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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

> Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories

You missed out the bit where some of them were doing Nazi salutes or carrying EDL / Britain First etc flags.

If you’re in a group with people you don’t know very well and some of them say or do something utterly stupid, you are not automatically one of them. Eg, some people were looting during the protests but it would be ridiculous to say the entire protest is just a bunch of thugs

If the protest which gets the media coverage for fighting police is an organised group of football hooligans run by prominent far-right activists, and there are widespread Nazi salutes, it's probably not incumbent on the media to 'some of them were good people' away the nature of the group you've joined up with.

Even the also in-attendance group of veterans which was very angry at media coverage for suggesting there might be racists descending on London acknowledged in their rush to disassociate themselves that the larger and longer lasting football hooligan protest which got into the actual fights was explicitly racist.

If you're in a large group, and many members of that group are by any definition racist, you're going to be called part of a racist group.

Then the early black lives matter protests were nothing but a bunch of anarchistic rioters and looters. And every cop in those police departments is racist. And all those city councillors too. It isn’t true though and the point is you can’t just go around labelling people like that willy nilly. You can’t just group everyone together based on what the worst of them do.

Imagine a world where every honest cop quit in order to avoid being associated with the bad ones

I don't agree with the point you're making at all here. OPs point is that if you attend a gathering with people you don't know, and that gathering turns out to be heavily represented by white supremacist groups, you are going to be labelled with it.

You're furiously defending an argument that you've made, which is exactly the point that is being made repeatedly in this thread, that's it's very difficult to have a discussion on many of these topics because the debate turns to this very quickly.

In the same spirit, gentleman11's point is that if you attend a gathering with people you don't know, and that gathering turns out to be heavily represented by looters and rioters, you are going to be labelled with it.

> You're furiously defending an argument that you've made

More like trying to show to DanBC that their line of thinking is illogical. Regardless, I do not see anything furious about it.

There's nothing illogical about describing as racist a group of people who make Nazi salutes, who attack black people, who spray racist graffiti.

I'm pointing out that this is a simplistic, dishonest, framing:

> Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories[1].

A more honest framing would be "people out protecting Churchill statutes, many of them making Nazi salutes and chanting racist slogans, are labelled as racists in several stories".

This isn't just the extreme left calling everything racist. Here's the Telegraph[1] quoting Boris Johnson[2] who condemns "racist thuggery". https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/13/black-lives-matt...

[1] A right wing newspaper.

[2] A right wing PM.

> There's nothing illogical about describing as racist a group of people who make Nazi salutes, who attack black people, who spray racist graffiti.

However that's not what you were doing; you were stating the point that being with a group doing x means you will labelled as x.

> If you're in a large group, and many members of that group are by any definition racist, you're going to be called part of a racist group.

Now whether you meant that that is a case of will be vs should was not covered but that was what the original point was.

The new point about framing would be in relation to the original point made where all in the protest centred around protection of the statues were labelled racist for doing so by major news organisations. At a guess there's at least two frustrations made in that that I can immediately think of

1) the lack of nuance from the papers (probably a hopeless ask given the way media operates in general for any story they handle but something worth discussing)

And 2) the hypocrisy displayed. We've seen the recent riots described as "mostly peaceful protests" time after time when a simple look at the stories and videos coming out show anything but yet the difference in the media descriptions of the two is pretty glaring would you agree?

> However that's not what you were doing; you were stating the point that being with a group doing x means you will labelled as x.

I still say that. If you attend a demonstration organised by a far right group (FLA), heavily promoted by other far right groups (Britain First, EDL), and prominent members of the far right (Stephen Yaxley Lennon, Paul Golding) then you're going to be called racist.

You're desperately trying to say these crowds were people interested in statues and merely peacefully protesting to protect statues. That shows a complete lack of understanding of i) who organised the demonstration ii) the language used to organise the demonstration iii) the behaviours displayed during the demonstration and iv) the commentary across the political spectrum condemning this demonstration as racist thuggery.

> yet the difference in the media descriptions of the two is pretty glaring would you agree?

At some point you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that in the UK the far right pose a far greater risk of harm than the left.

The people you're desperately trying to defend were drunk, coked-up, racist, football hooligans on a rampage. That has been fairly and accurately described by UK news media, including those on the right.

Daily fucking Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8404751/Police-fear...

I haven't said anything about defending these crowds at all, you're welcome to point out where I defended them; I've pointed out the likely frustrations of op about two facedness and lack of nuance in the press.

I can perfectly see there are people in the protests making the nazi salutes just fine and I follow the logic behind getting the label if you hang with them, and as you'll surely agree in just the same way that those involved with the recent floyyd protests will be labelled as opportunistic thugs looking to destroy property and assault people.

> At some point you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that in the UK the far right pose a far greater risk of harm than the left.

No, no I don't; both sides seem significantly detrimental in different ways and I don't have to permit free reign to one group of sociopathic bullies just because they are the enemies of a different one.

