What is the best way to react to white supremacists energized by the referendum campaign in Britain and the rise of Donald Trump in the U.S. — with physical confrontation or verbal mockery?
As my colleague Glenn Greenwald argues, it is too simple to suggest that last week’s rejection of the European Union by more than half of the British electorate, like Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican primary, can be explained by dismissing the voters as racists.
In both countries, and across the Western world, xenophobic bigots who pin the blame on foreigners and promise to restore prosperity by walling us off into ethnic-nationalist enclaves, have grown in prominence only after decades of failure by the traditional parties of left and right to find solutions for the suffering caused by globalization.
At the same time, however, it seems clear that the rhetoric of the referendum campaign in Britain, like Trump’s demonization of Mexican and Muslim immigrants, has emboldened the white supremacist fringe in ways too dangerous to ignore.
As the British historian Victoria Stiles observed, the referendum result, which has been followed by a 57 percent spike in reported hate crimes, seems to have encouraged the kind of public displays of racism in Britain that make physical assaults more likely.
The worry being that peer confirmation / peer approval is a crucial factor in violence against minority groups.
— Victoria Stiles (@ViolettaCrisis) June 25, 2016
To look at just one of those cases, the racist taunting of a black man on a tram in Manchester on Wednesday caught on video, is to get a visceral sense of how real the potential for violence has become.
How, exactly, to confront such intolerance and keep it from spreading, is now an urgent question on both sides of the Atlantic. Two very different answers were proposed over the weekend by anti-racist activists in California and the north of England.
There was a spasm on violence on Sunday in Sacramento, where at least 10 people were injured when a handful of American neo-Nazis, who describe themselves as white nationalists, attempted to rally on the steps of the state Capitol, only to be attacked by a larger number of anti-fascist activists hurling insults and rocks.
Police say at least 7 stabbed as rally at Calif. state capitol in Sacramento turns violent. https://t.co/4IoUfADCb2https://t.co/STjefv5EKG
— ABC News (@ABC) June 26, 2016
These nazis made it to the capital steps and were attacked with sticks and concrete. #nonazisinsac pic.twitter.com/xyKFf4WDTS
— Dave Id (@DaveId) June 26, 2016
Video posted online by reporters and activists showed street fights between white supremacists from the Traditionalist Worker Party, a neo-Nazi group that called the rally, and black-clad protesters from Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento and By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, a coalition dedicated to taking “militant, direct action” to defend affirmative action, integration, and immigrant rights.
Insane video. Crowd sees any signs of "Nazis" and they run&attack. A lot of people bleeding/getting maced. @ABC10 pic.twitter.com/PoFhILfZ95
— Frances Wang (@ABC10Frances) June 26, 2016
At least 10 people were treated for stab wounds, cuts, and bruises after the white nationalists were struck with pieces of concrete and then retreated — attacking protesters with clubs, knives, and fists as they fled.
Three reported stabbings by the Nazis to Antifacists in #Sacramento. #NoNazisInSac pic.twitter.com/2A7TyoBrzJ
— Bradley Allen (@BradleySA) June 26, 2016
After the melee, Yvette Felarca, a national organizer with BAMN — who was seen on video cursing at and punching one of the white nationalists — told the ABC News affiliate in Sacramento, “To us, there’s no free speech for fascists; they do not have the right to organize for genocide.”
A protest leader talks about "militant tactics" & "self-defense" to shut down "Nazi recruitment rally" @ABC10 pic.twitter.com/fpIcIKrz1X
— Frances Wang (@ABC10Frances) June 26, 2016
“The Nazis and the fascists are dangerous,” she added. “They need to be stopped and shut down by any means necessary. We can’t just ignore them, because then they grow. They hold these rallies not to just talk to each other but trying to recruit — but today they looked as weak as they are. They had to run hiding and we want to make sure that happens … if they try to show their faces publicly again.”
#ANTIFA aren't fighting Nazis for fun.
— benny • ??? (@bendykoval) June 27, 2016
We saw what happened when Nazis organized in Europe, and unlike liberals, we learned from the past.
In their online call for supporters to help “shut down the Nazi rally,” Antifa Sacramento noted that the founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party is Matthew Heimbach, one of the most outspoken Trump supporters in the white supremacist community.
Heimbach attracted national attention in March, when he was caught on camera shoving and screaming at a young black protester during a Trump rally in Louisville.
Leader of Neo-Nazi group involved in Sacramento stabbings is a Trump supporter who assaulted a black woman at rally. pic.twitter.com/TYxfswBHBN
— D (@Delo_Taylor) June 26, 2016
The same day, he explained his support for Trump in a video interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal. “I like Donald Trump because he’s the only person that’s speaking to white working-class interests,” Heimbach said, wearing one of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” baseball caps. “He’s the only candidate who’s standing up for us.”
“When his first comments came out about immigration, I was excited but a little wary,” Heimbach added. “But then when he doubled down … he’s been entirely consistent in defending and putting America first, putting our people first. That’s why I had to get behind him.”
Heimbach himself is not shy about tracing the roots of his white nationalist ideology to the Nazis. His YouTube channel features video of a speech he gave at a white supremacist retreat in Bakersfield, California, last year, illustrated with images of a Nuremberg rally and marches by contemporary neo-Nazi groups in Europe. “We are in a global struggle: Nationalism around the world is on the rise, the battle of the 21st century is going to be a war between nationalism and globalism,” Heimbach said in that address. “No matter who you are around the world, if you’re fighting for your national identity, your enemy is the international Jew.”
Unsurprisingly, Heimbach was thrilled by the British vote to exit the European Union, which he made clear on Twitter, sharing images of Oswald Mosley, who led the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, and of a “degenerate” at London’s Pride parade who told Britain’s Channel 4 News he was disappointed by the result.
#Brexit is the greatest European nationalist victory since 1933. Mosley would be proud of his Homeland and people pic.twitter.com/dXXuWU4NWa
— Matthew Heimbach (@MatthewHeimbach) June 24, 2016
A Remain supporter condemning #Brexit. This is the degenerate face of the European Union. Secede to Survive! pic.twitter.com/yMpdmcpM7J
— Matthew Heimbach (@MatthewHeimbach) June 26, 2016
Heimbach was also quite pleased with the chaos in Sacramento on Sunday, writing on his website that he had called the rally “to make a statement about the precarious situation our race is in” after “witnessing the brutal assaults these cowards, drug addicts, illegal immigrants and criminals committed in orchestrated pogroms by Zionist agitated colored people against elderly people, women, children, and even the disabled at Donald Trump events.”
In this context, it is interesting to look at the very different way British anti-fascists responded to a similar rally in the city of Newcastle on Saturday staged by white nationalists from fringe groups like the English Defense League and the National Front.
My home town of Newcastle. This afternoon. I feel like I am back in the 1980s. pic.twitter.com/8THD1xsn1N
— David Olusoga (@DavidOlusoga) June 25, 2016
EDL fascism comes to the streets of Newcastle. #Brexit pic.twitter.com/BJSdPcBeRC
— James Koranyi (@jtkoranyi) June 25, 2016
The fucking EDL marching in #Newcastle after #Brexit conjures images of Germany in 1930s. Bloddy scary. This time there'd be a bigger bang.
— thom_raindog (@thom_raindog) June 25, 2016
Embarrassing as fuck working in Newcastle & having to see pathetic EDL marches carrying banners "refugees not welcome" get a proper hobby
— Siobhan Appleby. (@siobhannx) June 25, 2016
While several observers took the EDL march as a celebration of the referendum result, it seems important to note that it was planned well in advance of the political campaign, as was the robust counterdemonstration by anti-racist activists who vastly outnumbered the white supremacists.
While the activists in Newcastle have the same goal as their counterparts in Sacramento, to demoralize and embarrass the racists, their tactics were strikingly different: They met the marchers with nonviolence and hurled not rocks but derision at them.
Tensions are high at monument. Just shot a whole roll of film on my dinner break #Newcastle #nebloggers #ncl pic.twitter.com/msFvzQcaQq
— Amy Spires (@AmySpires_) June 25, 2016
It's all kicking off in Newcastle #Newcastle #edl #nazi #antiedl #antinazi #march #protest pic.twitter.com/buBsljKi6J
— Nick Hall (@Nickyhall5) June 25, 2016
@ant1fane @ChiOnwurah @MHtwafa @Avionpart @ShumelRahman Newcastle showed the EDL they are NOT welcome in Newcastle pic.twitter.com/dKaXC91cr9
— Jon Proctor (@J_Proctor23) June 25, 2016
EDL demo in Newcastle. About a dozen. Outnumbered 10 to 1 by opponents waving "refugees welcome here" banners pic.twitter.com/Iw3Aaovw7s
— Matthew Cooke (@SafeEng) June 25, 2016
As video of the confrontation between the two groups posted online shows, the anti-racists in Newcastle mocked the white nationalists with chants like one that suggested they had to be kidding if they thought they represented a master race. “Super race? You’re having a laugh! Super race? You’re having a laugh!” they chanted, and then, simply, “Boring! Boring!”
Anti racism protest in Newcastle. EDL scum just turned up. pic.twitter.com/QjgbobkIDq
— Bryan (@dhcp_) June 25, 2016
As images of the rally and the counterdemonstration circulated widely over the weekend, Laura Pidcock, a local councillor in neighboring Northumberland, argued that the photographs, including one she took, had been mistaken for evidence of an uptick in racism in “post-Brexit Britain.”
“Just to be clear, the far-right have a history of street activity in Newcastle, they are always opposed and always out-numbered,” Pidcock wrote. “These ideas and attitudes have not just appeared since the referendum.”
“We must be careful,” she added, in terms that might make interesting reading for activists in Sacramento, “not to add to their sense of ‘victory,’ but respond to them in countering their ideas and joining together on the streets to demoralize their movement.”
Those depraved neoliberal shills, Amnesty International, are at it again: Video: Amnesty International launch campaign to combat racism after Brexit vote #Againsthate
Post-Brexit, racist attacks are increasing in Northern Ireland, so:
Amnesty should be ashamed. This is all just neoliberal identity politics, and a complete and calculated distraction. I know this, because several in comments here have asserted it is so.
Please describe in what way AI has vindicated your position, -Mona-.
IT FEELS LIKE … what I feel inside!!
You’ve convinced yourself with your own argument, again.
Why do you bother attempting to convince the board after you’ve been quelled throughout?
Some more on the real issues involved in Brexit and the fallout:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-30/brexit-focus-turning-to-consequences-for-uk-banks/7557316
The left-wing pro-Brexit argument is that the unregulated flow of capital around the EU can be highly damaging to local economies and that state members of the EU should be able to put some practical restrictions in place; with such restrictions, EU membership would not be such a problem.
Another aspect of the pro-Brexit argument is that the trade policies on goods and services, written in Brussels is often more about serving the interests of concentrated capital, rather than the interests of local economies, who are often prevented from trading directly with non-EU member states via high tariffs. Again, a more relaxed set of EU rules on member states setting their own trade policies outside the bloc is needed.
The final issue, the movement of workers, is what Mona is going overboard trying to make into a racist/xenophobic issue (while entirely ignoring the other issues); but even here, while an open multicultural society is a good thing, if it means that poor starving peole can be moved around the EU at will by concentrated wealth in order to undermine local workers, that’s going to be highly disruptive. This is what a lot of the turmoil in France is all about, the effort by the “socialist” Hollande government to undercut French workers and allow them to be more easily replaced by cheaper labor.
All in all, this is a highly complex issue – but, as with NAFTA in the US, it seems pretty clear that the middle class all across Britain and Europe will benefit from tighter restrictions on neoliberal EU policies – and the effort by the likes of “Mona” to paint it all as xenophobic racism are so dishonest and disingenuous as to be ridiculous.
Clearly, Mona has an ulterior motive; she is not interested in open-minded discussion of the real issues; instead, she’s trying to disrupt any such discussion with trollish behavior, insults and vitriol, and similar distractions. Dishonest and sleazy.
You can be for free trade or against it. But it’s hard for me to believe that free trade without free movement can be better than free trade with free movement. In the former case, a regime can simply terrorize and cow their (and I mean their) workers into cheap production. In the latter case, the workers get a vote with their feet to go somewhere with better wages. Is it better to sit in a factory and try to compete with slave labor abroad, or to sit in a factory and try to compete with former slaves who have come to work beside you? At least in the second case you have a chance to corrupt them.
@lastnamechosen is offensive:
That’s a lie. I completely agreed with Glenn’s Brexit column. Therein, he wrote this:
That is TRUE. As is this Greenwald tweet:
But what we’ve been seeing in comments here is the immoral denial, or downplaying, of the strong component of racism and xenophobia driving, and driven by, Brexit. Stating that basic fact as against a wall of deniers is not “demonization.”
It’s moral truth-telling.
Come on Mona, you’re just trolling and spamming the comment thread to promote your dishonest agenda. Any rational person looking at your behavior would come to the same conclusion. It’s seen in many other comment threads as well. Cut it out.
Scroll to comment highlighted in grey.
“Come on Mona, you’re just trolling and spamming the comment thread to promote your dishonest agenda. Any rational person looking at your behavior would come to the same conclusion. It’s seen in many other comment threads as well. Cut it out.”
-Mona- is the most disruptive commenter on this site. She’s prattled-on over others “crap-flooding” and that is by her own definition what -Mona- has been doing.
She hurls invective at new posters and you can almost hear her stomping her foot.
It’s time to treat -Mona- as I treated Omooex; bury her with her own shit until she relents.
If I replace one word:
This is obvious bigotry. This is the kind of crap spouted by people who frequent insane websites dedicated to proving that islam is a “unique evil”. This is not on the fence bigotry–this is full on in your face hatred.
And I don’t feel like finding a quote, but I’m pretty sure (or at least I hope) that you were one of the people arguing that a comment like that would be obvious bigotry. What I am trying to reconcile is how that sentence is obvious bigotry when applied to muslims, but not obvious bigotry when applied to another self-identified group. And I haven’t heard from you anything that comes close to a rational explanation for why I should treat those two statements differently just because you replaced one word.
Absurd: I do not deny, and never have, that some versions of Islam promote xenophobia and bigotry. ISIS? You bet, and worse.
Brexit isn’t a religion with 1.6 billion adherents world-wide, and many different manifestations.
Brexit is a discrete, narrow political movement in which, as Glenn puts it, the role of racism and xenophobia was “probably a big one.”
Now, please explain to me how Glenn, too, is a bigot “demonizing” people. For, you know, insisting on the obvious.
What is especially pernicious about your casuistry is that you delegitimize the fear and horror experienced all over the UK because of the bolstering the passage of Brexit has given to ACTUAL, rancid bigots — bigots who feel vindicated and who thus are acting more boldly. It is shameful — SHAMEFUL — to deny downplay this horrid reality.
Jesus Fucking Christ Mona, I throw you a rope to let you show that you aren’t a bigot and you tie it around your neck.
Just quickly looking–46 million people signed up to vote on the referendum, let’s just split in in half and say that 23 million voted for exit.
