The British Left does it with Palestine, which is why Corbyn and Momentum keep having to deal with accusations of anti-semitism.
Fair enough, but maybe also don’t paint anyone who asks questions as a nazi sympathiser.
Not sure that was the consensus in the other thread. This does also position vigilantism as a form of civil disobedience, which would be an interesting way to think about it.
ETA civil disobedience not conscientious objection
Other than continuing to try and claim Richard Spencer has distanced himself from Nazis, what with his constant support of Nazis and the Nazi salutes being thrown around his organized events.
You are getting well-earned guff.
EDIT
Not to mention your refusal to even acknowledge that you were literally dead wrong and continue to call anyone pointing it out emotional reactionaries of some kind to other people.
Some of the American left, too. Back in 2003, few things undermined the credibility of an anti-war demo in 2003 quite like young idiots holding signs in support of Hamas.
You’ll have to take that up with someone who did that.
Not from what I saw. There is a recognition that of late the law tends to give right-wingers the benefit of the doubt (e.g. cops sympathising with the white supremacists) but when I brought up the idea of Spencer filing assault charges in that thread no-one objected.
And no, the assailant’s defense would likely not position vigilantism as a form of civil disobedience. It would raise questions about the defendant responding to “fighting words” as a mitigating factor (probably during sentencing) – questions which Spencer and his fellow scumbags would prefer not be raised lest they lose access to their mainstream public platforms.
Except I never claimed that. I said that in that video… actually, lets find the quote
There you go, it’s not my claim, it’s Spencer’s. I think you’re also assuming that I know far more about Richard Spencer than I do. I don’t follow far right American politics, strangely enough, not being American, or on the far right.
I dunno. A lot of college boys seem to be getting off scott free lately after raping people. And the religious right was absolutely willing to forgive trump grabbing women by the pussy.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a discussion after all. The right would just accept the rape enthusiasts’ talking points prima facie. They seem to kind of already be doing so anyway.
True, but I think we’re also reading the thread differently in terms of the consensus.
I was thinking in terms of an ethical defence, rather than a legal one, but it’s a good point.
And you were corrected. And then you repeated the incorrect assertion. Repeatedly.
In fact, in what you just quoted your ignorance of the far right while speaking from a position of expertise is really fucked up. I mean you are saying “it’s not my fault I was wrong and (continue to) act like I am right because I didn’t know” and using that as a supportive argument (across multiple threads now) that your position is what makes sense. In no sense of any amount of reason are you making any sort of rational argument, but yet you continue to assert that 1) Richard Spencer works to distant himself from Nazis and 2) on Inauguration Day he was punched as a bystander and not an active participant in the clash between antifa and white supremecists.
You are talking out of your ass because your so entitled to what you feel is the morally superior position in the argument, and it then saying everyone else is being emotional despite your argument about Spencer never once having any sort of rigor to it.
But @jeezers was also accusing @strokeybeard of being exactly that kind of centrist (which they deny). As far as I can tell, the only basis for that accusation is @strokeybeard’s refusal to condone nazi-punching. So isn’t it fair to take that as a “with us or against us” argument and criticise it accordingly?
Uhm… unless I’ve mistaken the meaning of the word “you”, let me spell it out for you:
I haven’t been defending Nazis.
I haven’t been defending Nazis’ free speech rights.
I haven’t been defending people who defend Nazis.
I have been defending people who you are falsely accusing of defending Nazis (in this thread, not the other one).
Apparently, you’ve just moved from accusing @strokeybeard of saying and supporting things they never said, to lumping me in as having the same opinion. And apparently it is irrelevant what “we” deny, or what we’re actually saying for that matter.
Wait… what was the claim that they are repeating? What was the correction? After all, the only person to claim that Spencer is not a Nazi was Spencer himself. Yet for some reason, people keep claiming that @strokeybeard said so, too, despite multiple clarifications…
You know, discussions tend to be much more productive when people don’t have to waste their time proving that they are actually saying what they are saying…
And I wonder what people will soon claim that I have said…
To repeat (again and again):
Which is this current thread in his own words talking about Richard Spencer.
Previously he said:
To which he was corrected in the following fashion:
The initial responses were simply a correction of what he had said. Obviously as the easily disproven statement gets proven false repeatedly the tone changes and the argument skews away from any sort of rational act. So if you are going to step in on the behalf of someone being taken out of context, it would be appreciated if you would take the time to read the passages in question so that you are not confused.
And yes, repeating the same bad argument with no acknowledgement that you had been corrected does imply a level of support for the side you are falsifying the information for. Otherwise, why would you insist on going from ‘simply wrong’ to ‘stubbornly claiming it’s not your fault you didn’t know but continue to assert the same position about because you don’t actually know anything about Richard Spencer’?
I’ve read them, and I understood the context back then differently.
