Professor stupidmonkey wrote:
Just ask yourself how many genocides were led by american people whose main form of protest was burning flags, and compare that to the number of genocides perpetrated by Nought-sies and Christians.
The same number of genocides lead by American people wearing swastika armbands. Zero.
Now, if we want to do something crazy like say compare the amount of violence actually perpetrated by folks wearing swastika armbands, in the US, in the last 25 years, to the amount of violence perpetrated by folks burning flags, in the US, in the last 25 years, you might have a better comparison. I don't think it's nearly the one sided value you might think. If we start including things like property value, the skew goes even further in the other direction. Heck. If we were to look just at Antifa versus Neo-**** violence, damage, vandalism, etc in the last few years, one of those groups is vastly more harmful, vastly more hateful, and vastly more violent than the other. I'll give you a hint: It ain't the neo-*****.
We want to move into infringing other's rights? Same deal. I'm not aware of a single event in the last several decades where a group of neo-***** showed up (to someone else's event) and started breaking stuff, and burning stuff, and attacking people, because they hated the people who were engaged in some kind of political/social speech. Can you?
Antifa regularly does this on college campuses to shut down conservative speech. Not "neo-****" speech. Just regular old main stream conservative speakers. BLM has showed up to numerous events, engaging in shouting down those attending. In some cases, going so far as to push their way onto someone else's stage, grabbing the microphone and hijacking the event for their own cause.
If we want to talk about offensive speech, IMO, that's far far more harmful than some idiot with an armband.
Again. It's not about the speech itself. It's about the actions taken. If you point me at an article where a group of neo-***** beat up a random gay guy walking down the street, or burned down a black church, or whatever, I'll join you in opposing their actions, and support the strongest legal action possible against them. And yes, if you point me at someone saying something directly hateful, and calling for violent actions, I'll oppose that speech too. But it would be kinda nice if you'd join me in opposing the actions of those who also engage in violence against others, but happen to do so in the name of causes that you might be more inclined to support.
It just seems strange to me to place more weight on a form of speech that is a mere wearing or flying of a symbol, than you do on speech that is directly threatening. So folks at a BLM march yelling for the killing of cops gets zero response, but one guy wearing an armband does? I'm sorry, I put more weight on the person actually saying "kill <some group of people>. That's pretty darn direct and unambiguous, isn't it?
I don't make a distinction between why someone engaged in violence.