Two quick questions:

[bluebird]

I get it.

I want to believe that the momentum in this country regarding civil rights is too strong to be rolled back. I know its still a battle but I don't think it has to be fought in such a militant way. Throughout history there was need for that but America is tipping in the right direction. That seems silly with Trump being elected. And it is your duty to make sure people are aware of the elements (ok more than just elements) of racism and corruption in the Trump administration... But you really don't have to be so violent about it. YOUR RIGHT most people here know it. We are already diverse and tipping in your direction. You live in NYC for Christs sake!

My opinion is you don't have to be a radical on Group DIY in 2017.
Does that make sense?

 

[tands]

1) No.

2) I think they're racist, but too chickensh*t to admit it in public.

Sorry to be so direct in polite company, I don't know how else to say it.  ;D

 

[ruairioflaherty]

Having tried reason it gets exhausting and I'm fed up. That's all.

My point exactly with my earlier comments.

Share some of your life experience here, some incidents that shaped who you are and how you see things.

 

[tands]

He said there were fine people among those protesting the removal of the statue, "There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee", (this was the night before the rally, when they had the torches, and were chanting, "Jews will not replace us").

He's saying that people who object to the removal of the statue can be "fine people", and that those people in particular, he saw them at the torch thing alongside the Other people chanting, "Jews will not replace us". 

Now, can these non chanting "fine people" be said to be "fine people" when they're standing with neo nazis holding torches and chanting about jews?

I think no.

Did Trump simply make up the existence of these people at the torch nazi thing so he could avoid criticizing directly a portion of his base that is racist, but doesn't go in for the chanting?

I think yes.

Is it racist to do that? Is it cowardly? Is it duplicitous?

I think yes, and I think the same is true of those who endorse his logic.

 

[tands]

Nazis keep getting their rallies shut down, and their asses beat by antifa. I'm fine letting that continue apace. Whatever.

.

 

[Rocinante]

I heard one of the main organizers on NPR during This American Life.  The guy truly believes that the white race is under threat of genocide. The guy is a complete a****** . 
His organizing the rally and becoming a white supremacist all stemmed from one instance where he had applied for a job as a therapist but didn't get the job and shortly afterwards after taking another lower salary position in the company met the woman who did get the job.  After hearing some of the ladies background he felt like he was more experienced than her and that he should have gotten a job and that the only reason that she did get the job was because she was a woman.  Never once did he take into consideration  that maybe she had more schooling, or maybe she was a better interview taker, or maybe she had experience he wasn't aware of, or nevermind the fact that despite their education or experience women and people of color have been discriminated against for the last couple of hundreds of years and if they did actually get the job they typically were paid lower than white men.  All he knew was that he didn't get the job and that someone else did and that person was a woman. And that was preposterous to him.
And so he went down his absurd journey.

I will not let Nazis or White Supremacists walk down my street.  I will confront them and I will fight them.  Many of my friends are African American and people of color.  My son is Jewish, and they are threatening my friends and my son.  And so they can consider me to be a f****** threat to them.
Very recently a whole jury here in Minnesota understood why a cop would shoot an unarmed African American man. They understood why that cop was afraid because that jury too is afraid of African Americans.  Their Fear is killing African Americans.  Their fear is Not protecting African Americans.  I have  many African Americans on my staff and when that jury made that decision it felt like being punched in the stomach.  I'm sure it felt like being stabbed in the back for my African American friends and fellow co-workers.  I was deeply ashamed and couldnt speak for days.  I am so disappointed in our justice system which we all know is corrupt and racist.
And its getting worse.

How do you think those statues of confederate slave owners and generals make African American decendents of slaves feel? 
That the white man still marks his territory.  Most of those statues were erected  to instill fear into the African American population, to let them know who was and always would be their master.
How many of you even care?
Those statues are disgusting and no one is going to forget that part of history.  It's a BS excuse.
You will not find many African Americans who think those statues aren't offensive.  Because they are.
Why wouldn't you want to stand next to your African American brother and sister and together rip those statues down?
Why would you want to keep them erected?
You'll find no statues of Hitler in Germany.

Anyone who is in a crowd of men dressed in klan outfits and Neo Nazi regalia chanting "Jews will not replace us" or "blood and soil" didn't arrive and continue to stay there by accident.  There were very few people from some unknown confederate statue preservation society or whatever BS story they made up for why they were in a crowd of neo Nazis.  They were there to instill fear and to be a threat.
It's time for us all to stand up against such repulsive cowards and to stop making excuses for your bretheren. It's time we evolve. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

1. Do you think there were "very nice people" in that crowd of white supremacists chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us"?

