[POLITICS] If Trump is Innocent, he should prove it

[Schadrach]

I think the Democrats have made a genuinely terrible job at appealing to a huge number of Americans they could win over.

Be careful, suggesting that any Democrats were in any way at fault for Clinton not taking her rightful and ordained role as President is dangerous, suggesting that sort of thing makes you a sexist, and whatever other kind of bigot is convenient. It was HER TURN, after all! Her rightful place was stolen by the Russians!

In ways, sadly, that's often also a good electoral tactic, because it's often about motivating the enthusiasts to turn out more than providing a wider vision for the country.

Voter turnout is so bad in the US that all you have to do is pick a demographic and motivate them to actually show up and vote for you. So long as it's a demographic that can actually legally vote (for example, motivating illegal immigrants is largely wasted).

What I think Bernie and others reveal is that there are potentially a large number of Americans who can be won if only they got the messaging right.

I live in a state that's solidly red that was solidly blue just 20 years ago (I even remember when a hardline position on free speech was left-wing rather than dangerous and racist far right). During the primary, Bernie won every county by a huge margin. During the general, Trump beat Clinton in this state by a record setting margin (widest gap in election results since Lincoln, and this state was founded because of the Civil War).

Hint: Not starting with "I want to destroy your largest local industries, put you on welfare and retraining for a few years, and then make you relocate in the hopes of getting a job that isn't as good as the one you already have" is a good first step.

 

[Sonmi]

*snip*

For an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, there was a case where an off-duty Marine was approached by a group and asked if he was "proud." Not knowing what they were going on about (and rather ironically being one of "the few, the proud, the Marines") and also not knowing that the Proud Boys were having some kind of event nearby, he didn't know how to answer. As a result, they attacked him for being a "Nazi", by which I mean a Proud Boy, by which I mean someone who didn't know the right answer when a group of strangers approached and asked if he was proud.

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2018/12/18/im-mexican-marines-bewildered-after-being-called-nazis-beat-up-by-alleged-antifa-mob/

Or a teenager assaulted in a restaurant for wearing a MAGA hat: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-teenager-maga-hat-attack-san-antonio-viral-video-a8432581.html

Or maybe a middle aged man at another restaurant: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2019/02/25/maga-hat-assault-cape-cod Some reports claim the woman behind this assault was also an illegal immigrant.

Maybe an elderly man this time, again for wearing a MAGA hat: https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/crime/jersey-mayhem/2019/02/26/maga-hat-nj-man-assaulted-shoprite-cops/2993220002/

How about a younger black guy at a Cheesecake Factory, this time assaulted by the employees rather than other patrons for, you guessed it having a nice family dinner while wearing a MAGA hat: https://www.kyma.com/news/restaurant-employees-fired-after-attacking-man-wearing-maga-hat/745878181 That one is from the distant past of Mother's Day last year.

Yep, all dangerous folks who needed to be prevented from engaging in violence through proactive violent self defense. On the upside the ones happening at restaurants weren't all that serious on the whole, but I mean there have been a double digit number of "someone minding their own business assaulted for wearing a MAGA hat" incidents already this year..

This has always been my complaint about people who support "punching Nazis" - that they are very, very poor at limiting their targets to actual Nazis. They also like o try to expand the definition of "Nazis" arbitrarily to justify violence against anyone they disagree with.

I'd take having a soda spilled on my lap over getting stabbed to death, having my Church shot up, or having bombs sent to me, as far as political violence goes.

I mean, I don't agree with antifa's tactics, but to even discuss what they do when right-wing violence and terrorism is far more common, and worse, is hogwash

 

[Saelune]

Punching a person who advocates mass murder is not the same as committing mass murder. Go figure.

 

[Abomination]

I'd take having a soda spilled on my lap over getting stabbed to death, having my Church shot up, or having bombs sent to me, as far as political violence goes.

