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Comment by srtjstjsj | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what you consider the "hoax" in "very fine people hoax". Do you disagree with this analysis (linked below) which claims that the "only very fine non-white-nationalist people" Trump were either (a) at a different activity from the one Trump claimed they were doing, or (b) people who weren't there but Trump thought were there. That analysis puts Trump at best misinformed or confused, if not supportive of the white-nationalists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-fine...

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Go to the transcript it’s clear as day: https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trump...

> Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."

> Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same."

> Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?"

> Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson."

> Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?

> "So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

First, it’s crystal clear from the transcripts that he’s saying “I’m not talking about the neo-nazis and white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally.” Painting that as one of the “(a) or (b)” options is shamelessly deceitful.

So what does he mean? The city was renaming a park named after Robert E. Lee. Trump is making a totally reasonable point: not everyone protesting taking down a statute of Robert E. Lee is a white supremacist or a neo-nazi. And he’s point is actually prescient. The reporter says he loves Thomas Jefferson. Well, my high school is named after Thomas Jefferson, and just a few years later they’re trying to change the name of the school.

Is Trump wrong that there were people there who were just protesting the name change? Was literally everyone in that crowd a white supremacist or neo-nazi? Maybe but that would be odd. I grew up in Virginia. Lots of well meaning but maybe insensitive people lionize Robert E. Lee. Maybe they all stayed home that day. But it would be fair to guess they didn’t.

Regardless, whether or not those Robert E. Lee buffs were actually present has nothing to do with how to interpret Trump’s statement, because it’s unambiguous. Maybe his speculation was incorrect. So what? That doesn’t mean it’s fair to portray it as an “if not supportive of white nationalists” statement because it’s unambiguously not that.

If the headline was: “Trump incorrectly assumes that good people attended rally, but in reality everyone was a white supremacist” that would have been a good headline. Good commentary about how outdated it is to lionize Robert E. Lee. But instead the media went for an interpretation that was clearly not what Trump meant.

This is why TJ needs a better history curriculum. Support for confederate statues is not support for history or even support for Lee himself. The AHA even put out a statement to clarify since people don’t seem to ask historians what they think about the subject.

What is it support for and why do historians have special access to the internal motivations of contemporary protesters?

Historical documents are more evidence about the people who created them than the people described in the documents. It would be very poor historiography to use a book written about somebody as raw data about that person. This sort of thing is taught in intro college classes and makes it very clear that people who claim to be interested in defending history are not trained in the field and haven't actually made an effort to learn it. The conclusion then is that there is some other reason why they insist that said statues must remain up.

I agree with that today in 2020, but that’s not what I learned growing up in northern Virginia in the 1990s. I thought nothing of driving in Lee Highway, and didn’t know that all these monuments are created in the 1930s.

And that doesn’t even mean Trump’s assertion is even incorrect. Maybe the protesters had the same misconceptions about history as many people who grew up in a fairly liberal place in the 1990s. That actually supports Trump’s point that people who oppose taking down the statutes aren’t necessarily raving white supremacists.

Thus why I wish TJ had a better history curriculum. Its truly terrible that such a strong school is graduating people off two years of history, one of which is designed by the College Board.

Thinking nothing of the historical objects around us is not terrible. Most people are ignorant of most things, lord knows I am. A problem arises when people insist that defending confederate statues is protecting history, when if you went and asked the people who actually do history for a living they'd fairly universally disagree.

As for Unite the Right, I'd agree with you that there are people who want the statues to stay up and aren't white supremacists. However, it would not be possible to spend a few hours marching at Unite the Right and not notice the literal Nazi flags, the speakers giving speeches about whiteness, and the marchers shouting "gas the k--es, race war now". At that point, I'd expect an ignorant defender of confederate statues to think "wow, I've made a big mistake" and leave.

Historians are politically biased, with about 90 percent of them leaning left. See Jonathan Haidt for more information on political bias in the humanities. On such a politically charged issue they are not to be trusted and are a corrupted group of individuals. This is exactly why we need a politically balanced team to do any vetting on a platform like Facebook.

Also, to say that protesting in support of a Robert E Lee statue is not showing support for Lee is prima facie absurd.

The argument has nothing to do with political leaning and instead everything to do with how historians interact with primary sources. It is absolutely consistent with ordinary historiography to say that a statue of Lee is not a historical record of the man.

I do hope supporters will stop claiming they are defending history when they immediately turn around and declare that the thousands of professional historians around the country are all fools.

I'm sure that not literally everyone at a Nazi rally is actually a Nazi. But the Unite the Right rally and posters were full of actual Nazi symbols. There were enough Nazi and white power symbols that anyone marching there is either:

1. Anti white supremacist and Anti Nazi, but VERY dumb or very unobservant.

2. Anti white supremacist and Anti Nazi, but believe that saving a statue is worth marching in a rally on the same side as a large number of self professed Nazis.

3. A white supremist and/or Nazi.

This wasn't a case of a few white supremacist sneaking into an otherwise unrelated event. A large percentage of the crowd was chanting overtly racist slogans and flying overtly racist flags (even ignoring the confederate battle flags). No one there was confused about what was happening. None of the people marching on the Unite the Right side were "very fine people."

>I'm curious what you consider the "hoax" in "very fine people hoax".

The idea that the POTUS just called racists who ran over and killed a woman "fine people" is beyond reason.