Fallacy of composition – assuming that something true of part of a whole must also be true of the whole

2. What do you think of someone who thinks there were?

this involves multiple fallacies
1-Appeal to the stone (argumentum ad lapidem) – dismissing a claim as absurd without demonstrating proof for its absurdity
2-Modal fallacy – confusing possibility with necessity
3-Appeal to probability – is a statement that takes something for granted because it would probably be the case (or might be the case).

Then of course we have the old standby Ad hominem... attack the people who don't agree with you, to discredit them.

I have a ten-foot pole if your constitution is weak.



Seems some people here have a hard time understanding the implications of the answers to the questions. I'll go first:

1 - No. Hell no. Not a chance.
2 - I think they're an a-hole worthy of zero respect, and not unlikely also an anti-semite.

Your opinions are not only registered but too often repeated.

Argument from repetition (argumentum ad nauseam, argumentum ad infinitum) – signifies that it has been discussed extensively until nobody cares to discuss it anymore;[20][21] sometimes confused with proof by assertion
=====
There is no question that Trump's response to Charlottesville was not PC. Living in the South I am sensitive to the anger we experience when we all get grouped together, with the few miscreant low-lifes among us.  The civil war statues and memorials are not simply racist icons***, but our divisive modern political environment has decided to tear down this history and smear us all with broad implications of inherent racism.

**** in fact some were probably racially motivated.  After the civil war many people were unhappy about the outcome for a long time (still?).  As has been often repeated the civil war was about more than slavery but that is an inconvenient truth to the "every white man is a racist" meme. Look at how many white men fought for the union. (Are we seriously relitigating the civil war???)  It might be worthwhile adding historical plaques to the most obvious examples explaining the actual legacy of specific statues and monuments. This education could embarrass some to a better understanding of history. 
 
Some of us remember the 60's and before the civil rights legislation turned a corner for this country. We elected a black man to be president, does that sound like an inherently racist nation? He was elected with the help of many white voters.  Any argument that today is bad, and getting worse is political not reality based. Opportunist racial politics still being played because it still works with many uninformed, or misinformed young people.

JR

PS: One thing to come out of the russian election meddling investigation is how much effort they put into promoting divisive themes (like race, but multiple other hot button issues).

 

[mattiasNYC]

That's a cropped/out of context, production....My goodness......

It's actually not. All you have to do is listen to what he says and who he is referring to when he's speaking. It really isn't any harder than that.

Listen to the point where the link takes you, and then also at 7:20 which I put in parenthesis.

 

[mattiasNYC]

I heard one of the main organizers on NPR during This American Life.  The guy truly believes that the white race is under threat of genocide. The guy is a complete a****** . 
His organizing the rally and becoming a white supremacist all stemmed from one instance where he had applied for a job as a therapist but didn't get the job and shortly afterwards after taking another lower salary position in the company met the woman who did get the job.  After hearing some of the ladies background he felt like he was more experienced than her and that he should have gotten a job and that the only reason that she did get the job was because she was a woman.  Never once did he take into consideration  that maybe she had more schooling, or maybe she was a better interview taker, or maybe she had experience he wasn't aware of, or nevermind the fact that despite their education or experience women and people of color have been discriminated against for the last couple of hundreds of years and if they did actually get the job they typically were paid lower than white men.  All he knew was that he didn't get the job and that someone else did and that person was a woman. And that was preposterous to him.
And so he went down his absurd journey.

I will not let Nazis or White Supremacists walk down my street.  I will confront them and I will fight them.  Many of my friends are African American and people of color.  My son is Jewish, and they are threatening my friends and my son.  And so they can consider me to be a f****** threat to them.
Very recently a whole jury here in Minnesota understood why a cop would shoot an unarmed African American man. They understood why that cop was afraid because that jury too is afraid of African Americans.  Their Fear is killing African Americans.  Their fear is Not protecting African Americans.  I have  many African Americans on my staff and when that jury made that decision it felt like being punched in the stomach.  I'm sure it felt like being stabbed in the back for my African American friends and fellow co-workers.  I was deeply ashamed and couldnt speak for days.  I am so disappointed in our justice system which we all know is corrupt and racist.
And its getting worse.

How do you think those statues of confederate slave owners and generals make African American decendents of slaves feel? 
That the white man still marks his territory.  Most of those statues were erected  to instill fear into the African American population, to let them know who was and always would be their master.
How many of you even care?
Those statues are disgusting and no one is going to forget that part of history.  It's a BS excuse.
You will not find many African Americans who think those statues aren't offensive.  Because they are.
Why wouldn't you want to stand next to your African American brother and sister and together rip those statues down?
Why would you want to keep them erected?
You'll find no statues of Hitler in Germany.

