The News Thread

[The Ozzman]

Apparently the driver is Jewish.

Not confirmed yet but:

OY VEY GOYIM IT'S ANUDDAH SHOAH

 

[CiG]

Probably bullshit.

This though:

The alleged driver, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old who traveled to Virginia from Ohio, had espoused extremist ideals at least since high school, according to Derek Weimer, a history teacher.

Weimer said he taught Fields during his junior and senior years at Randall K. Cooper High School in Kentucky. In a class called “America’s Modern Wars,” Weimer recalled that Fields wrote a deeply researched paper about the Nazi military during World War II.

“It was obvious that he had this fascination with Nazism and a big idolatry of Adolf Hitler,” Weimer said. “He had white supremacist views. He really believed in that stuff.”

Fields’s research project into the Nazi military was well written, Weimer said, but it appeared to be a “big lovefest for the German military and the Waffen-SS.”

As a teacher, Weimer said he highlighted historical facts, not just opinion, in an unsuccessful attempt to steer Fields away from his infatuation with the Nazis.

“This was something that was growing in him,” Weimer said. “I admit I failed. I tried my best. But this is definitely a teachable moment and something we need to be vigilant about, because this stuff is tearing up our country.”

http://www.sltrib.com/news/nation-w...d-was-a-nazi-sympathizer-former-teacher-says/

 

[Dak]

The dead girl is another body on the pile due to Marx.

 

[CiG]

Karl Leuger and Karl Marx, the inspirational figures for the worst people. Kill all Karls.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Just saw this video:

https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/896295016284520448

Nazi faggots acting like more passive aggressive pussy versions of ANTIFA. Dude who cries about having his hat stolen after one of his buddies steals the old man's hat is apparently the "blinded" man, here's hoping the damage is permanent. I take back the demonstration being relatively peaceful the night prior to the car accident, these dumbass memelording trolls are officially as culpable, shutting down dialogue with violence. Hurts the case of the ACLU and others defending them as well now.

 

[CiG]

That's the so called Baked Alaska faggot. I was banned from Twitter for 24 hours for telling one of his toadies that if only he had mongoloid eye-lid fat around his superior white eyeballs, among other nastier words, he might be fine.

 

[Einherjar86]

The dead girl is another body on the pile due to Marx.

How so this time?

Also, very surprised you didn't comment on the fact that the teacher's name is "Weimar."

 

[Dak]

How so this time?

Also, very surprised you didn't comment on the fact that the teacher's name is "Weimar."

Teacher?

SJWists and isms may have arisen anyway through some other vector, but Marx is the patron saint of Flattening ideologies. The girl was present to do violence because she believed in the Flattening. Everything from the past is bad, only a future of flatness is to be pursued.

 

[Einherjar86]

Teacher?

SJWists and isms may have arisen anyway through some other vector, but Marx is the patron saint of Flattening ideologies. The girl was present to do violence because she believed in the Flattening. Everything from the past is bad, only a future of flatness is to be pursued.

It's clear that you're deploying rhetoric to paint Marxism as a religious fanaticism (patron saint, belief in the Flattening)--which it has been, but not in the sense that you're proclaiming. To put it simply and quickly, your language is inaccurate.

First, Marx didn't say that everything from history was part of an indifferent, homogeneous badness. Marx stresses that capitalism was better than feudalism, which is far from a non-evaluative flatness. And he doesn't want to assimilate them both into a undifferentiated mass of historical ooze into which communist revolution will set us free. He says that communist revolution was only made possible by capitalism, which in turn was only made possible by feudalism, etc. etc. To call Marxism a flattening of all historical forms or ideologies isn't true (this opens onto a conversation over what the "end of history" might mean, but it isn't this). Marx saw it as a fundamentally historical science, a political interpretation of a vibrant and fluctuating history. To say that Marxism is a flattening implies that it perceives itself as an ahistorical and miraculous phenomenon bursting forth from the morass of entropic decay. That's not at all what Marx said, though.

Second, I'm sure that the victim didn't believe everything from the past is bad. Was the Civil Rights movement bad? Was Suffrage bad? Again, absolutist rhetoric leads to poor analogies.

Third, the popular/populist version of modern leftism isn't that of flattening, but simply a left-wing version of individuality (which I think is its own misguided ideology). I know you like to believe that we're a Marxist country, but we're not. We're far from it. Modern Western culture has not embraced a vision of anti-individualism, but a form of individualism premised on selective identity rather than obligatory class membership, which is antithetical to traditional Marxism. This is why current leftist populism is obsessed with shutting down rallies and speeches by those they disagree with (the exact opposite of an absolute "flattening"). It has almost nothing to do with Marxism, despite the fact that they wear t-shirts with his face on them. This is an intellectual oversight, and you're perpetuating it when you say that Marx is the patron saint of modern political unrest.