In my understanding, the context of that discussion was @strokeybeard trying to gauge what level of Nazi-ness was required for other people in the thread to support punching. Someone said that Nazis who attack other people people deserve to be punched. Someone (don’t remember if it was the same person) said that self-declared Nazis deserve punching (in response to some claim that people might get misidentified as Nazis).
In that context @strokeybeard pointed out that Spencer fulfilled neither of those criteria in the video, i.e. in the moment he was punched. To me, that is a request to further clarify the criteria used, not a claim that Spencer is not a Nazi. In that context, it was a question about how obvious a Nazi someone has to be in order to be punched, not a defence of Spencer.
And yes, repeating the same bad argument with no acknowledgement that you had been corrected does imply a level of support for the side you are falsifying the information for.
I don’t see your correction as in any way contradicting (my reading of) what @strokeybeard said.
The whole thing looks to me like this:
Person X: “A.”
Person Y: “How can you possibly say B? B is not true!!”
Person X: “But I never said B, I only said A!”
Person Y: “You’re doing it again!”
Person Z: “B is false! You’re an evil person for saying B!”
Person X: “A and B are not the same thing. I never said B!”
Person Z: “I don’t believe you! You’re still saying B!”
Person Y: “You keep repeating something that has been corrected over and over again. Obviously you are a dishonest person supporting B!”
And in fact “A” is an easily provable fact that was only relevant in one context which is long gone. Reiterating “A” out of context indeed makes one look like a person who would say “B”, but in this case Person X has no other choice - they need to reiterate “A” in order to defend against the worse accusation of having said B.
Maybe it would help if you formulated concrete statements that you would like @strokeybeard to make or to explicitly distance himself from? That might obviate the need for further discussion of “I never said it” - “You’re saying it again!”.
Yes, rape culture certainly exists, but they talk about it in their boys clubs of privilege. I don’t see any well-funded group trying to send rape speakers to university campuses, and suing when they’re refused.
I don’t see anyone crying because NAMBLA is unlikely to get a pro-pedophilia platform there either.
Why is it always white supremacists, stinking of genocide and slavery, as the shining example of how we value unlimited free speech, when other groups don’t get that pass?
My point was that a more accurate critique of the use of the cartoon would be “you’re saying that I’m a supporter of the fascists because I’m opposed to the antifa, but that cartoon is portraying a completely different situation in which the dithering centrist is too busy making false equivalencies to choose either side. So which is it?” jeezers might answer “both” or something else, but at least the discussion is now based on the correct interpretation of the cartoon.
I’ll try to unwind what happened in the other thread:
Someone said “I’m ok with Nazi punching.”
strokeybeard replied to the effect of “oh yeah, then how do you square that with someone punching Spencer, since he claims he’s not a Nazi and because he was being non-confrontational in the interview? Where does your vigilantism end?”
Now that would make no sense as a rejoinder because Spencer is quite deserving of the shorthand “Nazi” and because publically advocating for ethnic cleansing, even in a calm way, is confrontational in and of itself.
The only way it would make sense as a rejoinder would be if strokeybeard were taking Spencer’s word that he was not a Nazi and/or did not consider publically advocating for ethnic cleansing to be confrontational behaviour. Since strokeybeard stubbornly stuck with that rejoinder as making sense despite its ridiculous premises, people responded badly.
To his credit, after a lot of explanation by people more familiar than he is with history and current U.S. events, strokeybeard later acknowledged that it’s reasonable to call Spencer a Nazi in the context of Nazi-punching, and seems to acknowledge that calling for ethnic cleansing is confrontational. Which leaves us with an effective admission that his initial rejoinder made no sense.
It would also make sense if people were mis-reading the argument and claiming that I supported Spencer. @zathras has it right.
A question for you, how far do your left wing allies have to go before you stop supporting them?
That’s pretty thin. There’s no evidence that Corbyn even knew why the mural was controversial when he made his comment. Which was this:
So, he heard an artist claim censorship, asked why he was being censored, and mentioned an artist who had been censored in the past.
The Guardian has been promoting this story at full throttle all week:
It’s a legitimate story to report on, but that level of focus is abnormal and suggestive of bias.
Actually, the mural is just a trigger for the letter which is addressing wider, more long term issues about the support he’s provided for anti-Semitic positions.
But the question isn’t ‘is Corbyn anti-Semitic?’, it’s ‘how far do your left wing allies have to go before you stop supporting them?’
I don’t follow UK politics with anywhere near the same detail as I do the US situation, but I’m yet to see anything from Corbyn that I’d classify as “antisemitic” rather than “critical of Israeli policy towards Palestine”.
And to quote a random Twitter leftie:
Complicated question.
There was a purge of dodgy stalker blokes from the online left a few months ago (about a month before #MeToo blew up). There are semi-regular instances of online Strasserists being told to fuck off. And, of course, there’s the constant squabbling between the Anarchists and the Marxist-Leninists.
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