[wildmusings]

You're honestly putting too much stock in the media's narrative. Were you not watching the violence coming from left-wing protesters for the last couple of years? Such as Antifa and similar groups smashing towns and beating people with fists and shovels. It's a miracle the guy they were beating on the streets of Berkeley didn't die. Edit: and how about the Scalise shooting or the police officers killed at the hands of BLM supporters. Apparently those don't arouse the same response.

It turns out there's violent people of all political stripes who would do us harm.

[woofyman]

There's a time for that discussion. But not now. Nazis, KKK, and white supremacists terrorized a town and killed a women. And our morally depraved president couldn't bring himself to put a name to evil.

[BeetleB]

>There's a time for that discussion. But not now.

No. The time is now.

Without going into my stance, I will say that in all my years observing politics, every single time I've heard this comment it's to hide a double standard. Not a single exception. How do I know this?

Because when that time does come (in this case it would be violence by the left), they are silent, and will not condemn.

This is as good a time as any.

[soundwave106]

Do you have some clear examples of this? Thinking back to the last notable American left-wing oriented violent act (the 2017 Congressional baseball game shooting), I cannot think of a major Democratic politician that did not strongly condemn the act. Who is the "they" you are speaking of?

In fact, regarding Charlottesville, this really isn't a right wing issue, it's a Trump issue. Most Republican leaders that I can think of condemned this immediately and strongly as well. Trump's response was unusually tepid at first, which is what people are taking issue with.

[BeetleB]

>Do you have some clear examples of this? Thinking back to the last notable American left-wing oriented violent act (the 2017 Congressional baseball game shooting), I cannot think of a major Democratic politician that did not strongly condemn the act. Who is the "they" you are speaking of?

By "they" I meant individuals I've interacted with, not a generic "they". My experience is with individuals who are polarized about various things (abortion, Middle East, etc) - I wasn't referring specifically to left vs right examples.

Some personal examples:

Muslims upset at a local newspaper for publishing certain cartoons. At the time they were protesting and demanding the editors get fired (one of them eventually was fired). I discussed it with them (friends, not just strangers), and they said a few things:

1. This isn't just about Muhammad but all of Islam's prophets (which includes Jesus, Moses, Abraham, etc).

2. This isn't just about Islam - they'd complain even if it happened to reverent figures of other religions.

3. The very statement that is being discussed here: Those are not the current problems and they are discussions for another time.

I pointed out to them that the comic section of the same newspaper had some years prior published really "offensive" cartoons about both Moses and Jesus. Response was "Well we weren't aware". Fair enough. Then later there was a news item about people upset with offensive depictions of Jesus. I pointed it out to them, and their response was the equivalent of "Leave me alone." Happened again related to a Hindu god. Same response.

The examples suggest the three points were not true. When those events became current problems, they did not want to have a discussion about it at all.

Similar story regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. Without talking about which side did what, in one of the conflicts one side was accused of carrying out war crimes. Protests. I asked some of my friends (protesters) why this issue is so potent to them when similar or worse crimes are not. The response:

1. This is about human rights, not favoritism to a particular group. "We condemn it when it happens to any one".

2. This is the issue of the moment. Don't distract from it.

Sure enough, later there was another conflict so eerily similar to what they were protesting, but in a whole other part of the world. Point it out to them, and get the equivalent of "Leave us alone". And then of course much worse conflicts occur than in the Middle East (DRC, for example). Crickets.

This is what I meant when I said "Every single time I've heard this comment it's to hide a double standard."

And of course, I have to endure accusations of aligning with the other side (by both sides) whenever I ask these questions. I'm asking because I'm curious and want to know. In some cases I may be neutral, and in others I'm actually siding with one side. But my taking a stance to one side does not mean I'll blanket accept the hypocrisy by that side's proponents.

[humanrebar]

That's fair. But people in this thread are already comparing left and right wing politics. If it's too soon for this discussion, there are up-thread comments it would be appropriate to object to as well.

[w_t_payne]

There is violence on all sides ... however, only one side appears to have the tacit approval of POTUS. I think we can safely assume that he already (and quite rightly) disapproves of left wing violence -- but a lot of us remain unconvinced by his seemingly forced and totally unconvincing denunciations of violence committed by those who also vocally support him and claim to act in his name. WE need to condemn violence on both sides. The president, on the other hand, particularly and specifically needs to convincingly disown right wing violence and the language of division and hatred. We will take a lot of convincing after this.

