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[Loud Whispers]

Seems like they're pretty quick to jump out of the uniform once you scare them enough, at least. He sure wasn't convinced to do this with reasoned argument, though I'm sure he'd prefer to deal with that, because he's a bitchboy wearing a hateful flag. Myself, I'm going to continue mocking this bunch of hateful bitchboys by assuming they're all just like that punk kid, and encourage others to do so while keeping in mind that declaring one's self to be a nazi carries with it an implicit threat of violence against a huge swath of the population. There's a problem with trying to hold a peaceful discussion when the other side has a key part of their platform being the removal of non-white people without much concern how they go about it.

lol this kills the reddit

[Akura]

@Akura: Umm...last time I checked, Columbus Day *is* a Federal holiday.

It is, but observance seems kinda' sketchy? Least for non-gov stuff. Might be some kind of exception wrote into something for leaf day. and yes I know that's the wrong spelling

I figured it was a state thing, since observance wasn't country-wide, and I don't get holiday pay for it.

[Sheb]

Uh, yeah, I mean of course it's a "uniform" which is also chosen to be normal, and it's not like everyone wearing polo and tan pants is a neo-nazi, but in the context of a far-right march it does work. There is a reason the guy felt the need to take it off.

[Reelya]

Are there pictures of more than one person wearing a white polo at the same time? Since I see one guy with a white polo, multiple people with button-up shirts (mostly light-blue office type), some t-shirts, and some dark shirts as well as light ones. Also your white polo guy there is wearing blue jeans. So I don't see that combo anywhere.

But remember, the point is that when people questioned the range of people being labeled "Nazi" Redking showed literally Nazis in uniform, and said the definition was limited to that.

Now I'm being told that merely wearing any type of light colored shirt/t-shirt/polo with tan slacks or blue jeans is enough to qualify as a Nazi uniform.

[scriver]

He was clearly wearing it for the sake of uniformity if that is from some rally or protest, though. You can tell from his behaviour and what he says. I wonder what happened in the mail that he changed his mind about talking about though.

As for the discussion on the slippery slope of what counts as a Nazi in uniform in itself - it reminds me of that time Swedish afa in Stockholm put a Ukrainian immigrant in the hospital because he was wearing a "Nazi uniform" - said uniform was a supporter sweater of his favourite football team, which is sometimes worn by right wing activists because there is an overlap between violent football supporters and violent radicals. Good job on not being fascist, afa!

[Sheb]

Uh, yeah, I mean of course it's a "uniform" which is also chosen to be normal, and it's not like everyone wearing polo and tan pants is a neo-nazi

Now I'm being told that merely wearing any type of light colored shirt/t-shirt/polo with tan slacks or blue jeans is enough to qualify as a Nazi uniform.

Your reading skills are truly a wonder to behold.

[Reelya]

Uh, yeah, I mean of course it's a "uniform" which is also chosen to be normal, and it's not like everyone wearing polo and tan pants is a neo-nazi

Now I'm being told that merely wearing any type of light colored shirt/t-shirt/polo with tan slacks or blue jeans is enough to qualify as a Nazi uniform.

Your reading skills are truly a wonder to behold.

But you're still sayings it's a sign of Nazis in context, which is my point. Punch anyone who wears a general combo of clothing (light colored or dark colored top, slack or jeans) and disagrees on politics is about where it's at now. I saw just as many black t-shirts as white ones in that rally, and a couple of people seem to be wearing green shirts at the back there. Maybe you have some better pictures, but that one isn't overly convincing.

[Frumple]

... well, maybe if by "disagrees on politics" you mean "openly supporting the active genocide of what's rapidly approaching half the country" I guess. But please, continue to diminish mass murder activism to political disagreement.

[Reelya]

"openly supporting the active genocide of what's rapidly approaching half the country" is clearly hysterical nonsense. That shit isn't happening. And I doubt those people in polo shirts are doing any of what you just said. Seriously, you guys are starting to sound like the Right Wing did during the Obama years. Has Trump lead to such an existential crisis that you guys are now talking as apocalyptically as the Wingnuts were?

The thing about Charlottesville is that it's an issue because people made a big deal about destroying some statues. That was the trigger and the focus. People get the shits when you try and obliterate parts of history even if you don't like them. Lots of southern people died in that war, and as pointed out, very few of the people fighting actually had slaves, they were just fighting out of loyalty to their states and their families. Because that's just what people do. It doesn't make the soldiers bad people.

The problem is that by making things like the confederate flag taboo, and going around knocking statues down, you force southerners who want to remember their heritage, and the sacrifices of war, to have to choose between supporting those extremists or turn their back on their own cultural heritage. Which is a losing strategy if you want to de-legitimize the far-right. Going off the deep end on the left in fact created the rallying point in question. It would be like going around Japan knocking down war memorials because of Unit 731 and Korean comfort women. While it might be justified, it sure as hell would galvanize the Japanese far-right nationalist movement.

Probably the response many people want to do now is to double-down on destroying every vestige of confederate/southern remembrance of the war, because such rememberace is what "Nazis" do. But ... can you see this is just playing into the hands of the far-right if you do that? "fuck the confederacy and everything about it" is very close to saying "fuck the south" to a lot of people. Do you really want to hand the far-right such a potent cause they can use for further recruitment?

[RedKing]

Also the main point is that the takeaway here is media coverage.

Antifa was out at Charlottesville one time, media coverage of the Nazis was at the maximum. Widespread national news exposure. Next time, Antifa wasn't there. You can't be there all the time. Now, how much is the media covering it now? Fuck all probably. And the only reason that the media would be interested is wondering "are Antifa going to show up again so we get a spectacle?"