I mean, I don't agree with antifa's tactics, but to even discuss what they do when right-wing violence and terrorism is far more common, and worse, is hogwash

I don't think assaulting people for their political views or beliefs is justified unless they are actively trying to impose them.

In the examples above, by all accounts, the victims were not attempting to enforce any draconian or tyrannical policy - yet they were assaulted all the same. Just because other people are doing bad things is not an excuse to handwave assault crimes because the victims are of a different political allegiance.

 

[Sonmi]

I'd take having a soda spilled on my lap over getting stabbed to death, having my Church shot up, or having bombs sent to me, as far as political violence goes.

I mean, I don't agree with antifa's tactics, but to even discuss what they do when right-wing violence and terrorism is far more common, and worse, is hogwash

I don't think assaulting people for their political views or beliefs is justified unless they are actively trying to impose them.

In the examples above, by all accounts, the victims were not attempting to enforce any draconian or tyrannical policy - yet they were assaulted all the same. Just because other people are doing bad things is not an excuse to handwave assault crimes because the victims are of a different political allegiance.

I'm not handwaving the assaults, I'm pointing out that left wing violence is barely notable compared to how widespread right wing violence and terrorism is throughout the West. Any discussion of political violence centering on antifa is dealing in whataboutism, as far as I am concerned, it's talking about how the heating is too high while the house is on fire.

EDIT: As far as imposing political beliefs, one could argue that openly arguing and pushing for said beliefs, and successfully getting a candidate holding those beliefs elected, is pretty much actively enforcing those views.

 

[Saelune]

I'd take having a soda spilled on my lap over getting stabbed to death, having my Church shot up, or having bombs sent to me, as far as political violence goes.

I mean, I don't agree with antifa's tactics, but to even discuss what they do when right-wing violence and terrorism is far more common, and worse, is hogwash

I don't think assaulting people for their political views or beliefs is justified unless they are actively trying to impose them.

In the examples above, by all accounts, the victims were not attempting to enforce any draconian or tyrannical policy - yet they were assaulted all the same. Just because other people are doing bad things is not an excuse to handwave assault crimes because the victims are of a different political allegiance.

A Nazi gets punched 'The left is terrible' but right-wingers shoot up multiple places and...what?

A guy in a van decked out as a shrine to Trump sends fucking bombs to left-wingers and...what?


If you really cared about political violence, you would condemn the right more than you do the left.

 

[Saelune]

'I know Hitler SAYS he wants to kill all Jews, but lets wait and see, he hasn't done it yet. Hell, I heard he was building camps for them, people are overreacting'.

 

[Thaluikhain]

'I know Hitler SAYS he wants to kill all Jews, but lets wait and see, he hasn't done it yet. Hell, I heard he was building camps for them, people are overreacting'.

To extend that a little, Hitler didn't actually kill 6 million Jews (and at least 5 million others, depends how you count it) personally. He just told people to do so, not even always in the form of official orders.

 

[Hawki]

A Nazi gets punched 'The left is terrible' but right-wingers shoot up multiple places and...what?

That would be all well and good if the term "Nazi" hadn't been thrown around so much that it's lost all meaning.

 

[TheIronRuler]

The Nurenburg laws didn't see much backlash or harsh reaction... It seemed like it felt fine to treat the Jew as a second class person... Reception was pretty warm or indifferent regarding the prison camps for undesirables - homosexuals, jehovah's witnesses, political dissidents... They were viewed as a corrupting factor that had to be removed from the general population. They were forced to labor for the Reich in these camps. It was later during the occupation of Poland, that the Nazis had so indulged themselves in debasing the Polish Jewry - much to the appreciation of the Germans back home. It escalated into execution death squads run by or encouraged by the Germans, with either locals being motivated by the near Nazi occupation to 'remove' Jews (like the Lithuanian volunteers volunteering to murder Jews...) or local generals taking initiative to... liquidate the local Jewry. Such was the case in Kiev, where Jews were executed and buried in a mass grave in Babi Yar. I had family there. They didn't escape in time.