So 23 million people is a small enough number to go all bigot on. Sweet!!!!
You are literally making all this up as you go along.
That literally made me LOL. It’s so fucking stupid and hysterical.
I repeat:
You don’t need a rope, LNC; you need absolution.
Let’s bring this a little closer to home. Replace the word Brexit with Judaism. Is your statement bigoted or not?
Think carefully about your answer.
I could replace it with Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism or Buddhism, and the problem for you remains the same. It is surpassingly common for adherents of a religious faith to face demonization and bigotry based on gross distortions of what it is they all supposedly believe.
Minority religionists are — to borrow from U.S. “equal protection” legalese — “discrete and insular minorities” often subject to vicious bigotry. By contrast, short-term, ephemeral movements pursuing a specific and narrow political goal — that is morally neutral on its face — are not
Rather, it is the discrete and insular minorities who are the victims of a significant portion of a political movement that has the support of the overwhelming majority of those who demonize minorities.
Again, your casuistry in the service of denying this manifestly existing sociological phenomenon of menace to hated minorities is appalling, just utterly shameful.
So if I understand your argument correctly, religion should get special protection not afforded to other self identified groups because they are subjected to more bigotry than other groups. Although, obviously we are not including scientology on that list. Just…because.
Are there any other groups, in addition to religion, that should get this same special treatment? You have been talking about racism, so I’m going to say that you probably want to include racial categories here.
So we got religion and race, how about political persuasion? Obviously the political groups that people self-identify under are subjected to serious amounts of bigotry, so we should we include political groups too, right?
Maybe you should just list those that shouldn’t get special treatment because I think the list will be smaller. Obviously we have brexit voters–but I do want to caution you, if enough people emulate your behavior, we could end up in a situation where you will forced to include brexit voters in your special treatment list simply because of the total amount of bigotry directed at them.
This does show the advantage of getting in on the ground floor of hate, before a group gets hated enough to deserve protection. Think of how pissed people are that hated muslims long before the current explosion of bigotry that pushed islam onto hate charts. Newbies always ruining things for everyone.
I am curious about the special treatment list. Is this list just personal to you, or is your list to be imposed upon everyone? Because I’m getting the feeling that you want your list to be everyone’s list.
So if I can sum up your points:
— Bigotry is only bad when it is directed against people on the Do Not Hate List.
— For some reason, Mona is in control of the Do Not Hate List.
Mona–arguing like a lawyer in service of a client is a moral good. Arguing like a lawyer in real life just means you are willing to throw away a lifetime of principle to win an internet argument. I guess what I am saying is that I am glad you were smart enough not to sign your name to the idea that jews are driving racism.
“— For some reason, Mona is in control of the Do Not Hate List.”
actual, real even, lol.
Al Jazeera: Brexit: Increase in racist attacks after EU referendum
Those who obscenely deny or downplay the horrific and significant component of racism and xenophobia driving, and being driven by, Brexit, should chat with some of these people:
Or these folks:
And those UK Muslims, they’re getting all into “identity politics,” according to many Brexit supporters, including several in TIs comments:
What a neoliberal front group that Mulsim Council is, eh?
Readers will begin to observe that I usually do not reply to photosymbiosis, except to link him to a comment explaining why I no longer substantively engage him. This is a good example of why I do this. He just wrote:
That is false; in your case, a lie. No, what I’ve been insisting on is precisely what Glenn Greenwald also does:
That is exactly what is true, and therefore is also what I claim.
Photosymbiosis has weak logical skills, and also simply make shit up. He also spews utterly insane insults to and about me (I’m getting paid by neoliberals to be their shill, or some such shit). So, take anything he says to or about me with a big pile of salt.
Wouldn’t you be happier among your own kind over at 4chan, Mona? Trolling, spitting abuse, twisting and spinning, personal attacks, fallacious arguments, unjustified appeals to authority – just acting as an apologist for neoliberal elites and corporate interests and trying to hijack comment threads. It’s the same thing, over and over, thread after thread.
I think the post about the London bank shares falling, and the reasons that is happening, is precisely what you are trying to avoid talking about, isn’t it? The London banksters have told the Conservative Party that Boris Johnson must go; and it isn’t because of his pandering to xenophobia and racism, which is really a minor issue in this story.
Boris Johnson, the clown who tried to ride the smallish xenophobic element of the Leave campaign to political victory, is out – looks like the angry bankers have pulled the plug on him. The real issues are coming to the fore.
London banking share values are collapsing as their possible exit from the EU single market will reduce their ability to rape and pillage across the EU without restraint . . . Barclays is down 29%, RBS is down 28%, Lloyds is down 24%.
HSBC is down by only 2%, likely due to their dominant position in the global drug cartel money laundering business, which is expected to be unaffected by Brexit. . .
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-3662354/Why-Britain-s-bank-shares-hit-hard-b-Brexit.html
If the neoliberal elite hadn’t been so greedy, so dead set on their nickel-and-diming wealth extraction mentality that drove the British middle class down into poverty, all justified by Social Darwinian-Ayn Rand excuses, this wouldn’t have happened – hoisted on their own petard.
And how about this from France?
They can still rescue the situation – they just have to give up some of their wealth and privilege, by agreeing to policy prescriptions that raise the economic lot of the general public.
Organized religions and the insane beliefs they promote are at the root of all social chaos.
That’s an exceedingly ignorant statement. A kindergarten-level of the socio-political reality of the world and role religions play in many cultures.
I think you’re the one with the kindergarten-leve understanding of Brexit issues, Mona, put that’s probably just a ruse on your part; an attempt to distract attention away from the greedy Social Darwinist/Ayn Rand neoliberal elite agenda that’s done so much damage across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Of course, organized religion has nothing to do with Brexit either; the EU policies on people, goods & services, and capital flows are at the heart of the social chaos that has spread across Europe, though it has been greatly exacerbated by the US regime change policies in Libya and Syria (supported by France and Britain), the militaristic policies focused on the control of oilfields and oil pipeline routes that have killed hundreds of thousands and sent millions more fleeing the region.
I suspect both “Jake Smyth” and “Mona” understand this, and are merely trying to distract readers from discussing the real issues involved in the populist anger behind the Brexit vote. Howling about racism and xenophobia and organized religion is just part of their distract-and-obfuscate game.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/28/the-neoliberal-prison-brexit-hysteria-and-the-liberal-mind/
Usually, this is all I shall ever have to say to you. (Depending on the browser, you may have to scroll to the comment highlighted in grey.)
Does that mean I’m right about your agenda here?
“Usually, this is all I shall ever have to say to you. (Depending on the browser, you may have to scroll to the comment highlighted in grey.)”
Why does a FORMER LAW PARTNER of Glenn feel the need to behave like this?
Not sure what the link is but it’s not ON TOPIC I may safely assume.
Class War. The people in England are being deliberately misled by our supposed servants and suppliers – our politicians and business owners. They are for sure being racist, no matter how you want to paint it. Even my own family are being racist, and we are entirely from albeit white immigrant stock (French Protestant and Polish). Our family lines would’ve been ended by during the Soviet-Nazi division of Poland or during the persecution of the Huegenots if we were not able to flee to England. I do not think ANYONE in England can trace thier “racial stock” back to the aboriginal pre-Celtic bloodlines, so who can claim to be “English”? The name itself has a Saxon etymology, but even the Britons before were invaders at one time in history, and the country was divided into many smaller kingdoms, so why should people from Mercia accept people from Wessex living in their territory?
It is insanity caused by fearmongering and it is an AMERICAN poison. The guy at the end of one of the videos said: It is Us vs. Them, nothing else. It is not about religion, or race, or upbringing, or education, or gender, or sexual orientation, or really even about wealth.
We live in a time when we can start to realise truly peaceful and democratic societies and it is no coincidence that the mechanisms for this – computers, the internet, modern communications, peaceful and fair cooperation between nations, free travel, democratic systems, a fair judiciary, and just generally trying to give a shit for those who are struggling – are under ferocious and continued attack.
There are politicised entities within the USA – the Government, the Military-Indutrial Complex, the Intelligence Community, the Police, and Big Business – that have now OVERSTEPPED THE MARK on a GLOBAL SCALE. They have used a terrible event as the excuse to murder and displace and impoverish MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD.
And whilst they direct their aggression against foreigners, the majority of the American public remain in denial: they are the ones in the most danger, they are the ones funding it all with their tax trillions, they are the ones whose legal system and domestic police forces are turned against, they are the ones truly under these megalomaniacs who are undermining the very fabric of modern society.
IT IS TIME TO BE COUNTED AND FUCKING STOP THEM BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
The EU policies were written by European technocrats appointed by elected European politicians, with an eye towards servicing the interests of consolidate banking interests and the shareholders who profit off them.
Trade rules for the EU were written to maximize profits for these interests; unregulated capital flows were introduced so these interests could move money around at will and run Goldman Sachs pump-and-dump schemes in Greece, with the IMF there to enforce austerity on local governments, so that even more wealth could be extracted from the average person, to be piled up in London and Switzerland and other wealth centers.
The only thing that really made it palatable was the open borders for people; but as some regions of the EU were driven into poverty, that just meant poor people could be shuffled around to reduce wages in other sectors; then the regime change game in Libya (initiated by France, before the US and Britain rushed in as well) and in Syria (another joint operation) flooded the EU with refugees.
Sorry, but you can’t blame this disaster on America alone; EU politicians and technocrats have played a leading role in this debacle; and now it’s finger-pointing time, as they struggle to preserve their careers – but down they go, like dominos.
If Britain has any sense at all, they’ll pick Corbyn as PM; he’s their only real hope.
Newcastle is often chosen for fascist demonstrations because it is the most CCTV saturated city in the UK. The BNP and NF could not hold an effective demonstration before that was the case.
I’m a bit confused. It almost seems that you are pleased with the fact (or what you claim is a fact) that unpopular groups can only safely demonstrate where people who might attack them are likely to be identified on CCTV recordings.
What difference does it make if he’s pleased or not? He’s told us something enlightening either way – and I now know something other than coals that the city would be famous for. Next question: why more there than somewhere else? Who is being targeted by them usually?
Below I wrote 57 and 550 per day. That should read every 4 days. “Thursday to Sunday” reads the Independent, copied verbatim from the True Vision report. It is uncertain what “the same period a month earlier” actually means — is it Monday May 23 to Thursday May 26th?
Sorry if my comments seem out of place. I certainly am not trying to excuse repellent ideologies, sentiments or actions.
True Vision reports 4196 hate crimes for 2014/2015 (roughly 57 per day).
[http://www.report-it.org.uk/files/reports_made_to_true_vision_201516.pdf]
The Home Office shows over 50,000 for the same period, or about 550 per day.
[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/467366/hosb0515.pdf]
Perhaps the author could post the Twit feed that explains this discrepancy — or just point me to the newspaper that does original research.
oops, 57 and 550 over a four day period (“between Thursday and Sunday” ).
@lastnamechosen
I’m unaware of anyone of note arguing that Brexit is “hateful and bigoted.” Brexit is a political position that the UK should stay or remain in the EU; standing alone, there is nothing “bigoted” about any entity’s desire to secede from a larger one.
But then one gets to the specifics of this particular movement. And there one finds that the far-right UKIP supports Brexit by a margin of about 95%. UKIP supporters have been documented hurling vile and racist things too many times to document. Racists and xenophobes were overwhelmingly for Brexit. By contrast, people of color, and Muslims, were and are alarmed by Brexit and the reasons many people supported it. So, what many are arguing — with facts to cite — is that much support for Brexit — not Brexit per se — is driven by racism and xenophobia.
As for Islam, there are myriad of those. Beyond saying it is a theistic Abrahamic faith, not much more can be said that captures all Muslims across history and geography. Certainly many Muslims have been, and are, hateful and bigoted. And many more are not, e.g. Mohammed Ali, and Sufi Muslim who comments here. That’s because there is not Islam, there are Islams. Some adhere to a hateful and bigoted version — many do not.
Your comparison fails, for Brexit is a narrow political goal that in some contexts could be morally neutral; racism and xenophobia attach to it only because of the reasons large swaths of its supporters have for their position.
Brexit is a proxy war for democrats vs republicans. You don’t think all these people suddenly became interested in British politics do you? Not only is it a proxy war, but it is an obvious proxy war. As embarrassing and empty as the proxy war between democrats and republicans that is islam. Are you serious that you really can’t see this?
Well as long as it is only the supporters who are evil instead of the thing in itself, then it’s all ok. And of course, this same rule applies to islam right?
I love that who gets freedom is determined by an the awarding of an ‘s’–our “friends” are many, but our enemies one.
How many ways can we come up with to judge two sides differently? Apparently a lot. Same story. Different network.
Um, no. Brexit is a populist uprising in the UK.
That’s right, I don’t, because I’m persuaded that Brexit is a UK thing, not an American one. Crazy, I know. Political Americans are avidly interested in Brexit because it’s a huge international news story that impacts foreign policy, economics, racism, xenophobia & etc. With some parallels to a similar political upheaval in the U.S. Unless, that is, you think Glenn Greenwald and Robert Mackey are writing about Brexit as partisans for either the Republicans or Democrats, and that would certainly amuse.
Interesting question in an academic sort of way, but not pertinent here.
Now you’re getting it. When a human movement — political or religious — is not fully (or nearly not so) predicated on evil premises, then, yes, it makes no sense to say the movement is per se evil. It might be being used by evil people to evil ends, but that’s not the same thing.
The main issues in Brexit were not racism and xenophobia, they were serious concerns over trade and capital flows, jobs and pensions.
However, let’s say racism and xenophobia accounted for 6% of the Leave vote, that would be enough to push it the result from Remain to Leave. 3 percentage points of the total vote would be enough to switch the result.
What Mona disingenously claims is that this was the major factor; this is nonsense – and she knows it is nonsense. All she is tireless doing is trying to redirect the discussion in the direction of racism and xenophobia – a transparent PR ploy.
The real issues are the trade policies enforced by the EU on British businesses, many of which prevent, for example, open trade with Brazil or India or China (the BRICS block); the austerity packages implemented by the IMF; the unregulated capital flows and market manipulations that, while enriching London banksters, have impoverished much of the British working class.
But Mona is dead set on directing the discussion away from these issues, isn’t she? Suspicious, I’d say.
I’m not touching Mackey because I don’t believe for a second that he is sincere, but that is a different issue. One of the reasons Glenn’s column was so strong is because he is writing from a non partisan position. Glenn’s column was a devastating critique of partisan logic and demonization, because he took the democratic position on islam, one of attempted understanding, and applied it to brexit voters and in the process showed the moral emptiness and hypocrisy of partisan logic. He did it not to demonize, which is exactly what you are doing, he did it to try and understand how we got here, and how we can fix things.
Now I just need to figure out how to love partisans more, so I can begin to understand how to fix things.
“I’m not saying that __________ are __________ , but they sure have a lot of __________ .” That is classic old school bigotry. You can’t Mad Libs your way into making that sentence acceptable.
