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I've noticed a lot less people defending Trump lately. How CAN you defend this?

"Obama pardoned a terrorist" without context from r/the_donald
"He has the power to do this so shut up and accept it" from same morons
"Liberals hate it so it's good" r/conservative
"butterymales" the general cry of the faithful

Yea, its always whataboutism or "its legal so its ok" which aren't even a defense, it is admission of guilt, but trying to justify it.

Well, if anything good comes out about this pardon, is that it counts as an admission of guilt.
Which means he made himself vulnerable to civil suits for his abusive policing of Maricopa County.

The phoenix new times, a local paper has one of the more impressive SCREEEEEEEEEEEs about this situation

Oh and in other news, Trump finally got around to banning trans people from the military

^ technically not yet, he only signed a bill to do it, it hasn't actually been implemented yet and, like almost every single other thing he has tried to pass, I really doubt this will pass either.

If he signs a bill it passes. The issue is enforcement, and whether or not the signed bill is constitutional, or not. Lawsuits are going to fly (AS THE SHOULD), which would probably keep this bill in the court systems for a while yet.

It's not even a bill, it's an executive order.

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Hurricane Harvey downgraded to Tropical Storm as is flows over Texas' coastline.

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In other news, Trump decides to end an Obama-era public works program.

According to the Millions of Jobs coalition's co-director Tate Huntsman, “By terminating the Local Labor Hiring Pilot Program, Trump will disproportionately hurt low-income and minority communities, denying them access to the good jobs they need to make our country and communities strong, and significantly reducing the local benefits that any infrastructure investment would provide.”

Jobs, jobs, jobs!

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Also, anyone else got the feeling that we might be seeing more pardons in the future?
In any case, be ready for it.

It says "Per the new directive, the Department of Defense will have six months to develop a plan on how to implement the ban" so it still has 6 months for something to change, which is likely.

Donald Trump asked Jeff Sessions to drop charges against Joe Arpaio.

Obstructing Justice seems to be the specialty of this administration.

Donald Trump's business sought a Trump Tower deal in Moscow during the 2016 Presidential Campaign.

Trump literally said the reason he made the pardon on friday, during the hurricane, was because he thought ratings would be high

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/348327-trump-i-pardoned-arpaio-during-hurricane-because-i-thought-tv-ratings

wtf.

I fail to see anything substantial here-- more specifically, I don't see anything here worth reporting. His company did correspondance with a Russian realtor who said that he could get Putin to say nice things about Trump, but the plan this thing didn't even come to fruition in any way that could be remotely concerning, considering that Trump himself didn't take up the offer to meet with the guy and the project was abandoned altogether.

And it's been a while since I've actually picked up an article from here-- I almost missed the

several people who have been briefed on his correspondence.

and the

one person briefed on the email exchange.

but my personal favorite characters are the

several people familiar with the proposal

.

Good times…

poochyena posted:

Trump literally said the reason he made the pardon on friday, during the hurricane, was because he thought ratings would be high

No, that's not what happened. He said that he assumed that the ratings would be higher at about that time, but I'm not hearing that he did so at the time because he thought the ratings would be higher-- it's thrown as an aside, even in the cropped video segment that they give on the link you provide.

That how it appears, unless someone can pull up a transcript of the conference, because I'm having a hard time getting a hold of one.

So, antifa was a thing in Berkeley for the third time, and WaPo actually speaks the lefty devil's name..

No snark, I've actually been bewildered by this since Charlottesville-- we hear of the "counter-protesters", but I don't recall any of the mainstream coverage actually naming these counter-protesting groups, but perhaps I wasn't looking in the right places-- that's why I'm mildly surprised that WaPo even made an article on this while speaking the name of the group (coalition?).

But, as far as the incident itself goes… throws hands up I've been saying it since Charlottesville: this isn't an isolated incident, and I don't know why… hey wait a second why isn't this riotous display getting much coverage?

…does someone really have to legit die before people start paying attention to our escalating political violence?

It's actually disgusting onision can't wait for week to push his agenda

Good to see that the police actually did something at one of these things for once. Coming in and arresting people instead of waiting 3 weeks. Fights got broken up quickly and roads were blocked with dump trucks.

There was supposed to be a "Free Speech Rally" in Berkeley but Ann Coulter canceled so the only people who went after were just the Proud Boys / Militia type people who only came for the violence.