My grandmother warned me when I was young, not to trust the other girls, always look for a nice Jewish girl... When the order was set to flush the remaining Jews of Kiev, they all gathered outside, goaded by their neighbors and friends... Jewish Husbands kicked out of their homes by their Ukrainian wives...

Stop comparing to Hitler. You're making a fool of yourself.

Each terrible person is responsible to their despicable actions.

Before the Holocaust, Jews would say "We've lived past Pharaoh, we can endure this...", now they say it about Hitler... There have been very few individuals with the desire for such wanton murder... Do not cheapen the name, the significance behind it.

When Trump brings back Jim Crow, you can talk about resembling Hitler. So far every person is equal in the eyes of the law in the USA. That is the prelude to horrors to come... Japanese Americans were interned on US soil without any proper cause... Such is the line in the sand that they knew not to cross, that the government did cross with its own citizens... Was the US administration at the time a bunch of Nazis...

Idiotic hyperbolic claims cheapen what had happened. I hear it gladly recounted alongside gleeful accusation of the country of the Jews of the same thing... A pitiful attempt to redeem Europe of what it had done.

 

[Abomination]

I'm not handwaving the assaults, I'm pointing out that left wing violence is barely notable compared to how widespread right wing violence and terrorism is throughout the West. Any discussion of political violence centering on antifa is dealing in whataboutism, as far as I am concerned, it's talking about how the heating is too high while the house is on fire.

It's a whataboutism when it is used to excuse the actions of others. It's possible to find BOTH acts appalling. The right certainly does a lot of horrible shit, but that doesn't excuse the shit that extremists on the left pull either.

EDIT: As far as imposing political beliefs, one could argue that openly arguing and pushing for said beliefs, and successfully getting a candidate holding those beliefs elected, is pretty much actively enforcing those views.

That opens up the rabbit hole leading to democracy = tyranny. In this context, it's okay to assault people if you suspect they hold political leanings that do not align with yours? Under no circumstance am I defending the actions of the Republican party or the foolishness of those who vote for it, but I am still condemning people who think it is acceptable to assault and harass others for their (supposed) political affiliations.

A Nazi gets punched 'The left is terrible' but right-wingers shoot up multiple places and...what?

A guy in a van decked out as a shrine to Trump sends fucking bombs to left-wingers and...what?


If you really cared about political violence, you would condemn the right more than you do the left.

Nobody in this thread is arguing that shooting up establishments or bombing people is acceptable - but people are arguing that it's acceptable to assault people for having a political view they disagree with.

Would it make you happy if I keep rattling on about how murder is bad and how racially motivated violence is abhorrent? If I do that enough do I earn enough points to finally say that members of the left are also capable of behaving in an unacceptable manner?

 

[tstorm823]

Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless for free, that's socialism, and it is not capitalism.

As is tradition, that's not socialism that does those things, it's society that does those things.

To the latter paragraph, I believe we went over this on the first page of the thread. Obstruction of justice is a procedural crime that is not predicated on the existence of an underlying crime. It is entirely contained within the act of trying to illegally influence an investigation, regardless of the reason.

It's not predicated on the existence of an underlying crime, but that isn't this. You think Trump is guilty of obstructing justice because of comments he made about an investigation he cooperated with that couldn't indict him in the first place. It's not that he didn't obstruct justice because he wasn't guilty, it's that:

He didn't obstruct Mueller.
Mueller wasn't working to indict Trump.
You're now two connections away from Trump obstructing justice. Your case is only getting worse.

Point of fact, the report actually lays out a good ten counts of obstruction of justice, but rather explicitly refrains from making the charge because of that selfsame policy.

Perhaps the most apt phrase I've been hearing thrown about with regards to this is that the report is a roadmap. Essentially "we can't charge him now due to extant policy, but when we can charge him, here's what you charge him with".