> the same way that those involved with the recent floyyd protests will be labelled as opportunistic thugs looking to destroy property and assault people

This is so disengenuous as to veer into the realm of absurdity. You seem to be completely ignoring the actual intent of the two groups in attempt to conflate them to defend your argument. Not to mention both side-ing them is an absolute joke.

The intent of the floyd protests wasn't to loot and destroy property. It was to protest his death. The fact that some took this opportunity to do so does not affect the actual intent which was upheld in many other places and protests.

The intent of the other group was explicitly racist. Organized by far-right groups and quite literal Nazis.

No the intent as described many times in the comment chain was protection of the statues; that was what spurred the counter protest. Both sides began under good intent; both sides had bad actors who caused trouble; both sides get labelled.

And as DanBC said multiple times, that was not the real reason why they were out there. You seem to be ignoring all context for why they were out there and who organized it in attempt to equate the two in a disingenuous manner. At this point it's obvious you're not here to argue in good faith.

Unfortunate as it is but neither you nor DanBC are the global authority on other peoples "real reason" for doing things no matter how you feel on the subject. Context is also a poorly thought out point to bring up considering plenty was provided; numerous examples of destruction of statues given before, no sign of slowing and future targetting given often and loudly.

Why are you repeating the same thing over and over while ignoring the argument given?

Oh well, here, let's repeat it. "There's nothing illogical about describing as looters and rioters a group of people who break windows, steal from shops, set buildings and cars on fire."

You can extend the same argument to have racist undertones by including all black people for example because there are some criminals among them. Racism is bad not because it is racism but rather because it is yet another instance of prejudice and generalization.

So if there is a peaceful protest and some looters pop up, what does it make of the protestors?

With all the talk of people doing Nazi salutes it seemed like you could open any news story about the counter-protests and you'd see clear evidence of Neo-Nazis but it was anything but, even when people point to videos [0] that are supposed to demonstrate the Nazi salute it's a struggle to even figure out who is supposed to be doing it. Another video [1] of that same scene is even less supportive of the claim of Nazi salutes. The discussion on such videos at the time always devolved into bickering about how strict the salute had to be before it counts on videos that were overwhelmingly of people with one or both arms in the air, closed fist salutes, people literally pointing, stills out of context, etc, on videos that were always accompanied by football chanting. I don't think I saw a single example of a strict or even semi-strict Nazi salute from a couple of days of casually looking up the news on the counter-protests despite every thread having a dozen people that were quick to point out that the protestors were racists doing the Nazi salute.

As far as the EDL / Britain First goes, this is literally the first time I'm hearing that the leader of Britain First showed up, it seems like it was drowned out of the news completely. Are there any pictures of said flags or the scale of their involvement? I don't recall seeing any at the time and I can't find any pics at all. Edit: Found one [2], it's of the leader.

[0] https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1271763042745925632

[1] https://twitter.com/BBCDomC/status/1271761377317851136

[2] https://twitter.com/hopenothate/status/1271772683013931008

> this is literally the first time I'm hearing that the leader of Britain First showed up

It's somewhat frustrating that people who do not know who attended the demonstration are telling me that I'm wrong when I say it was mostly comprised of recognised far right groups.

The protests were organised by far right groups such as FLA / DLFA, with calls from people like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Paul Golding for people to attend.

Here's a photo of a Britain First flag: https://twitter.com/harshmallow01/status/1272099528175386625... (This is the un-modified version).

Here's Stephen Yaxley Lennon calling on the Football Lads Alliance (a recognised far right leader talking to a recognised far right group) https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2020/06/08/football-hooligans...

Here's a right-wing source, describing a right wing PM who calls the protest "racist thuggery". https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/13/black-lives-matt...

It was extremely well publicised at the time too: Golding even gave the PA a quote in advance about why he was going, every mainstream media outlet mentioned him in their reports and Twitter throbbed with speculation about whether he was breaching his bail conditions.

Maybe in some circles it was well publicised but in many articles around the time it's nothing more than a single sentence mention, e.g., [0] which is near the bottom, [1] or [2] which are closer to the top but still not really the point of the articles. The Telegraph link from DanBC's post mentions them a few more times for comparison.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53033550

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53031072

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/14/met-police-con...

>telling me that I'm wrong when I say it was mostly comprised of recognised far right groups

I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong or that far right groups didn't attend and I'm sorry if it came across that way, I was hesitant to even make a reply for fear it would come across as a defence of groups I'm ideologically opposed to over protests I don't agree with. The only point I wanted to discuss really was the Nazi salutes since 'protestors defending Churchill statue perform Nazi salute' seems to be the sticking point of social commentary on the counter protests, but the supposed video where it happens is questionable. But I'm happy to be proven wrong on that, just like I was the involvement from Britain First which is why I edited the post, so again sorry if it seems like I'm trying to downplay their involvement.

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