Police say 10 people were arrested and most were arrested for bringing in prohibited items like sticks.

No snark, I’ve actually been bewildered by this since Charlottesville-- we hear of the “counter-protesters”, but I don’t recall any of the mainstream coverage actually naming these counter-protesting groups, but perhaps I wasn’t looking in the right places-- that’s why I’m mildly surprised that WaPo even made an article on this while speaking the name of the group (coalition?).

Mainstream news outlets are shit, plain and simple. I know USA Today did an article on antifa, and I know WaPo wrote some about them – because I read things from both outlets as research for an essay I was writing. The Atlantic and The New Yorker had absolutely fabulous long essays on antifa's origins as well, but they are less mainstream and more for light to medium level political nerds.

But, as far as the incident itself goes… throws hands up I’ve been saying it since Charlottesville: this isn’t an isolated incident, and I don’t know why… hey wait a second why isn’t this riotous display getting much coverage?

CNN
NPR
LATimes
NYTimes

…does someone really have to legit die before people start paying attention to our escalating political violence?

According to a poll conducted pre-Charlottesville, 76% of likely voters believed there was a greater danger of political violence these days compared to past years.

Astatine said:

And it’s been a while since I’ve actually picked up an article from here-- I almost missed the

several people who have been briefed on his correspondence.

and the

one person briefed on the email exchange.

but my personal favorite characters are the

several people familiar with the proposal

Pointing out anonymous sources as being a negative is not an effective argument. You should know this.
Also, just like with Donald Trump Jr.'s e-mail to Ron Goldstone, even if nothing was accomplished, intent is just as important.
Kinda weird how Don Jr. didn't question why the Russian government was helping his father's Presidential campaign, ain't it?

Astatine said:

…does someone really have to legit die before people start paying attention to our escalating political violence?

Kinda hurts when the alt-right were talking about committing vehicular assault against those that oppose them weeks before the Charlottesville Tragedy.
Or that an African-American man was nearly beaten to death at that same event by at least 4 white supremacists. Three of them have been arrested so far.

You have yet to mention the African-American man that protected the alt-right guy from getting beaten up by those anarchists at Berkely this weekend.

Astatine said:

I’ve been saying it since Charlottesville: this isn’t an isolated incident, and I don’t know why… hey wait a second why isn’t this riotous display getting much coverage?

Because the alt-right were more violent at Charlottesville than Antifa were.
This isn't the only example I can find. If you want more, I can do this all day.

BrentD15 posted:

Pointing out anonymous sources as being a negative is not an effective argument. You should know this.

Good thing it was at the tail end of my response and I already made a general point about the actual contents of the article. But even then, I disagree with the idea that pointing out anonymous sources isn't effective in some capacity-- the abundance of anonymous sources combined with the lack of proof makes self-verification hard to do.

Also, just like with Donald Trump Jr.‘s e-mail to Ron Goldstone, even if nothing was accomplished, intent is just as important.

What intent? In any of these situations, Trump hasn't been personally involved in the dealings that fell out. In this situation in particular, the dealings weren't started by him, and he preemptively declined the only way that he could start getting directly involved before the start of the primaries.

And even then, what would have been accomplished? Trump would build a thing in Russia, and maybe Putin would give him props as part of an endorsement from a world power-- emphasis on "might", being that, if I'm reading this right, this was a thing floated about by a third party?

Kinda weird how Don Jr. didn’t question why the Russian government was helping his father’s Presidential campaign, ain’t it?

Stay on topic-- we're not talking about Don Jr., and the article in question doesn't make mention of him either.

Kinda hurts when the alt-right were talking about committing vehicular assault against those that oppose them weeks before the Charlottesville Tragedy.

"Kinda hurts"? What is that supposed to mean? How is this even relevant to my point about how we seem to have only started caring about political violence after Charlottesville, when someone died?

Or that an African-American man was nearly beaten to death at that same event by at least 4 white supremacists. Three of them have been arrested so far.

This is actually a non sequitur, but that wouldn't be the first time someone got assaulted and at least bloodied at a protest-turned-riot-by-antifa-aligned-groups. Of those injured at the first raid at Berkeley, one was left unconscious and on the ground. There was also the Bikelock Fugitive at the second Berkeley protest-turned-riot-by-you-get-the-idea.

Yeah, that's legitimately unfortunate, nonetheless. But I don't see the point of throwing that out there at that particular point of your comment is.