I don't think you understand what the situation is at all. It's not miracle powers that exempt a sitting president from prosecution. It's a policy within the department of justice because the department of justice is in the executive branch, run by the president. He could have fired Mueller at any point for any reason and it wouldn't be obstruction of justice because it's not the job of the executive branch to have oversight of itself. There's not a policy of "we can't charge him yet", there's a policy of "we can't charge him." If you want the president charged, that's what the impeachment process is for. Nobody in their right mind is going to push for impeachment based on disliking being investigated for 2 years.

No.

To use the simplistic notion of politics as a combination of social liberalism - illiberalism and economic preferences (capitalism - socialism), a substantial chunk of the "far left" are actually quite illiberal in various ways.

It is generally liberals who are in favour of easy legal access to drugs and sex - but bear in mind liberal in this sense runs all the way from the far left, through the centre, to a large chunk of the political right and libertarianism. "Physical satisfaction" however is not the moral imperative. The moral imperative is personal autonomy: the right to do with yourself what you wish without interference (assuming it does not harm others). Some people may choose physical pleasure first and foremost, however plenty of liberals will disapprove of it even if they accept the legal and moral right to do so. The reason for this is a distinction between a personal morality and the morality of imposing law: for instance things like lying and cheating on your spouse are usually held to be immoral, but not deemed appropriate for legal intervention.

I don't understand what you're thinking here. Why write out all that stuff about the moral imperative of liberalism immediately after acknowledging explicitly that the people I'm talking about aren't liberal? I know communists aren't liberal. If you think the people who want to abolish private property are for legalizing pot on the basis of the morality of personal autonomy, I'd suggest you're confused.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I'd take having a soda spilled on my lap over getting stabbed to death, having my Church shot up, or having bombs sent to me, as far as political violence goes.

I mean, I don't agree with antifa's tactics, but to even discuss what they do when right-wing violence and terrorism is far more common, and worse, is hogwash

I don't think assaulting people for their political views or beliefs is justified unless they are actively trying to impose them.

In the examples above, by all accounts, the victims were not attempting to enforce any draconian or tyrannical policy - yet they were assaulted all the same. Just because other people are doing bad things is not an excuse to handwave assault crimes because the victims are of a different political allegiance.

A Nazi gets punched 'The left is terrible' but right-wingers shoot up multiple places and...what?

A guy in a van decked out as a shrine to Trump sends fucking bombs to left-wingers and...what?


If you really cared about political violence, you would condemn the right more than you do the left.

That's the thing exactly. The left is expected to apologize for every single time someone did something questionable and when someone hasn't done anything questionable in a while you just bring up fucking Stalin again and ask the left, as a whole, to apologize for everything he ever did. And the left, of course, has tripping over itself to do so whenever someone wants them to.

Take the right in comparison. Countless cases of genocide and murderous terrorism, looting and plundering every single country they run while promoting policies with no purpose other than to cause arbitrary selected minorities misery and commiting a genocide about once every few decades. Are they expected to apologize? Are they expected to disavow practically everything their side has been up to? Would they? Don't kid yourself. You asked rightists to apologize for the Holocaust you'd get one group who claims it had nothing to do with their ideology, another one that will tell you it should happen again and a third one denying it entirely.

Of course the one reason the right has gotten as strong as it did is the lefts inherent tendency towards pacifism and tolerance. I live in Germany, a country whose greatest responsiblity and utmost priority should be uncompromising antifascism, yet our rightists have a cute little nickname they give to everyone to the left of Reagan: "Gutmensch", which is, more or less, the German equivalent of the English "Do-gooder" or "Goody Two-Shoes" and demonstrates quite clearly how they view the antifascist left. As a bunch of spineless moralizers incapable of defending themselves.

 

[Asita]

To the latter paragraph, I believe we went over this on the first page of the thread. Obstruction of justice is a procedural crime that is not predicated on the existence of an underlying crime. It is entirely contained within the act of trying to illegally influence an investigation, regardless of the reason.

