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#3977 Aug 14 2017 at 8:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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Samira wrote:
This is a sad, cynical point of view.

If anyone can convince themselves that liberals are the real bad guys after a white nationalist Alt-Right terrorist murders a woman, it's Gbaji.
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#3978 Aug 14 2017 at 8:05 PM Rating: Decent
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Samira wrote:
However, another point of view is that showing up to oppose out and proud fascists has value, for people who would otherwise feel even more marginalized if the original protest had gone unremarked. I can see that argument; my way doesn't give the attention whores what they want, but also makes no statement against them.


Sure. So show up with your own signs and messages and engage in your own free speech. One of the problems I've seen is that some protesters (and it sure seems to be almost exclusively those on the left) have come to believe that their free speech is protected to an absurd degree. Their free speech can include unscheduled protests. Their free speech can include blocking roads. Their free speech can include blocking businesses. Those are not lawful assemblies, but any attempt to break them up is declared to be a violation of free speech and thus condemned.

Also, their free speech can include obstructing someone else's free speech. Free speech does not mean you get to say anything you want, any time you want, on anyone's dime. Free speech means that authorities cannot prevent you from doing so on your own dime and in a manner which does not infringe on other people's liberties. I recall a story about a graduation speech this year where the speaker was a conservative (Betsy DeVos I believe). The school had arranged it. She was one of a handful of people speaking at the ceremony. Yet, when it was her time to speak, many in the audience began shouting her down. They stood up and turned their back to her. This was hailed as fair free speech by the students in most media re-tellings of the event, but if you stop and think about it, while they certainly were expressing their own opinions, they were also preventing he free speech. They were blocking the free speech of the university, which had chosen this speaker to speak. They were blocking the rights of other students to hear what the speaker had to say.

It was defended as a "peaceful protest". But the word "peaceful" in this case has shrunk to mean "no physical violence occurred". But that's not the extent of peaceful. We don't only call something peaceful if there is an absence of violence. I would argue that if you are disrupting an event, that's not "peaceful". Just because you didn't start punching people, you're still preventing them from doing what they came there to do. So I think that the language gets twisted around a bit in cases like this.

And my biggest issue is the one-sidedness of it all. The same rules for speech must apply to speech, regardless of whether we like or dislike that speech. And it certainly appears to me as though many on the left use extremely different methods of measuring whether speech should be "free" based purely on whether it aligns with their own personal ideology and beliefs. So, as mentioned above, their speech should have nearly unbridled freedom, and justifies virtually any amount of disruption to anyone else due to its vast importance. But speech they don't agree with can be cavalierly blocked, banned from campuses, blocked from all public places, and even if a private event uses it, they'll try to disrupt it as well by showing up and trying to create havoc.

Again. I'd be inclined to agree with you, except that this same tactic is used against far broader types of speech than merely racist speech. The left has an unfortunate habit of labeling any speech that they don't agree with as "fascist" and "hate speech". This then gives them a green light to use disruptive and/or violent tactics to block it. And this in turn leads to media reporting the event based on the type of speech being opposed, rather than the tactics used to oppose it.


An easy way to test this is to just change the speech type. Let's imagine that this wasn't about Lee's statue, and there weren't any racists involved. Imagine it was a protest against a city council decision regarding use of a public park. Some people want it to remain a park, and some want it turned into a new housing complex. Now, imagine the exact same counter protest occurred, and then imagine someone on the "we want a park" side blowing a gasket for some reason and driving his car into the crowd, injuring a number of people and killing one.

What would the story be about? It would first be about the crazy guy who rammed the crowd. Perhaps with talk about mental illness or whatnot. It would also be about letting counter protests get so out of control in the first place. No one would be making it about the initial position of those who scheduled the protest itself. So what we're seeing here is a reaction based on whether we agree with the speech of those who scheduled the event. But in so doing, we're essentially taking the "side" of the counter protesters, not on their position on a park versus housing, but on their counter protest tactics in the first place.

No amount of free speech allows you to violate the law in the process of that speech. That means that jaywalking is still jaywalking, even if you're doing it with a hundred other people at the same time. A simple test if you find yourself in a rally, march, protest, etc, is: "Would I be doing this if I were the only person standing here?". If the answer is "no", then you should not do it. We see this all the time though. I remember the occupy protests, and people complaining that the police were violating their free speech by arresting them for merely standing there. Except that they were standing in the middle of a street, with hundreds of other people, blocking traffic, without having made previous arrangements for a march in that street at that time. Same thing: If one person were standing in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, what would you expect the police to do when they arrive at the scene. They'd ask the person to get out of the street, and if he refuses, they'd tackle him, cuff him, and arrest him.

