White Supremacist rally in Charlottesville

SneakDZA wrote: »

@CapitalB - You know this ? has absolutely nothing to do with confederate statues. It's all about the ? and nazis and militias forming like some kind of ? up Voltron, testing the waters, promoting their brand and seeing how much they can get away with so they can ramp it up for the next time.

You're sounding like one of those slaves Harriet Tubman had to take to freedom at gunpoint because he thought he was chillin. I'm not sure what's logical about kicking back and watching people that want you dead or in chains organizing themselves.

If anything I could see your point if the basis of your argument was that black people need to not be on the frontlines of this until we see some arabs, asian and hispanic groups out there too.

Trump shrugged off the criticism. Earlier Thursday, he slammed Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) for their criticism of his leadership in the wake of the Charlottesville tragedy.

On Twitter, Trump called Flake “WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate,” and praised Flake’s primary challenger.

McConnell responded with a tweet later in the day, calling Flake “an excellent Senator and a tireless advocate for Arizona and our nation.”

“He has my full support,” McConnell added.

There is little public polling over what to do with Confederate monuments. An NPR-PBS survey conducted Monday and Tuesday by Marist College found that 62 percent of respondents said statues honoring Confederate leaders should remain as a historical symbol; 27 percent said they should be removed because they are offensive to some people.

That poll found a large partisan divide: Republicans prefer to keep statues by 86 percent to 6 percent, while Democrats split 44 percent for keeping them and 47 percent for removing them. Among African Americans in the survey, 44 percent favored keeping them, and 40 percent favored removal.

In his tweets Thursday, Trump appeared to equate Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, who commanded Southern forces in the Civil War to secede from the United States, with Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as potential targets of criticism because of Washington and Jefferson’s status as slave owners — an argument he first advanced at his Tuesday news conference.

“You . . . can’t change history, but you can learn from it,” he tweeted. “Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson — who’s next, Washington, Jefferson?”

Charlottesville wasn’t the first place that white supremacists had gathered recently to oppose the removal of a Confederate statue, but last weekend was the first rally marked by deadly violence. More rallies are planned for other cities as a show of force to pressure municipal officials into leaving Civil War symbols in place.

Trump’s new enthusiasm on statues stands apart from his views last year. On the campaign trail, Trump said he agreed with the decision in 2015 by then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to remove a Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds following the mass shooting by Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine African Americans at a black church in Charleston. Haley now serves as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“I would take it down, yes,” Trump said at the time. “I think they should put it in a museum and respect whatever it is you have to respect.”

Democrats moved aggressively on Thursday to counter what they described as a disturbing turn.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump’s tweets Thursday represented an attempt to “divert attention away from the president’s refusal to unequivocally and full-throatedly denounce white supremacy, neo-? , and other forms of bigotry.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and a small group of Democrats called for a congressional resolution to censure Trump. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said he would seek to introduce articles of impeachment. Neither measure faces a chance of success in the GOP-controlled House.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) announced late Wednesday that he intends to introduce legislation after Congress reconvenes next month calling for the removal of at least a dozen statues of Confederate soldiers and politicians inside the U.S. Capitol.

That collection includes two statues selected by each state, and the presence of Confederate political and military leaders among them — as well as other figures with well-known discriminatory views — has previously attracted protests.

“There is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country,” Pelosi said.

A spokesman for Ryan said congressional Republicans would not intervene to remove the statues without the states’ consent.

“These are decisions for those states to make,” said Ryan spokesman Doug Andres.

Meester wrote: »

Why the ? are some of yall so in a hurry to die? These ? been organized since the beginning of America what we gonna do with the females and children? Or u gon figure that out after we punch guns outta honkies hands? Smh THINK ? THINK...

White Nationalists Are Feeling The Squeeze After Charlottesville Backlash

While President Donald Trump spent the week generating goodwill among the varied white nationalist groups that descended on Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend, a wide swath of corporations, universities and localities were pushing back against them.

PayPal, Patreon, Facebook, Squarespace, Spotify, Google, GoDaddy, Texas A&M University, the University of Florida, Michigan State University, and a mountain resort in Colorado are among the companies removing white nationalists’ accounts and venues canceling their planned events in the wake of violent street clashes that left three people dead and dozens injured on Saturday. By eliminating both the physical and virtual platforms that white nationalists use to promote their ideas, those companies and institutions have curtailed the avenues by which they could grow their reach.

“I can’t think of another incident to which the backlash has been nearly so widespread,” Mark Pitcavage, an expert on right-wing extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, told TPM.