[wildmusings]

Why don't we demand the same disavowal of left wing radical groups like Antifa from Democratic politicians. There is countless footage of peaceful right-wing protesters getting beat, fire bombed, etc. at Berkeley and elsewhere.

[torkins]

If don't you listen, you don't hear:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-ann-coult...

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/elizabeth-warren-to-berkeley-pro...

re: Scalise Shooting: In a statement, Senator Sanders wrote that he had been “informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign.” He went on to say: “I am sickened by this despicable act. Let me be as clear as I can be. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/scalise...

edit: and Obama on the BLM shooting in Dallas rightly called it a racist hate crime http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-dallas-police-sh...

That's my 5 minutes of doing your research for you. High ranking Democrat politicians don't tolerate heckler's veto, much less violence. Republicans are so cowed by losing support from their radicals that they can barely bring themselves to speak up against them. Charlottesville is notable in that its pretty much just Trump who failed to speak up.

[leereeves]

And Trump tweeted:

> We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/89642082278044467...

He didn't fail to speak up.

[jazzyk]

1. The statement (politico) you refer to was made 5 days after the incident, in a private meeting, Obama said it was "hate crime", did not use the word "racist", did not mention they were BLM sympathizers.

2. Obama did speak up just one day after the events [1], but he did not specifically mention BLM in particular, claiming lack of confirmed info (justifiably so)

Trump immediately spoke up, but did not mention white supremacists, drawing huge criticism.

I am far from a Trump enthusiast, but can you not see double standard applied here?

[1] Full transcript here: http://fortune.com/2016/07/08/transcript-obama-dallas-police...

[w_t_payne]

We can and we should. Democratic politicians need to strongly disavow and condemn violence in general and left wing violence in particular and in exactly the same manner Republican politicians need to strongly disavow and condemn violence and right wing violence in particular. I would also like to see politicians from across the political spectrum come together to endorse peaceful political processes and to emphasise that the criminality of violence and hate has no place in a democratic society.

[jacquesm]

So, what's your position then regarding:

- BLM

- Antifa

- the 'alt right'

- the Neo Nazis / white supremacy groups

[exo762]

Pure cancer. All of them.

[grasshopperpurp]

A group asking police not to kill them in such great numbers should be grouped with white supremacists? Do you really believe that?

[talmand]

Which part of the group? The part that calls for an end to violence or the part that openly calls for violence against police officers?

Lumping people into groups often times hides the positives and negatives of individuals.

[humanrebar]

There was also the assassination of police officers in Dallas last year. That's on top of a series of ambush style killings of police officers.

EDIT: Would downvoters care to explain where I'm mistaken?

[spaginal]

On the internet these days take it as a badge of honor honestly.

You hear people chant speak truth to power when they repeat the safe narrative and everyone pats their back.

The fact that the media, large corporate business leaders, online forums, and government representatives are dog piling all over this narrative and ignoring even basic facts and events that happened in very recent memory, it should shock anyone paying attention to what is currently going on.

It's called censorship to blatantly disregard and shout down any opinion or factual information that works against the popularly driven editorial narrative, which is now apparently that Trump and his supporters are extremist violent Neo nazi kkk communist Russian spies, and I'm not even joking when I put that list together.

[nl]

So let's talk about that.

On the day the shooter was killed, Obama gave a press conference[1] where he said:

We still don’t know all the facts. What we do know is that there’s been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement. Police in Dallas were on duty, doing their job, keeping people safe during a peaceful protest. These law enforcement officers were targeted, and nearly a dozen officers were shot, five were killed.... According to police there are multiple suspects. We will learn more undoubtedly about their twisted motivations, but let’s be clear, there is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks. Grave violence against law enforcement. The FBI is already in touch with the Dallas police; anyone involved in these senseless murders will be held fully accountable. Justice will be done.

Three days later he had returned from Spain (before planned) to visit the survivors, where he ... described the Dallas shooting as a "hate crime" against police, according to a top law enforcement representative in the meeting with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. One really striking thing the president said in his opening remarks was that the shooting in Dallas in many ways was strikingly parallel to the Dylann Roof shooting in Charleston in the sense that it was a hate crime[2]

The Dallas shooting were a terrible thing, and Obama seems to have responded as one would expect a President should.

