About those peaceful antifa protests...

[crazy canuck]

I don't think that's a critical distinction. Yi was comparing two mindsets, not likening Trump to McCarthy.

Ok, others might see a distinction between government actions and non governmental actions.

Was the blacklist a government action?

Do a bit of reading about the Un-American Activities hearings and the creation of the blacklist.

[Sophie Scholl]

...  There is a lot more to Fascist ideology than just racism and/or antisemitism.   

Precisely.  Fascism is an ideology, and claiming that people who don't hold that ideology are "fascists" or "Nazis" just makes the claimant sound emo and silly.

One does not need to be a card carrying member of a Fascist organization or group to sympathize with, assist, or turn a blind eye to the actions of said groups though.

So you are now arguing that there is NOT "a lot more to Fascist ideology than just racism and/or antisemitism?"  Or is your statement a non sequitur?  Fascists are fascists - they share a common ideology.  Nazis are a subset of Fascists, with a bunch of racism stuff thrown in.  The Communist party of the USSR (and the Third International, for that matter) assisted and turned a blind eye to the actions of Nazis.  Does this make Marxists into Nazis?

No, no, and no.  That's the most I'm willing to go down the rabbit hole of inane minutia and silliness.  Sorry, but I don't feel like playing with you.  It is never fun, it is never rewarding, and it is never enlightening.  Have a nice day!

[crazy canuck]

...  There is a lot more to Fascist ideology than just racism and/or antisemitism.   

Precisely.  Fascism is an ideology, and claiming that people who don't hold that ideology are "fascists" or "Nazis" just makes the claimant sound emo and silly.

One does not need to be a card carrying member of a Fascist organization or group to sympathize with, assist, or turn a blind eye to the actions of said groups though.

So you are now arguing that there is NOT "a lot more to Fascist ideology than just racism and/or antisemitism?"  Or is your statement a non sequitur?  Fascists are fascists - they share a common ideology.  Nazis are a subset of Fascists, with a bunch of racism stuff thrown in.  The Communist party of the USSR (and the Third International, for that matter) assisted and turned a blind eye to the actions of Nazis.  Does this make Marxists into Nazis?

No, no, and no.  That's the most I'm willing to go down the rabbit hole of inane minutia and silliness.  Sorry, but I don't feel like playing with you.  It is never fun, it is never rewarding, and it is never enlightening.  Have a nice day!

The correct decision

[grumbler]

No, no, and no.  That's the most I'm willing to go down the rabbit hole of inane minutia and silliness.  Sorry, but I don't feel like playing with you.  It is never fun, it is never rewarding, and it is never enlightening.  Have a nice day!

Okay.  That's pretty much what I thought.  First Rule of Holes, and so forth.

[Sophie Scholl]

No, no, and no.  That's the most I'm willing to go down the rabbit hole of inane minutia and silliness.  Sorry, but I don't feel like playing with you.  It is never fun, it is never rewarding, and it is never enlightening.  Have a nice day!

Okay.  That's pretty much what I thought.  First Rule of Holes, and so forth.

Have a nice day!

[jimmy olsen]

They consider themselves "Western Chauvinists", touting the superiority of Western culture, but they have disavowed racism.

I know what they say. I am asking if you consider them racist.

As far as I understand it (and I don't spend a lot of time thinking about them) the Proud Boys allow and have non-white members.

There appears to be an argument that PB are misogynistic, certainly both anti-Muslim and anti-semitic, but racism doesn't seem to apply.

I thought this was an interesting article on the subject.

Why Young Men of Color Are Joining White-Supremacist Groups

Patriot Prayer's leader is half-Japanese. Black and brown faces march with the Proud Boys. Is the future of hate multicultural?

Arun Gupta

09.04.18 4:54 AM ET

PORTLAND, Oregon—Outfitted in a flak jacket and fighting gloves, Enrique Tarrio was one of dozens of black, Latino, and Asian men who marched alongside white supremacists in Portland on Aug. 4.

Tarrio, who identifies as Afro-Cuban, is president of the Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, who call themselves "Western chauvinists," and "regularly spout white-nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Last month, prior to the Patriot Prayer rally he attended in Portland, Tarrio was pictured with other far-right activists making a hand sign that started as a hoax but has become an in-joke. Last year, Tarrio said traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Right rally that ended with a neo-Nazi allegedly killing an anti-fascist protester. (The Proud Boys said any members who went to the event were kicked out.)