Simple question–which group has a higher percentage of self-identified members who are racist–islam or brexit supporters? Should be super easy for you to answer. If that question is too hard, replace “brexit voters” with “republicans.”
“By contrast, people of color, and Muslims, were and are alarmed by Brexit”
You have no idea of the skin color of the voters. You are being quite racist by lumping “people of color” into ONE group.
You are still calling people “insane” while projecting little rationality of your own.
Why are you allowed to behave this way? Glenn’s former law partner …
Reader alert: “Nuf said” is an antisemties — the real sort, not the fake version Zionists shriek about re: Israel critics. One Jewish commenter therefore refuses to interact with him, and I have often called his antisemitism to readers’ attention. Hence, he spews baseless insults at me on a more or less regular basis, as he just did here.
Reader alert: “Mona” is a troll bent on breaking up rational discussions with inflamatory and vitriolic commentary, ad hominem and personal attacks, and disingenous diversions away from subjects she doesn’t want discussed. She attempts to drag comment threads down into the gutter by whatever means she can think of; this is her trademark. It’d be nice if she abandoned TI threads for 4chan, where she belongs, but she’s probably being paid to hang out here and play this game.
Scroll to the comment in grey.
http://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/hate-crime-is-unacceptable-in-any-circumstances-say-police
“Further information:
There has been an of 57% increase in reporting to True Vision since Friday compared to this time last month (85 reports between Thursday 23 –Sunday 26 June compared with 54 reports the corresponding 4 days four weeks ago.) These figures only take into account reports through one mechanism, reports are also made directly to forces and other community groups like Tell Mama and Community Security so this is not an overall national figure. This should not be read as a national increase in hate crime of 57% but an increase in reporting through one mechanism.”
The home office figures show over 50,000 hate crimes for 2014/2015 or roughly more than 136 per day.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/467366/hosb0515.pdf
This is much larger than True Vision’s reported 4169 for the same period.
http://www.report-it.org.uk/files/reports_made_to_true_vision_201516.pdf
Hello TI’ers;
This is OT, but as this thread seems to be active, I will post the link here – this is a very telling development – one we should keep our eyes on:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/29/aclu-sues-justice-department-software-discrimination
Why would you trust that pathetic PR rag as a useful source of information, given their record? If you want a honest discussion of the ACLU lawsuit, go to Google News, do a simple search, and you’ll get dozens of better, non-spun articles on the issue, for example:
https://thestack.com/world/2016/06/29/aclu-lawsuit-challenges-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act/
It’s hardly just about racism, as the Guardian tried to spin it, it’s a much broader issue that affects all kinds of web research:
Given the dishonest behavior of the Guardian in the post-Alan Rusbridger era, it should be boycotted and ignored.
@photosymbiosis –
Ya know I am TIRED of you ragging on The Guardian. You don’t seem to agree with the gov’t and tech industry premise here, so why attack? And THIS is the article I found, since I DO like The Guardian. I posted it here because I feel the suit is something we should know about.
Now STOP attacking my posts, please.
I’m very worried about this surge in violence. Violence begets more violence, and this may encourage the neonazis to escalate too. The real problem is the political system which has disenfranchised so many people, creating nazi extremists here, anti-fascists there. If you want your USA back it’s not the immigrants who have it, it’s the corporations and their pet politicians.
Schadenfreude
noun
1.
satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else’s misfortune.
2.
No 1 but with the additional enjoyment of bleeding skinhead neo-Nazies
And when they shoot back?
And are you a regular at protests, or just chortling about it over your laptop from the safety of your den?
A fine article from George Monbiot:
“It’s not as if the system that’s now crashing around us was functioning. The vote could be seen as a self-inflicted wound, or it could be seen as the eruption of an internal wound inflicted over many years by an economic oligarchy on the poor and the forgotten. The bogus theories on which our politics and economics are founded were going to collide with reality one day. The only questions were how and when.”
And:
“Yes, popular anger was channelled towards undeserving targets – migrants. But the vote was also a howl of rage against exclusion, alienation and remote authority. That is why the slogan “take back control” resonated. If the left can’t work with this, what are we for?”
And:
“Neoliberalism has not delivered the meritocratic nirvana its theorists promised, but a rentiers’ paradise, offering staggering returns to whoever grabs the castle first while leaving productive workers on the wrong side of the moat.”
And:
When the peculiarities of community and place are swept away by the tides of capital, all that’s left is a globalised shopping culture, in which we engage with glazed passivity. Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chainstores. In all these crises are opportunities – opportunities to reject, connect and erect, to build from these ruins a system that works for the people of this country rather than for an offshore elite that preys on insecurity.”
And:
“If it is true that Britain will have to renegotiate its trade treaties, is this not the best chance we’ve had in decades to contain corporate power – of insisting that companies that operate here must offer proper contracts, share their profits, cut their emissions and pay their taxes? Is it not a chance to regain control of the public services slipping from our grasp?”
And:
“Remote authority has been rejected, so let’s use this moment to root our politics in a common celebration of place, to fight the epidemic of loneliness and rekindle common purpose, transcending the tensions between recent and less recent migrants (which means everyone else). In doing so, we might find a language in which liberal graduates can talk with the alienated people of Britain, rather than at them.”
More at Brexit is a disaster, but we can build on the ruins
It’s about as much as the Guardian will allow, but Monbiot basically tiptoes around the central issues. I took to Google News searching for this phrase, which the corporate media doesn’t want to talk about, and the results were pretty tasty: Brexit “capital flows”
For example:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/28/the-neoliberal-prison-brexit-hysteria-and-the-liberal-mind/
Brexit is of course highly complex, as the EU deal encompasses the flows of not just people, but also goods, services and capital around the EU member states with few restrictions. Essentially, 98% of current media discussion strictly looks at the people aspect, carefully ignoring the other issues.
However, in terms of goods and services (aka: the real economy), the tariff structures for doing business with, for example, Brazil and India, are problematic and also set in Brussels. This has actually hurt some British businesses by restricting their trade possiblities outside the EU.
However, it’s the EU’s unregulated capital flows (aka: the casino economy) that have been most disruptive, along with associated issues like the privatization of state-owned assets, from utilities to ports and water supplies, as well as austerity packages. Monbiot doesn’t touch on this issue except in the most oblique manner; it’s not a subject that the current Guardian board allows to be discussed, but it is the area where reforms are most needed if the EU is to survive.
I wish there were a site that actually respected free speech, where REAL issues could be discussed without being spat on by the mob. Oh well. Democracy trumps free speech in the real world.
Very interesting. Thanks for adding that information.
Is it possible to sincerely argue that islam is not hateful and bigoted, while arguing that brexit is?
People want to have this both ways.
If you think that one or the other is true then it should be every easy to state who is more bigoted–muslims or brexit voters? Two points for any honest enough to answer that question.
I think we shouldn’t be demonizing people by taking away their free will, but if we are going to do it, let’s do it to everyone, and do it hard. Let’s not play this pretend morality game. It’s free for all or free for none.
I used to think–how in the world do you make such a big deal over forgiving muslims, but still condemn republicans, and then it became clear–there was no ascension, no overcoming, and no forgiveness–it’s all a bullshit game. No true or false. No right or wrong. No philosophy. No beliefs. Only power.
Division as a tool of control.
Bigot Idiot Invents False Dichotomy, Impresses Self
Some versions of Islam are more bigoted and violent than others. I wouldn’t paint historical crusaders, Mother Teresa, the KKK, Barack Obama and Billy Graham with the same brush, and the same applies to Muslims. It is all too convenient to generalize that which we are unfamiliar with. Now I’m talking about people rather than religions, but actually every religious person has a slightly different versions if their beliefs, just as every child’s DNA is different from their parents’. Polytheism evolved into monotheism with ancient Judaism and Islam and Christianity evolved out of that mix, and gave birth to all these different strains in our culture: evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, Satanism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s witnesses, among many others….
I agree with you that both Islam and Brexit have been tarred unfairly by broad brushes.
Obama is quick to say Muslim terrorism is not ‘real Islam,’ which is something I agree with, but he doesn’t state that Wahhabism (the insufferable reactionary orthodoxy that ISIS and Saudi Arabia have in common) isn’t real Islam – because he doesn’t dare.
Similarly, for some, possibly, Brexit has officials and supporters who might be called “not REAL Brexit,” but (no doubt because it serves the interests of the establishment to blur radical ultraconservatism with paleo-conservatism, nationalist independence or other – even leftist – ideologies behind ‘Leave’ generally) no earnest distinction is made to articulate this in the mainstream.
The fact that many liberal voices call out for nuanced understanding of Islam and not Brexit is telling. And the fact that Democrats can overlook Islamic traditionalism but not everyday Christian/Republican traditionalism is telling, as well, as both traditions are quite benign compared to radical extremism.
And of course the real problem is that neoliberalism and neoconservatism continue to rule in practice, regardless of these elaborate and manipulative memes, regardless of the theater of politics.
I think that there should be a rule that says empathy for your other’s other doesn’t actually count as empathy for the other–for obvious reasons. How does the saying go–The other of my other is not my brother, but a cover to smother another.
Nietzsche said the love that christianity taught is what destroyed christianity, and just as anti-racism destroyed the concept of race, the lies that democrats tell have destroyed the democratic party–but only because people believed the lies.
This is the big problem with moral based arguments–people might actually think you believe what you preach, and they might start to believe it too.
Then again, I can think of no better way to go than being destroyed by what you preach. That is the definition of forward thinking.
Just as love was invented to get the prudish to take off their clothes, wouldn’t it be a fine kick in the nuts if morality is only the empty promises of date rapists taken far too seriously by lonely people who haven’t figured out how to take what they want from people weaker than them.
Now that’s an origin story. Apple tree my ass.
I find your views on morality intriguing. Philosophically, it’s a veritable minefield, yet I find myself using an appeal to ‘ethics’ as shorthand sometimes – even though, as you indicate, the concept of ‘moral behavior’ basically stems from all-too human, manipulative and arbitrary views. I think many will misunderstand your point, however, jumping to the false idea that you’re advocating uninhibited chaos – but I appreciate your trying to articulate the importance of how the concept of is abused to the point of absurdity.
@Maisie
I am fascinated with and disappointed by morality because I have a very strong sense of right and wrong. There is nothing louder than confession.
We believed the lies our mothers told, and somehow they became true. That is the promise of morality. Talk about making lemonade.
Morality has this wonderful optimistic naivete of seeing the best in everything. Always misinterpret in favor of good. As if the bigotry of our pattern matching could be our savior. Talk about making lemonade.
Morality is the older sibling that never stopped believing in us despite all evidence to the contrary.
Yet, morality is fire, and I am a pyro. Smoke is foreshadowing and confession, and most of all a threat. Morality is the condemnation and danger of righteousness.
Morality is the best case for its own demise.
That everything should fold into and against itself–I would be disappointed with anything less.
@Vic Perry & @JDawg
I’m not arguing that being bigoted against brexit voters is the reason we should be bigoted against muslims, I am arguing that not being bigoted against muslims is the reason we should not be bigoted against brexit voters.
I am arguing that forgiveness is for everyone. Forgivness cannot be a weapon used against the other. What’s good for the muslims is good for the republicans. If we can try and understand the root causes of terrorism, then we should be able to try and understand the root causes of bigotry. Understanding does not mean supporting or justifying. But understanding is the first step to fixing.
And if it is not out of bounds to suggest that some in government seem to want to create more terrorists, then it shouldn’t be out of bounds to suggest that some in government seem to want to make more bigots.
Even if I dispensed with parody and sarcasm, I still wouldn’t be clear with my writing, so I will always blame myself for miscommunication, instead of people kind enough to read me, but I will point out that JDawg’s reply has an excellent anger to education ratio–something Vic Perry and I may want to work on.
Thankfully, both of your replies bolster my original (if unclear) point. Less bigotry and more understanding.
“Division as a tool of control.”
This is also the theory behind controlling the populations in California state prisons, whose population is currently around 115,000 (down 45% since 2006, some good news). Racially segregated gangs (Aryan Brotherhood, Norteno/Sureno, Crips/Bloods) are tolerated, even encouraged, by prison authorities, but inter-racial cooperation is frowned upon because if the entire prison population was at peace with itself, it’d be harder to control.
Muslims are demonized by the right-wing corporate press (they’re all Islamic radical terrorists), poor whites by the left-wing corporate press (they’re all white supremacist neo-Nazis) – safe targets for moral outrage.
If we’re going to discuss that tool, I must point out that it is essential to the current maintenance of control amidst the illusion of democracy currently in the Empire of Lies. Without the constant hostility between Democrats and Republicans, the supremacy of the Thalmor would be threatened.
It is a circus show, isn’t it? Every once in a while, though, some reporter gets a picture that tells the real story – here we have those ‘enemies’, McCain and Pelosi, chortling together as they go to pay homage to the new Saudi king:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/files/2015/03/arabia-mccain-polesi-1024×712.jpg
Then it’s back to the US for some howling over ‘radical Islam’ (McCain) and calling for ‘gun sale controls’ (Pelosi). What a farce.
photosymbiosis & JDawg
Not only does division keep us occupied and distracted, but the constant drumbeat of philosophical repetition is the idea that there is one set of rules for us, and one set for the other. That we will forgive someone for doing the exact same thing that we will hang another for–all based on in or out groups. That morality and law must be unequally applied.
Partisanship is like future ruler camp for youngsters. Assholes in training.
Once you accept partisanship, not prosecuting torture makes perfect sense. Once you accept partisanship, putting someone in jail for ten years for stealing beer, while not prosecuting bankers makes perfect sense.
Division, above all, is the idea that inequality is the highest value.
Totally OT but it’s worth noting
As far as I know there are no chronic hippies from the 60s with Alzheimer’s (those that stuck to weed and didn’t get too drunk or coked-up)
Think of all the expensive medication Pharma has cooked up while keeping cannabis research illegal.
THE most prominent “hippie” of the 1960s suffered and died from Alzheimer’s disease.
Which “most prominent hippie” would that have been?
Timothy Leary (Turn on, tune in, and drop out)
I thought that’s what you’d say.
Wrong. Tim Leary died from prostate cancer as is not known to ever have been diagnosed with or suffered from Alzheimer’s.
I was wrong. My bad. Sorry
No problem. Tim’s antics wrt his approaching death, among other things, could easily lead the unsuspecting to believe his brain was being overwhelmed by those amyloid plaques, but, no . . . it was just Tim being Tim: batshit crazy and one of the important thinkers and cultural analysts of his time.
Leary was required reading when I was in my late teens – as was Dr Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass; Be Here Now).
You are aware of what the CIA did to Mr. Leary? One of the things they did was tie his forehead against an air-conditioner for many, many (36, I believe) hours. The grill imprint lasted for a couple of days. They created hypothermia and he was never the same, not that he wasn’t handicapped by the MASSIVE amounts of LSD with its concurrent adulterants …
Like I said, stoner hippies are still as sharp as ever …
I know a few (yes, they’re older than I) and I know a few non-stoners of that age who have memory issues.