You have yet to mention the African-American man that protected the alt-right guy from getting beaten up by those anarchists at Berkely this weekend.

…your response is a mess. This is the third time that I've had to address a non sequitur, and that was just the downhill slope from you ignoring that I actually addressed the contents of the article I first did commentary on. Now-- if I'm reading you correctly-- you're assuming that I did know about the African-American who protected some alt-right guy from getting beaten up by anarchists but I'm not mentioning it for… some reason. That's not even getting at the fact that it's not particularly relevant in the scope of your responses to me but you format it as if it was.

Because the alt-right were more violent at Charlottesville than Antifa were.

>Deray McKesson
>a video with jumpcuts
>a group of guys trying to push against the cop barricade to get to… somewhere, it's not clear
>taker of video exclaiming "this is what white privilege looks like"
>watermark says "wokevideo.com"
>expecting me to take this seriously

Well, I'm at least slightly better than dropping the point like a hot potato as soon as the word "privilege" proceeds the word "white". However, the lack of continuous shooting is suspect, and I can't even surmise why they were pushing against the cops. It's contextless.

However, in response, let me provide this commentary of the day from a person who was at the rally and even did a livestream that… was unfortunately removed soon after it finished.

Finally, that doesn't answer my question. Again: the Inauguration Day riots, the riot at University of Berkeley, the second riot at Berkeley, the attempted assassination of four Republican politicians by a militant far-leftist, active antifa presence at the Boston free speech rally, and then the third riot at Berkeley now. On a minor note, the poster of the videos that I've linked here has personally been a victim of politically motivated assault at least once.

All these incidents span the year thus far. Was the militant right as active as antifa prior to Charlottesville in the same manner as antifa? No, not to my recollection. There was counterattacking from the right in the second incident at Berkeley, though I would chalk that to seeing a need for defense after the first incident at Berkeley.

I'm not just talking about Charlottesville. Again, Charlottesville wasn't an isolated incident.

Rivers demonstrates that I need to either be less lazy about describing my concerns or I need to look in more places:

Yeah, okay, I was describing the wrong thing. I was comparing the combined attention that the news media and the online forums I've been frequenting as of late gave to this incident, versus Charlottesville.

According to a poll conducted pre-Charlottesville, 76% of likely voters believed there was a greater danger of political violence these days compared to past years.

Huh. When you put it that way…

So, what is your point?
That antifa is just as bad, if not worse, than the murderous neo-nazis?
Or that most media outlets aren't paying attention to antifa because there are more important things to worry about at that time, like a Hurricane/Tropical Storm that's flooding Southeastern Texas?

I can agree that the escalation of political violence and provokatsiya has been an increasing problem since the election, and we need to do a better job of spreading the word that those that commit violence will be singled out and turned over to police.

Astatine said:

Yeah, okay, I was describing the wrong thing. I was comparing the combined attention that the news media and the online forums I’ve been frequenting as of late gave to this incident, versus Charlottesville.

Sometimes, it's easy to forget that social media can act as both an echo-chamber and a megaphone.

===========

In other news, a man who claims to have been stabbed for looking like a neo-nazi was lying, and was arrested for it.

Also, Florida Republican Ron DeSantis wants to defund Robert Mueller's investigation.

Ron DeSantis is also listed as a speaker at one of the few remaining Mar-A-Lago events.

BrentD15 posted:

That antifa is just as bad, if not worse, than the murderous neo-nazis?

Are they not at least as bad? Violence is literally their MO. I cited several situations of militant far-left violence, and of those situations, we have two more than clear-cut examples of far-left militancy.

Or, what, is it because they haven't killed people yet that they're not as dangerous? If you beat someone over the head with a weighted object or beat them unconscious, but the victim isn't dead, is that somehow less bad than actually killing someone? If you fail to assassinate people, is that not as bad as actually killing people?

This is the kind of thing I was trying to address-- Charlottesville is bad in that the political violence led to a death, but that doesn't mean that the riotous incidents prior to Charlottesville as instigated or fueled by antifa or other militant far-left groups are less dangerous or rendered antifa less dangerous because they just happened to not kill anyone yet, even though they've been far more active-- if only distinguishably.

And yet nearly everyone I've talked to about this or heard talking about it, especially when it was still fresh, has treated the situation as such.