Tarrio and other people of color at the far-right rallies claim institutional racism no longer exists in America. In their view, blacks are to blame for any lingering inequality because they are dependent on welfare, lack strong leadership, and believe Democrats who tell them "You're always going to be broke. You're not going to make it in society because of institutional racism," as one mixed-race man put it.

If racism doesn't exist, I ask Tarrio, how would he explain the disproportionate killing of young black men by police? "Hip-hop culture," he says. It "glorifies that lifestyle... of selling drugs, shooting up." Because of that, "Obviously you're going to have higher crime rates. Obviously you're going to have more police presence and more confrontations." (Police kill black males aged 15 to 34 at nine times the rate of the general population.)

Elysa Sanchez, who is black and Puerto Rican, attended the "Liberty or Death Rally Against Left-Wing Violence" in Seattle on Aug. 18, joining about 20 militiamen open-carrying handguns and semi-automatic rifles.

Sanchez says, "If black people are committing more murders, more robberies, more thefts, more violent crime, that's why you would see more black men having encounters with the police."

Also in Seattle, Franky Price, who said he is  "black and white,"wore a T-shirt reading, "It's okay to be white."

They are among nearly a dozen black, Latino, and Asian participants at far-right rallies on the West Coast interviewed by The Daily Beast recently. They represent the new face of the far right that some scholars term "multiracial white supremacy."

The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, which overlap, embrace an America-first nationalism that is less pro-white than it is anti-Muslim, anti-illegal immigrant, and anti-Black Lives Matter. "Proud Boys is multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide," a lawyer for the group's leader, Gavin McInnis, said in a statement. "The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best."

Daniel Martinez HoSang, associate professor at Yale University, co-author of the forthcoming Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, says "Multiculturalism has become a norm in society" and has spread from corporations and consumer culture to conservatism and the far-right.

Indeed, Patriot Prayer's leader is Joey Gibson, who is half-Japanese and claims Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a hero. But his agenda is the opposite of King's. Gibson's rallies have attracted neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis.

His right-hand man is Tusitala "Tiny" Toese, a 345-pound Samoan American who calls himself "a brown brother for Donald Trump" and is notorious for brawling. By bringing diversity to what is at heart a white-supremacist movement, people of color give it legitimacy to challenge state power and commit violence against their enemies.

David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, says, "The ranks of people of color who show up to these right-wing events are totally dominated by males." He says the alt-right targets white males between the ages of 15 and 30 with a message of male resentment, which ends up attracting black, Latino, and Asian men as well.

Neiwert says many young men of color in the far-right grew up on conservative traditions common in minority communities. Their journey to the far-right has been enabled by the ease of recruitment in the internet age and the endorsement of extremism by Trump.

Entry points to the far-right include male-dominated video-game culture, the anti-feminist gamergate, troll havens on 4chan and 8chan, and the conspiracism that flourishes on websites like Infowars. Libertarianism is another gateway.

"A lot of these young guys," Neiwert says, "especially from the software world, who are being sucked into white nationalism, start out being worked up about Ayn Rand in high school."

Andrew Zhao, 25, a software engineer, says his parents, physicists who emigrated from mainland China, "are Trump fans." He found out about the Seattle rally from Reddit and Facebook and said, "We need more patriotism. A lot of liberals don't like America."

Daniel HoSang says some people of color are drawn to the far-right because they "identify with the military, with nationalism, with patriotism, with conservatism."

Wearing a Proud Boys hat, David Nopal, 23, came to the Seattle rally alone, like others. Nopal, whose parents crossed illegally from Mexico, said, "I'm very patriotic. The U.S. isn't perfect, but we are a hell of a lot better than other countries."

Sanchez comes from a military family. "They all love America. It's a big part of the reason I'm a patriot."

Similarly, Tarrio attributes his anti-socialist politics to his grandfather's experience in Cuba under Fidel Castro.

They proudly identify as "American" without modifiers. In their America they've never experienced racism. They eagerly talk politics, but evidence of their America is scant beyond the internet. Institutional racism has been ended by affirmative action, "black privilege," and equal protection under the law. Any remaining black inequality is caused by social welfare and liberal policies. In any case, it was Democrats who started the Klan.

People of color within the far-right play a role that "excuses white racism and bears witness to the failure of people of color," HoSang says, adding that they make "white supremacy a more durable force."

