RE: Woodstock versus Charlottesville
Uhm, the various groups that came to Charlottesville for the last protest were open Nazi, KKK, and other self-proclaimed racist groups. That's not a mystery. They came in the open and were proud of it.
Of course neo nazis are going to use race to divide people. They want to divide people by race after all. That's one of their objectives. I still don't understand why people are ignoring the fact that actual KKK and other affiliated groups were involved in this last protest.
Sure, there are some antifa groups that are racist too, and I do not support them either. My main point though is that people should guard against the suggestion that everyone who is anti-fascist is in those bad antifa groups.
They are not. As with the crowd that was driven into by the car, those people were locals. They were a diverse group of people who were not being violent and who got ran over by an open, self-proclaimed, neo nazi from Ohio.
Oh, not disagreeing with you about the open racism of some if not most of the permitted marchers.
They are nothing new. Those yahoos have been around for decades preying on the marginalized and malcontent.
Society treats them like the occasional foul smell that drifts in from the sewage treatment plant. A necessary evil in order to protect our freedom of speech.
Society is in no danger from them. You don't need to suppress the speech of an idiot. Just let him speak and he will quickly eliminate any doubt as far as society is concerned.
But if the quest to end racism drifts into a witch hunt, which it is, and racism accusations become a club used to gain advantage and bash other people over the head, then their ranks could grow.
So they are not the danger. Our reaction to them is where the danger could lie.