I've read that Alt-Right speaker Richard Spencer was drowned out by hecklers. This at his attempted speech at the University of Florida. I did watch him on YouTube. I would have liked to have heard him uninterrupted. I think we need to know why they believe what they do. What led them there, and why they stay.
Of course the heckling was expected. Nazis, and extreme rightists aren't that socially acceptable,...yet. However everyone must have their say. The Free Speech Movement was just that. A movement for open speech, and not just for those we agreed with. If I were there I'd have heard him or those like him out. ...yeah even Nazis. I want to hear their vision from their own mouths. Even better if there's a debate of the merits.
The current custom of shutting down those we profoundly disagree with is ultimately counter productive. Let them speak, and very likely by their own words condemn themselves.
I'm generally progressive, but hold personal views on theology sexuality, and art that might be unpopular. ...more than "might". There's more than a few of us in that situation. If I held a talk as I sometimes think of doing would I could be shut down too.
Btw I almost forgot.
As a post-script to the above rant. Seems two Nazis at the Spencer speech were so encouraged by it that they drove off to verbally attack folks. Finally ending up at a bus stop. Apparently there were some Negros, and white race traitor beatniks there. That, and our gleeful Bully Boys wanted to share the good news of the Fourth Reich rising with them.
The folks were apparently not enthused. So the Nazis shot at them. Well all good things. John Law apprehended them 20 miles outside of town. Charged them with attempted murder. They will very likely be guests of the Federal government for some years. Of course I still think Nazis have the right to speak if not shoot.
Such interesting times.
Btw I almost forgot.
As a post-script to the above rant. Seems two Nazis at the Spencer speech were so encouraged by it that they drove off to verbally attack folks. Finally ending up at a bus stop. Apparently there were some Negros, and white race traitor beatniks there. That, and our gleeful Bully Boys wanted to share the good news of the Fourth Reich rising with them.
The folks were apparently not enthused. So the Nazis shot at them. Well all good things. John Law apprehended them 20 miles outside of town. Charged them with attempted murder. They will very likely be guests of the Federal government for some years. Of course I still think Nazis have the right to speak if not shoot.
Such interesting times.
9 comments:
Where did the real leftists go? It seems to me that what we have now is a fake left that has betrayed some of the bedrock philosophical foundations of democracy, such as the one expressed in this statement: “I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Why do they repudiate that principle? What kind of liberals are these?
I know that Richard Spencer is a white supremacist not because campus activists have said so, but because I’ve heard him say on video that “America was made by white people for white people,” or words to that effect. His way of thinking is abhorrent, he distorts history in service to a terrible idea. But he should be allowed to speak. I’d like to see him debate some smart well-informed opponents. Why don’t the so-called leftists propose that and put some debating champions forward? Because they’re afraid a white supremacist’s ideas will be more cogent and persuasive than their own? It does not speak well of them.
I’m glad the Nazi bully-boys got busted. Serves them right. Such people are dangerous, and must be forcibly prevented from hurting anyone, if necessary. What I’d like to see are some for-real leftist liberals: the kind who support trade unionism, rent control, universal health care, and who seriously oppose our insane and destructive wars abroad. But all that seems off the agenda. Why? Why do the alleged opposition to the current administration insist only on silencing their opponents? I think something has gone fatally wrong with the political culture of the country.
Z
I fear the well is profoundly poisoned. All who drink from the American stream become ill confused hateful. I know of no cure other than time.
I’m afraid that’s the case.
I’ve been slamming the left because that was once my team, and I feel they’ve let me down. But come to think of it, I don’t see too many thoughtful conservatives on the right either. Hysterical Tea Party goobers waving around Tiki Torches from Walmart do not give the impression that they’ve been reading and discussing the ideas of Edmund Burke. I wonder how many are aware that conservation, for instance, was once a Republican concern - that the national park system and the EPA were established by Republican presidents? How many know who Barry Goldwater was, let alone what were the planks of his platform? Both sides seem to me to be operating in the darkness of willful historical ignorance, manically fixated on Hitler and WWII.
But to speak truth, I don’t worry about it, not at all. Having given up on America as lost cause is a source of tranquility to me, as well as being absolutely justified by observable fact.
Z
I'm also afraid that's the case.
I too have mostly,...that's "mostly" given up on America as an experiment in freedom, and justice. A large portion 30 to 40% have no real interest in either. The bare majority that does is showing that they're not enough.
