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Comment by EnigmaFlare | Hacker News Reader

"attended by white supremacists" doesn't mean "attended exclusively by white supremacists". Why not show how you know that all of them were?

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If you end up protesting alongside white supremacists, you're with them. You don't go to a protest supported by KKK just because you agree on a few specific points they raise. "Oh, hi, I see you're about to clash with antifa, but you see I'm also interested in preserving this statue, respectfully, I'll just stand here on the side". It's not like they were secretive about turning up there with a surprising agenda - the event was openly organised by white supremacists.

How about that they were in a procession with flaming torches (nice-smelling though they might have been) behind people shouting nationalist, anti-semitic slogans?

One way not to associate with that would be to walk away from it, rather than join in.

It will always be weird to me that when presented with the statement "I like soft cheeses, so I'm going to march in uniform with the Neo-Nazis For Soft Cheeses group today" some people will insist that the first part of that sentence is the only important part.

Correct. Especially when Trump repeatedly and explicitly distinguished between white supremacists and people who oppose taking down the statue for other reasons.

Trump was pushing back on the journalist’s attempt to paint everyone who opposed tearing down confederate statues as white supremacists. That was wholly reasonable. My Italian American neighbors oppose tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus. Are they Nazis too?

> My Italian American neighbors oppose tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus. Are they Nazis too?

If the way they express their feelings is by joining the Nazis For Christopher Columbus march where the way they express their support for Christopher Columbus is by chanting "Jews will not replace us", that would probably answer the question for us.

People who oppose taking down the statue for other reasons who were in a procession shouting "you! will not! replace us!" and "jews! will not! replace us!" which are obvious "great replacement theory" tropes associated with the very white nationalists and neo-nazis who organised the rally, probably don't get to fall back on those "other reasons" without cause.

Trump was trying to equivocate, to offer support in principle, even though every single one of the people in that rally was actually in the class of people who he was supposedly condemning, and he knew it.

Quite aside from the fact that there is no ethical reason to oppose taking down confederate statues that were erected for explicitly white nationalist reasons:

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues...

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