Is political violence ok when it is from the Left?

[Elixir]

"I am opposed to Nazi's and to anyone who says bad things about Nazi's."

Yeah, if nobody had said bad things about Nazis in 1939, we could have avoided WWII.
Oh... wait.
Never mind.
We should have condemned Nazis then, and then condemned ourselves for condemning Nazis.
No.... that's not it.
We should have waited for someone to get violent in their condemnation of Nazis, then condemned Nazis AND whoever got violent in their condemnation.
I think that should satisfy all our conservona - uh, less liberal forum members.

 

[whichphilosophy]

The SPLC, which has a vested interest in making the numbers of hate groups as large as possible, especially white nationalism, puts their numbers at less than 10,000 nationwide. In a country of approximately 300 million people, that makes them 0.0033 % of the total public, hardly enough to be anyone's base of support.

During the election, two people came forward to speak for that demographic. One of them expressed support for Trump (but didn't go all the way to an endorsement) and one of them expressed support for Hillary (but didn't go all the way to an endorsement).



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In other words, he avoided saying anything bad about the alt-right, just lumped them with "all sides"..

Equally he did say something bad about both sides in that they both contain violent elements who use asinine reasoning (if ever such is attempted).
Antifa hasn't killed anyone (yet?).

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The SPLC makes fine-grained but not politically meaningful distinctions between "white nationalists", "white supremacists", "racist skinheads", the KKK, "Neo-Nazi's" and many other white racists groups that share largely the same views and policy positions in any way relevant to this discussion. There are over 100 formal KKK chapters in the US and about 500 identifiable organized groups that fall into these various sub-categories.

In addition, estimates of people that belong to such groups are based upon where there is evidence of an association to a particular group. That guarantees an under-estimate of people who hold such views by a factor of somewhere between 10 and 100.
It not only excludes people who personal identify with a group but are careful not to do so in any public fashion, but also excludes the vast majority of people with such views who do not affiliate it with any formal organization that specialized in promoting such views.

And as I explain in more detail below, it is an undeniable fact, one which Breitbart itself openly acknowledged, that its fanbase and the entire alt-right movement is rooted in the "intellectual arguments" of historical white supremacists and the originator of the term is an unabashed white supremacist. Their numbers alone are in the millions, regardless of whether they formerly belong to a recognized white supremacist group (beyond Breitbart itself).

If you take their groups and add them up, you still get a much lower number than is politically useful to your argument, sorry. Like I said, the SPLC WANTS the numbers to be as high as possible, and even they can't get it up as high as you want. High numbers are good for their fundraising. Making the absurd assumption of zero overlap of membership, you still have to work hard to get the numbers all the way up to 20,000.

In order to make your numbers work, you have to include "I accuse them of sympathizing", which is subjective and unmeasurable. It has been shown that just as many Democrats think Republicans are generally racist, many Republicans think the same about Democrats.

Yes, the alt-right (and notice the word "alt") sure has a racist basis. On that you will accuse the whole right under "I accuse them of sympathizing."

The numbers simply don't add up until you imagine more of them, which you are doing.

During the election, two people came forward to speak for that demographic. One of them expressed support for Trump (but didn't go all the way to an endorsement) and one of them expressed support for Hillary (but didn't go all the way to an endorsement).

Utter nonsense.

Will Quigg doesn't fit your narrative.

Bottom line is that without people who accept in large part white supremacist/nationalist assumptions and ideology, Trump and the GOP would have no chance of winning any election at the national, and very few at the State level. They all know this, and know that is partly a cause why and partly a product of the fact that the GOP consciously chose to court the votes of white racists with their "Southern Strategy", which is why and when one of the most blatant racists to a Congressional seat, Strom Thurmond, switched parties in 1965. Coicindentally, his heir to the most blatant racist prize goes to Jeff Sessions, Trumps best bud in the Senate.

Senator Robert Byrd doesn't fit your narrative.

"I am opposed to Nazi's and to anyone who says bad things about Nazi's."

Yeah, if nobody had said bad things about Nazis in 1939, we could have avoided WWII.
Oh... wait.
Never mind.
We should have condemned Nazis then, and then condemned ourselves for condemning Nazis.
No.... that's not it.
We should have waited for someone to get violent in their condemnation of Nazis, then condemned Nazis AND whoever got violent in their condemnation.
I think that should satisfy all our conservona - uh, less liberal forum members.

Even if we were to assume that was my argument, that still wasn't my argument. How conservoprogressive of you.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In other words, he avoided saying anything bad about the alt-right, just lumped them with "all sides"..

Equally he did say something bad about both sides in that they both contain violent elements who use asinine reasoning (if ever such is attempted).
Antifa hasn't killed anyone (yet?).

The thing is what he's saying is basically that both 1 and 1,000 are not zero so they are both wrong. While he's not explicitly saying they are equal the implication is that they are similar.