Or that most media outlets aren’t paying attention to antifa because there are more important things to worry about at that time, like a Hurricane/Tropical Storm that’s flooding Southeastern Texas?

I didn't know Harvey was a thing during the Boston free speech rally.

…or Charlottesville, even, where antifa/militant BLM didn't have a permit for the space that UtR was using, so instead got permits for two adjacent spaces and then illegally counterprotested in the UtR space, anyways.

Wait, no, but they had to not focus on antifa or even mention their name, because a white supremacist killed someone, and comprehensive coverage isn't managable.

Are they not at least as bad? Violence is literally their MO. I cited several situations of militant far-left violence, and of those situations, we have two more than clear-cut examples of far-left militancy.

Debateable.

Recently, a book was released called Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. It was part a history of antifa, and part a guidebook. In a summary of the book by The New Yorker, it says this:

Violence, Bray insists, is not the preferred method for past or present Antifa--but it is definitely on the table. He quotes a Baltimore-based activist who goes by the name Murray to explain the movement’s outlook:

You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don’t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them with tanks.

and

Bray, for his part, believes that one can practice “everyday anti-fascism” by confronting bigots in nonviolent ways, “from calling them out, to boycotting their business, to shaming them for their oppressive beliefs, to ending a friendship unless someone shapes up.” The point, as he sees it, is to shut down Fascists not just in the street but in every interaction. “An anti-fascist outlook has no tolerance for ‘intolerance.’ ” he writes. “It will not ‘agree to disagree.’ ”

Antifa does heavily associate itself with violence. To simplify it into violence, though, is to do the philosophy and reality a bit of a disservice. In addition, due to the highly decentralized nature of it, any given "antifascist" may very well be nonviolent or just refuse to engage in this kind of violence. Wouldn't surprise me – at best, antifa is a collection of local autonomous groups.

Astatine said:

Are they not at least as bad?

That's the problem.
Equating a band of provocative anarchists to well-organized, well-financed Neo-Nazis that have a long-term plan on destroying Western Democracy is exactly the goal of what an active measures campaign would want.

Pretending that members of the alt-right don't want to discredit them by any-means necessary, whether it is by forging propaganda and spreading it through an astro-turf campaign, or even disguising themselves as antifa to cause violence,fostering more negative reputations than they deserve, is naive at best.

It's very naive of you to not think that at least a portion of Antifa aren't like those Neo-Nazis, attempting to destroy Western Democracy, except replace it with communism instead of fascism. Last time I checked, communism isn't that great either.

And how do we know that they aren't doing the exact same thing back to the Alt-Right? I mean I'm not saying that the guy driving the car was an undercover Antifa activist or anything, but how do we know that it's not Antifa members that are purposely waving around these Nazi flags and such to discredit the Alt-Right?

On the off chance that anti-fa was there pretending to be nazis to discredit the alt right, it would have been in vain. The rally was organized by white nationalists and even booked white nationalist speakers.

Even the people from /r/the_donald who helped promote it knew ahead of time that there would be nazis there.

And if they were secretly members of antifa just posing as nazis, then there sure were a lot of them and they were very dedicated to the role.

Un decided Harvey was taking away from his headlines, so he lobbed a rocket over Japan.

poochyena said:

I’ve noticed a lot less people defending Trump lately. How CAN you defend this?

I grew tired arguing with a brick wall, so I stopped bothering. And if you mean the pardon, I suggest you read Article II, Section II, Clause I of the Constitution. If Washington, Johnson, and Truman can pardon people for literal treason (the actual, constitutionally defined kind), Trump can do so for a guy held in contempt.

BrentD15 said:

…well-organized, well-financed Neo-Nazis that have a long-term plan on destroying Western Democracy…

Care to provide a sauce for this? Last I checked, the American Nazi Party's gone, the Brownshirt Party isn't even on any ballots, and Daily Stormer can't get its website sorted out. At best, there's Stormfront, but I'd hardly call a single internet forum the epicenter of some grand, expensive plot to overthrow Western civilization.

Kinda hard to destroy western democracy when you can't even pull off a rally correctly and have to have the ACLU bail you out before SCOTUS when you want to troll an Illinois town.

…even disguising themselves as antifa to cause violence…

No True Antifa. And if we're diving into the realm of crazy unbelievable false flag operations, couldn't you make the same argument about the neo-nazi violence?

Why should I, or anyone, care about antifa or see them as any more than teenage edgelords?