Read up on the lung condition of stoners vs tobacco smokers.
Old stoners can run circles around tobacco users. The organic components of cannabis coat and protect the lung. If you quit cannabis, it takes about a month and your lungs are back to pink because your body absorbs the cannabis resins.
Tobacco, well, once your lungs have gone black you never get back to pink.
Cannabis was known for decades by another name (personal communication from early 80s with a white stoner). This gentleman was in his 40s in the early 1950s and he said cops might ask what the sweet smell was that you were smoking on the street corner.
The answer was Turkish Tobacco. “Oh”, would be the reply from the law …
According to researchers studying long-term marijuana use, the only drawback, as far as physical health is concerned, is gum disease. Their findings were published [June 1 ’16] in JAMA Psychiatry.
Very interesting stuff… thanks
“Very interesting stuff… thanks”
i also found this article dated 2006!
Only now are some states allowing medical cannabis. 10 years later.
Another crime by corporate America – it seems that is their function; crime.
That does it. I’m going to get a script for some medical marijuana. Now, where did I put the keys to my car…
In never read about that particular incident with Tim. He did have his run-ins with spooks however; beginning with his own MKUltra funded research.
During the 1970s, I happened to spend some time in Istanbul. The term “Turkish tobacco” was often used by street vendors as a pseudonym for a mixture of tobacco and keef (THC crystals from cannabis buds that was also sold separately in blocks of caked granules much like brown sugar).
The tars in Marijuana are carcinogenic:
http://www.leafscience.com/2014/06/27/marijuana-doesnt-increase-lung-cancer-risk/
“In fact, studies show a marijuana ‘joint’ deposits four times as much tar in the lungs than an equivalent tobacco cigarette.”
and your body absorbs that tar. It does not absorb tobacco tar and that’s why your lungs stay black. You can put a filter on a joint and get plenty high but it reduces that thick, rich, aroma that people enjoy.
Like I said, stoners can run circles around tobacco users, even ex-tobacco users, because you don’t heal from tobacco. It doesn’t get worse if you quit but it only gets a little better.
The carcinogens in cannabis (there are carcinogens most everywhere) are easily defeated by other cannabinoids in conjunction with your own body’s defenses. Nobody gets lung cancer from pot. You can’t die from pot (although if you eat enough you may wish you were dead, for a while anyway).
Nature is a wonderful thing, is it not? Thank god for neuronal cannabinoid receptors for which without we would all be a bunch of miserable smucks.
BAMN is a terrorist organization, and this violence for the purpose of suppressing racist political speech is an act of terrorism and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
@ Mona
Speech!? … most of what I saw on those videos was vicious assault and battery. Both parties … like the blind leading the blind.
I’m rather shocked the po po didn’t step in and seperate the gang bangers (ordinarily, the cops slam those dudes just for looking sideways.)? Lucky, a bunch of people didn’t get kilt!
Rather than address the limits (or not) of speech, my contention with Mr. Mackey’s analysis was limited to this:
1. ‘Traditional parties of left and right’ (esp the vast resources of ‘elite’ neo-liberal/conservative capital, left and right) have not been trying (and failing) to ‘find solutions for decades’ … they have rather been more the problem, for decades, in my view.
2. “Globalization” did not cause the suffering (see above). The relentless evolutionary process of globalization is one of integration, cohesiveness and global unity … as opposed to chaos, disorder and suffering caused by it’s exploitation.
Hi bah.Not sure why you addressed that to me.
With regard to your point #1, I’d certainly put it more as you do, but that strikes me as a minor semantic point. As for #2, globalization is, indeed, inevitable, and has much good to commend it. That said, however, globalization is largely a by-product of capitalism — the good, world-shrinking stuff that capitalism simply does create — but that has come at a tremendous cost, inclusing to the cause of democracy worldwide.
When one thinks back to Thomas Jefferson and his notions of a society of equal gentleman farmers — and assuming all those gentlemen had come to include dark-colored and lady ones — one can only sigh in sorrow. Capitalism, unfettered and unregulated, without attention to carving up the pie equitably, destroys equality and democracy; now it’s doing so globally, which is new and very bad.
>”Hi bah.Not sure why you addressed that to me.”
Ah, an errant post below perhaps?
*it don’t matter … I always like talking things over w/ you. :)~
Showing your true colors, Mona?
Pathetic apologist for the neoliberal elite trying to leverage a past relationship with GG into ‘third-party credibility’, is it? I hope you’re well paid for this game – although aren’t you worried it will end up rotting your soul?
Mona has no “true colors.” Mona is best described a chameleon and/or a doppelganger for the many guises she adopts including those of her foils. Her sole purpose is to dexterously and expediently change or adopt opinions that reflect and promote those of Glenn Greenwald and/or intercept staff reporters. This does not mean that she will not express a contrary opinion from time to time, but rather, in the doing, she will use a number of her alters to promote the intended narrative. Ho hum…. same old, same old
It’s official: You are insane.
My protege tweets below: “Yes, it [xenophobia and bigotry] played a role, probably a big one. Economic deprivation usually creates the climate for that, fuels it.”
You must be so darn proud of that boy.
I am. .. proud as peacock./
“AS MY COLLEAGUE Glenn Greenwald argues, it is too simple to suggest that last week’s rejection of the European Union by more than half of the British electorate, like Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican primary, can be explained by dismissing the voters as racists.”
But… that won’t stop Robert Mackey from doubling down on simplicity and generalizations.
“At the same time, however, it seems clear that the rhetoric of the referendum campaign in Britain, like Trump’s demonization of Mexican and Muslim immigrants, has emboldened the white supremacist fringe in ways too dangerous to ignore.”
Classic Mackey right there.
Brexit / Trump is not emboldening shit… those types of people have always existed and likely always will because humans are not perfect. Once again, instead of logic you are using correlation to make your clearly biased point. This is not adversarial journalism Mr Mackey, it is just your ideological opinion.
You are too much the abject idiot who has made more errors of fact and reason in these comments — over a long course of time — to have a scintilla of credibility when passing judgment on any one else’s reasoning or intellectual output. And the above is just too stupid to even merit more than observing that it is, yet again, more stupidity from you.
Mona the troll, endlessly repetitive. Why do you even bother any more? All you’re trying to do is upset people and disrupt rational conversations with a torrent of vitriolic abuse. Why not do it at 4chan?
And more on topic, violence in the face of speech is never the answer. When the bigots take to the public streets to engage in their protected speech no matter how vile, the correct productive reaction is mockery and ridicule (if not love)–glitter bombing them, singing songs, drowning them out with tuba music or marching bands, and generally having a good multi-racial party right in front of their faces.
Their agenda is morally incoherent lunacy. Don’t give it credibility it doesn’t deserve by treating it with respect or fearing it. And don’t lend it legitimacy by combatting it with violence.
“. . . drowning them out . . .”
No. Drowning out speech you find offensive is not an exercise of free speech; it is an attempt to deny free speech.
Indeed, aside from the fact that it is ethically antithetical to our free speech traditions, “drowning them out” simply shows that you fear their speech being heard — a serious tactical error.
Listen and respond. Analyze and refute — as vigorously as you like. Do not attempt to silence, in any way. That’s fundamentally “un-American.”
When the Nazis Came to Skokie: Freedom for Speech We Hate
How should one respond to the Hillsborough Baptist lunatics chanting at a funeral?
Their ugly chanting is an attempt to infringe upon (drown out) the free speech that is the funeral ceremony.
Move them to a place where the chanting doesn’t interfere with the ceremony and let them yammer away.
So who decides to remove the HB lunatics? And isn’t removal an even greater violation of their rights than being shouted down?
The relevant police authority, presumably either acting upon a verified complaint or on their own observation.
No, of course not. Being shouted down deprives them of their free speech right, while merely being moved along to a place where exercising their right doesn’t impinge upon that of others is simply a reasonable compromise.
Bill of Rights includes freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Moving people along would seem to be a violation of the latter.
And since when are cops even-handed, fair-minded arbiters?
Well, consider the event in question. The party who shows up at pre-scheduled event to disrupt it with loud noise is the party in the wrong.
So if the Westboro nutcases show up at someone’s funeral, where people are trying to express their rights to speech by remembering the deceased, and start chanting, then you can do this:
But if the KKK sets up a rally, which is their right, showing up to drown them out isn’t the right approach. Let them talk, then respond, or carry signs, or wear silly costumes, or something like that.
My favorite response to neo-Nazis is to say “Don’t you know that Hitler would have had you all shot once you’d played your role?” (i.e. Night of the Long Knives, June 30 1934). (I used to call the California skinheads “Reagan Youth” which they never seemed to appreciate. . .)
This can get one into trouble, with jokes like “How is a gay pride rally different than a white pride rally?”, and then everyone turns on you . . . what? Why isn’t that funny?
@ Doug
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one. But I’m confused–which part of my approach of “listen and respond” (i.e. with glitter bombs, singing etc.) isn’t “vigorous”?
I’m not attempting to “silence” anybody, but simply to talk more and “vigorously” over them.
And I mean, here’s a newsflash, it is pretty hard to “analyze and refute” something (i.e. bigotry) that is irrational and not amenable to “rational discourse”.
So maybe it’s the tuba music or marching bands that bother you.
Again, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree because I’m not wasting my time trying to “reason” with members of the KKK and their fellow travelers, people have been trying that for decades if not similar types of human beings for millennia–doesn’t work.
@rr
I’m not suggesting that you reason with the wackos; I’m suggesting that, after letting them speak, you offer a reasoned response to their wackiness for others to assess.
And, just BTW, the causes of bigotry are entirely amenable to rational discourse, although perhaps not with the bigots themselves, usually. Indeed, it’s perfectly easy to understand how and under what circumstances bigotry arises and further, to recognize that particular combinations of circumstances will virtually always bring it to the fore.
And denouncing it won’t do the slightest good.
Here are my limited thoughts on the Brexit issue (assuming I’m accurately understanding the positions people have staked out around here, and without taking a position on whether I think Brexit is “good” or “bad” and/or for who as I don’t have an opinion on that idea which is I think a poor way to frame what’s going on and what is motivating it):
1) I’m not sure I understand precisely what the beef is between the:
a) Mona positions (racist nationalism was a significant driver in Brexit, and that faction is a serious threat to certain minority groups and/or Brexit will be bad for minority groups as it is creating the “space” or opportunity for racist nationalism to thrive and grow)
v.
b) Doug/photosymbiosis positions (racist nationalism is/was not a significant driver of Brexit but rather a broader (under-middle)class pushback against neoliberalism AND the racist nationalism narrative is being used opportunistically and propagandistically by the neoliberal/globalization supporting liberals/progressives all over the globe to perpetuate the neoliberal/globalization agenda via fearmongering about said theoretical racist nationalism and the threat it theoretically presents);
2) As Glenn noted in his piece, I don’t see these two positions (assuming I’m perceiving and representing them accurately) as mutually exclusive, because they aren’t, they are reconcilable; so,
3) from my perspective, it doesn’t appear that racist nationalism (or bigotry) was/is a significant or majority driver of the Brexit Leave adherents in the sense that racist nationalism wasn’t the primary motivation of a majority of Leave voters (or even at best the motivator for a significant minority although I could be persuaded it was with some accurate methodologically valid polling), nevertheless there was/is without doubt some relatively smaller number who were motivated by precisely that sentiment;
4) given 3) it is not unjustified or unreasonable to be, like Mona, concerned about the effect(s) that racist nationalism sentiment could have on certain groups given the space and opportunity the Brexit Leave campaign/language employed which that sentiment and its adherents are opportunistically exploiting; however,
5) it appears to me that racist nationalist sentiment and its potential effects are being statistically overstated (and yes I concede that it might empower some of the kooky fringe racist nationalists members to carry out individual acts of violence against minority groups or individuals–but that happens today, everywhere, anyway); so,
6) given 3), 4) and 5), and the current demographic makeup of say Britain and the USA, and the legislative and legal frameworks (including law enforcement) that operate in those nations (not to mention the vast majority of the people in those societies actively loathing racism/racists at the group/individual/ideological level), I’m not sure I see racist nationalism as ever having the necessary numbers, space or opportunity to really grow in any statistically meaningful way such that it creates a statistically significant risk to disfavored groups of minorities at least not en masse;
7) I tend to adhere to the idea that, as Doug/photosymbiosis argue, and Glenn to one degree or another did, what we are witnessing is being driven in large part by the economic dislocations created by neoliberalism/globalization amongst the working lower/middle class in Western societies;
8) “unfettered immigration” and “the other” is the easy shibboleth the lower/middle class cling to to explain or understand (wrongly generally speaking) those economic dislocations they are experiencing, and/or for a lack of a clearer or better understanding of the causes/motivation/effects of the neoliberal/globalization agenda; however,
9) unlike Doug/photosymbiosis, while I agree the economic factions that support neoliberalism/globalization are the most immoral opportunistic sons of bitches to ever walk the planet, I don’t believe they’d ever openly (nor could they covertly without being found out) financially back or align with racist nationalism for two reasons;
a) as indicated the world has changed demographically, legally, culturally in the West it would be the death of their businesses if they were ever caught or found out; and,
b) assuming arguendo they would or could, their entire project would collapse in mass violence with no certainty their forces would prevail because, IMHO, given the demographic diversity of the Western nations and the good will of most non-minority folks therein, you’d have open civil wars in those nations if you tried to impose the necessary legal framework to actually make that sort of fascist/racist nationalism ascendant or achieve actual political power (of course in a small less diverse nations say–Poland, Hungary etc. maybe it could as it is in some senses happening in those nations but I think will ultimately be short-lived);
10) given the above, the neoliberal/globalization ideologues and factions will do what they’ve always done–engage in opportunistic behaviors/propaganda (if not employ agent provocateurs) to divide and conquer (if not coopt) the very people and factions suffering from the economic dislocations created by their policies in such a way as to perpetuate the status quo (that’s the safe move that does not threaten their agenda or their businesses);
11) the “war on terrorism” is part and parcel of this neoliberal agenda in the sense that,
a) it provides a direct subsidy to certain industries to engage in, instigate and fight and profit directly off from global resource wars (but that’s not a particularly new phenomenon given it is the West’s historical colonialist economic agenda), and
b) it provides the propaganda narrative to keep people fearful of “the other” both domestically and internationally, a narrative without which they could not distract those disaffected groups from asking the right questions, and joining forces within and across class lines to address the underlying failures of the neoliberal/globalization project.
So, and sorry for long post, I’m convinced the Mona/Doug/photosymbiosis positions are not mutually exclusive but rather talking past each other and fairly easily reconcilable.
Just my $0.02.
No that’s a mischaracterization of what I’ve been saying. Racist xenophobia clearly played a central role in the Brexit outcome; without it, Remain would have won.
What Mona and Mackey – and the Guardian, and NPR, and the NYTimes, and Cameron, all refuse to acknowledge are the root causes of that racist xenophobia. They trot out arguments like ‘lack of college education’ or ‘inherent bigotry’ or ‘white supremacism’.