A person with some objectivity can understand that Trump wasn't talking about white supremacists with his "fine people" statement. He was referring to there being "fine people on both sides" of the political spectrum, protesters and counter-protesters, at the protest. His point was that not all of those protesting the statue removal were white supremacists, some were "fine people". Of course, that's the story the left went with anyway, because Trump fumbled another one.

Trump started the interview by questioning the notion of the alt-right before pivoting to argue that the 'alt-left' started the violence and falsely claiming the counterprotestors didn't have permits, before adding his endorsement of the Robert E Lee statue cause. He pointedly hasn't taken a similar tack of emphasising the involvement of fine people as well as bad people with other protests involving some degree of violence, such as BLM. That's the context a person someone with some objectivity is putting it in, and it's difficult to argue with a straight face that there is no degree of truth to the media reporting it as Trump endorsing the march.

Because about ten seconds later in the same speech he says he unequivocally condemns white supremacists. But the media (and the democrats in their advertising) cuts off that part of the speech, leaving a false impression in people's minds. This alone is evidence that he wasn't calling white supremacists fine people.

Further, it was a large protest over a statue with thousands of people over a whole day, do you think there isn't one single non white supremact there protesting to keep it up? There's no evidence that Trump was referring to the tiki torch rally when he said fine people. He made the speech after the large protest and the terrorist attack, where by the law of large numbers there is inevitably going to be non-white supremacists attending to show support merely for the statue/history.

What specific people were both “very fine” and marching with Unite the Right? Trump said “both sides” so there must have been some good people on both sides. But I’ve seen their live-streams. The Unite the Right crowd was loudly and consistently shouting racial slurs and calling for racial violence. A very fine person would walk away upon hearing that.

If people honestly supported history they would have asked the historians. The AHA put out a clear statement that taking down statues is not destroying history.

There were lots of people protesting on that day in support of the statue that had nothing to do with the neo-nazis and white supremacists, in exactly the same way that there were lots of people protesting against the statue who were are not affiliated with antifa.

Those are the people that Trump was presumably referring to, given that he explicitly said he was not talking about white supremacists (whom he condemned totally in the exact same speech).

I would expect somebody who has "nothing to do with neo-nazis" to say "wow, I've made a huge mistake" and leave the first time they hear somebody they are marching next to shout "gas the k--es, race war now". Who specifically are these hypothetical good people?

Unlike you, I do believe that every counterprotestor was associated with antifa. It was an antifascist counterprotest. That is antifa.

Support for the Lee statue has never been seriously about history because the supporters of keeping it up never asked historians. I'm serious. UVA is an excellent history program. They could have asked the history faculty to decide. It wouldn't have gone in their favor.

I would also expect somebody to not march alongside neo-marxists and self-professed communists (antifa) with a history of violent extremism (according to the FBI director Wray) but there you go.

> Support for the Lee statue has never been seriously about history

This is irrelevant to the question of whether there were non-white supremacists in attendance. What matters as to people's motives is whether people think that it's about history, which many ordinary people do.

Then your conclusion should be that there were no fine people on either side, not that there were. If you truly believe that leftism is as evil as racial genocide then actually stand by that.

If ignorance leads you to provide ammunition for people who support racial genocide and you don’t leave once you notice the nazi flags flying at a march you attend... I really don’t know what to say.

I do believe that support for antifa (the violent political extremist group according to the FBI director) and support for communism (prevalent among self-described antifa) is as evil as support for fascism, yes. I am more concerned about communism actually because it has a veneer of respectability that makes it potentially more dangerous than fascism in the current climate, although I do believe that they're both evil. I am not talking about the Orwellian double speak that equates antifa the extremist group, with anti-fascism.

It's not my conclusion that there are no fine people on either side, I was simply outlining the absurdity of thinking that there were only fine people on one side, given the visible existence of political extremist groups on both sides that many protesters (on both sides) overlooked when they attended the protests in order to voice their political opinion about what should happen with the statue.

But he doesn't actually condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists! He makes the offhand comment that they should be condemned, but doesn't shut them down when he knows he has their ear.

It's the same with the Proud Boys comment at the debate. He tells them to stand by and stand down, then the next day says he doesn't know who they are. We all know he's lying - and most of all the Proud Boys, who see the wink and the nod behind the denial, which is just to get the lugenpresse off his back.

He didn't even know who the Proud Boys were during the debate. It's even disputable that they're white supremacists, their leader is Hispanic and they proclaim the superiority of western culture not the white race.

The next day Trump said something like "I don't know who they are, but I condemn them", you can't get more clear than that but of course this doesn't get coverage in the media.

Nevermind the numerous times prior where he has explicitly condemned white supremacy and even designated the KKK as a terrorist organization. It's all ignored in the left wing echo chamber.

It's not ignored – his claim not to know who they are made the news – it's just treated the same as most everything else that Trump says: facile and not based in reality, if not an outright lie.

It doesn't matter what he does or says. If he says nothing - apparently he condones it. If he says something condemning it, they pretend it's not genuine, ignore it and look at the other vague terms he uses as if they're dog-whistles condoning it. This tells me they've pre-decided their stance on him and will push that no matter what he says or does. You can't argue or reason with insanity.

What makes it worse is there are a lot of very smart, articulate and well-meaning people that are coming to the defense of such an incoherent point of view. They will verbally and with "facts" stomp down on anything but the most perfect of criticisms, essentially making criticism of any left-wing action next to impossible.

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