Most of the white nationalist, far-right and “anti-communist” groups that spoke with TPM acknowledged that squeeze, in addition to their association with a gory rally attended by neo-Nazis and decorated Ku Klux ? members, as a setback. But the gloss they put on it varied widely: A number of group leaders insisted that the exposure they received through the “Unite the Right” rally is worth any ensuing hardship, and that other social media and web domain platforms will crop up to service their needs. Others described the ongoing backlash as a huge blow.

A Charlottesville organizer and white nationalist podcast host who goes by the pseudonym Caerulus Rex told TPM that his PayPal account had been terminated in the wake of Charlottesville. But Rex insisted that such moves would not “silence us.”

“There are already services stepping up to accept the money that paypal and the like dont want,” Rex said in an email. “Those companies that started refusing us service created an opportunity for tech savy [sic] individuals to profit by not being offended by the truth.”

The Charlottesville organizer behind the @ AltRightVa Twitter handle, who declined to give his name, expressed a similar sentiment.

In a phone call, the organizer acknowledged that the “Unite the Right” rally “did not turn out the way we wanted it to.” But he was confident that white nationalists who had their PayPal, YouTube and other accounts canceled will either turn to other sites to get their message out, like the open source platform Minds.com, or create new platforms entirely.

“The market will provide a solution,” he insisted in a phone interview.

Other rally attendees made use of the pro-First Amendment arguments so often voiced by white nationalists to concede that private companies are within their rights to cut off service to any user.

“That is that company’s choice if they want to,” the publications director for the California-based Anti-Communist Action Group, who identified himself only as Seth, told TPM. “If we’re going to allow people to deny a ? couple their cake, we have to apply that standard universally.”

The extent to which white nationalist groups were affected by service denials and account terminations this week varied depending on their size, reach and how violent and virulent their views are. Andrew Anglin’s neo-? website, The Daily Stormer, was essentially wiped off the mainstream internet after GoDaddy, Google and CloudFare stopped providing domain registration in quick succession. Anglin has since relocated the site to the dark web, where it is only available via use of a Tor network, radically restricting his audience.

“His site is all he has,” the ADL’s Pitcavage observed. “He can’t even show his face ‘cause he’ll get served with lawsuits. So his site is basically his voice. He gets hurt a lot worse than someone else who has a lot of different avenues for expressing their ideologies and beliefs.”

Pitcavage said the squeeze was real, whether or not these groups want to acknowledge it.

“There’s only a limited number of ways to send money electronically over the Internet,” he said. “There are only a limited number of large social media sites—once you get away from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you’re really dropping off in terms of the numbers of membership.”

Some white nationalist groups who have been active for years see this week’s backlash, which has derailed several scheduled events, as devastating.

Though his website and PayPal account have gone untouched, Jared Taylor, the head of white nationalist publication American Renaissance, likened large social media platforms to “public utilities” in their monopoly of specific industries, saying, “If they kick you off because they don’t like the cut of your jib, it’s a terrible setback in how you want to get your message out.”

Taylor said that he was “driven to” hold his publication’s annual conference at state parks rather than in posh hotels because of what he deemed “illegal pressure tactics.”

“We used to have our meetings in first class hotels, convenient to airports, convenient to international travel,” he said. “Now we’re really limited to public facilities. That’s a huge blow; it’s a huge setback.”

The rally on the streets of Charlottesville and a slew of plans to hold events in public spaces on university campuses speaks to this squeezing of the white nationalist movement out of private spaces.

Cheyenne Mountain Lodge, a luxury resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado, this week canceled a planned 2018 conference organized by the white nationalist-aligned website Virginia Dare after public outcry. Still, VDare founder Peter Brimelow told TPM that the conference hubbub, on top of PayPal dropping his account, led to “one of the strongest donor days ever” and claimed that “traffic is running double or triple usual pace.” According to Brimelow, that cable hosts like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson discussed VDare’s predicament on air helped, too.

Texas A&M this week canceled a September rally planned by activist Preston Wiginton, who had invited prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak, out of concern that the event would result in the same violence seen in Virginia.

Wiginton told TPM he’s in talks with the American Civil Liberties Union and private attorneys to take legal action against A&M. Given the high burden for a public university to prove that threats of violence will materialize at an event, some legal analysts say Wiginton has a strong case (The ACLU did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment).

Insisting he was just “making an observation,” Wiginton invoked a dark precedent: the formation of the Irish Republican Army.

“Historically if you look at the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, this is exactly how they were formed,” he said. “They were forced underground because of their views. That’s what America is playing with. I’m not advocating that at all, but in a society where you have people that have issues or are angry or something, our First Amendment makes it so they can express those views, come to a forum and discuss and find a solution to those problems.”

Battles over whether one may spew hate speech in public are likely to play out on university campuses and in city parks for years to come. As Pitcavage noted, what matters in terms of corporate and private backlash is whether it stands that test of time.