Outside the Dallas shooting, Obama himself seems to have had some issues with police behavior. But that didn't stop him saying what should be said.

[1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/08/transcript-obama-dallas-police...

[2] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-dallas-police-sh...

[viridian]

Let's not forget that Obama immediately used the Dallas shootings as an opportunity to aggrandize gun control at the same time. During his Paris release he also said:

"We also know when people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately, it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic, [...] In the days ahead, we will have to consider those realities as well. In the meantime, today, our focus is on the victims and their families."

I don't know if that's something I would consider to be in the wheelhouse of what the president should do, as it reads like exploitative base rallying to me, which is something I've accused Trump of as well. I get it, never waste a good tragedy and all that, but it seems modern presidents are far too open about using tragedy to push an agenda.

[EStudley]

An attack on heavily armed police by one guy with an assault rifle is a pretty good time to talk about gun control.

So are politicians just supposed to reply "That was horrible" and not look at the underlying causes or events that allowed it to happen?

[evgen]

You forgot to add "our hopes and prayers" to their shocked, shocked I tell you response to gun violence.

[humanrebar]

Obama was a decent human being and Trump had to coerced into being one, yep. I was just pointing out "left wing" violence. Insofar as skinheads are "right wing".

[pjc50]

The right-wing violence runs a lot further than that, all the way back to the Civil War and the people who went to war to defend their "right" to violence against black people. There is a continuous line between that and today. The Charlottesville protests were centered on a statue: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-rally-...

[lliamander]

> The Charlottesville protests were centered on a statue

You know, in Seattle there is a rather grand looking statue of Lenin. He was a rather evil guy. Who gets to decide which statue stays and which goes?

[dragonwriter]

> You know, in Seattle there is a rather grand looking statue of Lenin. He was a rather evil guy.

The Seattle Lenin is privately owned, so not parallel to the Lee statue in Charlottesville.

> Who gets to decide which statue stays and which goes?

The owners of the statues?

[lliamander]

A fair point. I see how the two situations are different.

[pjc50]

Did the Americans ask the Iraqi zoning board before pulling down all those statues of Saddam Hussein?

Less controversially, there is actually a political process here, and in the normal manner the city had decided to remove the statue. The white supremacists decided to demonstrate against this, sparking the violence.

The statue recently pulled down in Durham NC is a different Confederate statue.

[talmand]

Left-wing violence goes back just as much.

Those people defending their "rights" in the Civil War were Democrats.

[freehunter]

Democrats today are not Democrats of yesteryear. The ideology of the two parties switched during the Civil Rights movement. The Civil War was not “left wing violence”.

[mi100hael]

That's a pretty gross simplification. Around the time of the Civil War, there were more than two significant parties (including Whigs, Progressives, etc) and they were much less clearly left/right polarized in today's terms. Over the next 100+ years, there was a lot of shifting of policy priorities (from war, to slavery, to business, to civil rights, etc) followed by consolidation culminating with LBJ that left us with the two modern parties.

[freehunter]

The point is that the people who used to be known as Democrats did not share the same belief that modern Democrats share, so comparing them to each other is ridiculous. It’s like saying “Roman Republicans owned white slaves so all Republicans hate white people”. It’s the same word, yes, but not the same beliefs.

[talmand]

That's the only reason I post such a statement. To see how the myth of the switching parties is still being pushed.

[freehunter]

I don’t understand that. Democrats today fight for civil rights for minorities. Surely you can’t argue against that. It’s part of the core platform. Democrats of the 1860s fought to keep black people enslaved. You yourself said this.

So with those two statements, how can you then argue that the positions have not flipped? How does that even reconcile in your mind?

[talmand]

Just because the Democrats altered their message doesn't mean that the Republicans had to have changed in response.

[lliamander]

How about the French Revolution?

[freehunter]

If we're bringing European politics into a US discussion, then we should arrest everyone displaying Nazi symbols or using the Nazi salute, and we should probably also ban displays of the Confederate flag as well. Also now the Democratic party is far-right extremism, and the Republicans are banned by law.

I'm loving my new single-payer healthcare and free college tuition, though.

[usefulcat]

There are some times when "technically correct" is most definitely not the best kind of correct. This is one of those times.