Recent Political Violence in America

[Antiboyscout]

Yes presume the motivations of Anti Fa to be noble and not the communist revolutionary motivations that they themselves say are their actual motivations. They're always peaceful until they aren't huh? No a fight takes two people and both sides brought weapons.

[Rocketboy1313]

Yes presume the motivations of Anti Fa to be noble and not the communist revolutionary motivations that they themselves say are their actual motivations. They're always peaceful until they aren't huh? No a fight takes two people and both sides brought weapons.

I don't know what it is you think you are proving by repeatedly pointing to antifa.
Like, what person, or group, or whatever do you want to hear the words, "violence is bad" for you to be satisfied that the topic has been addressed.

I personally do not care about Antifa, because as far as I can tell, if literal Nazis were not marching in the street those guys would be at home watching "The Defenders" and eating carrot sticks. Their existence seems predicated on fighting back against marching hate groups.

And if they are all voters/advocates for some kind of socialist/communist/populist worldview that does not include hate speech then I am cool with that too, because that isn't the part that causes violence.

Nazis and hate groups because the violence by advocating for the destruction of minorities. They need to be opposed and frankly violent opposition to hate speech is going to be an inevitable event.

You can talk about how free speech and opinions are for everyone, but hate speech is not protected. These guys are pushing a world view of a race war. They need to be stopped.

[Antiboyscout]

Hate speech is protected. There is a reason they were not arrested for demonstrating.
And an unfortunate amount of people seem to not think violence is bad. They think it is quite justified.
Punch a Nazi right?

[LittleRaven]

You can talk about how free speech and opinions are for everyone, but hate speech is not protected.

Uh....

(The idea that the government may restrict) speech expressing ideas that offend … strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”

The courts have been quite explicit in what kinds of speech you are not allowed to engage in, and 'hate speech' doesn't qualify. As a general rule of thumb, unless you're saying something that can reasonably be expected to cause imminent physical violence, the First Amendment has your back. As it should.

Which isn't to say that we shouldn't push back against people that advocate for race war. But you don't do it by shutting them up.

[Rocketboy1313]

I guess I inserted my opinion in there.
"Hate speech is not protected," should read, "Hate speech should not be protected".

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Yes presume the motivations of Anti Fa to be noble and not the communist revolutionary motivations that they themselves say are their actual motivations. They're always peaceful until they aren't huh? No a fight takes two people and both sides brought weapons.

You have not answered my QUESTIONS. You have sidestepped them.

What does it take? What amount of blatant proof will you need to finally acknowledge that the Alt Right protesters with swastikas, chanting about killing jews, shouting "Heil Trump!" and doing the Nazi salute...are in fact, Nazis? What hypothetical bar could possibly be high enough for you? TELL ME.

[Antiboyscout]

You have not answered my QUESTIONS. You have sidestepped them.

What does it take? What amount of blatant proof will you need to finally acknowledge that the Alt Right protesters with swastikas, chanting about killing jews, shouting "Heil Trump!" and doing the Nazi salute...are in fact, Nazis? What hypothetical bar could possibly be high enough for you? TELL ME.

When did I ever say they weren't? Yes the ones with swastikas were nazi's. Like the ones with hammers and sickles are communist.
I'm angry that the entire alt right is painted with the Nazi brush while AntiFa is quietly swept under the rug.
Both sides live and die together. Even if you attack one side, it will still grow if the other side grows. You have to attack both sides at once...
unless you secretly want one side to win...

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

It seems that only problem is that he said "on many sides" and did not denounce only the Alt Right and ignore the violence on the extreme left. I say the Alt Right and not Nazi because the media also had a field day when Trump suggested that not all the people on the Alt Right were Nazi's, or that any of them had any valid concern

This weak tea condemnation of "both sides at fault" and "both sides have good people" was SPECIFICALLY about the Nazi rally.
Every person at the rally on the Alt Right's side was a flame-throwing, antisemitic, dyed-in-the-wool Neo Nazi! There can't be "good people on both sides" if one of the sides is made up entirely of Nazis! I'm not saying that every single counter protester was as pure as the frigging driven snow, but you know what they weren't? OPENLY NAZIS.

One side had lots of different faiths, different races, and different ideologies united in opposition to the HUNDRED OF ANGRY NAZIS WITH TORCHES AND ASSAULT RIFLES.

That was an Alt Right demonstration. The Alt Right ARE NEO NAZIS.

Whether Antifa has a high proportion of communists is irrelevant to the real life Nazi threat. You know, the Nazis who MURDERED A WOMAN THREE YEARS OLDER THAN ME.

And ALL you can think to say to this is "well the Antifas are commies! The antifas aren't entirely peaceful! The antifas do bad things too!"

[The Romulan Republic]

Specifically, I had asked the question, what can the right do to limit political violence by the right, and what can the left do to limit political violence by the left. I had in mind this shift in rhetoric by the right to limit the support of white nationalists or white supremacists.

The Left doesn't need to do anything to limit political violence from the Left, because contrary to the propaganda spread by the Right Wing media and the "oh no, we have to say it's both sides or we'll be called Liberal" mainstream press, what "violence" we do see from the Left is by and large a reaction to violence from the Right. Or as lawyers might call it, self-defense. And no, property damage doesn't count*.

Firing on someone who's coming at you with a weapon might reasonably be considered self-defense under the law (depending on circumstances).

Forming Left-wing militias to carry out retaliatory acts of violence or intimidation would not be, even if the Nazis did it first.

Please clarify which you are referring to.

[Rocketboy1313]

Firing on someone who's coming at you with a weapon might reasonably be considered self-defense under the law (depending on circumstances).

Forming Left-wing militias to carry out retaliatory acts of violence or intimidation would not be, even if the Nazis did it first.

Please clarify which you are referring to.

Retaliatory acts of violence are still in retaliation for something.

Also, I am surprisingly cool with both things.