What do you think the Neo-Nazis wanted to happen by marching again at Charlottesville? I can tell you right now, that they wanted another fight so that they'd get national news coverage again. This is not a "victory" for a political movement. "Safe to be a weekend Nazi" <= wtf is that. Nazis don't want it to be "safe" to march, they want to spread the message that they're fighting the fight against the violent leftists.

Wrong on both counts. The media covered it pretty well (obviously not to the same degree because of the old "if it bleeds, it leads" and because there are half a dozen other dumpster fires going on at the same time). And if they wanted a fight, why organize in secret? You can't get a fight if your opponent doesn't even know you're there. 

When people talking about Direct Action and how it's been effective in the past they have this backwards. The suffragettes petitioned the nation for voting rights, the civil rights movement petitioned for equal treatment before the law.

Suffragettes did not create masked "hit squads" which went around beating up sexist men, and the civil rights movement did not create death squads to take out KKK members (or at least The Black Panthers and co weren't actually politically effective). That's the difference between direct action for a political goal and straight-up thuggery. It doesn't matter if you can point out "well the people we're beating up are worse thugs". Beating people up isn't effective Direct Action.

Oh lawd....go pick up a history book.

Suffragettes in Britain committed arson, bombings, threw a hatchet at the Prime Minister, attempted to burn down the Royal Theater while the Prime Minister was speaking, and created a "Bodyguard" trained in jujitsu to defend the movement's leaders which then fought with police. They were probably the most violent progressive movement in modern history. Suffragettes in the US were less militant, but to some degree because they didn't need to be. The British suffragettes had shown what was possible if they were denied dialogue.

And nice job moving the goalposts with the civil rights movement. Because no one is talking about death squads, then or now. But they absolutely organized to confront the Klan physically, and you know it.

I will say that there is a distinct difference between those movements and Antifa though -- those groups were fighting to move society forward, I see Antifa as fighting to keep society from being dragged backwards. They're not fighting to bring about change, they're fighting to prevent a cancerous change -- namely the normalization of fascist ideas in the body politic.

And to that extent, the fact that Spencer and his Beigeshirts now have to resort to pop-up demonstrations is a good thing. It keeps them from seeming normal, and becoming a socially acceptable "Third Way".

[Lucus Casius]

I mean, I don't care about the nazis in this case, but I'd agree that despite the risks of galvanizing the far right that many confederate monuments should be destroyed.  Even ignoring the whole "regardless of whether they owned slaves or not, they were indeed defending slavery" thing.  They're symbolic of treason against the union as a whole, and glorify the men who nearly brought about its destruction.  That we haven't been more thorough with it in the past century astounds me.

So I suppose "I don't care that much about the far right, but sure, if the south wants to base its heritage around the events during and leading up to the American civil war, fuck the south?"  I guess that's what I'm saying.

[MorleyDev]

With Charlottesville at least, those people wielding the torches were literally shouting "Jews will not replace us" so I think it can be safely ascertained that they'd at least managed to cross the Nazi barrier, or at least the "dangerously delusional racist conspiracy theorist" barrier (somewhat hard to find a distinction between those two when torches and marches get involved).

[RedKing]

Those people wielding the torches were literally shouting "Jews will not replace us". I think it can be safely ascertained that they'd at least managed to cross the Nazi barrier at that point.

#NotAllAntiSemites

[Rolan7]

The thing about Charlottesville is that it's an issue because people made a big deal about destroying some statues. That was the trigger and the focus. People get the shits when you try and obliterate parts of history even if you don't like them. Lots of southern people died in that war, and as pointed out, very few of the people fighting actually had slaves, they were just fighting out of loyalty to their states and their families. Because that's just what people do. It doesn't make the soldiers bad people.

I do have some respect for the Confederacy, and question the only-about-slavery narrative, but these statues only undermine my position.  They were constructed during the worst parts of the Jim Crow era, to prop up resentment of blacks and the USA, *using* the Confederacy.  They're not artifacts of the Confederacy, or state's rights, or The South.  They're technically monuments of Confederate leaders, but (to my mind) twisting history to support contemporary racism.

The statues belong in museums, along with proper context, as artifacts of Jim Crow racism.

[Frumple]

"openly supporting the active genocide of what's rapidly approaching half the country" is clearly hysterical nonsense. That shit isn't happening. And I doubt those people in polo shirts are doing any of what you just said. Seriously, you guys are starting to sound like the Right Wing did during the Obama years. Has Trump lead to such an existential crisis that you guys are now talking as apocalyptically as the Wingnuts were?

It's literally the foundation of the beliefs claimed either explicitly by the people in question, or by people standing at their side. The explicit goal is to reach the point minority populations can be wiped out, and with stuff that's actually being talked about, not some kind of hypothetical, the folks there were either straight up behind that full throatedly or sufficiently uncaring about an end goal with everything or near everything non-white in the country in a grave they were willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with such ideology.

So, no. Active genocide of america's minority populations is either these fuckers' literal goal, or something they're willing to show solidarity with. Fortunately they've so far been suppressed enough the murder and beatings have been limited, but that shit is, in fact, what those folks were openly supporting. This ain't exactly some kind of watered down goddamn political disagreement, here, this is actually, factually, about people who are demonstrating in open support, explicitly and/or implicitly, of goddamn genocide.

Political disagreement would be over the statues, yes. But, for the Nth time, the issue vis a vis that is not the statues and the bullshit surrounding it, it's literal genocide activists and people willing to stand with them. Call it hysteria or whatever the fuck you want to think that might be something to be disapproved of pretty damn staunchly or considered to be just a titch more specific and/or substantial than nebulous political disagreement. In the meantime I'm going to call it diminishment when this specific bit of nastiness gets lumped together with general political disagreement.