Let’s say, rrheard, that you live in working-class British city, basically scraping by. Your electricity and heating bills keep rising, however, since your utility has been privatized and is now run by the German firm E.ON, which keeps jacking up rates (legal under EU rules). Then, hundreds of immigrants from destitute eastern European countries flood in, willing to work for half of what you get paid. Then, to top it off, even more Muslim refugees fleeing wars in Libya and Syria come in behind them.
Yes, the decent moral people will try to do as much as they can to help such people – but how much can any one community absorb? How long before the less-decent, bitter-and-angry people start in with racism and xenophonia and “Britain for the British!”? Particularly when they’re also being nickel-and-dimed to death by corporate elites? The greed of the neoliberal elites is off the scale, and these are the consequences.
What is really annoying is the absolute refusal of Mackey & Mona and like-minded people to discuss these root causes of racist xenophobia, or to acknowledge that the best way to combat such xenophobia in the long run is to get rid of EU and imperialist policies that have done so much damage in eastern Europe, Greece and Spain, and Libya and Syria.
Now Corbyn, who is a rational person and thinker, says staying in the EU and trying to change the EU policies from within is the better solution – a reasonable view – but the Blairites are trying to kick him out of Labor to placate the London banksters! Happily, he has refused to go along with the Blairites, and has publicly condemned the racist xenophobic trend – not that Mackey mentions this. The neofascist right, in contrast, has doubled down on racism – in cooperation with Cameron! – by calling for a ban on immigration while retaining access to the EU single market! Astonishing! Happily, Merkel slapped that idea down hard.
I’d be very interested to hear what policy changes the Mackey-Mona cohort would propose to combat this tide of xenophobia and racism, but they seem to be silent on that, don’t they? All in all, they come across as being deliberately deceptive, disingenuous, not willing to say anything that would upset the neoliberal elites who’ve created this mess.
“I’d be very interested to hear what policy changes the Mackey-Mona cohort ”
The number of people who think describing an event constitutes support for the event …
Nowhere has Mackey advocated the position of -Mona-.
In fact, he opens this piece with
You also chastise him for not writing about something.
Pretty weak.
I think Mackey’s views on the white supremacist movement are entirely understandable; but let’s be clear, this is the powerless “white trash” segment of American and British society. It’s really a rather sad and ignorant group of people – an easy target, a safe target.
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/docs/media-intellectual-cleansing.pdf
My point, I think, is that if a similar article was written about the neoliberal elite, in the same vein, a diatribe against snobbery, greed, the Ayn Rand-Social Darwinist mentality of the London bankster class, the persistent racism and sexism seen in corporate board rooms – if this was promoted as being centrally involved in the Brexit vote, it wouldn’t bode well for any journalist’s career in the modern media world. It would be seen as biting the hand that feeds you.
Considering that the subject is the Brexit vote, I think it’s justifiable to criticize journalists who white-out so many of the issues involved in favor of a one-sided screed on racism and xenophobia. I think that’s what’s weak.
Jesus on a fucking cracker. Lumping me in with Cameron now too, eh? In any event I do not “refuse to acknowledge” what the root causes of racism and xenophobia are. Rather, I insist on the fact, as Glenn does as well, that times of economic stress and insecurity almost always fuel them. And that is happening NOW.
From now on, at least most often, I am simply going to post that nothing you purport to be my views, and nothing you argue against my views, is likely accurate. If someone whom I deem to be asking in good faith requests that I reply to something you’ve written, I shall do so, otherwise, I’ve wasted enough time debunking your inane bilge.
I fail to detect an argument in this flood of vitriolic spew, other than to note that Mona, who repeatedly distorts and misrepresents what anyone who disagrees with her rants actually says, is now complaining (with little merit) that she is being treated the same way.
Based on her behavior here, she sure seems like nothing more than an apologist for the neoliberal corporate policies that have been such a disaster for the vast majority of people in Europe, Britain, the United States and elsewhere.
150 years ago, she’d be doing the same PR job for European colonialism in Africa, I imagine. “Inevitable, and good, too. Bringing the light of European civilization to the ignorant dark-skinned savages and lifting them out of poverty. . .”
Such a lot of rot.
Mona, how many times, in the past few weeks and months, have you written essentially the same thing, to multiple other posters? I haven’t counted, but I’m pretty sure that it’s safe to say the answer is:
“Often enough that the writer might be well-advised to engage in some introspection.”
“Often enough that the writer might be well-advised to engage in some introspection.”
How many times has -Mona- told us that no matter how often people tell me I need some introspection “it never works” …
About as often as she says someone is “virulent ” … (or real, actual).
from Vocabulary<a href="https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/virulent" we have this …
How many times has someone said to -Mona-, “pot meet kettle” ?
Lawyers are trained to bluff when they hold a losing position. It’s like a leopard and his spots … or the crocodile and the scorpion …
“Often enough that the writer might be well-advised to engage in some introspection.”
You are a liar. That is, a teller of falsehoods which you know to be false. You fabricated quotes of Robert Makcey and then dug in with the lie as that whole sub-thread shows. Going so far as to insist others had not read the article, or had reading comprehension problems.
I don’t take advice from liars as to whether I could benefit from introspection. Nor am I worried if they find my commentary logically or morally deficient. That’s the type one should want to dislike what one writes.
“I don’t take advice from liars as to whether I could benefit from introspection. ”
Shorter -Mona-: I’ll crap-flood when I want to!.
Are all the others who have asked you for some introspection “liars”, too?
Or are they “insane, despicable, immoral” as you assert with regularity?
@photosymbiosis –
“root causes of racist xenophobia?” How about NOT seeing other individuals as fellow humans? I mentioned in the other thread a lady I just met who seemed to think of all adherents of Islam as monotithic. It’s not just one little group who is succumbing…
You also seem to fail to understand that a lot of us nonwhites are feeling more and more threatened —– and we have nothing to do with immigrants or being oppressors —– we’re just 99%ers, too. The threat of violence is all too real a possibility.
What would I suggest? Of course we need to enact economic policies that would benefit those struggling. That would help a lot of folks more diverse than you might want to admit. We need to support a living wage, for example. We need to support reforms to make the system more responsive to all of us. But we also have to work on getting to respect and acknowledge each other as FELLOW HUMANS and I don’t know if there’s a policy for that.
One thing I do think is we need to get to know each other better and work together. Jackie Robinson said that what turned his teammates and other baseball players around was actually working with him and/or seeing him work – and getting to know him. So we need to make opportunities to come together. Our public spaces are too often being privatized and we need to have places where all would be welcome. How well are our workplaces for diversity? Yup, diversity matters. How many of us live in integrated neighborhoods? How many of us worship in an integrated house of worship? (I’ve heard it said that the Christian Sunday Worship is one of the most segregated hours of the week.) How about if any have any experience in worship with those of another faith? I’ll bet the percentage will be low and the occasions very occasional. And schools? Well, we’ve decided Brown v. Board of Education, but aren’t the schools fairly segregated again now? No wonder we stigmatize — we don’t get to know folks different from us as any sort of individuals.
You blame neoliberal elites. But no one HAS to succumb to hate and bigotry. We need to ask folks as did that wonderful gal who was on “What Would You Do?” — she asked the actress playing a gal bigoted against an interracial couple: “Where is you heart, your caring heart?” We should listen to her.
” I’m not sure I understand precisely what the beef is between the:”
The “beef” comes when -Mona- calls people “despicable, immoral” etc. for disagreeing with her obvious conclusion. She demands her knowledge of others motive be accepted, over and over …
We Want More of Whatever Gives Us More of What We Want.
Why would a person that uses racism as an excuse for violence want racism to end?
The priesthood doesn’t create molesters, it attracts them. Just as morality attracts the violent and those that want power over others. Just as soldiers pray for war, the violent pray for sinners.
When your enemy justifies everything you want to be, you nurture, breed and feed your enemy.
When a person uses examples of anti-female attitudes of certain self identified muslims as a reason to wage war against islam–do you think they want more or less bigotry from self identified muslims? Do you think that at some point “muslims” will behave right and then the war can stop?
The goal is war–morality is the excuse.
The biggest problem with “good” is that it attracts so many evil fucking assholes. Seriously, thanks to “good” people, morality has the credibility of congress. There is nothing more out of touch than morality without credibility.
The war on terror is partisan politics sent overseas. The shtick against muslims is the exact same game that the democrats play against republicans and vice versa. It is exactly the same game–with just the labels changed. The other is the other.
Partisanship is the idea that morality serves power. Morality is a fable and a tool, like God, used to impose your will upon those weaker than you. The label above ideas. The word above definition. Power above principle.
In truth, morality can not be imposed. Morality requires acceptance.
Morality turned against an enemy is always corrupted.
“to us, there’s no free speech for fascists; they do not have the right to organize for genocide”
the new exception to free speech:
to us, there’s no free speech for ________; they do not have the right to organize for ________
jump right in anyone can play! go out and find some asshole talking shit and kick his fucking ass!
@-Mona-
>Nope, no “new” exception. No Western nation, including the U.S., allows people to conspire to commit mass slaughter. Definitely not protected speech. Never has been.”
no one at that sacramento event was “conspiring” or “organizing” to commit genocide. nor were they advocating genocide. and if they were advocating genocide that IS protected speech in the US. if you went on tv and said “hitler should have finished the job” or “we should nuke iran” you would NOT be arrested. in the second case you might even get invited back. the anti-fascist activists are just grasping at an excuse to suppress speech they don’t like simple as that
@-Mona-
> Nope, no “new” exception. No Western nation, including the U.S., allows people to conspire to commit mass slaughter. Definitely not protected speech. Never has been.
no one at that sacramento event was “conspiring” or “organizing” to commit genocide. nor were they advocating genocide. and if they were advocating genocide that IS protected speech in the US. if you went on tv and said “hitler should have finished the job” or “we should nuke iran” you would NOT be arrested. in the second case you’d probably be offered a job. the anti-fascist protesters are just grasping at an excuse to suppress speech they don’t like simple as that
It is and it isn’t. It depends on the context of that speech and any immediate consequences that may or may not flow from that speech i.e. it is protected speech in the abstract (even though that is debatable when it comes to expressly advocating genocide), but if your advocacy directly incites others to imminently commit illegal acts (genocidal or otherwise), you will at the very least be subject to civil suit if not criminal sanction for those consequences directly attributable to your advocacy, exhortations or incitement.
Legally, “threats” fall into a different category than “hate.” Threat speech is not protected speech, hate speech is, but the details matter:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/04/hate-speech-prosecution-in-montana/
The Supreme Court has held (1974) that:
The case described in that article, Montana vs. Lenio, represented a precedent-setting threat to free speech that would have banned defamation of groups; however the prosecutor has since backed off and cut a deal with the suspect that avoids prosecution. Speech targeting specific individuals with threats is not protected, however.
Raising the interesting question, if Mona says “I hope you suffer debilitating pain and injury” is that protected? Probably, but not if she says “I intend to cause you debilitating pain and injury.” So watch that language, Mona.
@ photosymbiosis
I am very well acquainted with the current state of the law in the US on this topic.
As I indicated, it is one thing to discuss “genocide” in the abstract, or even “advocate” for it in the abstract.
But at some point a person needs to be aware of the circumstances of that “advocacy” (literally the audience in physical or remote attendance), the advocate’s pleas re: “imminence” (need to familiarize yourself with the case of Mulugeta Seraw the consequences of speech advocating violence doesn’t need to manifest quite as imminently as you’d think), and the actual consequences that occur.
Which is precisely what I stated. It is very difficult to criminalize speech, less so to impose civil liability.
A rousing appeal for the brown shirts. . If only there were some way to keep track of the Nazis. Some distinguishing mark they could be made to wear….
If you are so afraid of an idea that you think it must be confronted with violance, then guess what. You are the fascist.
No. More like the *exploitation* of globalization [by ‘elite neo-liberal/conservative’ cancerous materialism, left and right] which causes the suffering. .. xenophobic bigots who place the blame on foreigners notwithstanding.
Globalization is the process … ‘of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects of culture.’
Nope, no “new” exception. No Western nation, including the U.S., allows people to conspire to commit mass slaughter. Definitely not protected speech. Never has been.
You seem to have forgotten the leadup to the Iraq War, Mona, when the Bush administration conspired with corporate media reporters like the NYTimes’s William Broad and Judith Miller to promote lies about Saddam’s ties to 9/11 and his arsenal of WMDs, all to justify a mass slaughter in Iraq from 2003 onwards.
I’d also rethink your statements about who has the “moral authority” to criticize reporters for promoting propaganda lines; don’t you know that the worst criminals of the 20th century always claimed “moral authority”? Whether it was the Armenian genocide or the Nazi Holocaust or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the leaders always said they were doing it for the good of the Turkish nation, for the good of the German people, for the good of the Communist utopian revolution – just gotta slaughter a few million people, and we have the moral authority to do so.
Never trust or follow anyone who claims to have the moral authority, that’s the lesson history teaches us.
In Skokie, the Nazi party paraded through a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago filled with Holocaust survivors. It was protected speech. In Brandenburg, it was a KKK rally, captured on film was a cross burning, and speeches calling for revenge against blacks, jews, Congress, and that was protected.
What, pray tell, occurred here that went beyond that precedent?
“What, pray tell, occurred here that went beyond that precedent?”
opposition to affirmative action
It gets strange when Louis Farrakan praises DJT for refusing “jewish money.” Recall Rabbi Kahane talking about Farrakan on Larry King that he touches a nerve… but in general that kind of rhetoric from anyone “touches a nerve” about any other.
– Mr Mackey –
Great article and thank you. This was what I felt Glenn’s discussion gave a short shrift to.
“At the same time, however, it seems clear that the rhetoric of the referendum campaign in Britain, like Trump’s demonization of Mexican and Muslim immigrants, has emboldened the white supremacist fringe in ways too dangerous to ignore.”
—– Now that’s saying it.
So let’s stop hating each other, shall we?
The white supremacist fringe is politically powerless; they were not behind the 2003 Iraq invasion that resulted in the needless deaths of a million people (and some 4 million refugees); they were not behind the disastrous US-British-French intervention in Libya, nor the civil war in Syria, (which has killed at least 250,000 people and sent some 3 million refugees into exile).
Mackey hyping up the “white supremacist threat” is no different from Fox News hyping up the “radical Islamic threat.” Sure, both groups might commit terrorist acts – the worst acts of terrorism in the U.S. have been committed by these two groups, i.e. the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, and the World Trade Center attacks. But they are not the root causes of this global mess, are they?
Furthermore, trying to tie this to Brexit, implying that 53% of the British voters who chose Leave are motivated by xenophobic hatred, is a false argument. Their main concerns included lack of democratic control over trade policy, the devastating effects of unregulated capital flows on the local economy and the environment, and dislike of the EU austerity policies seen in Greece and Spain.
