot, which I always sort of rolled my eyes at. These days I narrow my eyes a bit at people who obsess over the details of military history without having a similar interest in the context of those conflicts. Fetishization of war, etc. It’s a common thing up here, and – well, I don’t think I need to explain why that makes me uncomfortable.

I’ve seen some excellent reenactment, but the absolute best was always the reenactment of the camps, the lives of soldiers on the march, etc. Almost universally poor people being dragged into these huge conflicts, facing death all around them, often with little more than a pair of boots, a bag of flour and a ratty blanket for comfort and survival. Being forced to fight through circumstances outside of their control, making do with what they could find or salvage. Terrible and inspiring in equal measure. That sort of reenactment I am entirely behind.

Battle reenactment, though? Gimme a foam axe and shield, and let me bonk some padding-swathed Normans. They’re just SCA enthusiasts without the sense of fun. Take themselves waaaaay too seriously.

As for the fucking Nazi-reenactment-enthusiasts? I’ve known for years that those jackoffs were serious. There’s a huge crossover between them and the dudes that enjoy military engineering for the “woah look at that cool tank” factor. They love powerful war machines, decisive and heartless decisions from military commanders (the more heartless the better, cause it just shows off how dedicated they are to their cause), and snappy uniforms that look impressive. They don’t process that those war machines destroy lives, those heartless decisions are needlessly brutal, and those snappy uniforms are meaningless. It’s all about the spectacle, the show of force.

Just like your average authoritarian, really.

If I had to sum up 2017, it’d have to be “Fuck the Nazis.” Jees.