If you're looking for an intellectual enemy responsible for some kind of absolutist flattening, you should focus your distaste on Georges Bataille or Jean-François Lyotard, both of whom disavowed Marxism. Bataille dismissed Marxism as merely another manifestation of liberal Enlightenment, a quasi-religious institution that promoted its own values and ideals. That's not a flattening in any sense of the word.

Now, Bataille's base materialism. That's a flattening, and believe me, Western society is nowhere near ready for a political ideology premised on this concept: http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Base_materialism

 

[Dak]

I'm on the road so I can't craft an adequately lengthy response, but my point isn't that SJWists are good or consistent Marxists, but that he provides loose justification and an outsized influence even if the influence is due simply to misinterpretation and the compounding nature of popularity. That said, Marx was in favor of as much flattening as possible, even if his methodology hasn't ever "really been tried". Literally just read before this reaponse that he said that social deviations in wealth must be minimized. This has since been expanded (or reduced) to "deviations must be minimized".

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm on the road so I can't craft an adequately lengthy response, but my point isn't that SJWists are good or consistent Marxists, but that he provides loose justification and an outsized influence even if the influence is due simply to misinterpretation and the compounding nature of popularity.

You can't make this equivocation while noting the intellectual misgivings regarding any popular or widespread comprehension of Marx's work. The proper response isn't to continue to add checks to the current Marxist Body Count list you have running, but to disillusion yourself (and others, including populist-leftists) from the notion that any and every poor interpretation of Marx is his fault. There's something a bit irrational about admitting a blind spot when it comes to popular notions of Marxism and then proceeding to say that these blind spots are because of Marx himself.

That said, Marx was in favor of as much flattening as possible, even if his methodology hasn't ever "really been tried". Literally just read before this reaponse that he said that social deviations in wealth must be minimized. This has since been expanded (or reduced) to "deviations must be minimized".

He wasn't in favor of as much flattening as possible (I'm tempted to ask you to specify what you mean, but I think I already know). He was interested in targeted flattening, specifically economic. Whether or not further instances of flattening would follow from economic flattening is beside the point. What we have today is maybe a reversal, but more likely an incoherent muddling, of Marx's original argument--the muddling being that identity comes first. Marx would have flipped a shit if he saw what was happening. Selective identity? Absolutely not, such a thing was impractical to him on a political level, and probably inconceivable on a philosophical one.

As I said, whether or not other instances of "flattening" followed economic redistribution and reorganization is beside the point. Marx didn't elevate them as necessary or valuable political goals. If individualism waned after a communist revolution, then so be it; but it could just as easily have continued thriving. Marx didn't prescribe the flattening of individual identity one way or another. All he said was that individualism (as an ideology) was a symptom of the conditions under capitalism. It doesn't matter whether we agree with this claim or not, because Marx didn't advocate the dismantling of the class system through identity politics. Any change in identity or individuality could only happen after economic flattening, if it happened at all.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

The alt-right protests last night were relatively ordered and calm from what I see. Leave it to radical leftist ANTIFA members to up the ante.

It seems like the violence was instigated by Antifa.

I was trying to make the argument with someone that they weren't given a fair chance to have a peaceful protest and she conveniently ignored my comment about the protest not turning violent until the counter protesters showed up.

Pictures of some of the "peaceful protesters", who the Virginia Governor said had the police outgunned:





Also, the police chief called both sides "mutually combative". Any of you have evidence to back up your biased claims to the contrary?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...5a3617c767b_story.html?utm_term=.790c70b3d574

 

[HamburgerBoy]

First time seeing the armed dudes in camo at all. Apparently open carry is legal in Virginia though so I don't see the problem, it's the guys with baseball sticks, mace, and masks that are usually more of an issue. ANTIFA isn't totally dumb and probably knows that targeting some neckbeard Kekistani is easier.

I admitted above, after my initial post, that there was clear video evidence of the white nationalists instigating a fight against a calm representative of the SPLC, so I was wrong there. In the past, e.g. universities inviting conservative speakers, it has always been ANTIFA that shut things down with violence. In any case, there are documented cases of ANTIFA attacking not only independent reporters unprovoked, but even affiliated cable reporters in Charlottesville. I don't really even care if two groups mutually consent to beat the shit out of each other, but attacking total bystanders is bullshit.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Well the right-wingers have the disadvantage of having committed murder, as well as carrying enough firepower to the "protest" to have given the police second thoughts about doing their basic job of upholding law and order...

