http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-charlottesville-witnesse...
With witness testimony of antifa violence.
In my own home town, I've seen the militant left engage in violent protest of "bad people". The "bad people" weren't actually doing anything other than talking. But OMFG we all know they're evil, right? So violent suppression of their free speech is a Good Thing.
While I live in a generally left country, and am generally somewhat leftist myself, I find the tactics of the authoritarian left to be abhorrent. If someone can't talk reasonably with people on "the other side", they don't deserve my respect or support.
The only people saying that are members of right wing extremist organizations that have, as their guiding principle, the genocide of non-white people. These are groups that planned and trained to wage war against counter-protestors, and for weeks leading up to the event posted to their social media about their weapons, smashing people's heads, etc.
I've read a number of reports of the events in Charlottesville, and the overwhelming feeling I came away with was that antifa saved lives, in this case. One can reasonably criticize other times antifa has shown up; Berkeley, for example. But, I'm on team antifa in Charlottesville. I sure as hell don't want to be on the side of the Nazis who murdered someone.
More eyewitness testimony about antifa in Charlottesville:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...
Edit: I think it's really important to recognize that violence is what Neo-Nazis are about. They are not rallying to express opinions, they are rallying to recruit and build a network of impressionable young men who will commit violent acts in pursuit of their goals. They were there specifically to find more people like James Alex Fields. To frame it as a peaceful political rally gone bad is to wholly misunderstand the threat Neo-Nazi organizations pose to our democracy.
Which is a thinly-veiled ad homimen directed at me.
The truth is that in my experience, the authoritarian left (antifa included) have engaged in violent suppression of speech they find distasteful. As a result, I believe that they are amoral cultists.
You can go to any internet space and find thousands of hateful and racist people. The chances of any of them committing violence is extremely low.
These terrorist acts, while pertinent to the current conversation, are not the same. We've (hopefully) moved on from the violence of our forebears, and the rise of white nationalism should be treated as a new occurrence. I hope it is one. The argument that it
The police should be on hand at these 'demonstrations'. Many of them are actually violent. Many more have peaceful if disgusting protestors, and a few truly vile people that will incite incidents - And these get out of hand very quick. Police should be quick to stamp out these brawls. They need to immediately arrest the criminals who instigate violent acts.
The important things to recognize are a) that the violence is instigated on both sides, and b) making yourself a target for violence is not an effective way of rooting out violence. They're correlated - Black Block members often toe the line in attempt to provoke. That's simply escalation. It make the Nazis think they're right and makes it easier for them to radicalize others - Because they're "being provoked", so why shouldn't they "fight back"?
Escalation only makes it worse. As the old adage goes - "Don't wrestle with pigs; You both get dirty and the pig likes it". Antifa is wrestling with pigs. You can't fight Nazi's by fighting them with fists - They like that. You need to fight them by being better than them, and quite frankly, when they're winning you need to re-evaluate if you really are.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us...
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/12/right-wing-extremists-mil...
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/24/417192057/right-wing-extremist...
http://www.newsweek.com/right-wing-extremism-islamist-terror...
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/aug/16/...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics...
"48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center."
The pulse nightclub shooting alone killed 49 people. That is more than the entirety of the post 9/11 number white supremacist murders up to 2015 with a single event from 2016.
Then again, the Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terror attack on US soil in our lifetimes prior to 9/11, and was committed by a right wing extremist. It is sort of arbitrary to draw the line at 9/11 (though maybe reasonable since it was such a devastating attack, and kinda blows the curve for any sort of accounting of other kinds of terror).
Doing comparisons without these cases we get similar numbers for both factions within some wide margin of error. Looking at this from a per capita perspective though we have Muslim Americans that make up around 1% of the population by my googling having a similar terrorism death toll as the 32% of the population that is right wing white Americans (white Americans being 64% of the population. This would make that faction 32 times more dangerous per capita than the white right wing.
But, the way so many have jumped to defend Neo-Nazis or redirect blame for their violence has me pretty shook. I don't really know how to process someone looking at Charlottesville and saying, "it's the fault of the left". It doesn't even make sense, much less help the nation heal, and a lot of people with a lot of influence are doing it.