Why should I, or anyone, care about antifa or see them as any more than teenage edgelords?

Because to do so is to ignore reality and demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge about antifa's current actions, especially the black bloc users. Astatine had just linked an article by the Washington Post about some dangerous activities. If you want reading about antifa, I highly recommend The Atlantic's and The New Yorker's most relevant articles.

even disguising themselves as antifa to cause violence,fostering more negative reputations than they deserve

While I like the rest of your post, this part I did not like. Without good evidence I will never accept that any given piece of bullshittery by a group wasn't actually done by that group.

As someone from a country where, every year, we have at least two rounds of "teenage edgelords" that vandalize property to the point of destroying entire stores, paralyze entire districts, have actually killed people before and keep injuring others every time and generally keep the nation from just moving on already, you should care plenty. Because even a supposed "teenage edgelord" with a molotov cocktail and a supposed motive that isn't much more than a guise for rampant violence can harm a nation, both in making its citizens' lives worse and in making its political climate ever worse.

>Astatine had just linked an article by the Washington Post about some dangerous activities. If you want reading about antifa, I highly recommend The Atlantic’s and The New Yorker’s most relevant articles.

Its just random people randomly attacking others while self-identifying as antifa. I don't see it any different, than, say, anonymous. They are just nobodies who do attacks, and say they are part of this group just so their attack will have more publicity.

They aren't organized. The only thing that separates them from a random rioter is that they say they are antifa. They aren't structured like, say, the KKK where there is an actual leader and organization of morals and such.

There are, in fact, local antifa organizations, and when engaging in protests and activities such as black bloc, they temporarily organize.

I can't believe you're making me play against my typical direction here, but I guess it's necessary.

When we say we should care about antifa, it's essentially akin to saying we care about the growing leftist militancy. When we say we care about the KKK, we're talking about a specific organization. You're right in that they're not comparable, but proceed to the wrong conclusion – that a lack of organization precludes any reasonable action from being taken to stem rising problems.

Think of it like this, Antifa has disorganized violence, while the KKK has organized violence.

At the end of the day, it's still violence, whether it was organized or not. Getting beamed in the head by a bat from an Antifa activist in the heat of a protest will have the same effect of getting beamed in the head by a bat from a clansmen who planned for the attack in advanced.

>When we say we should care about antifa, it’s essentially akin to saying we care about the growing leftist militancy.

I don't think that is really how it is seen to many people. Being antifa is 100% ideological, you have to attack their ideas, not the group. Thats why I have a problem with people complaining about antifa, its sorta avoiding the point?

You can attack an organized group like KKK for simply being a part of it. The group as a whole commits atrocities, but antifa is used to describe individuals, when you attack them, it has to be their ideology you attack and it has to be specific. You shouldn't say "I hate antifa", it should be "I hate people against free speech" or what ever reason you hate antifa. Its like saying you hate the left or right or whatever, its too vague to really mean anything.

>Getting beamed in the head by a bat from an Antifa activist in the heat of a protest will have the same effect of getting beamed in the head by a bat from a clansmen who planned for the attack in advanced.

Its not. Getting hit by a clansman is being attacked by a group. The entire group is responsible for it. Getting hit by an antifa, that is just an individual who hit you and only they are responsible.

wait, I don't understand, how is antifa not a group? It's myriad of individuals share similar ideological opinions, with (as far as I could tell) very little actual differentiation. And they are certainly organized, with their own reddit channels, facebook groups, etc. I don't particularly think they have a particular hierarchy or clear leadership but that doesn't mean that they aren't organized.

The KKK, are also individuals that share ideological opinions, and those ideological opinions are so rancid that, as you say, just belonging to that group, or associating with that group makes you on par as they are.

But that comes down to literal reputation above all else. And very rapidly calling yourself or supporting antifa means that you harbor or supportive of ideas that many people rithfuly consider abhorrent.

And they are certainly viewed as a group rather than individuals, and as a group they are responsible for how they are perceived.

And yeah, the day is coming that associating yourself with antifa would have a huge stigma coming with it. As it ought to, since the only thing people hate more than antifa are actual neo-Nazis, but that, even ain't saying that much.

This is 100% trash analogy, but its like viewing McDonalds and individual entrepreneur restaurant owners the same way.

A few McDonalds employees do something bad and the entire McDonalds empire is blamed and held responsible. If a few local restaurant owners do something bad, you don't blame and hold responsible all restaurant owners.