And none of us would blink at this, or think it was a violation of that person's rights. But if a crowd of people are all doing it? We suddenly think there's some magical free speech issue at hand.


So yeah. TR/DR. Whatever. I guess my point is that you counter speech with actual speech. When your form of speech involves disruption and violence, then you're not using speech. You're using intimidation tactics. In a free society, as painful as it might be, you have to actually allow other members of your society to hear all sides of an issue, listen to all forms of speech and opinions, and then let them make up their own minds. The moment we start trying to choose ahead of time which opinions and positions are "good" or "bad", and then acting to prevent the speech of the "bad" sides, out of fear that they might influence people to believe them, we no longer have free speech, and we no longer live in a free society.

I get it. It's really easy to just say "That's hate speech. It's horrible. We shouldn't allow people to say that". And there's some legitimacy to that. We could easily argue that if we could make racist speech illegal, it would make it harder for racists to spread their hate, and we could seriously decrease the amount of racists in our society (or even completely eliminate it). The problem is that we all know it wont stop there. Yes, slippery slope, whatever. But we all know this to be true. As I've mentioned above, we're already seeing this. Conservative speech is often very broadly labeled as "hate speech" and condemned and attacked, not because of what is said, but in many cases, merely because of the political or ideological persuasion of the person speaking.

I'm all for opposing someone else's opinion, but you're veering into authoritarian state when you start suppressing that opinion. It's just too dangerous. Far far more dangerous than allowing such people to speak their minds, IMO. We can listen to, judge, and dismiss their speech. But we can never know what someone might have said, and whether it might have made sense to us, if we never get to hear it in the first place.
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#3979 Aug 14 2017 at 8:08 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
Samira wrote:
This is a sad, cynical point of view.

If anyone can convince themselves that liberals are the real bad guys after a white nationalist Alt-Right terrorist murders a woman, it's Gbaji.


The fact that you're presenting this as "one side is bad, and the other good" is a great example of the problem I'm talking about. Both sides can be in the wrong. You get that, right?
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#3980 Aug 14 2017 at 8:10 PM Rating: Excellent
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In the same way that both a puddle and an ocean can be wet, sure. If I'm afraid of drowning, I don't waste time whining about the puddle.

Also, I never said "This side is good". You're the one flipping out and posting huge screeds defending Alt-Right terrorists. You'll notice I don't feel obligated to defend the groups that, you know, didn't murder someone.

Edited, Aug 14th 2017 9:13pm by Jophiel
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#3981 Aug 14 2017 at 8:41 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Someone in the comments section of the linked article raised a question: What would have happened if no one had showed up to counter protest?

Screenshot

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#3982 Aug 14 2017 at 9:22 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
In the same way that both a puddle and an ocean can be wet, sure. If I'm afraid of drowning, I don't waste time whining about the puddle.


Except that in this case, to follow your analogy, both volumes of water are sufficient to drown in. One is not a puddle, and therefore relatively harmless. It's the need to absolutely dismiss the danger of one thing while obsessing over the other that is the point of what I'm trying to say here. Your response just verifies that point.

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Also, I never said "This side is good". You're the one flipping out and posting huge screeds defending Alt-Right terrorists.


And... again. I have not once defended anyone's actions. Not once. You are doing *exactly* what I've been talking about. You have now equated failure to criticize one and only one "side" in a conflict to "defending" that side. Seriously. Stop and read what you just wrote.

I'm also going to go out on a limb and assume that you view the counter protesters as "good" in this context, right? They're standing up to hate speech and racism. They're "good". Right? I wasn't saying that you literally said that, but that this is the starting point which you are using to form your response to the event itself. My point is that we should not judge people's actions based on whether we agree or disagree with some broader ideological position they hold. I further argue that on the right, we tend to have no problem at all condemning violent and disruptive acts regardless of "side". And we have no problem defending people's legitimate rights regardless of "side".

On the left? That's not so much the case.

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You'll notice I don't feel obligated to defend the groups that, you know, didn't murder someone.


Interesting choice of language. You're making it about the group, and not the individual and the action. I don't defend murder. I don't defend people who commit murder. I don't defend violence. I don't defend people who commit violence. But you're making it about the whole group. But the whole group was expressing its opinion via a legitimate and legal act of free speech. I don't agree with their opinion, but I defend their right to express it via legal acts.

The group didn't murder that woman. One person did. Are you getting now why I have for years argued against the idea of treating people as identity groups rather than individuals? This is why. The fact that you so easily move from condemning a single act to condemning an entire group you view as associated to the one person who committed the act is kind of alarming to me. I honestly hope you can see this.
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#3983 Aug 14 2017 at 9:49 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
The group didn't murder that woman. One person did.
One person who fully embraced the ideology of said group and acted on it, yes.



gbaji wrote:
Are you getting now why I have for years argued against the idea of treating people as identity groups rather than individuals? This is why.
Coming from mister "everyone who disagrees with me is a liberal stooge" that's almost funny.
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#3984 Aug 14 2017 at 9:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
And... again. I have not once defended anyone's actions. Not once.