Yes, uncontrolled immigration was also an issue – but is that not understandable, when EU policies drove so many Poles into poverty and left them no choice but to seek jobs outside Poland? Is it not understandable that reckless military actions in Libya and Syria – backed by Britain and France – which resulted in a flood of North African and Middle Eastern refugees into Europe – had a blowback effect that fueled the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment? Mass population movements cause problems, and most of those people left their homes, not by choice, but by necessity.
This is the problem – a refusal by Mackey and his cohort to acknowledge how neoliberal government policies which only benefit a handful of elites have destablized Europe, impoverishing the middle class and aiding the rise of right-wing neofascists.
Notably, Mackey and his supporters have no policy prescriptions for turning back the tide of xenophobic racist sentiment, do they? That’s because they’d have to admit that the neoliberal agenda is a disaster – they’d have to discuss in detail the capital flow issue, the trade issue, the regime change issue – and that’s not on their agenda, is it? Their job, as far as I can tell, is to act as apologists for the neoliberal elites, to protect their interests by distracting attention away from the root causes of this giant global mess that neoliberalism and neoconservatism have created.
“This is the problem – a refusal by Mackey ”
sigh …
How can you justify writing about a topic as a journalist – claiming to be ‘covering the story’ – but whiting-out many of the central issues in the story?
Responsible journalism isn’t op-ed blogging; it involves covering all aspects of a story, not just flogging one of them, over and over.
sigh …
@photosymbiosis –
Also see my reply to you above. It seems to me that you are apologizing for racism. Which is something we can all do without. Please do NOT try to sell me that there is ANY justification for hatred and bigotry.
@photosymbiosis –
I replied to this once, but it seemed to get lost in cyberspace. Also see my response above.
It seems to me you are doing nothing but apologizing for racism. Please do not even try to sell me that there is ANY justification for hatred and bigotry. There isn’t.
Newcastle’s response was far smarter and much more devastating than the brawl in Sacramento.
As for some people on this board slavering for violence, you sound like Dylan Roof: losers longing for a race war.
The moving of the Overton window (“the range of ideas the public will accept”) further to the right has been occurring for decades, if I’m judging history accurately.
This means that corporatism, imperialism and militarism are wrongly perceived as centrist(!) by too many people. The normal is already too far right, but its totalitarianism is a ‘stealth’ domination, manifest in quieter restrictions (like psychological coercion, privacy-invasion and financial fraud) than those that brash oppressiveness might add.
Only flat-out reactionary authoritarianism, racism, and obviously-oppressive violence is called out for righteous shaming and correcting by the new normal, the new center. (And it is called ‘fascism,’ even though this word has become largely meaningless.)
Beneath this understandable but exploited-and-encouraged-by-the establishment alarm is a trick that makes people end up trying to protect the corrupt status quo, even if they wouldn’t otherwise, because of the threat of *some bigger bullies* (who are MUCH worse) encroaching upon the nation.
The financial and military evils of neoliberalism and its supposedly ‘humanitarian’ interventionism are greatly tolerated and excused in the mainstream with the same phony rationale presenting Clinton as preferable to Trump – the far worse, the greater evil, is shown as such a monster that it renders neoliberal monstrosity *comparatively sane.* The same dynamic is seen with the Obama’s grossly immoral drone strikes, and the retort that they’re ‘better’ than massive ground invasion – because it’s apparently the amount (and, evidently, skin-color) of death that’s important, not the unconscionable killing itself.
It is not that outspoken xenophobia and bigotry in general are innocent, for they are foul; the point is that something equally tragic (if more subtle and manipulative) is already occurring under the guise of normality – and it gets away with it by pointing instead at this all-too-useful arising of expressed bigotry where despair has taken root, a sleight of hand that conspicuously benefits the stealthily-looting, calculating establishment that thereby appears less mad and heartless than it really is.
Worth noting: On the subject of those who bandy the word ‘fascism’ about, George Orwell had this to say –
“By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.”
“But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.”
the conquering of nations is no longer attact bomb and destroy.
it is, infect, subvert, overcome, dominate. especially tailored to the governance type.
respect the boundaries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJHuIQ11j4s
A lot of mischaracterization in this article. Here is the racist antifa in their own words on “whiteness.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmE5drjUgAALWVD.jpg:large
i am about to step in it.
the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortunes.
truth.
GROUPO BETA.
gringos.
who burns the American Flag.
who takes jobs that should be PAID AMERICAN.
US Veteran Cuts Down Mexican and American Flags with knife in front of TV Crew.
texas teacher gets students to pledge allegiance to mexico.
How mexican 8th Graders Act in our Public Schools.
East LA Gang Members With Ties To Mexican Mafia Indicted On Federal Racketeering Charges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJHuIQ11j4s
pardon my french…
F MEXIGO & F THE INVASION
maybe you should be glad i’m not president.
This is not the way to respond to the results of NAFTA and the U.S. War on Drugs, barabbas.
First any rational person would agree that peaceful relationships with neighboring countries are a good idea, as is travel and tourism between those two countries. On the other hand, desperate people flooding into one country from another in response to economic impoverishment and warfare is not a good thing – the latter has characterized the U.S.-Mexico relationship for the past two decades, however.
Under NAFTA rules :
(1) U.S. manufacturing jobs were shipped out to Mexican sweatshops to cut labor costs and increase profits and dividends for the neoliberal elite – the shareholders and executives of the corporations involved.
(2) U.S. agricultural products were dumped on Mexico to drive small farmers into bankrupcty; they could then work in the sweatshops for a dollar a day – or ‘invade’ the US to get paid $5 an hour for contractors specializing in undocumented workers. Again, this benefited the neoliberal elite – business owners, shareholders and executives in the construction, hotel & golf course (Trump!), agribusiness & meatpacking industries all saw large drops in their labor costs.
(3) Once small Mexican farmers had been driven out of business, U.S. finance began to manipulate the food market in Mexico, jacking up prices for imported corn and making a further fat profit, but greatly harming the average Mexican consumer. At the same time, in the United States, working-class Americans saw their wages fall and their jobs taken by the “invasion” of undocumented Mexican workers.
Now, barabbas, what the neoliberal elite don’t want you to understand is that white middle-class Americans and brown middle-class Mexicans are both victims of their neoliberal policies; they’d rather have the two groups consumed with hatred of each other. It’s rather like how prison authorities control prison populations by having the white, black and brown gangs fight each other. Comprende?
The other issue is the Drug War. In this scheme, the Mexican government conspires with South American cartels to ship cocaine and heroin into the U.S.; the money from those sales is snuck back into Mexico, depositied in Mexican banks, and laundered by Wall Street and London banks via international wire transfer, for which the neoliberal elite earn a fat percentage of the take. All the border violence (different Mexican mafia gangs fighting over the right to supply American drug consumers) is associated with this trade.
Due to cannabis legalization and decriminalization in many U.S. states, this mafia business has diminished as nobody wants to buy cannabis from this system; this has done more to cut down on drug war-related violence than any other factor.
Note also that the promotion of opiate addiction – pharmaceutical pills and heroin – in the United States also benefits the neoliberal elite, either via Big Pharma sales, or via the Mexico-Wall Street money laundering system. Apologists for neoliberal elites are remarkably consistent in their behavior, right Mona?
There’s a word for people who ignore these factors and instead target their anger on “brown immigrants” – and that word is, I’m afraid, “ignorant.” And ignorant people are easily conned by manipulative power-hungry politicians, aren’t they? That’s how the Nazis gained power – and look what it brought the German people, in the end. Utter devastation.
Opiate addicts are almost impossible to truly get angry in more than a passive-aggressive manner. Cattiness will never evince political change. Self-medicating relieves people too much from thinking about large issues. Not all substance users are selfish but I can’t help but think most *addicts* would sell out their own family to get a hit. That definitely works in the favor of any fascist (or any other) government.
Nah, if they were rational they’d tax the shit. Don’t think corrupt people all get along together lol.
thanks for the feedback
what the US did to/in mexico i did not know
so yes, i would be ignorant.
i also need a way better search engine resource something.
Non-violence, absolutely.
Attacks on the right will only feed into their paranoia and (worst case scenario) create martyrs.
And we will repaid in kind.
I completely agree. I never thought I’d observe an event with white supremacists and have them *not* be the most disgusting group present.
This Twitter chain is quite illuminating.
Black Lives Matter activist, Shaun King, praises Glenn’s Brexit piece, but adds:
Glenn replies:
Later in the chain, a black Harvard University Nieman Fellow, in response to Glenn’s stating his article explicitly acknowledges the role of racism and xenophobia in Brexit, that guy tweets back:
My own assessment is that Glenn’s article was excellent, and was absolutely adequate in strongly stating the role of racism and xenophobia in Brexit. But isn’t surprising to me, in the least, that two activist black men are far more focused on the menace of increased racism than white writers are.
And what is your policy prescription, Mona, for combatting the menace of increased racism?
Feel free to mention EU policies, capital flow, and the neoliberal elite agenda, in reference to the economic deprivation that has fueled the increased racism.
Thank you, Robert Mackey, for saying what so urgently needs saying:
Yes.
That.
Donald Trump is delivering a populist message and vowing to protect entitlements such as Social Security. And then there is Brexit, also a populist movement.
Populism virtually always has a sound basis in opposition to corrupt elites who are fucking the regular man and woman. But the most casual knowledge of history informs that populism also often is fueled by dangerous Other-hatred.
The disparity between pro-Brexit white leftists on the one hand, and leftist of color on the other, and their discussion of Brexit has been quite stark. Even if Brexit was the right choice — just as some of Trump’s policies are also right — it is wholly immoral to ignore the ugly racist elephant in the anti-elite-movement room.
If someone else hadn’t invented identity politics, the Rulers would have had to do so themselves, in order to divert attention from the class issues that are at the heart of economic and socio-cultural inequity.
Hmmm . . . wait . . .
Doug translated: “I’m going to prattle non sequiturs about ‘identity politics’ and refuse to even acknowledge the virulent racism and xenophobia that my preferred potions have boosted.”
Fucking spellcheck: “potions” should be “positions.”
lmao………………….
better late than never? no. we need a a good faff, gaff, laff………………….
dont use spellcheck- its more fun
Sure, Mona, sure – we just go along with the neoliberal elite agenda of austerity and regime change, and that will reduce xenophobia and racism? Just drink lots of Victory Gin and stay addicted to opiates, and everything will be rosy . . .
virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent
virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent
virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent
virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent
virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent virulent
I understand stomping your foot helps get your point across, too.
@Mona –
Why, this was EXACTLY what I was talking about in Glenn’s thread. I see you’re o board now :-)
I was “on board” during our last exchange! Brexit is
a horrendously complicated issue in which all the choices carry bad consequences, and in which positions are taken for reasons both good and wicked.
What’s appalling, however, is left pro-Brexit that wants to ignore and dismiss all attention to the virulent and stronger racism and xenophobia Brexit represents and somewhat causes. It’s disgusting to vilify writers who do pay attention to that.
I agree that pro-muslim leftists want to ignore and dismiss the really terrible things that islam and its adherents represent and somewhat cause. And it is disgusting to vilify writers who point out how bad islam is.
This is exactly why I can’t believe democratic partisans actually like muslims–or any minorities for that matter. They are just using muslims to make republicans look bad by pointing out that republicans treat muslims the same way democrats treat republicans–and somehow we are supposed to get really mad about this.
It’s hard to say what is more theater–the crying or the wolf.
@Mona –
wasn’t sure about that… but I think you hit it with your second paragraph here. And I’m on board with THAT!
You know, I’m starting to think that peole who wave the “Godwin’s Law” flag – like Mackey did recently – simply don’t want people to understand how Nazism and fascism in general really worked.
Bigotry and hatred were just one part of the phenomenon – without the alliance between concentrated capital and the Nazi party, fascism would have died a quick death.
The real threat of fascism in Europe is that the neoliberal elites, who have been behind the Blairites and the Camerons for some time now, will throw their support to the neofascists who have pledged to serve their interests by retaining the ‘single market access’ of the EU deal while banning immigration – Corbyn, on the other hand, being a threat to their interests, must go.
I’m starting to like Angela Merkel a lot more for pouring cold water all over this notion, which Farage and Boris Johnson have trotted out; no free flow of people, no access to the common market, she says. Good for her for shutting down the neofascist agenda.
Of course, what Mackey won’t discuss – and what “radical fringe leftists” like myself want to see, is democratic controls over the flow of capital, as well as over trade negotiations – along with the end of EU/US-sponsored militarism – and if that happens, then the free flow of people is no big deal, since you won’t have these idiotic regime change games and austerity packages driving the tides of refugees and immigrants.
The refusal to discuss these issues is simply unacceptable in terms of journalistic integrity; the one-sided carefully constructed narrative Mackey promotes is disingenous, dishonest and is nothing but the work of an apologist for the neoliberal elite. Period.
See the link to the Graun story just below, and keep running the cui bono analysis.
They be some seriously slimy bastards.
and:
are nothing more than manufactured positions that I haven’t seen the author take. If it’s been explicitly stated somewhere and I’ve missed it, please point it out.
This rational of proclaiming repeatedly that authors here “refuse to discuss” what some readers feel are the missing links to the logic “behind it all” for some nefarious reason has been the primary bailiwick of one other regular commenter here, and it’s no more convincing now than it is when they do it.
“nothing more than manufactured positions that I haven’t seen the author take. ”
That is it in a nutshell.
It’s no different than people accusing Glenn of being a Sanders supporter for writing something about Sanders.
Oh, what tangled webs . . .
Whose interests, exactly, does this meme serve?
That’s the Guardian – like Mackey, a blanket refusal to discuss the economic reasons for Brexit supporters – the lack of democracy in trade deals, unregulated capital flows, how that harms local economies from Poland to Greece to most of Britain (excluding London’s wealthy banking sector) – all deliberately forgotten.
Cameron is trying desperately to get that message out as well, and has been joined in this effort by the Labor Blairites, the neofascist Boris Johnson – what a show. All are trying to outdo one another in an effort to appease the international finance sector – Blairites by attacking Corbyn, on top of it. What a pack of toadies.
I wonder how many of these anti-fascists have ever taken a look at the Fascist manifesto? Still quite progressive even almost 100 years later.
What happened in Sacramento was not an “intellectual” event…and, for those who have lived history they do not care a whit about the Fascist manifesto or whether one like yourself considers it “progressive”…Those identified TWP Fascists and those from the Golden State Skinheads who attempted to rally in Sacramento are agents of hatred who seek to convert others into their evil environment.
They need to practice their First Amendment rights in another city far, far away from California. It should now seem obvious that if they again attempt to rally in Sacramento they will not meet with a non-violent MLK type of response. Sadly, those groups do not understand where they are not welcome.
“Sadly, those groups do not understand where they are not welcome.”
And where have we heard that before. Funny how tables turn.
Indeed. Just wait until a pro BDS rally gets the skin-head treatment. That is the goal in Cali, is it not? Free Speech for some, as dictated by Israel-firsters.