But yeah, fuck anyone on either side who's instigating violence. I want to see them all behind bars.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I can't read the WaPo link (paywall), but according to this, the militia guys were mostly away from the violence, and apparently actually broke up fights. The former at least would fit the videos I've seen where dudes in camo with guns aren't anywhere in the picture.

Left-wingers committed murder in Dallas at the BLM rally not long ago btw, don't recall Obama apologizing for his blackness or disavowing black separatists (not to imply that he should have, of course).

 

[Einherjar86]

BLM =/= white supremacy.

BLM is a reaction to white supremacy and an advocation of racial equality. It did not begin as a group directed toward the hatred of whites or the mistreatment of white people. White supremacist and neo-Nazi movements began, by definition, as groups predicated on the devaluation of nonwhites (not to mention gays and single women, apparently). BLM has been involved in violent incidents, but it did not originate as a violent group. The rally in Charlottesville involved people who publicly and explicitly promote violence--there are people on tape from the rally saying as much.

Obama didn't apologize for his blackness because that's not a choice; it's obligatory. Trump is being asked to apologize for white supremacist beliefs (which are a choice) that have fueled an element of his base, and he can't even do that. It's pathetic and disgusting.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I didn't compare BLM and white supremacy. This event was in theory intended to bring many different right wing groups together, a good number of them white supremacist/separatist but not all. Likewise, the protestors in Dallas were there significantly to bring attention to black issues or police abuse, but a number of them were neo-Black Panther types, and one committed murder in the name of his extremist views. You could certainly find evidence of individual blacks explicitly promoting violence against cops, and whites if we go to the 1970s (and why not? that's about when white supremacy stopped being any significant political force as well).

"Originating as a violent group" is kind of a meaningless metric anyways. Many currently-moderate political parties originated in genocide, e.g. modern day Turkey, and less-extreme groups can radicalize with time, e.g. probably some of the Pepe-worshipers that began as 4chan memers and graduated to white supremacy. The perpetrator has not been conclusively linked to any specific white supremacist group afaik (he had a shield that belonged to a group but they claimed they were giving out free shields; I wouldn't try to predict one way or the other there), but we definitely know he was a 4chan guy based on his Facebook history. If the guy is a lone wolf, a title the left is rightfully eager to give to radical black separatists and Islamists when applicable, why not to white supremacists as well?

 

[Baroque]

One group is about hate, hating anyone whose color isn't white.

The other group is about trying to stop the above group's hate.

It doesn't justify violence, but the other group clearly has the moral high ground here.

 

[Einherjar86]

I didn't compare BLM and white supremacy. This event was in theory intended to bring many different right wing groups together, a good number of them white supremacist/separatist but not all. Likewise, the protestors in Dallas were there significantly to bring attention to black issues or police abuse, but a number of them were neo-Black Panther types, and one committed murder in the name of his extremist views.

If the guy is a lone wolf, a title the left is rightfully eager to give to radical black separatists and Islamists when applicable, why not to white supremacists as well?

Not that simple. An Islamic extremist is not representative of all Muslims, nor does he indicate the general temperament or values or Islamic beliefs (I've had that argument before with CIG and while I don't think I changed his mind, he didn't change mine). In other words, a Muslim who kills a Christian doesn't stand for the anti-Christian bias of all Muslims.

On the other hand, a white supremacist who commits violence against those he despises does stand for the anti-everyfuckingbodywhoisn'tawhitemale bias of all white supremacists. That's what the entire ideology is predicated on, there's no getting around it.

I realize you didn't compare BLM with white supremacy, but you implied an equivalence when you suggested that Trump's response was comparable to Obama's, and that they basically reflect the same dynamic. Obama doesn't need to apologize for the fact that BLM supports him (or any black person, for that matter) because neither BLM nor blackness is prescriptively defined by extremist or violent beliefs. He condemned the Dallas shooting because it was an atrocity that needed to be condemned, but it wasn't indicative of the wider tendencies of BLM.

Trump is being asked to apologize for the fact that he has built his campaign and presidency around the persistent fueling of white supremacist values and has all but explicitly acknowledged them as a significant part of his base. This is a group that is, in fact, prescriptively defined by extremist or violent beliefs. It's very different than Obama not apologizing for BLM.

 

[The Ozzman]

One group is about hate, hating anyone whose color isn't white.

The other group is about hating anyone who is white

Fixed that for you