Some antifa might not be bad and just protest. Some might be violent. Some might be just be random thugs wanting more attention so they say they are antifa. You just can't say "Look at what this one antifa did, they should be held accountable for this". They aren't organized enough to do so. They might have local groups that are, but not on any large scale.

Antifa is not ideologically homogenous. They are united primarily in antifascism, antiracism, and anticapitalism, but even then you might find a self-proclaimed antifascist who doesn't have one or both of the latter two. In addition, all the other views – for example, what should replace our current economic system? – are hardly even relevant.

In addition, they may have "organizations" of sorts but it is much different than the organization the KKK or far-right militias, for example, have. In the latter hierarchies, if one member acts out, the group is implicitly involved. Either the group must condemn them, or the group as a whole is condemned. Such a dynamic is not present in antifa at large. Due to the very autonomous nature and anarchistic ideals present within its members, even if there are leaders or organizers there are not bosses or commanders. There may be a representative of sorts but they can be scrapped or disagreed with reasonably. It's extremely horizontal, as opposed to the traditional hierarchies that the far-right extremist groups use.

This makes combating violence from antifa a much different challenge than combating violence from organized racist groups. While antifa has its roots and its present in the possibility of violence, the situation is complex – most violent leftist attacks at protests lately are by antifascists, but it's entirely unreasonable to say that all antifascists at rallies are violent.

If you want to find a better group to criticize, consider members of black blocs. When you see the headlines about things like "antifa wearing all black", they're referring to black blocs. When people join a black bloc, they are doing so for the explicit purpose of helping others commit crimes – including acts of violence. When a group of a dozen or more wears nearly identical, concealing outfits (black bloc members wear masks, scarves, hoodies, plain clothes, things like that) and head out at the same time at the same place, if any one of them commits a crime it is hard for police to pin it on any one because any of a large group very well may have committed the crime. Without proof that others were aware of the explicit crimes others were going to commit, police would have trouble prosecuting for conspiracy as well.

Black blocs, as far as I can tell, account for the majority of antifascist violence. If cultural and political pressure was put on that method, it should help stunt leftist violence.

Rivers said:

While I like the rest of your post, this part I did not like. Without good evidence I will never accept that any given piece of bullshittery by a group wasn’t actually done by that group.

It's not like they openly talked about doing so…




Oh.
I guess they did.

=========

In other news, California Republican Dana Rohrabacher is planning on meeting Donald Trump to give him information he received from Julian Assange.

Serious News Time

"Young Chinese are 'too fat and masturbate too much to pass army fitness tests'"

Discuss.

Maybe… just maybe we're more alike than any of us realize

That /pol/ loves to false-flag both online and IRL isn't in question, however, that shouldn't be taken to mean literally everything anitfa does wrong was just a deep-cover /pol/yp making them look like violent thugs.

Take whatever /pol/ says with a grain of salt. They're not the boogeyman you actually claim them to be. They're either neckbearded weirdos permanently stuck in a basement or edgy teenagers that think saying "fuck the jews" is cool. Literally the only talent they really have is manipulating the internet.

One thing you should realize about /pol/ is a lot of people there are actually cowards. That's why they go there to begin with. They're afraid of being perceived as racist and nazis by displaying behavior in real life, so they instead talk about it on an anonymous website so they can basically vent and stay anonymous. They're too afraid to do this type of stuff most the time. Out of 100 that'd say they do this probably only 1 really would.

so literally:

So….
Trump tried to bribe Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley a day after report Don Jr. would testify before Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Grassley told Trump to piss off.

>using palmer report

Now that that's out of the way,

>bribe

A policy pledge isn't a bribe-- it can't even be classed as a bribe, last I checked. Furthermore, if I go by the recount of the

spokesman for Grassley

the conversation lasted two minutes, and apart from this pledge, they talked about

Hurricane Harvey and Ambassador Branstad in China.

Properly speaking, there's barely any dots to connect unless you're already willing to believe that Trump was "bribing" the guy, as hinted at by your citation of Palmer Report, which doesn't make anything resembling a good case for their headline: am I supposed to just assume that Grassley publicizing the calling incident is a-- as they put it-- "push back", or as you put it, "[telling someone to] piss off"? Is the discussion about ethanol a conversation that's been all but dormant until just recently when Trump made that call?