Free speech for all, or free speech for none. There can be no middle ground. The moment you restrict the most abhorrent, disgusting, intolerable speech, your own freedom is given up.
A few of you may know what I’m talking about. It would be foolish to think that that, yes, even that, cannot be politically relevant.
“for those who have lived history ”
Oh please. Bougie anarchists kids get in a bit of a tussle and now they’ve lived history? No more than middle age Civil War reenactors. Yeah but thank god you stopped those 20 or dudes before they erected a 1000 year Reich. They will sing songs about your heroic deeds in the future I’m sure
“What is the best way to react to niggers who think they should be able to vote and sit in the front of the bus, and to faggots who think they ought to be able to get married just as if they were normal, decent humans? Physical confrontation or verbal mockery?”
Since, in the opinion of some, I’d belong to one of the above named groups,
will you be standing with us when the nazis or klan or trump fan club starts shooting?
I like that: “physical confrontation.” Sounds so antiseptic.
Unlike gunshot blast, knee capping, fractured skull…
And are you interested in just a series of escalating, random, increasingly gory skirmishes,
or in the kind armed struggle requires long term planning, long term access to food, land, weapons, energy resources,
and which is called “terrorism” and which would ensure you dying in a “confrontation” with the state or dying in a cage?
And btw, though Rosa Parks did have weapons training and did know how to handle a gun,
she was far too intelligent than to resort violence over a seat on a bus.
Sorry, you just didn’t understand what I was pointing out.
That happens a lot around here. Partially, it’s because nuance doesn’t transmit well through the ethers. And, partially, it’s because the intellectual level and breadth of the discussions are distressingly shallow and narrow.
“Sorry, you just didn’t understand what I was pointing out.
That happens a lot around here. ”
No need to remind us, again …
So what’s your point?
Free speech means that ANYONE has the right to peacefully advocate their views(no matter how despicable they are) without being attacked by a mob of “anti-fascists”
Pains me to say it, but I agree.
…..not every day in Sacramento….
The british far right and antifascist confrontations are far from free of violence in britain. There are clashes often in Brighton and recent demos at dover ended in all day running battles
Mackey paraphrased: Which is better, physical confrontation or verbal mockery?
How about doing it the “American way,” Robert? You know, championing the right to speech even if we find it horrendously offensive because, if that’s not what “free speech” means, it isn’t meaningful at all.
You should be sooo fucking ashamed of yourself.
Robert Mackey did not say, nor did he imply, the sentiment in your “paraphrase.” He did some straight reporting.
Horseshit.
Was this another of those instances in which you couldn’t be bothered to read before posting a reply?
Where did Robert Mackey pose this:
I already provided the citation.
I don’t see that in the article. I used Ctr F and inserted the search term: “with physical confrontation.” I found it twice: your comment, and mine quoting it.
Why are you and other Remain supporters refusing to address the economic argument for Brexit? Why is this also seen among the neofascist right-wing Leave supporters, who are now saying it was only about immigration?
Mackey has used the word ‘globalization’ once, but refuses to expand on the topic or discuss its implications – that’s just bias that comes across, like your comments on this topic do, as something like, I don’t know. . .
Perhaps, “apologists for the neoliberal corporate elite?” What, are they “on the side of the angels”?
The EU deal is about the movement of people, goods, services and capital. So why this focus on people only, to the exclusion of a discussion of the other three?
Note that Cameron, Farage and Johnson are now united in calling for retaining the EU deal on goods, services and capital – the part the ‘fringe radical left’ is generally opposed to – while claiming the referendum was only about halting the flow of people?
It all seems very shady, I must say.
I stopped reading becasue you began thus:
That’s a lie, and you know it is. I’ve repeatedly stated that I have no position, except to tilt toward Remain based on the endorsement of Sinn Fein. But I have not taken a pro-Remain stance, and do not now.
I. Am. Ambivalent.
You’re as obscenely indifferent to the racism terrifying people of color in Western nations as a result of the populist tsunami as you are to people in intractable pain, and those who advocate for them. You are disgusting.
Those who advocate for the interests of the neoliberal elite and Big Pharma will get no sympathy from me, Mona, particularly when they do it in such a disingenuous manner. If anyone should be ashamed of themselves, it’s you.
You’re an embarrassment to yourself by using the old tried and failed tactic of making crap up that you attribute to and credit to someone else, and then say they should be ashamed for the crap that you made up. ‘You should be sooo fucking embarrassed for yourself.’
Reading comprehension problem, Kitt? Couldn’t read the Headline and subhead either on the front page of TI or when I quoted it verbatim?
Try again.
And then there’s Mackey’s posturing that he’s Greenwald’s peer.
;^)
He did say “colleague” . . . so I’ll give him the benefit of doubt on that one. Having judged him and found him wanting so often, already, it’s really the decent thing to do.
Just as Greenwald “postures” as Mackey’s peer.
it’s not longer just the great flushing sound.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-ip
I would be careful to not label Brexit as merely the result of xenophobia and a success of right-wing propaganda. These may have been important factors for some voters, but there is no evidence that these were the only or the main motives of those who voted for exiting the EU. Non-Londoners perhaps voted more because of economic opportunity, or the lack thereof, in their rural settings. We must not be hasty in lumping them with Trumpism just because of what proponents of EU say the _motive_ of the separatists are or were. Also, all indications are that it is not legally binding and Cameron’s resignation may actually mean that there will not be a true exit but some sort of compromise, something even Cameron and London were attempting to do in the first place.
If you were an apologist for the neoliberal corporate elite, you would be very careful to label Brexit as a strictly xenophobic phenomenon, and equally careful not to discuss the goods-services-capital aspects of the EU deal that were problematic, and which is a main reason so many Britains voted for Brexit.
You’d have to keep your blinders tightly wrapped around your head, if that was the case.
There is a clock for the end of the world to show how close we are to having the world leaders blowing us all up. If we had a temperature reading indicating how close too many of us as groups around the world are to the boiling point, it would show many very hot spots around this very small world of ours.
Somehow we need to figure this out, before it’s to late. I believe we have chance.
There is something too planned and staged about these shows of violence against these small and ineffective minority groups and at Trump events First we were warned repeatedly by liberal talking heads about the violence coming from Trump supporters and when it didn’t develop this actual violence coming from so called anti fascists is erupting apparently to keep people on edge and further manipulate public perceptions.
I’ll admit to suspicion that the Russians would fund some of this stuff. After all, they admitted to funding hooligans in the Soviet days. And the initially bloodless invasion of the Ukraine shows that they have acquired much more of a grasp of First Earth Battalion tactics than the U.S. ever had. They can make some very serious impacts on overall American political legitimacy while expending virtually no funds and suffering no casualties.
Well, when you consider the “color revolutions” and coups that the US has founded on Russia’s doorstep, even as “we” have moved to surround it on all fronts with new NATO members, it isn’t hard to understand why the Kremlin might want to stir up a little trouble here, but there isn’t any evidence of which I’m aware.
How about you?
I find this disgusting. There’s nothing like a batch of “anarchists” out there enforcing censorship against people they don’t think should be allowed to talk. Yeah, they can present it as some kind of a right not to let fascism be heard. But there’s the problem with anarchism: anything that can be written as a law can be written as a right. “Thou shalt have the right not to hear the name of the Lord taken in vain.” And so while anarchism is a useful rhetorical perspective for those looking to understand why things like drug laws violate human rights, it is ultimately a vacuous doctrine that offers no real guidance toward proper action. I wish it weren’t so – I spent a long time believing it wasn’t so. We need to pursue the sum of all human rights – that is the position of the good anarchist or of the National Lawyer’s Guild rep who comes to argue his case against a bogus charge. But people have to actually determine what those rights are.
But in every estimation of these, the very first is the freedom of speech. It is the moral equator that separates thought and action, reality and fantasy. A person who denies the fascists a chance to speak surely does wrong.
But what of dangerous fascism? Well, it is made dangerous not by speech. Hand a German a Mein Kampf in the 1920s and he laughs. Hand him one in 1933 and he treats it with reverence. Why? Because if he doesn’t teach his kids to treat it with reverence, they may come home with half their teeth smashed. It’s not the content of the book that matters – it’s harmless. It’s the violent action that comes from believing in it.
In this case, we can be assured that this incident will lead to more violence than we’ve seen. Remember the story of the World Church of the Creator? A court refused to let the guy in charge become a lawyer because of his beliefs… next thing people knew, one of the members was shooting up a Jewish school. There are basically two possibilities here — either one of the fascists will go after Jews, or he’ll go after some Sikhs. (In the latter case he means to go after Muslims, but fascists always screw up and attack a Sikh instead when they try, because they’re not very bright)
We can also rest assured that we’ll see a spate of the usual crackdown laws – laws against covering the face from the friendly corporate spy cameras, laws against protesting with a flag or anything else with a stick, etc. They’ll use these protester’s abuses as an excuse for their own. And who is going to stop that?
Spot on, wnt.
Spot on, indeed.
What Wnt said.
Except for the mislabeling of “anarchists”. I did not see in the article nor in any of the various news reports of the melee, these dumbasses self-identifying as anarchists.
I saw it in some of the news reports, and we’re talking about a “Black Bloc” waving black-and-red flags. (Then again, the former of these dates back AFAIR to when the Revolutionary Communist Party abruptly turned anarchist in the 1990s…) Apparently there were multiple protesting groups involved though and some of the affiliations are not clear – there was a By Any Means Necessary organization that wasn’t strictly an anarchist group AFAICT and then “Antifa Sacramento” which is easier to classify as anarchist, or what passes for it. There’s some sourcing at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Sacramento_riot though I didn’t look into it much. But this kind of “Black Bloc” tactic has been going on a long time; it’s just that before the ugliness was so unfocused that it was easier to sell it as mere rambunctious, well, anarchism rather than as targeted censorship. The animal-rights spinoffs certainly have done a lot of law enforcement by now also.
So the alternatives are violence or mockery. Laughing at people, attempting to humiliate them, really achieves results. I’m amazed that a “serious” journalist would recommend school bully tactics. But then so-called progressives like Elizabeth Warren are doing it now to great acclaim. No wonder the masses are revolting.
Feed them pot-laced brownies, instead, and play reggae music at them? Would that work (for both sides, I mean)?
I bet FEMEN could stop them right in their tracks. Arrest the Nazis with the irresistible power of the Slavic master race!
This could work . . .
Might I point out that Trump and Brexit are both totally opposed by Zionists throughout the MSM and the web.
The only permitted nationalism is theirs.
You can’t really go around calling other people knuckleheads when you are a Holocaust denier, dahoit. That would be an example of hating your own kind.
Maybe drugs would help? Just not opiates, or cocaine, or meth, or alcohol. . . try cannabis, or MDMA, perhaps?
You expose your prejudice every day by your concerns.Only Zionists(and Mona or her illiberal ilk) call other people holocaust deniers.
I have never denied Hitler putting his political enemies in ccs and many many died.In fact in life,I have never met one person who denied that truth.
And I know this logical statement,if Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews in his control,he would have,will bring tears of rage,just remember the whole story was used for the creation of Israel,as it wouldn’t have occurred wo the Nazis depredations.
I question the tale spun by serial liars,of whom the Zionists are number one with a bullet.Weisel,some recent other guy?,and others have all been caught in embellishments of reality.
Doesn’t the ridiculous show trials of 90 year old men for long dead German criminals and modern German guilt expose the continuing lies?Why aren’t our leaders held to standards as the Nazis were,when we make them pikers in international aggressive war?
Stick to your myths,minds are free,at least for now,but I know you people are working on that.
Oh come on, “you people”? Really?
Here, you’ll get a kick out of this – recall when the MI6 head’s (John Sawyer) wife dumped his personal info all over a publicly-accessible account on Facebook, including his close familial association with notorious Holocaust denier David Irving?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197562/MI6-chief-blows-cover-wifes-Facebook-account-reveals-family-holidays-showbiz-friends-links-David-Irving.html
Seriously, that is flat Earth thinking. “There was no Final Solution, it was a myth made up to justify Israel, who rules the world via a secret Zionist conspiracy” ??? Throw out that old KKK literature and get some fresh air, why don’t you?
Let’s point out what’s going on here: in a stunning about-face, the right-wing supporters of Brexit in Britain have entirely abandoned the economic argument for Brexit and are doubling down on xenophobic hatred while pleading with EU leaders to retain access to the “EU single market.”
Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have shown their true ugly colors – they have ridden the wave of hate, and are now trying to make peace with London banksters while retaining their populist appeal, that being an appeal to bigotry and racism.
This is exactly in line with what Trump has done – he’s gone silent on key issues like overturning NAFTA’s effect on the middle class, as he seeks Republican neocon backing and funding; hence his attack-the-Muslims response to Orlando.
However, the bigotry of the neoliberal elite is just as bad. London elites have driven up property prices by turning London real estate into a cash haven / money-laundering center for their global partners, including Saudis and Qataris and others who skim the top off the global cash flows. Cameron’s anti-Muslim rhetoric has been on full display for years now, and elite attitudes towards poor whites, blacks and Pakistanis in London – kick ’em out to the suburbs, we don’t want to see them – are not much different.
We can also see this in the U.S., where neoliberal House Democrats tried to use Orlando to expand the extrajudicial powers of the ‘terrorist watch list’ program, in a highly cynical bit of political theater that would have done little to stop the epidemic of mass shootings across the United States. Targeting LGBT is not okay, but scapegoating Muslims is? What the hell is up with that? That’s almost as bad as Trumpism.
Consider the real issue:
The EU deal is about the unrestricted flow of people, goods, services and capital across EU member states. The left-wing pro-Brexit position was that the unregulated capital flows were a disaster for local economies and the environment, and that having EU technocrats write trade rules was highly undemocratic. The flow of people was not the left-wing issue, other than to note how high bad EU policies were driving refugees and immigrants across borders in search of security and jobs.
The fact that so many media outlets are trying to bury the core economic issues in the Brexit debate, instead focusing solely on racism and bigotry (and even there, only on the racism and bigotry of the Leave campaign, not on that of the Remain campaign) – that’s just indicative of the propaganda-centric mentality of corporate media in the modern world.
Indeed. Also why the UK media are focusing on the attack on Corbyn by the Blairites. (In the works for some time… )
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/13/labour-rebels-hope-to-topple-jeremy-corbyn-in-24-hour-blitz-afte/
Some, like the excellent Craig Murray, say it’s for his stance on Iraq, as the upcoming Chilcot report will tarnish Blair’s reputation- which Corbyn will apologize for.
A dozen knuckleheads,exercising their free speech,are assaulted by a more numerous bunch of knucklehead thugs.
Do these idiots know that employing tactics as this only intensifies the anger at illegal immigration,and the divide and conquer apparatus of the media?
These morons probably killed BS with their actual nazi antics,opposed to the others whom just pay dumb lip service to Nazi lore.
That would be assassin of Trump(the whole story totally buried),was he part of these creeps?
Mackey is a propagandist,and not very good,as he’s totally transparent.