It's not predicated on the existence of an underlying crime, but that isn't this. You think Trump is guilty of obstructing justice because of comments he made about an investigation he cooperated with that couldn't indict him in the first place. It's not that he didn't obstruct justice because he wasn't guilty, it's that:

He didn't obstruct Mueller.
Mueller wasn't working to indict Trump.
You're now two connections away from Trump obstructing justice. Your case is only getting worse.

Ok, I'm seeing two points of disconnect here:

To the former, his success (or lack thereof) in obstructing Mueller is immaterial. The criteria for obstruction is met through making the attempt.

To the latter, whether or not Mueller was working to indict Trump is also immaterial. It wouldn't have even mattered if Trump was the subject of the investigation.

To explain this a bit further, the question of whether or not a given person is guilty of obstruction of justice is self contained in the question of whether or not they tried to illicitly influence the investigation. If someone willfully and knowingly tries to protect a suspect (eg, lying to investigators) or to hide from investigation of their own activities, they can be prosecuted for obstruction of justice. If they try to intimidate a witness, they can be prosecuted for obstruction of justice regardless of the witness's decision to testify. If they try to bribe someone to keep silent when queried by investigators, they can be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, regardless of whether or not their target even accepts the bribe, much less cooperates with investigators.

To be more direct, Obstruction of Justice is met through three criteria:

1) There was a pending federal judicial proceeding
2) The defendant knew of the proceeding
3) The defendant had corrupt intent to interfere with or attempted to interfere with the proceeding.

It really is that simple.

Point of fact, the report actually lays out a good ten counts of obstruction of justice, but rather explicitly refrains from making the charge because of that selfsame policy.

Perhaps the most apt phrase I've been hearing thrown about with regards to this is that the report is a roadmap. Essentially "we can't charge him now due to extant policy, but when we can charge him, here's what you charge him with".

I don't think you understand what the situation is at all. It's not miracle powers that exempt a sitting president from prosecution. It's a policy within the department of justice because the department of justice is in the executive branch, run by the president. He could have fired Mueller at any point for any reason and it wouldn't be obstruction of justice because it's not the job of the executive branch to have oversight of itself. There's not a policy of "we can't charge him yet", there's a policy of "we can't charge him." If you want the president charged, that's what the impeachment process is for. Nobody in their right mind is going to push for impeachment based on disliking being investigated for 2 years.

...That's about as wrong as saying that it wouldn't be obstruction of justice for a judge to dismiss a case against themselves because dismissing cases is part of their job. Or for a sheriff to fire anyone who insisted on investigating charges that said sheriff was taking bribes. Or to borrow from fiction, I can again draw a parallel to the film Philadelphia, albeit not for the crime of obstruction. The long and short of this is that while Beckett's (Hanks) firm, as his employer, had the right to terminate his employment in a broad sense, firing him because he had AIDS was still against the law. The reason behind the firing (or attempted firing) is the determinant factor, not whether or not they had the right to terminate employment under other circumstances.

On a more specific note, that's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black on your part, isn't it? The DoJ's standing policy not to indict a sitting president traces back to the a memo circulated in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council in 1973, during the Watergate scandal, and reaffirmed in 2000. The stated rationale of the DoJ itself is that pressing charges against the president would be a constitutional violation of the separation of powers and undermine the capacity of the executive branch to execute its assigned functions. Point of fact, Mueller actually references this on page 213 of the report.

First, a traditional prosecution or declination decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution, but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgement. The Office of Legal Council (OLC) has issued an opinion finding that "the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions" in violation of "the constitutional separation of powers." Given the role of the Special Counsel as an attorney in the Department of Justice and the framework of the Special Counsel's regulations...this Office accepted OLC's legal conclusion for the purpose of exercising prosecutorial jurisdiction. And apart from OLC's constitutional view, we recognized that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would place burdens on the President's capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing Presidential misconduct.