This is so laughably wrong that your post isn't worth replying to. Well, less so than usual. You are either blatantly lying here or suffer such as massive dissonance that you are literally not worth talking to about this.
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#3985 Aug 14 2017 at 10:24 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
The group didn't murder that woman. One person did.
One person who fully embraced the ideology of said group and acted on it, yes.


Did he? You're equating the ideology of the group (and very broadly defining the group as well, but I'll let that slide) to the action of the individual. Did he slam his car into that group of protesters because he's a racist who hates people of color and they were all people of color (or whatever groups he hates)? Or did he slam his car into that group of protesters because they were engaging in disruption tactics to prevent him and his group from being able to assemble and exercise their own free speech (which, btw, they were successful at, given that the police broke up the fights and forced everone to leave the area of the actual event 30 minutes before the event was even to start, so no one got to speak at it).

I'll point out again, that had this been any other event, in support for any other cause, and it had been blocked in this manner, it's entirely possible that some member of that group might also have snapped and decided to respond by ramming his car into those responsible for shutting down his groups right to assemble. If this were a direct result of his ideological beliefs, you'd expect to see a lot more cases of white supremacists randomly mowing down crowds of people they don't like. Heck. Why do it at one of your own groups protests? Just show up to a BLM march and do this, right? The most probable reason for him doing what he did was anger at the people disrupting a protest he wanted to attend, and not a broad hatred of the people because he's a racist. I can't say that's 100% certain, but it seems more likely to me. And that's the kind of anger that could arise within the member of any group who feels that its speech is being infringed, regardless of that group or member's personal ideology.


A big part of my point is that many people are judging this based on the fact that they don't like white supremacists, and less on "guy ran into a crowd with his car". His action is just as horrific regardless of the details of the conflict between the two groups. And just as wrong. Some of you seem to be of the opinion that it's somehow "more wrong" because of his ideology, which suggests that it would be "less wrong", if his ideology had been different.

And yeah. I find that line of thinking problematic.

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Coming from mister "everyone who disagrees with me is a liberal stooge" that's almost funny.


No. It's more like "everyone who perfectly parrots the liberal talking points on a given issue is a liberal stooge". Which, as you might imagine, is somewhat axiomatic.
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#3987 Aug 14 2017 at 10:30 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
And... again. I have not once defended anyone's actions. Not once.

This is so laughably wrong that your post isn't worth replying to. Well, less so than usual. You are either blatantly lying here or suffer such as massive dissonance that you are literally not worth talking to about this.


Ah yes, the old "this is so obvious that I don't need to actually prove it!" response. Gee. It's like I've never seen this before. Oh wait!...

How about quoting me actually defending anyone's violent actions in this event? Can you do this? Or are you going to start channeling Varus and insist that I wrote something, and it's "right there. Just look for it", but you'll spend post after post refusing to actually quote it?

I'll wait. Not going to hold my breath though.
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#3988 Aug 14 2017 at 11:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Ah yes, the old "this is so obvious that I don't need to actually prove it!" response. Gee. It's like I've never seen this before. Oh wait!...

Was that intentional? Smiley: laugh
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Belkira wrote:
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#3989 Aug 14 2017 at 11:02 PM Rating: Excellent
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I'll use this double post to say that, after extensive research, I have found evidence of antifas radicals using their car as a weapon to attack Alt-Right white supremacists.



Edited, Aug 15th 2017 12:41am by Jophiel
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Belkira wrote:
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#3990 Aug 15 2017 at 3:49 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Interesting choice of language. You're making it about the group, and not the individual and the action. I don't defend murder. I don't defend people who commit murder. I don't defend violence. I don't defend people who commit violence. But you're making it about the whole group. But the whole group was expressing its opinion via a legitimate and legal act of free speech. I don't agree with their opinion, but I defend their right to express it via legal acts.

The group didn't murder that woman. One person did. Are you getting now why I have for years argued against the idea of treating people as identity groups rather than individuals? This is why. The fact that you so easily move from condemning a single act to condemning an entire group you view as associated to the one person who committed the act is kind of alarming to me. I honestly hope you can see this.
This has to be up there as one of the most ridiculous and hypocritical things you've ever written. You are literally the worst person to comment on anyone blaming a group for the actions of one person. You have an incredibly long history of condemning the entire left for the action of any single lefty. Every single time any one on the left does anything, it always sets you off on stating that it is a trend of the left. Every. Single. Time.