Come on dahoit, you just trotted out “the Final Solution is a Zionist myth” in a response to me, didn’t you? How is that any different from Zionists claiming it’s a myth that Palestinians were driven off their land by Zionist terrorists from 1948 onwards?
Yes, the best way to deal with such nonsense is via ridicule. . .
For example, on ‘illegal immigration’ – are you sure that you could make a 100 mile trek across the Sonoran desert with just the water and food you could carry on your back? Seems like anyone capable of doing that is the kind of person you’d want as a citizen, isn’t it? True Grit, determination, toughness – desirable American characteristics, I’d say.
In fact, this could be a bonding experience for corporate executives, isn’t that all the rage these days? Corporate team building, it’s called. That would be a real group experience – across 100 miles of Sonoran desert on foot, Mexico-to-the-United-States? Would they make it? I see a real business opportunity here!
;)
Look, if undocumented immigrants are given citizenship papers, corporations will have to pay them full wages, and that will prevent the wage collapse associated with illegal immigration.
If everyone can get over their respective ethnocentric hatreds, and everything will be fine, really.
Just because they don’t look like you do, doesn’t mean you have to be afraid of them. . .
The real* antisemite says:
The activists who became violent with the white supremacists were attacking your friends. You lack all moral authority to make judgments about Mackey’s views and how he states them.
*Meaning, a Jew-hater, and not merely an Israel critic and/or an anti-Zionist.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/personal-attack.html
The claim that “Mackey is a propagandist” cannot be supported or refuted by the claim that dahoit is an anti-semite, even if the latter claim is true.
One could instead say, “Mackey is a propagandist because he is giving a biased account of the issues involved in the Brexit campaign by ignoring the goods, services and capital flow aspects of the EU deal and focusing only on the flow of people aspect.”
That would be a conclusion supported by an argument; not the kind of ad hominen or personal attack that you tend to rely on, Mona.
Once again, you demonstrate a gross misunderstanding of the formal fallacies. When X offers the judgment that Y is [Bad Thing A], but X is himself a [Wholly Rancid Thing B], X then lacks moral authority to pass judgment on any other, including Y.
Y does not become [Bad Thing A] because Some Guy thinks his economic analysis is incomplete or flawed.
Dahoit is an antisemite — the real thing, and he spews vicious antisemitic propaganda. To say that he lacks moral authority to judge anyone else as a “propagandist” is to understate. He lacks all credibility to do that.
“real” as in “actual”
Check.
So you justify the assault on free speech if it’s from someone who obviously hates Jews.
As an attorney, -Mona-, you should be alarmed at the physical assault against a peaceful protester. But no, -Mona- pisses on the constitution again because it involves people who are “real, actual” antisemites; so that makes it OK with -Mona-.
The guy was close to being in a situation in which deadly-force use by him would be legal. He was able to flee but if he had waited a little longer, his life would have been in danger.
But then this is the environment propagated by Israel, with its campaign against BDS, and Cali being a battle ground because of DiFi and her billionaire Israel-first husband. Israel is the Jewish state, in case you forgot.
The difference here is that these matters were resolved not politically, but by the continuation of politics by other, much more violent means.
Reopening these matters in civilian politics implicitly reopens the matters that led to the most violent armed conflict in history.
Once matters are resolved by war, they are off the table for civilian politics by definition. If they are put onto the table, then that is asking for war.
Is that too simple to understand? That’s why we had peace treaties and war crimes trials and established the Nuremberg Principles. These are not simply minor policy differences that people of good will might differ on.
They are calls for genocide which must be confronted and neutralized.
I am sad that no fascists were killed.
“I am sad that no fascists were killed.”
My family was bombed heavily by the Nazis during the blitz.
Had I witnessed the assault in Cali, I might be tempted to wish death upon the brutal thugs holding, and using, weapons while having covered faces.
What if those covered faces wore sheets instead?
What if covered faces attacked BDS supporters?
Fortunately, I am a safe distance away so I can calmly demand arrest and trial for the thugs.
I would like to reason for the Constitution and free speech even speech I find vile and stupid and hateful. No one at this disturbance cares a dam for that. Not the racists, rioters or police. Once one starts down the road of violence to police speech where does it stop and how do you stop it when all parties seemed well wishers to it.
Yawn… another example intolerance against those who are “intolerant”… It’s a shame I can’t enjoy reading the articles about security and privacy without suffering the liberal blathering about how everyone that doesn’t agree with you is wrong.
Sometimes democracy is in the streets — but violence against your opponents’ rally is anti-democracy in the streets. Those who use anti-fascism as an excuse for violence like this are the oppressors or, more often, wannabe oppressors of tomorrow.
I’m glad people are in the streets, online, and everywhere else fighting for real democracy, and that’s how our rights grow. But you have to come out and support others’ rights. If you just stay home, our rights erode.
It’s amazing that you characterize this group of violent thugs, whose stated goal is to prevent free speech, as “anti-fascist”.
I’m all for self defense, but I am not for using violence to silence other people because you don’t like what they have to say. The fact that no arrests were made shows a stunning apathy by police to uphold the law and will certainly lead to an escalation in violence.
“It’s amazing that you characterize this group of violent thugs, whose stated goal is to prevent free speech, as “anti-fascist”.”
That is what they call themselves.
Yes, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain were well known bastions of free speech.
That’s why they had all of those concentration camps.
Ah, the modern student.
The USA had and has them too.
All those regimes are long dead and buried,but modern regimes like the USA and Israel commit almost as many and as serious crimes wo a tap on the wrist.
Our problem is the present.
Agreed, the US and Israel are the leading war criminals now and must be contested.
But racist, fascist, anti-semitic, anti-gay white supremacy cannot be allowed to show itself in public.
History matters; the Nazis did use gangs of thugs to attack their political enemies in the streets, but, once they had seized power and gained control of the army, those gangs of thugs (called the brownshirts, or the Sturmabteilung) were rather problematic, so the Nazis had them rounded up and shot, on the Night of the Long Knives, June 30, 1934. Hey, the anniversary is just a couple days away!
Then Hitler went to the German people and said, “See, I’ve gotten rid of those thugs!” – and they all cheered.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm
This is fun history to relate to neo-Nazi street demonstrators like these clowns in Sacramento; “don’t you realize you’d share the same fate as your enemies in a real fascist system?”
Dumber than a pile of rocks, that’s your average neo-Nazi. Although the idiots who attacked them are not much smarter.
Yes, Röhm got fucked.
An easy fix for illegal immigration and excess legal immigration
• Build a triple layer wall along the U.S./Mexico border with ground sensors to detect tunneling.
• Freeze all immigration into the U.S. until we get our house in order.
• Revoke all visas and give each alien $5,000.00 to go home.
• Give each “Illegal Alien” $10,000.00 to go home.
• Give each “Permanent Resident Alien,” “Resident Alien Permit Holder,” and “Green Card Holder” $20,000.00 to go home.
• Give each person in the U.S. with “dual citizenship” $40,000.00 to renounce their U.S citizenship and go home.
• Suspend all Visa programs including the business (visa category B-1), tourism, pleasure or visiting (visa category B-2), or a combination of both purposes (B-1/B-2) until the Biometric Exit Tracking system is complete and verified to be 98% accurate.
• End the Diversity Visa lottery
• End the Visa Waiver Program
• End the Family Unification Program
Every year the U.S. bureau-rats give approximately 40 BILLION dollars in foreign aid to our enemies and $100 BILLION to subsidize illegal aliens and their dependents. Use that 140 BILLION dollars a year to the build and maintain the wall, protect, rebuild, and make America Great Again.
Because of lying animals like you people think it’s open season on Trump supporters. If anything happens to us because of your demagoguery you will be held accountable for it.
I’d doubt that anything more than a fringe of Trump supporters are white supremacist fascists.
I’m sure they are out there,but as a white American,living in NY,I’ve never met an avowed white supremacist in my life.
Racists,yes,but no political movement,or even violence against minorities,other than the kids beating up illegals,which has died out too.
Americans contrary to many opinions,are a very tolerant people,usually very go along get along.
Blowback vs Muslims by Americans within USA?None whatsoever(violence or deaths),or at least to my knowledge,at least not yet.
The expression of political opinions deserve more First Amendment protection than regular speech. Greenwald and his Intercept thugs only want their own opinions protected.
Nope. Not all opinions are the same. Harmful opinions that lead to action that hurts people–like the ones expressed by neo-Nazis and other hate groups–must be suppressed by any means necessary.
Don’t tar Greenwald with Mackey’s cheerleading for politically-correct thuggery. Even then, it’s hard to fully condemn TI writers when there are so many leftist readers, like RZ above, who would violently suppress freedom in order to prevent “harm”.
Robert, much more balanced and nuanced, with facts backing it up. Thank you.
One minor quibble: forced integration/affirmative action by the power of the state, even if the goals are correct, are inimical to a free society and reek of totalitarianism/fascism to me.
By resorting to violence one lowers one’s self to the level of the thugs.
Ghandi was able to overthrow the British in India without firing a shot, or throwing a stone. Likewise, King was able to mobilize the majority in the US to achieve great strides for minorities. So it is not as though there was no proven effective alternative to violence.
Of course there are always exceptions, like when a regime is intractably addicted to suppression, as was the case in Nazi Germany, in the Stalinist USSR, in North Korea, and in Israel today. Where the oppressed are set upon violently under the slightest pretext, violence is justified, in my view. But the US has not yet reached that point, and neither has the UK.
Regarding Sacramento, from the outside it looks like the city and the police simultaneously failed to protect free speech, and allowed some real senseless violence to take place. This was a planned rally? Seems like the cops could’ve cared less about either side… Great knee-high shin guard and crotch pad combos though. I don’t know why these guys won’t try some cuddly teddy bear costume armor at one of these smaller rallies, just to A/B test the jackboot look’s effectiveness.
Yeah, when Chamberlain came back with the piece of paper from Munich, World War II never happened.
When the Chileans elected Allende, Pinochet and Kissinger were just fine with that and respected the peaceful democratically expressed will of the Chilean people.
When the South African racists imposed apartheid and the Pass Laws, all Nelson Mandela had to do was to ask politely and the National Party realized the errors of their ways and made amends.
@marcos, @24b4Jeff –
Actually good points from both of you. I absolutely think nonviolence is the way to go and always advocate that. But yes, unfortunately, there have been cases such as marcos listed which seem more intractable. (BTW, marcos, I think that international economic pressure finally had a lot to do with ending apartheid.)
Maybe THAT’S what we need to do more of. Put economic pressure on the bigots.
Yes, economic pressure is part of the solution. It certainly worked against the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it can certainly work against Israel. That’s why I support BDS, and despite all the efforts by the two major parties I will not purchase any product made in Israel, nor knowingly buy from anyone who does business with them, until Israel removes all of its citizens to within the 1967 borders.
More violence, please.
There are those who say that the right to free speech was won on the battlefield.
The fight to extinguish fascism was also won on the battlefield.
The right of the fascist to free speech ends between the moment they call for my genocide and the moment their bodily space is invaded by the implement at hand.
They tried this crap in San Francisco in 1990 and we pelted them with D-Cell batteries until they were bloodied and forced to retreat.
No quarter whatsoever for fascism.
No quarter for anyone who advocates violence against people just talking. Speech, my waste of life lefty, is Not violent.
When you speak to reopen the wounds closed by wars, you are reopening the wars themselves. Once matters are settled by war, they are off limits to political discourse absent another war. You want a war? You’ve got one.
Sherman said that what the South needed in 1865 was 30,000 hangings. We need the same thing for white supremacists now.
We shut you all down in 1990 and wherever, whenever you show up in public, we’ll be there to make you pay for your disrespect to the hundreds of American service members who died fighting fascism in Europe.
marcos – The La Raza & MeCHA members that were attacking Americans are nothing but the brown KKK.
“Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada” “For the race everything, outside the race nothing”
First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Newsflash: it is only racism when bigotry and discrimination are backed with the power to do something about it.
Latinos are not empowered in the US. White people are.
I participated in some U.S. anti-Nazi/Klan rallies in the 1970s and 1980s. We basically scared them back into their holes because of the number of protesters and the willingness to use force at times.
If you remember the history of Nazi Germany, physically controlling the streets is a fascist tactic. And there is only one efficient way to deal with that, which the German Communists employed.
Right here in Minneapolis in the 1930s the unions formed armed militias to intimidate a fascist outfit that had set up shop here, the Silver Shirts. They were also routed.
I’d like to make fun of them, but unfortunately the Nazis and Klan wont’ be laughable…
Your own examples illustrate how ineffective violence is.
In the ’80s, when you scared them back into their holes, did they go away, or disband? No, instead they continued under cover, emerging time and again when the opportunity presented itself. One cannot suppress hate, any more than one can eliminate evil in the world.
And in Germany, the very tactics employed by the Communists only served to garner support for the Nazis among people who were terrified by the prospect of Germany becoming another Soviet Union.
If you revel in physically attacking people you dislike, then you are at your core no better than they are.
I’m so surprised at the comments here. Maybe times really are changing but I always felt the ACLU was correct in defending the Neo-Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie. The answer to hateful speech is to not suppress it and let it fester, the answer is to let be aired, counter it, and see it fade away.
For the kids who aren’t familiar with Skokie: https://www.aclu.org/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-speech-skokie
Another thing that is called to mind is the really incredible interview with Daryl Davis – an African American musician who started befriending Klan leaders in Maryland, not in a subservient way, but in an effort to understand race hatred. As a result, he ended up convincing the very top Wizards to resign from the Klan and as a result, the Klan in Maryland never recovered. In the interview, he says something along the lines of “when you are actively learning about another person, you are passively teaching them about yourself.” To his critics who say “how can you do that?” he just has to point to the wizard robes he keeps in his closet when those members left the Klan for good and made them a symbolic gift to him. Anyway, it is an inspiring interview:
https://soundcloud.com/loveandradio/the-silver-dollar
You missed the Antifa people using mace also. So much violence these days only getting worse amongst average people, it’s distressing. The divide and conquer is strong, and people are falling for it to the point of physicality. I am scared for the future of the US.
If white supremacists in the Americas have a problem with people of color, the only sensible solution for those white supremacists is to go back to Europe. The Native Americans aren’t white and were here first. This is no homeland to white people. Learn equality and shut up or leave.
That is definitely a counter argument that would embarrass them.
@Tim –
Good one. We must remember that we are a nation of folks who came or who were brought here as well as those who were here first.
Yes, I think there are quite a few folks who need some equality lessons.
Interesting when the media covers “white” Americans or Europeans demanding secure borders, limited immigration and respect for citizenship, its called “racism and xenophobia”…but in reality its just pure manipulation.
Contrast this reaction to Israel and its draconian measures taken to protect Israel’s “culture”.
Every country has the right to protect its own borders as i sees fit, and the Ziocons use PC speak to limit discussion, control debate and insure the destabilization of the West.
These pieces of human garbage don’t want real diversity, they want the illusion of diversity. That is to say, they want all colors, but you best think exactly the way they do.