HoSang said the far-right is trying to broaden its appeal from a whites-only movement in a multiracial America, so it is "laying claim to the ideas of anti-racism, racial uplift, and civil-rights progress."

HoSang says, "It's hard for people to wrap their head around how Dr. King and civil-rights language are being used to legitimate positions approaching fascism and violence to restore hierarchy and order. But they are."

[Berkut]

So, for you, the Proud Boys are not racist?

They consider themselves "Western Chauvinists", touting the superiority of Western culture, but they have disavowed racism.

You don't really believe that, do you?

[Berkut]

They consider themselves "Western Chauvinists", touting the superiority of Western culture, but they have disavowed racism.

I know what they say. I am asking if you consider them racist.

As far as I understand it (and I don't spend a lot of time thinking about them) the Proud Boys allow and have non-white members.

There appears to be an argument that PB are misogynistic, certainly both anti-Muslim and anti-semitic, but racism doesn't seem to apply.

I thought this was an interesting article on the subject.

Why Young Men of Color Are Joining White-Supremacist Groups

Patriot Prayer's leader is half-Japanese. Black and brown faces march with the Proud Boys. Is the future of hate multicultural?

Arun Gupta

09.04.18 4:54 AM ET

PORTLAND, Oregon—Outfitted in a flak jacket and fighting gloves, Enrique Tarrio was one of dozens of black, Latino, and Asian men who marched alongside white supremacists in Portland on Aug. 4.

Tarrio, who identifies as Afro-Cuban, is president of the Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, who call themselves "Western chauvinists," and "regularly spout white-nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Last month, prior to the Patriot Prayer rally he attended in Portland, Tarrio was pictured with other far-right activists making a hand sign that started as a hoax but has become an in-joke. Last year, Tarrio said traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Right rally that ended with a neo-Nazi allegedly killing an anti-fascist protester. (The Proud Boys said any members who went to the event were kicked out.)

Tarrio and other people of color at the far-right rallies claim institutional racism no longer exists in America. In their view, blacks are to blame for any lingering inequality because they are dependent on welfare, lack strong leadership, and believe Democrats who tell them "You're always going to be broke. You're not going to make it in society because of institutional racism," as one mixed-race man put it.

If racism doesn't exist, I ask Tarrio, how would he explain the disproportionate killing of young black men by police? "Hip-hop culture," he says. It "glorifies that lifestyle... of selling drugs, shooting up." Because of that, "Obviously you're going to have higher crime rates. Obviously you're going to have more police presence and more confrontations." (Police kill black males aged 15 to 34 at nine times the rate of the general population.)

Elysa Sanchez, who is black and Puerto Rican, attended the "Liberty or Death Rally Against Left-Wing Violence" in Seattle on Aug. 18, joining about 20 militiamen open-carrying handguns and semi-automatic rifles.

Sanchez says, "If black people are committing more murders, more robberies, more thefts, more violent crime, that's why you would see more black men having encounters with the police."

Also in Seattle, Franky Price, who said he is  "black and white,"wore a T-shirt reading, "It's okay to be white."

They are among nearly a dozen black, Latino, and Asian participants at far-right rallies on the West Coast interviewed by The Daily Beast recently. They represent the new face of the far right that some scholars term "multiracial white supremacy."

The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, which overlap, embrace an America-first nationalism that is less pro-white than it is anti-Muslim, anti-illegal immigrant, and anti-Black Lives Matter. "Proud Boys is multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide," a lawyer for the group's leader, Gavin McInnis, said in a statement. "The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best."

Daniel Martinez HoSang, associate professor at Yale University, co-author of the forthcoming Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, says "Multiculturalism has become a norm in society" and has spread from corporations and consumer culture to conservatism and the far-right.

Indeed, Patriot Prayer's leader is Joey Gibson, who is half-Japanese and claims Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a hero. But his agenda is the opposite of King's. Gibson's rallies have attracted neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis.

His right-hand man is Tusitala "Tiny" Toese, a 345-pound Samoan American who calls himself "a brown brother for Donald Trump" and is notorious for brawling. By bringing diversity to what is at heart a white-supremacist movement, people of color give it legitimacy to challenge state power and commit violence against their enemies.

David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, says, "The ranks of people of color who show up to these right-wing events are totally dominated by males." He says the alt-right targets white males between the ages of 15 and 30 with a message of male resentment, which ends up attracting black, Latino, and Asian men as well.

