by Quin;
Let it be said that the proper response to despicable protesters is NOT to confront them physically and provoke a confrontation. If the group is despicable enough, they actually crave that sort of attention. The best response is to ignore them as irrelevant in terms of their demonstration itself, and to use other means (print, Internet, etcetera) to combat their hateful messages. The “antifa” activists who counter-protested in Charlottesville and who have created riots or near-riots elsewhere are bad elements, and they are not blameless. In other places and times I have strenuously criticized them and said that those who riot should be arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.
BUT… BUT…. BUT….
There is no moral equivalence between them and the white supremacist and neo-Nazi low-lifes who deliberately created the scene in Charlottesville even before one of their vile number used his car as a murder weapon. There is no good way to condemn them equally. It is the white supremacists and their hateful ilk who were at fault, who deserve the blame, and who must be condemned. It takes no special insight to say this. It should be, should have been, the response of all decent Americans to condemn the white racists and neo-Nazis, and to leave the other discussions about antifa, Black Lives Matter, etcetera, until later, after the first 48 hours, once calm retrospection is appropriate — rather than firm (but still calm), initial, unifying moral lessons that must be stressed when the shock is new and first impressions are being formed. That lesson, the only lesson appropriate in those first 48 hours, was this:
White supremacists are evil. They have no place in civil society. Period.
Thank you.