Not according to that Guardian article, which says,

Bloomberg reported in June that US ethanol producers were concerned that oil industry lobbyists who oppose important biofuel mandates could hold sway over Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, one of the regulatory bodies that sets important standards on the use of biofuel.

BrentD15 wrote:

Equating a band of provocative anarchists to well-organized, well-financed Neo-Nazis that have a long-term plan on destroying Western Democracy is exactly the goal of what an active measures campaign would want.

"Financed"? By who? The KKK are estimated to have 5k-8k members, and I doubt that all the Nazi groups have anything significantly more than that, unless you can produce the stats that say otherwise. The only thing that they have over the maruading antifa groups and mercs are the fact that they have defined groups, and even antifa has those, as well.

Also, antifa generally includes people who also want to destroy Western democracy.

Pretending that members of the alt-right don’t want to discredit them by any-means necessary, whether it is by forging propaganda and spreading it through an astro-turf campaign, or even disguising themselves as antifa to cause violence,fostering more negative reputations than they deserve, is naive at best.

Because they need any help in accomplishing that. On the contrary, it's utterly naive to think that they're actually defamed in any significant measure by alt-righters, and certainly on any scale that surpasses tit-for-tat, such that it can be said that all or even a significant contigent of violent antifa agitators are actually secretly far-righties trying to defame antifa. Barely anybody-- if at all-- from antifa claims that themselves.

And… as far as the evidences you posted go… you realize the second one is a joke, yeah? There's literally a sex toy there.

Astatine said:

>using palmer report
Now that that’s out of the way,

…as hinted at by your citation of Palmer Report, which doesn’t make anything resembling a good case for their headline:

"B-b-but the Palmer Report isn't credible!" is what I got out of that argument. Try harder.

Is the discussion about ethanol a conversation that’s been all but dormant until just recently when Trump made that call?

It seems like an innuendo towards campaign donors. At least, that's how I read it.

The KKK are estimated to have 5k-8k members, and I doubt that all the Nazi groups have anything significantly more than that, unless you can produce the stats that say otherwise.

You know there are alt-right groups than just the American Nazi Party and the KKK, right? Do the militant Proud Boys ring a bell? Or would you prefer Kekistan?

Because they need any help in accomplishing that. On the contrary, it’s utterly naive to think that they’re actually defamed in any significant measure by alt-righters, and certainly on any scale that surpasses tit-for-tat,

Oh, they're certainly trying.

It says a lot that the worst the Alt-Right can say about Antifa is that they use bike locks and damage property, while the Alt-Right proclaim white supremacy as their goal, arm themselves with semi-automatic rifles at rallies, and commit murder for their cause.

As much as you guys want it to be so, I just can't see Antifa being as bad as the hysterical Alt-Right at this time. Perhaps that may change one day, but until then, the alt-right can go fuck themselves.

On a more uplifting note, Trump Supporters and Protesters meet in Springfield, Illinois and shake hands.

BrentD15 wrote:

“B-b-but the Palmer Report isn’t credible!” is what I got out of that argument

Read better, then.

But in case you don't get it, let me walk you through:

I spend barely any time voicing my opinion about how I find the Palmer Report to be biased trash, and it cannot be argued that it's even as credible as even the Guardian article that you gave. Therefore, I do not engage the article, which says more or less the same thing as the Guardian article, which I do engage.

When I refer back to the Palmer Report article, it's only to challenge the notion that they made in their headline, and I equate that with your paraphrase of their headline.

This is the second time that you've both inflated and caracatured my points about credibility. So that you understand my point even better: nobody here links to Breitbart regularly, if at all-- talk less a bootleg Breitbart.

It seems like an innuendo towards campaign donors. At least, that’s how I read it.

Of course you did, because you primed yourself to read it that way. You do so perhaps at the cost of not recognizing that perhaps there's a lot more going on in the political sphere than Trump's investigations, including this matter.

You know there are alt-right groups than just the American Nazi Party and the KKK, right? Do the militant Proud Boys ring a bell? Or would you prefer Kekistan?

Firstly, Kekistan is no such thing. It's a label that's been undertaken by classical liberals as much as it has by the /pol/es-- to put them in the same category as any of the other groups you list shows how little you know about it.

Secondly, I didn't ask for what groups there were-- I suggested that the other groups that existed on the same plane as, say, the KKK, couldn't be significantly more popular than the KKK such that even between all of them, they'd have a considerable size. At its peak, the KKK had 6 million members-- my question is, do all those groups number in membership to even that?