Anyone who is in a crowd of men dressed in klan outfits and Neo Nazi regalia chanting "Jews will not replace us" or "blood and soil" didn't arrive and continue to stay there by accident.  There were very few people from some unknown confederate statue preservation society or whatever BS story they made up for why they were in a crowd of neo Nazis.  They were there to instill fear and to be a threat.
It's time for us all to stand up against such repulsive cowards and to stop making excuses for your bretheren. It's time we evolve.

Well said.

 

[Gold]

When I was in high school in the '80's and going to and playing at punk rock and hardcore shows there were some racist skinheads around. I always made it a point to talk to them. I never hid I was Jewish but never flouted it either. I never had a problem. I hope I confused them.

 

[Gold]

One little fun fact from real Nazi's. Georg Neumann was married to a Jewish woman. He was considered important and didn't want him to leave. He lived unmolested with his wife in Berlin through WWII. There are exceptions to every rule.

 

[bluebird]

It's time we evolve. 

Well that's the problem...Not really the thread to get all philosophical, but I think we have actually reached the limit of evolution. There is an average amount of greed and survival instinct encoded into our DNA that seems to be stopping us from advancing past war. I mean we simultaneously put a man on the moon while burning down villages full of women and children in Vietnam.
I guess I don't have a lot of hope for us. Nobody on the forum has changed their political/social points of view and we've been at this for years now.

 

[cyrano]

One little fun fact from real Nazi's. Georg Neumann was married to a Jewish woman. He was considered important and didn't want him to leave. He lived unmolested with his wife in Berlin through WWII. There are exceptions to every rule.

You mean the US ones aren't real nazis?

BTW is that the same Neumann as the one from the mics  :

Sorry, just having a dense day today.

If I understand John, some of the white supremacists are nice people?

And, yeah rattlesnakes make real nice pets, in some rare cases. I'll still keep my dog, tho 

 

[ruffrecords]

1. Do you think there were "very nice people" in that crowd of white supremacists chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us"?

2. What do you think of someone who thinks there were?

I have a ten-foot pole if your constitution is weak.



Seems some people here have a hard time understanding the implications of the answers to the questions. I'll go first:

1 - No. Hell no. Not a chance.
2 - I think they're an a-hole worthy of zero respect, and not unlikely also an anti-semite.

Remember, it takes only one white crow to disprove the assertion that all crows are black.

Or put another way, all absolute statements are false.

Cheers

Ian

 

[mattiasNYC]

Remember, it takes only one white crow to disprove the assertion that all crows are black.

I think that's a statement that sounds nicer than it is profound.

Or put another way, all absolute statements are false.

Including that one?

 

[tands]

After the civil war many people were unhappy about the outcome for a long time (still?).  As has been often repeated the civil war was about more than slavery but that is an inconvenient truth to the "every white man is a racist" meme. Look at how many white men fought for the union. (Are we seriously relitigating the civil war???)  It might be worthwhile adding historical plaques to the most obvious examples explaining the actual legacy of specific statues and monuments. This education could embarrass some to a better understanding of history.

Some of us remember the 60's and before the civil rights legislation turned a corner for this country. We elected a black man to be president, does that sound like an inherently racist nation? He was elected with the help of many white voters.

Fallacy of division. Obama wouldn't have been elected if it was up to the south only, Palin and McCain all the way. You're implying the white south favored Obama, because he won in the total US.

Description: Inferring that something is true of one or more of the parts from the fact that it is true of the whole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTLe4LSo

.

 

[tands]

I told you I'm done wiping your nose, scott2000.

 

[tands]

Then do the work. I don't serve you.

 

[ruffrecords]

I think that's a statement that sounds nicer than it is profound.

Including that one?

That is the point.

And this one too:

1 - No. Hell no. Not a chance.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Gustav]

1. Do you think there were "very nice people" in that crowd of white supremacists chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us"?

Maybe some nice, well meaning guy went along with his misguided grandfather, but in general,  decent people would not want to be part of that crowd, and even if they came for something else, they would leave when they realised what they were part of. 

I personally doubt they would have stayed if the crowd was chanting "Allah is great", "the legal age of consent should be 5", or even "Global warming is a scientific fact".  Staying in the crowd shows some level of tolerance to what was being chanted, not necessarily agreement, but a degree of tolerance.  (I'd stay in a crowd that chanted "popcorn sucks", even though I like popcorn, because its not a big deal to me, for example).

2. What do you think of someone who thinks there were?

I dont think its impossible (see above), but...

Donald Trump generally doesn't come off as a nuanced person, or even seem to care if he does (he actually seems to take pride in the opposite, right!?). So, for him specifically, its curious that this is one of the times he makes the attempt.

When he says there were "fine people on both sides" it comes off as veiled support -  or at the very least, a refusal to condemn a group of white supremacists by reframing the question.

Gustav