Second, while the OLC opinion concludes that a sitting President may not be prosecuted, it recognizes that a criminal investigation during a President's term is permissible. The OLC opinion also recognizes that a President does not have immunity after he leaves office.

So, as I said, can't prosecute until he's out of office, whether through normal election process or impeachment.

And "based on disliking being investigated for 2 years"? To repeat what I said on page 2, "it's things like that that make me suspect that you are not as impartial as you believe yourself to be". Trying to convince the head of the FBI to bury the investigation into Michael Flynn and then firing said head for not playing ball doesn't even have anything to do with Trump being under investigation. And efforts to curtail an investigation, fire the prosecutor and then attempting to cover up that attempted firing, trying to influence testimony, trying to influence a jury...these go well beyond "disliking being investigated". You are trying to handwave some very serious attempts to interfere with several criminal proceedings.

 

[Sonmi]

Would it make you happy if I keep rattling on about how murder is bad and how racially motivated violence is abhorrent? If I do that enough do I earn enough points to finally say that members of the left are also capable of behaving in an unacceptable manner?

That would legitimately be better, yes. As PsychedelicDiamonds pointed out, there's a massive double standard in what is expected of people on the Left vs people on the Right. Hand-wringing about Antifa ain't going to lead us anywhere when the opposing side refuses to own up to its far more serious crimes.

 

[Agema]

I don't understand what you're thinking here. Why write out all that stuff about the moral imperative of liberalism immediately after acknowledging explicitly that the people I'm talking about aren't liberal?

My apologies: I'm too used to "far left" being used to describe progressives and social democrats and I can't always keep track of people who use the term properly.

I know communists aren't liberal.

Which communists?

The old Soviet/Maoist style regimes certainly weren't liberal. According to Marxist theory, communism ends with the withering away of the state and so also centralised law and control - socialist libertarianism. The old Eastern bloc, by Marxist theory, was actually in a transitional phase between capitalism and communism. Whilst there still are Maoists / Leninists etc., the failure of those states has led a lot of modern communists to pursue communism by other means, and they tend to be liberal / libertarian.

 

[Saelune]

I'm not handwaving the assaults, I'm pointing out that left wing violence is barely notable compared to how widespread right wing violence and terrorism is throughout the West. Any discussion of political violence centering on antifa is dealing in whataboutism, as far as I am concerned, it's talking about how the heating is too high while the house is on fire.

It's a whataboutism when it is used to excuse the actions of others. It's possible to find BOTH acts appalling. The right certainly does a lot of horrible shit, but that doesn't excuse the shit that extremists on the left pull either.

EDIT: As far as imposing political beliefs, one could argue that openly arguing and pushing for said beliefs, and successfully getting a candidate holding those beliefs elected, is pretty much actively enforcing those views.

That opens up the rabbit hole leading to democracy = tyranny. In this context, it's okay to assault people if you suspect they hold political leanings that do not align with yours? Under no circumstance am I defending the actions of the Republican party or the foolishness of those who vote for it, but I am still condemning people who think it is acceptable to assault and harass others for their (supposed) political affiliations.

A Nazi gets punched 'The left is terrible' but right-wingers shoot up multiple places and...what?

A guy in a van decked out as a shrine to Trump sends fucking bombs to left-wingers and...what?


If you really cared about political violence, you would condemn the right more than you do the left.

Nobody in this thread is arguing that shooting up establishments or bombing people is acceptable - but people are arguing that it's acceptable to assault people for having a political view they disagree with.

Would it make you happy if I keep rattling on about how murder is bad and how racially motivated violence is abhorrent? If I do that enough do I earn enough points to finally say that members of the left are also capable of behaving in an unacceptable manner?

You are arguing that punching people in the face is a bigger deal than shooting up places or bombing people, becase you are acting like the left is worse than the right when that is just objectively not true. If you want to decry political violence, THEN DO THAT by actually making a big deal out of literal terrorists being terrorists and murdering people instead of making a big deal of Nazis being punched, cause guess what! America did way worse to Nazis in 1940's AND WE ALL USED TO AGREE THAT WAS GOOD!

