Can we please just treat these people as they deserve to be treated?
They’re poster children for how not to act in grown up society.
Most of the time, they’re just wannabe bullies, stomping around having temper tantrums like childish little brats on a kindergarten playground. We have laws. If they actually break any or physically hurt anyone, then toss them in jail. Otherwise, we ought to just let them stamp their feet in their sandbox while the rest of us all go on about our lives.
When they protest, they’re just looking for attention. Like any tantrum throwing spoiled little child. If we counter-protest, we’re giving them what they want. Usually with the added benefit to them of a media spotlight.
For example, searching for the “Unite the Right” nonsense in Charlottesville and various gatherings you see descriptions of “several dozen” up to “between 250 and 500” so-called “right-wing protesters.” If that is “uniting” the “Right” then basically there is no “Right.” If that is the power of “the Right” then you can safely ignore them. Because that’s pathetic in terms of a national or even regional “demonstration.” As it very well should be.
Compare those numbers to the civil rights protests of the 1960s. Or to the “Million Man March” or other actual large scale demonstrations. Real protests gather tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in the National Mall in Washington DC. A couple dozen or even a couple hundred people standing around a statue simply doesn’t count.
And the same articles that describe “250 to 500” white nationalists getting together go on to say that they were met by “1000 or so” counter-protesters. Well … you know what that means? You all just made the power of the original protest 3 to 5 times what it would have been without you. Because the protest is nothing without noise.
And you stirred up a kerfuffle that made it a newsworthy event. A fight is nothing if nobody shows up to the fight. If a couple dozen people stand around waiving their silly red flags or whatever and nobody notices, then that would be a real victory for the “good guys” side.
You’re not helping anything, ANTIFA. Just go home.
At best, you’re just giving more volume to the white nationalists’ voice.
At worst, you’re just as bad as they are – or sometimes worse.
And, you know what? The so-called “white nationalists” are not even real nationalists. Not in the United States of America. Because they don’t support anything about the founding principles of our country. I doubt any of them have even read the Constitution or even the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Because what they advocate is completely contrary to those things. They might want a nation somewhere. But it’s not the United States of America that the rest of us live in.
“White Nationalists” are most definitely not “conservatives.” Because they don’t want to conserve even the most basic principles of our constitution or the rights and freedoms that real conservatives wish to protect. Don’t call them “conservatives.” If you’ve been calling them “conservatives,” just stop it. All you’re doing is using childish name-calling and conflating terms to advance your own tribalism.
Now, for those of you who are sitting there saying, “But racism is a real issue!” and “We need to do something about it!” …
Yes, it is.
And yes, we do.
But the thing to do about it doesn’t have anything to do with going out in the streets and claiming to counter a bunch of kindergarten-level tantrum-throwing idiots by acting just like them.
There is undue poverty in some areas and among some people. A lot of it is due to the circumstance of their birth and prejudices that they run into. And some of that, in some places, has to do with the race that they happened to be born into. There is even institutional racism, including prejudice in the actions of some police departments. People who say that these things do not exist haven’t really looked. Because they do.
But they need to be fixed individually in those places where they are a problem.
And the solution involves building people up. Not just going out and protesting against someone you imagine is the problem.
The hard truth is this: The first part of the battle is over. And the good guys won. The era of the need for 1960s style civil rights protests is over. We no longer need to call out the National Guard to escort little black kids to school.
And that’s a hard truth because the next part is a lot more difficult.
The truth is that the rest of the battle is not a “battle” at all. Not that kind, anyway. The rest of what we need to do as a society is to promote constructive effort and attitudes among all people. And constructing a new building is always harder than tearing down an old barrier.
It would be really easy to put up the same old walls and go about tearing them down over and over again. But that wouldn’t really do anything.
And yet, that’s what this protest and counter-protest nonsense is all about.