It's pretty much terrifying that we have a president that is among the ranks of Neo-Nazi apologists, and that a large percentage of GOP leadership has said nothing. Maybe I'm giving moderate Republicans too much credit. Neo-Nazi leaders certainly feel vindicated by what's been coming out of a lot of mainstream Republican talking heads lately.
Timothy McVeigh? Why do you consider him right-wing?
Some quotes:
"McVeigh was reprimanded by the military for purchasing a "White Power" T-shirt at a Ku Klux Klan protest"
"he spoke daily to his co-worker Carl Lebron, Jr. about his loathing for government. Deciding that the Buffalo area was too liberal, he left his job and began driving around the country, seeking out his old friends from the Army."
A letter he wrote to a newspaper:
"Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight. [...] Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might."
"McVeigh introduced his sister to anti-government literature"
"For the five months following the Waco siege, McVeigh worked at gun shows and handed out free cards printed up with Lon Horiuchi's name and address, "in the hope that somebody in the Patriot movement would assassinate the sharpshooter." (Note "Patriot movement" was the way right wing extremist groups were re-branded in the 90s, just as alt-right and some other names have been used since.)
He made his meager living selling copies of The Turner Diaries (a novel that fantasizes about an armed revolution against the US government, and genocide of blacks, Jews, and gays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries) among other right wing literature at gun shows.
I don't see how he can be considered anything but right wing, and pretty extreme right wing, at that.
Source for all of the above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh
If, instead, you mean, civil rights for members of Muslim extremist organizations, then your comparison would be reasonable. So, you tell me. Should Al Qaeda be given permits for rallies across the US to recruit people to commit acts of terror?
We aren't talking about people who merely say racist things. No one is suggesting racists should have their speech curtailed, as repugnant as that speech may be. We are discussing groups that have as their stated goal the violent overthrow of the US government and imposition of a white ethno-state. It's not a secret that's what they stand for and what they are recruiting for. They talk about it pretty openly, and it can be confirmed by spending even a little time in their online or real world spaces.
It is false equivalence, and gross, to compare Neo-Nazis to Muslims. There is no similarity there. There are violent extremists that are Muslims, but it is not the stated purpose of the religion or the majority of the people (or even a notable percentage) who practice that religion. Neo-Nazis, the groups represented by the Unite The Right rally, are violent extremists, both in word and deed, and it isn't a secret or small percentage of their numbers. It is why the organizations exist.
[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/aug/16/...
Right wing violence is not expected until Antifa show up. If Antifa don't show up, there is no expected violence.
Nazis must be protested, everywhere they show their angry entitled faces. Sometimes they become violent when criticized. Violence is core to Nazi beliefs, so it's not surprising when they become violent. Antifa is a defensive tool against that violence, to make it safer for others to protest against Nazis.
Sometimes, antifa goes too far, perhaps. But, you're never going to make me feel sympathy for people who literally actively seek the death and degradation of millions of Americans.
Charlottesville police seemed underprepared for this event, in general. Many, many, reports from a wide variety of people noted a complete lack of police presence in a number of situations where violence occurred, or that police were present but merely observed violence taking place.
This leads to a lot of mistrust of police, and also makes it harder for protesters who might like to remain non-violent to do so. If you see someone being beaten up by Nazis and police aren't stopping it, the only decent thing for an able-bodied person to do is to try to stop it.
Core problem seems to be that lots of the Nazis (and to a lesser extent, some of the protesters) were heavily armed. It's easy for police to break up a protest where no one is armed, but they sure as hell won't mace a group of heavily armed people, no matter if Nazi, Antifa or whatever.
Antifa isn't a group or organization that holds rallies, and black bloc isn't a group at all (it's a tactic). Antifa shows up when right wing violence is expected. It is a direct response to white supremacist violence; remove white supremacist violence from the world, and you remove antifa from the world. They cease to show up, or show up in a different capacity, usually as peaceful protestors.
Antifa is a desperate last line of defense against white supremacist violence, and not an organization (or, organizations since it is very loosely affiliated bunch of groups with often wildly different ideas about tactics and practices) that seeks violence.
To compare Neo-Nazis to antifa is an irresponsible false equivalence. You can criticize antifa tactics (and, reasonably so, in many cases) without misleading people. There's enough misinformation coming from Fox News and Breitbart about what antifa is and does and why.