Imagine going 46 miles in a 45 and getting pulled over by a cop, just as another person goes 90 past you both. You say 'but that guy is going 90!' and the cop responds 'Im not arguing that 90 is too fast, but you're the one Im going to ticket'.

Donald Trump is President, not Hillary Clinton. McConnel is stopping every piece of good legislation and political action, not Pelosi. Right-Wing Pro-Trump terrorists are murdering people left and right and barely any Nazis are actually being punched.

If all you care about is shitting on the left, then maybe you just don't actually care about opposing political violence.

 

[Saelune]

Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless for free, that's socialism, and it is not capitalism.

As is tradition, that's not socialism that does those things, it's society that does those things.

Now don't get me wrong, I am well aware that many political labels have long been twisted into meaning different things. You yourself are trying to make people think communism is inherently hedonistic, which it is not.

But socialism gets its name from society, the idea being that society should look after the people that is part of it, that we should take care of eachother to better our society.

So yeah, it is socialism, because it is society. I will give you the benefit of the doubt here, if you think people helping eachother is good, then you need to stop being mistaken into thinking 'socialism' is this evil thing that Fox News and Trump wants you to think it is. Socialism is people helping people.

 

[Saelune]

I'd take having a soda spilled on my lap over getting stabbed to death, having my Church shot up, or having bombs sent to me, as far as political violence goes.

I mean, I don't agree with antifa's tactics, but to even discuss what they do when right-wing violence and terrorism is far more common, and worse, is hogwash

I don't think assaulting people for their political views or beliefs is justified unless they are actively trying to impose them.

In the examples above, by all accounts, the victims were not attempting to enforce any draconian or tyrannical policy - yet they were assaulted all the same. Just because other people are doing bad things is not an excuse to handwave assault crimes because the victims are of a different political allegiance.

A Nazi gets punched 'The left is terrible' but right-wingers shoot up multiple places and...what?

A guy in a van decked out as a shrine to Trump sends fucking bombs to left-wingers and...what?


If you really cared about political violence, you would condemn the right more than you do the left.

That's the thing exactly. The left is expected to apologize for every single time someone did something questionable and when someone hasn't done anything questionable in a while you just bring up fucking Stalin again and ask the left, as a whole, to apologize for everything he ever did. And the left, of course, has tripping over itself to do so whenever someone wants them to.

Take the right in comparison. Countless cases of genocide and murderous terrorism, looting and plundering every single country they run while promoting policies with no purpose other than to cause arbitrary selected minorities misery and commiting a genocide about once every few decades. Are they expected to apologize? Are they expected to disavow practically everything their side has been up to? Would they? Don't kid yourself. You asked rightists to apologize for the Holocaust you'd get one group who claims it had nothing to do with their ideology, another one that will tell you it should happen again and a third one denying it entirely.

Of course the one reason the right has gotten as strong as it did is the lefts inherent tendency towards pacifism and tolerance. I live in Germany, a country whose greatest responsiblity and utmost priority should be uncompromising antifascism, yet our rightists have a cute little nickname they give to everyone to the left of Reagan: "Gutmensch", which is, more or less, the German equivalent of the English "Do-gooder" or "Goody Two-Shoes" and demonstrates quite clearly how they view the antifascist left. As a bunch of spineless moralizers incapable of defending themselves.

I am just sick and tired of people telling me I am wrong for wanting fairness and equality.

 

[Saelune]

A Nazi gets punched 'The left is terrible' but right-wingers shoot up multiple places and...what?

That would be all well and good if the term "Nazi" hadn't been thrown around so much that it's lost all meaning.

Neo-Nazis: We're Nazis!

Anti-Nazis: They are Nazis!

You: They aren't Nazis.

*shrug*