I mean ****, earlier in this thread you blamed the left for all violence. Not the individuals that caused the violence in those situaitons, but the "left".
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#3991 Aug 15 2017 at 7:02 AM Rating: Excellent
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Allegory wrote:
If it's just to sate your revenge and you don't mind them coming back to do the same to your family I guess that is rational.
What part of "cut down their family tree" suggests there'd be anyone left to retaliate?
Uglysasquatch wrote:
This has to be up there as one of the most ridiculous and hypocritical things you've ever written.
Everyone knows that if you don't post for a couple of days everyone forgets you and your posting history.
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#3992 Aug 15 2017 at 7:23 AM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
Allegory wrote:
If it's just to sate your revenge and you don't mind them coming back to do the same to your family I guess that is rational.
What part of "cut down their family tree" suggests there'd be anyone left to retaliate?

The roots, man. The roots.

Gbaji is being too stupid to waste time on. Go call that a win, big guy.
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Belkira wrote:
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#3993 Aug 15 2017 at 7:24 AM Rating: Excellent
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Defunct game forums are killing the Asylum via double posts

Edited, Aug 15th 2017 8:31am by Jophiel
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#3994 Aug 15 2017 at 8:15 AM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
The roots, man. The roots.
If I have to take out Levar Burton as part of a scorched Earth scenario then so be it.
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#3995 Aug 15 2017 at 9:18 AM Rating: Excellent
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Samira wrote:
This is a sad, cynical point of view. I am not happy about anyone dying, and I don't know anyone who is celebrating Ms Heyer's death as a valuable opportunity for propaganda.
Apparently one of the neo-**** groups was celebrating it. Along with comments suggesting she was a worthless drain on society anyway for not having children yet. I took it as a hopeful sign that they're not becoming a mainstream political force any time soon.
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#3996 Aug 15 2017 at 9:40 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
It was defended as a "peaceful protest". But the word "peaceful" in this case has shrunk to mean "no physical violence occurred". But that's not the extent of peaceful. We don't only call something peaceful if there is an absence of violence. I would argue that if you are disrupting an event, that's not "peaceful".
Physical violence is a fairly easily thing to discern, while drawing the line earlier can be more difficult. How does one draw a line on a verbal altercation? Seems like that kind of disruption would be commonplace during an unpopular march. Even if there's no organized counter-march you're bound to run into people who disagree with you if your opinion is unpopular enough.

This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the police seem to be letting these groups have at it a bit more lately. With several instances of physical violence breaking out over the last few weeks.
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#3997 Aug 15 2017 at 9:56 AM Rating: Good
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someproteinguy wrote:
This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the police seem to be letting these groups have at it a bit more lately.
From experience I can tell you that people that have taken a few punches are a lot less energetic when they inevitably decide to run face first into a riot shield.
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#3998 Aug 15 2017 at 10:05 AM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the police seem to be letting these groups have at it a bit more lately.
From experience I can tell you that people that have taken a few punches are a lot less energetic when they inevitably decide to run face first into a riot shield.
Have noticed they've also been taking the initiative to pepper-spray each other before hand too. Imagine that probably saves the department a little bit of money, just as a bonus.
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#3999 Aug 15 2017 at 10:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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I heard, and can not cite because it was a day or two ago and I don't recall where, that part of the issue with police involvement was the number of armed Alt-Right protesters. There was a concern about escalating from punches and thrown urine bottles to an actual shooting event.

The idea that the protestors didn't come itching for a fight is, of course, ludicrous. Many of these morons had matching shields for heaven's sake.
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#4000 Aug 15 2017 at 11:42 AM Rating: Good
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lolgaxe wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
The roots, man. The roots.
If I have to take out Levar Burton Questlove as part of a scorched Earth scenario then so be it.

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#4001 Aug 15 2017 at 11:50 AM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
I heard, and can not cite because it was a day or two ago and I don't recall where, that part of the issue with police involvement was the number of armed Alt-Right protesters. There was a concern about escalating from punches and thrown urine bottles to an actual shooting event.


Yesterday on NPR, I think they were either interviewing, or discussing statements from, an official from the police department about the response and how it was handled. And the person had said that the tensions rose between the demonstrators and protestors, so they ended the event and told everyone to leave, but that made it worse. Because now instead of the two groups in one area, relatively contained and more easily controlled, they had dispersing groups that they had to divide their forces to monitor and try to stop.

It sounded like they regretted that initial decision since it made the policing even harder after that point.


And I haven't read into it or heard anything discussed during the "drive to work/home" radio time slot, but why did the helicopter crash and kill two police officers? Seems like a horrible coincidence of an accident. Not to diminish the deaths, but contributing those deaths to the protest itself seemed much like when they contribute a death due to heart attack during snow shoveling to a blizzard.
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