Are you seriously parroting Donald Trump right now? The lefties at Charlottesville were peaceful (and in those cases where it did turn violent, the Nazis began with assaulting). Most weren't even Antifa, they were ordinary Charlottesville citizens protesting against Nazis from all over the USA taking their city over!
Some of them came armed with pepper spray, urine bombs, baseball bats, shields, helmets, etc.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/08/12/pr...
Some of them attacked reporters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jufZItpL3o0
A NY Times reporter said:
> The hard left seemed as hate-filled as alt-right. I saw club-wielding "antifa" beating white nationalists being led out of the park
https://twitter.com/SherylNYT/status/896575560650035200
It's deeply unfortunate that peaceful people were caught in the middle of that, but both sides share responsibility for the violence.
> Rethinking this. Should have said violent, not hate-filled. They were standing up to hate.
They are not the same. First off: disclaimer: I'm not condoning any violence, but this is a fact:
There would be no antifa without far right extremists. There would be far right extremists regardless.
One is an admittedly on occasion violent antibody, but an antibody to a disease nonetheless. They might share blame, but extremely far from parity.
They weren't fighting "far right extremists" at the G20 summit.
Antifa is violent. Full stop. That's independent of the equally bad people who are sometimes on the other side.
Source: Witnessed everything from a bridge above the watercannons.
Honestly I find such an order repugnant. Anonymity is crucial to free speech, especially when protesting a group as powerful as G20. I'm sure no-one thinks they should be forced to report their political activity to their employer (at least judging from the outcry when the Trump administration requested all those IP addresses), but such an order is effectively exactly that.
This doesn't negate anything I said.
> Antifa is violent. Full stop.
On occasion, their ideals aren't.
> That's independent of the equally bad people who are sometimes on the other side.
Again, not equal, and again, wouldn't exist without Nazis.
Antifa is also "anticapitalist".
https://twitter.com/NYCAntifa/status/882475842802262016
They would exist without Nazis. In fact, Charlottesville may be the first time they've actually fought Nazis.
> The first German movement to call itself Antifaschistische Aktion was proclaimed by the German Communist Party (KPD) in their newspaper Rote Fahne in 1932 and held its first rally in Berlin on 10 July 1932, then capital of the Weimar Republic. During the early 1930s amidst rising tensions between Nazis and the communists, Berlin in particular has been the site of regular and often very violent clashes between the two groups.
There's no direct connection between those people in 1932 and these people in 2017, except using the same name.
> There's no direct connection between those people in 1932 and these people in 2017, except using the same name.
And you're basing this on what?
Also, read this post by Daniel Sieradsky. It perfectly sums up why ANY comparison between Nazis and Antifa is totally invalid: https://twitter.com/NYCAntifa/status/898528286325723136
A quick look at the Global Terrorism Database for 2016 (the most recent year available) calls that into question:
https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?page=1&cas...
According to that, either Muslim or left-wing (anti-white or anti-police) extremists were responsible for all the fatalities in 2016, save one attack for which the motive is unknown.
First off, you're taking liberties in assigning those to left-wing extremism without a basis.
Here's some more data, over a longer period:
Quoting ADL's Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2016 report [1] (focus on domestic terrorism):
Killings between 2001-2010 by:
Left-Wing Extremists | Right-Wing Extremists | Domestic Islamic Extremists
2 | 24 | 0
Between 2011-2016:
8 | 10 | 1
[1] https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/MurderAndE...
That's assuming the ADL's numbers are right and none of the other people the GTD called "anti-police extremists" were left-wing, which appears to be incorrect. [1]
The "rise of the violent left", as The Atlantic called it, is a depressing trend.
Anyway, I have to go and won't be able to respond until tomorrow. Have a great day.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_killings_of_NYPD_officers
8 police officers shot by radical BLM activists. I don't like that kind of action either, but given that PoC are routine walking target circles for police, I certainly get how the two activists were motivated - and there is a difference between taking revenge on murderers versus murdering people just because they're black/jewish/...
And: according to ADL (https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/murder-and-e...), however, Nazis did commit two triple-murders (bringing their tally for 2016 to 6), and it's the first year that Nazis were not the absolute dominator on the murder statistics since over 30 years (9/11 was not domestic terrorism). This one year is nothing to prove a trend turn.
> Anti-government extremists and white supremacists were responsible for only a minority of extremist related deaths in 2016, though they did commit two triple homicides.
Unfortunately they don't identify those incidents. The GTD doesn't list any triple homicides by the right. Let me know if you can find out what they're talking about here.