This phenomenon is explained well here:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

It's long, but I think worth the read.

Excellent excellent link! Thanks for posting it. Seriously... thank you.

> but my friends who do that seem to also turn a blind eye to riots and beatings from folks "the left"

Yes, those "left" beatings get zero widespread cultural support. Violence is not glorified by any prominent voices on the left.

Whereas racist and sexist voices on the right make a boatload of money and fill up the comments of every news article posted to Facebook. It's cultural.

>zero widespread cultural support. Violence is not glorified by any prominent voices on the left.

This is just not true.[1] Even in our tech community it's pretty commonplace to see 'it's okay to punch a nazi' is a well supported position.[2]

[1] https://heatst.com/culture-wars/prominent-leftists-celebrate... [2] http://reason.com/blog/2017/02/15/now-its-okay-to-punch-nazi...

I thought parent commenter was referring to generic Trump supporters being beaten.

When someone thinks you don't deserve to live because of the color of your skin, you're well within your right to defend yourself against that idea. You shouldn't have to wait until they're knocking down your door.

> When someone thinks you don't deserve to live because of the color of your skin, you're well within your right to defend yourself against that idea. You shouldn't have to wait until they're knocking down your door.

Replace color of your skin with political belief, and you've just made an argument for Trump supporters who live in places like Berkeley or San Jose to violently defend themselves from liberal rioting.

Find me a leftist actively making plans and pushing for the elimination of those with certain political beliefs, and I'll agree. Saying that people shouldn't be racist or oppose welfare != saying there should be a "peaceful ethnic cleansing", a la Spencer.

Antifa is the yin to the alt-right's yang. Both are jokes.

Radicals on your own 'side' are difficult to distinguish, and even harder to repudiate because they constantly say things where you agree with 95% of the content, or most of the underpinnings of their reasoning.

For a liberal, its' easy to write off Glen Beck when he says Obama is a fascist for taking particular action. However, it is difficult to write off the Huffington Post, when they say Trump is a fascist for rolling back the previous administrations 'reform' (thus returning us to the hell-world of laws existing in 2007).

As a person on the left, when you look at the left you see your bubble. That is, you see the people you are already agreeing with, the nice people. However, when you look at the right, you see the controversy; the things most visible in the mainstream are the ones that are most talked about, are the loudest and most divisive ones. Your point of view is not symmetrical.

I suspect the right-leaning people in this thread would say the same thing in reverse.

What media outlet, TV or radio or web, promotes active violence against Trump supporters?

I'll avoid naming them, but there at least 5 loud rightwingers who make millions of dollars promoting racism. Not just on the web, but on TV. On the radio.

This isn't a "people live in a bubble" thing. This is people exaggerating the size of the fringe left and equating it with actual mainstream right.

It's hardly a double standard. Fringe members of your own side cannot represent your entire group, because you are part of the group therefore you have 1st hand evidence that some members (i.e. you) are utterly rationale, reasonable, realistic human beings.

Considering your political opponents is difficult. You may not even know too many of them in real life, and even when you do---political discussion is frowned upon so at best you get a niggling thought of "Bob is a great dev, I don't understand how he could be so crazy to vote for X".

I agree that conscientious leftists shouldn't turn a blind eye to wanton violence and property destruction at their events. But I don't think it's quite a double standard, when one of the groups of "fringe wackos" in question occupies the highest executive office in the country (slash world depending on your assessment of American power). And as far as representing the whole: nobody voted for the black bloc; 62.9 million people did vote for Trump.

There are fringe wackos on both sides, but only one of the sides had a fringe wacko as a candidate.

Considering how much flack the Democrats got for shutting down Bernie's campaign with questionable means, that was a close-run thing.

> only one of the sides had a fringe wacko as a candidate

This statement is probably true for most people, but the side with the fringe wacko for a candidate is up for debate.