Neiwert says many young men of color in the far-right grew up on conservative traditions common in minority communities. Their journey to the far-right has been enabled by the ease of recruitment in the internet age and the endorsement of extremism by Trump.

Entry points to the far-right include male-dominated video-game culture, the anti-feminist gamergate, troll havens on 4chan and 8chan, and the conspiracism that flourishes on websites like Infowars. Libertarianism is another gateway.

"A lot of these young guys," Neiwert says, "especially from the software world, who are being sucked into white nationalism, start out being worked up about Ayn Rand in high school."

Andrew Zhao, 25, a software engineer, says his parents, physicists who emigrated from mainland China, "are Trump fans." He found out about the Seattle rally from Reddit and Facebook and said, "We need more patriotism. A lot of liberals don't like America."

Daniel HoSang says some people of color are drawn to the far-right because they "identify with the military, with nationalism, with patriotism, with conservatism."

Wearing a Proud Boys hat, David Nopal, 23, came to the Seattle rally alone, like others. Nopal, whose parents crossed illegally from Mexico, said, "I'm very patriotic. The U.S. isn't perfect, but we are a hell of a lot better than other countries."

Sanchez comes from a military family. "They all love America. It's a big part of the reason I'm a patriot."

Similarly, Tarrio attributes his anti-socialist politics to his grandfather's experience in Cuba under Fidel Castro.

They proudly identify as "American" without modifiers. In their America they've never experienced racism. They eagerly talk politics, but evidence of their America is scant beyond the internet. Institutional racism has been ended by affirmative action, "black privilege," and equal protection under the law. Any remaining black inequality is caused by social welfare and liberal policies. In any case, it was Democrats who started the Klan.

People of color within the far-right play a role that "excuses white racism and bears witness to the failure of people of color," HoSang says, adding that they make "white supremacy a more durable force."

HoSang said the far-right is trying to broaden its appeal from a whites-only movement in a multiracial America, so it is "laying claim to the ideas of anti-racism, racial uplift, and civil-rights progress."

HoSang says, "It's hard for people to wrap their head around how Dr. King and civil-rights language are being used to legitimate positions approaching fascism and violence to restore hierarchy and order. But they are."

The dumb ass lefts whole scale embrace of identity politics and refusal to even countenance any kind of rational discussion of race, immigration, and globalism beyond "YOUR RACIST" and "The police and FBI and CIA and all authority figures are secret complicit Nazis" is what leaves a nice little gap for dog whistle racist organizations like Proud Boys to fill.

[dps]

The dumb ass lefts whole scale embrace of identity politics and refusal to even countenance any kind of rational discussion of race, immigration, and globalism beyond "YOUR RACIST" and "The police and FBI and CIA and all authority figures are secret complicit Nazis" is what leaves a nice little gap for dog whistle racist organizations like Proud Boys to fill.

The left's embrace of identity politics is a large part of why I have so much hesitation about voting for Democrats, even with Trump as the face of the Republican party.

[The Minsky Moment]

The right and left have both embraced identity politics.  They just privilege different identities.

[Valmy]

The dumb ass lefts whole scale embrace of identity politics and refusal to even countenance any kind of rational discussion of race, immigration, and globalism beyond "YOUR RACIST" and "The police and FBI and CIA and all authority figures are secret complicit Nazis" is what leaves a nice little gap for dog whistle racist organizations like Proud Boys to fill.

The left's embrace of identity politics is a large part of why I have so much hesitation about voting for Democrats, even with Trump as the face of the Republican party.

It is not so much of an embrace as it is a hijack. They are a pretty intimidating group.

[Razgovory]

Longtime antigovernment militia organizer calls for 'lone wolf' action against antifa

An antigovernment extremist who has called Islam a mental disorder and urged his followers to shoot black women and children has issued another call to violence, posting a video on his Facebook page urging members of the Patriot movement to engage in "lone wolf" action against antifa.

James Stachowiak, who runs the antigovernment propagandist Freedom Fighter Radio, is a former police officer who has repeatedly urged his listeners to consider lone wolf acts of violence. This latest announcement followed a Sunday prayer vigil, which Stachowiak attended with several others in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to show support for a toppled statue that commemorated the Confederacy. In the video, Stachowiak alleges that tires on a fellow attendee's vehicle were slashed during the event. He blames antifa and demands nationwide retaliation.

"This will have a blowback [sic] against antifa," Stachowiak warns. "I personally hold all members of antifa responsible in all fifty states. If someone is a member of antifa, people, it is time to, be ... lone wolves and retaliate against this attack. Retaliate as a lone wolf."

