1. I was watching the news and in a picture I noticed one of the counter protesters using some sort of spray can as a flamethrower. I also saw the counter protesters beating up a spokesman for the protesters before the police saved him. So violence goes all around.
2. Arresting people just because someone like the parent here calls them violent is a really bad idea. As in, it's horrendous. If all someone has to do is call you violent to have you arrested, then boy can it be used to silence people that say things inconvenient to whoever wants to silence them. Saying "arrest their member" about a political group is extreme, ignores any legal precepts of innocent until proven guilty, and can be used by the most authoritarian groups to silence anyone they choose.
That said I do find protesters very unlikable. The counter protesters I have found a little bit more likeable but still unlikable, because they seem somewhat hypocritical and dishonest, given they have been somewhat violent as well, and have said that it doesn't matter that they were violent as well.
Given such a protest–and even if you disagree with the above, please entertain this as a hypothetical–what would be the makeup of the group of people opposing such a protest? It seems to me that, in principle, everybody who disagrees with the far-right ideology of these protesters could, or even should, be among the counter-protesters. You can be a Nazi, or you can be against Nazis. But I'm having a hard time imagining someone being neutral: "I think the idea of sending the jews to the gas chamber has potential, but I will reserve judgement until I have studied it in more detail" just doesn't seem like a common opinion.
And that's why people are so outraged with the President's "there are always two sides" equivocation: one side wants genocide, the other wants "no genocide". Even if both sides had been similarly violent (which they were not: only one committed a terror attack killing someone), they aren't comparable. Because for these Nazis, the opposition is in the way of their fantasy of a whites-only country, whereas for these opponents, the step after keeping the upper hand against the Nazis is "going home".
One can criticize both groups and still not be neutral. As I have stated, I do not like the neo nazis (not sure if all the original protesters are that or if only a few of them are, either way, they all seem quite unlikable).
What I have really been against is the "just arrest people for being seen in a group" which is what my comment was really replying to. Asking for discriminatory laws like this is backwards, harking back to when there were discriminatory laws against people with black skin. Although I know this is not what you were replying to, this is just to show why I made the comment in the first place. Also I seem to be being called a libertarian just for disagreeing with what I replied to, I don't think I have ever actually agreed with anything that someone calling themselves a libertarian has said, that I remember anyway.
It's a good idea to arrest violent people. Don't be the libertarian theory nerd that thinks of people as academic concepts only. In the real world, people are violent and dangerous, and they get to be arrested.
Government limits rights and freedoms of individuals to deal with the real world.
How hard is this to understand the following
GROUPS != INDIVIDUALS
You're advocating to punish individuals by what group they belong to instead of what they did.
Sounds familar?
Person A is a jew and lends money and is rich by "stealing" money from the borrowers via interest Person B is also a jew Therefore person b "stole" money Therefore we should arrest all jews
And even then it's not actually that, because a private company has decided to stop hosting the content, the government/law enforcement was never involved.
No. Just no.
Islamists =/= Muslims
The honest comparison would be to ask if anyone who professes to be a member of Al Qaeda or ISIS, is considered a criminal by simple association.
And if they provide "material support or resources" (like organising/publishing/translating, at the lower end of terrorist criminality) they would be so.
Charitably, your comment reads that people who call themselves Nazis today are as far removed from (and do not bear the mantle of) the Nazis of WW2, as Muslims are removed from Islamist terrorists.
Again, charitably, that is an appalling comparison. Because it implies the reverse too; that Muslims are as responsible for the crimes of 9/11 as one believes modern Nazis are for bearing the history of the National Socialist movement - which of course they (modern Nazis) are.
More clearly: The perpetrators of 9/11 are only tangentially part of the same group as Muslims in general. You may as well group these NeoNazis with the set "Americans", or "White Men", as their motivations have as little bearing as regular Muslims and the men who brought down WTC.
As before, the better comparison is to ask if non-violent members of ISIS or Al Qaida can be assumed criminals/terrorists, as their violent companions are.
You know why I made that comparison, because someone was saying arrest them just for associating with the group, I was showing how it would apply more widely, indeed it could apply to people who associate with BLM, it is terrible to throw away due process like that.
I think that the people who carry swastikas and the like are morons, who have a fantasy view of what actual Nazis were. They are certainly not part of the Nazi Party, because it died at the end of WW2. If you think my view of them is wrong, then please correct me.
We literally declared war against them, and killed them wholesale. Are you saying we should stop declaring war against Nazis?
Except we didn't kill them wholesale. The United States pardoned or looked the other way for lesser Nazis and Imperialists in Japan to run their respective postwar governments. How do you think these countries functioned after the war? It's not like they systematically shot every remaining Nazi.
Look up Operation Paperclip.
In the end it doesn't matter if it is a leftist or a rightist organization that calls for murder or other criminal or sedituous behaviour: if we can be sure that you use your means of communication to murder people and destroy society, then this has consequences. In Germany I know as well of leftist as rightist groups/activists who were prosecuted on these grounds, so this is by no means something that is just used against nazis.
However: almost all nazi-groups are concerned by this, as violence and hate are constitutive for their movement, while almost all of the leftist groups go uninvolved, since their fundamental interests are compatible with our basic humanitarian values etc.
So, to all you libertarian-nerds: stop whining (and seeming stupid thereby) that it would be sooooo hard to detect speech that is used to murder people, poison the civil society and destroy the democratic form of government. There is nothing valuable about hateful agitation, we can do fine without it. And please stop acting as if it didn't matter: the whole point of the Charlottesville-demonstration was to show that people can be motivated by hateful agitation and propaganda on the internet to go out and intimidate the rest of the world. That people can be motivated to let go of all inhibitions if they see day after day that it is okay to talk about killing jews, homosexuals and afroamericans, that other people kudo them when they deride minorities themselves.
Oh and by the way: go and check your priviledges. It is easy to act as if hateful speech wouldn't matter if you aren't affected by it (or are intelligent and eloquent enough to turn the tables). But: hateful speech harms the people that are affected by it and can make life a living hell for them. I mean: it is obviously the aim of it, isn't it? I deride and intimidate minorities, so that ... they feel derided and intimidated. It's just that simple.
My opinion about those?
Just ban them. Arrest their members. Don't be the socially inept libertarian nerd that thinks only in terms of theory without any real-world experience. It's perfectly fine to limit rights and freedoms in the real world. You can do it!
Well done, sir. This is why nobody takes libertarians serious.
This isn't some free-speech issue where you debate politely and sip iced water and other frippery.. this is actual people killing other people. This is how the the real world actually operates, instead of libertarian-nerd theory world.
And you know Nazis would be extremely violent people because no rational person would self identify with that group, so already they're batshit insane, which means they're likely to be extremely violent. And sure enough, when hundreds of Nazis gathered this weekend in Charlottesville, you actually ended up with an event measured in terms of "death toll".
We have to treat these people like armed and dangerous criminals, like you would ISIS or any active shooter.
And we all need to understand that government limits speech in many, many ways, not just the "fire in the theatre" example, but with things like sedition and other criminal conspiracies to more mundane things like copyrights and libel.
People forget that we went to war against these people and used to kill Nazis wholesale less than 80 years ago, because the Nazi party went to war against America. Identifying with them means you've actually declared war against the US. Not sure how much clearer you could be in declaring yourself to be a violent and dangerous criminal than that.
Just ban them. Arrest their members. Don't be the socially inept libertarian nerd that thinks only in terms of theory without any real-world experience. It's perfectly fine to limit rights and freedoms in the real world. You can do it!