For Freedom to work it calls for a 'full' majority.
75/80%
We have just enough good people for the project to fail. Just as other nations who let their freedoms vanish. We have reached the point where 'just' enough will look the other way, and let the corrosive minority wreak havoc to justice.
There will of course be a United States of America for some time. Perhaps another century,...maybe two in some configuraton. However this collection of hateful tribes will have long since abandoned their original dream.
What's with this "original dream" stuff? The "founding Father's" original dream did not include women. It did not include slaves - or even freed blacks, for that matter. (Even Lincoln, had he lived, was of the opinion that the freed blacks should be shipped off to Nicaragua, where they could provide a basis for American expansionism.)It sure as hell did not include Native Americans, who were literally expected to disappear as quickly as possible. At first it did not even include other white males, unless they owned property or had sufficient money. It did not include non-English speakers (particularly the Spanish, although the failure of efforts in Pennsylvania after the revolution to make it a bi-lingual English/German state, in recognition of the number of German settlers, makes that clear enough). Only the homosexuals are lacking on this list - largely because homosexuality was not invented (i.e., conceptualized as such) until a century later.
Only the poor (white) males eventually crawled onto the edges of the American dream - and eventually women were allowed to vote, at least.
The best you can claim is that you folks are going back to the original "dream", now with the crackers as participants/enforcers.
Yes yes yes. True. All true. However I speak of the original dream that through the work pain, and yes deaths of good people has been expanded to include more, and more of those never considered in the beginning. I'm Black, and lived the first half of my life in legal Jim Crow, and the balance in shadow Jim Crow.
I'm as you know a BL/Queer.
So given that I am more than aware of your laundry list from hell. However what sustained me through all this was Hope. I will not abandon it. I don't like some have that luxury. Despite my posts about what will likely befall us all. I still. I 'still' have in part of my soul that believe all our work was not in vain. That somehow in some way for at least some us a better life is not only possible, but attainable.
This 'must' be believed. Otherwise why live. You read my story "The Great Departure". That's in my guts as well,...but that's not 'all' that's there.
(...the story was posted earlier in the month here. read it if you haven't.)
I wasn't saying there wasn't/isn't a dream to fight for - just that it was not the "original dream" of America's founders. It WAS the dream of the abolitionists and suffragists starting from the 1830s (male and female, black and white - and after the Civil War there was a major overlap between these two groups as the abolitionists took on a new cause), it was the dream of the socialists and anarchists and IWW organizers from the 1880s on, into the Socialists (Debs) and Progressives, Communists and CIO labor organizers of the 20th century, and even New Deal Democrats, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and Chavez and Huelga and Means and AIM, and Harry Hay, and the queers at Stonewall: that's the dream to fight for.
But it won't be easy, as there is not much left: when labor sold out during the cold war, and the feminists sold out to being more concerned about glass ceilings for women executives than fair pay and treatment for the women who who mop the johns in office towers and clean hotel rooms (and get raped: where was #METOO when that French politician raped the chambermaid in NYC and walked free?), and black leaders sold out once they got their hands on the urban graft, about the time when black culture moved from protest to 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' and then on to rappers rapping about their 'bitches', and gays kicked out the pederasts in favor of the marriage/stroller crowd (incidentally, Charlie Shively, founder of Fag Rag and first biographer of Whitman to not pull any punches about Walt's sexuality, died last Friday, but you're not likely to see anything about that in the LGBTTTTTTTQQIA media). To rescue anything that is left (Left?) is going to take more than a #LEEHARVEYOSWALDWHEREAREUWHENWENEEDYOU campaign... or a #anything campaign.
"...it was the dream of the socialists and anarchists and IWW organizers from the 1880s on, into the Socialists (Debs) and Progressives, Communists and CIO labor organizers of the 20th century, and even New Deal Democrats, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and Chavez and Huelga and Means and AIM, and Harry Hay, and the queers at Stonewall: that's the dream to fight for."
Yep that's the Dream.
That's what so many of us fought our whole lives for. This is what I meant by Hope.
I am very sorry to hear of Charlie Shively's passing.
No not a word for him anywhere I could see. He was hero, and a valiant warrior for kindness, and justice. I never met him personally, but did correspond. He was instrumental in putting my early Queer Angel Boy art into Fag Rag against the cold feet of certain proto-stroller pushers. Yeah even then. So I say Bless him.
He will be missed.
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