Stachowiak's call for lone wolf action comes at a time where violence from lone offenders — who, given their smaller footprints are typically less vulnerable to detection by law enforcement — is overshadowing the threat of violence from established groups.

Not even 10 days before Stachowiak posted the video, neo-Nazi sympathizer James Fields was convicted of first-degree murder for his lone wolf attack, ramming his car into a crowd of "Unite the Right" counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one and wounding dozens more.

The Patriot movement at its core is fervently antigovernment, to the extent that adherents believe the federal government will enact mass genocide of American citizens and surrender American sovereignty to a cabal of international elites, often under the auspices of the United Nations and complicit federal agencies like the DHS and FEMA. Stachowiak's call to violent action comes at a time when this movement is rapidly adjusting to a federal government under President Trump that it widely sees as an embattled ally.

Political Research Associates, a Massachusetts-based social justice organization, accurately detailed Trump's appeal to the fundamentally antigovernment Patriot movement when it wrote, "Trump isn't exactly the movement's ideal candidate ... But quite a number of Trump's views — his toxic combination of bellicose patriotism, xenophobia and Islamophobia; implicit White nationalism; protectionist but pro-capitalist politics; as well as his thinly veiled threats of violence and penchant for wild conspiracy theories — all hit the same notes as the Patriot movement."

It's with this context that the Patriot movement largely adores President Trump, and zealously opposes those it perceives to be a threat to the president's Make America Great Again platform: Muslims, immigrants, Black Lives Matter activists and the political left (often all labeled antifa) to name a few.

Stachowiak, a staunch Trump supporter, is a case in point.

He regularly calls himself Johnny Infidel, and has an extensive history of anti-Muslim bigotry and activism, including calling the Islamic Prophet Mohammed a rapist, calling Islam a mental disorder and planning an anti-Muslim rally where he promised to shred a Quran.

In another video posted to Facebook, Stachowiak describes migrants as "illegals," "invaders," "criminals," "parasites" and "vermin." He does so while carrying an AR-15 variant with a Three Percenter "Nyberg" flag displayed prominently behind him. When he's done ranting, he burns the Mexican flag.

In yet another video, Stachowiak seemingly responds to the civil unrest in in a predominantly black quarter of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, following a police shooting of a 23-year-old man by leveling his AR-15 rifle at the camera and stating, "I don't care if they're women or children. Anyone coming out of a store should be shot on sight. They should be shot exiting the store. If they make it down the street, then take their asses out and shoot them in the back."

Stachowiak goes on to describe the Black Lives Matter movement as "Bitches, Losers and Maggots" before holding up to the camera a bullet with "BLM" scribbled on it.

"This is the solution to BLM," Stachowiak says while presenting the ammunition. "BLM, I got a round with your name on it."

He previously called for lone wolf action against Black Lives Matter in 2016, urging "lone wolf patriots" to confront them at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

To be sure, Stachowiak's call for lone wolf retaliation is his latest exclamation in a career of extremist bluster. He does not command a paramilitary militia, and his comments are often controversial even with the ranks of the Patriot movement. But his call for leaderless vigilantism doesn't require paramilitary force — in fact it seeks the opposite — and his rhetoric therein is consistent with the rhetoric of the broader Patriot movement in the Trump era.

And while Stachowiak's radio and social media audience doesn't influence as many people as antigovernment mainstay Alex Jones (at the time of writing the video calling for lone wolf retaliation was viewed just shy of 250 times on Facebook) his messages serve the same purpose of instilling fear and an urgency to act.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/12/20/longtime-antigovernment-militia-organizer-calls-lone-wolf-action-against-antifa?fbclid=IwAR3eTl9oq6pPqmndm_9NYsoowiOJVONuewxc4tgE8D5bcvSqF0ZjeTqR63k

Huh, imagine that.

[Admiral Yi]

"Social justice organization is just a term used by bigots who want to be free to call black people niggers."

[viper37]

he's a freedom fighter suffering from the oppressive system in which he lives.  He has all the rights to defend himself by attacking innocents and not so innocents.

[Razgovory]

he's a freedom fighter suffering from the oppressive system in which he lives.  He has all the rights to defend himself by attacking innocents and not so innocents.

Or perhaps we should leave dealing with former law enforcement officials like James Stachowiak, with current law officials like James Stachowiak.