Oh, they’re certainly trying.

Not my point. I don't deny that there's false-flagging, but you have yet to produce the evidence that the image of antifa is regularly tarnished by infiltrators, as if they're not at least liberal to the concept of violence, don't regularly use violence, and don't regularly generally engage in aggressive/outright warlike rhetoric.

It says a lot that the worst the Alt-Right can say about Antifa is that they use bike locks and damage property,

Because someone can't be killed by blunt force trauma to the head. Because a far-left militant didn't almost kill four politicians. Because people don't get hurt in their riots. Because most of them don't advocate a socioeconomic system and philosophy that's, globally, killed millions. Because they're not contributing to the degeneration of civility that even allows for things like what happened at Charlottesville to happen.

You're purposely downplaying antifa in order to make the white supremacists look that much worse, and the worst part about it is that you don't even try to make a limp-wristed attempt to downplay them in pointing to their supposedly small size in comparison to the "big" white supremacist/neo-nazi groups-- you just outright downplay their actual violence, and for what purpose?

It says a lot that the worst the Alt-Right can say about Antifa is that they use bike locks and damage property

Please go and read the New Yorker article I linked earlier. It takes its info directly from a book by an antifascist (or antifa sympathizer) who did research into historical and current antifa. It explicitly lays out, as I quoted earlier, that antifa is not beyond violence at all.

Because most of them don’t advocate a socioeconomic system and philosophy that’s, globally, killed millions.

Communism and socialism are huge ranges. To use the political compass as a rough visual guide…

While the end goal of marxist communism (which is what the historical regimes, to my knowledge, claimed to be) is anarchism, the means to achieve it are hotly disputed. Marxism-Leninism was notoriously among the most authoritarian forms, pushing for a "vanguard party", a group of basically ideological purists to help draw in less communistic proletarians.

In contrast, the highly anarchistic members of antifa do not want to use the state for anything. They want to skip Marx's idea of using the state to implement communism and then let it "wither away", thinking that won't happen, and instead just go as straight as possible to full communism. At least, a big group. There are socialists (not communists) in the group as well who are anarchistic too, so while their ideology is a bit different it remains that they are distinctly different than the state regimes of the past which lead to mass atrocities.

The reason I included Pinochet in the chart was partly for perspective, and partly to help remind that while an ideology can be used for horrible things, that doesn't make it de facto bad. For the most part, Pinochet loved market freedom, even while being extremely oppressive in terms of ideology. I have even heard lassiez-faire types saying that Pinochet's Chile was an actual proof that lassiez faire could work. Despite this, there are of course plenty of people who support highly deregulated markets who aren't in the business of wanting to throw communists out of helicopters and worse.

And the general concept that Pinochet had, of suppressing communism and such to maintain the free market, can actually still be present in a lack of a state. Controversial libertarian/anarcho-capitalist/monarchist Hans-Hermann Hoppe makes the case that in order for an anarcho-capitalistic society to thrive, they have to kick out communists and basically anyone else who threatens the local societal group. (Hoppe is an interesting fellow, I would recommend checking out the wikipedia page on him if this made you curious at all.) This kind of shifting of expulsion in an authoritarian state to expulsion in a libertarian government is sort of analogous to that of authoritarian to libertarian socialism.

TL;DR don't conflate the spectrum of communism and socialism into one point

Astatine said:

Firstly, Kekistan is no such thing. It’s a label that’s been undertaken by classical liberals as much as it has by the /pol/es-- to put them in the same category as any of the other groups you list shows how little you know about it.

Oh, I don't need to put them in such a group. They're happy to do so themselves. Hence their participation in the Unite the Right rally.

Because someone can’t be killed by blunt force trauma to the head. Because a far-left militant didn’t almost kill four politicians. Because people don’t get hurt in their riots. Because most of them don’t advocate a socioeconomic system and philosophy that’s, globally, killed millions. Because they’re not contributing to the degeneration of civility that even allows for things like what happened at Charlottesville to happen.

Blame the philosophy, not the people that hunger for power. Gotcha.

The alt-right were responsible. They attacked the UVA counter-protesters with their ridiculous tiki torches and spraying some sort of chemical at them. And then they were violent the following day, resulting in the murder of a counter-protester and the injuries of dozens more people. Some were even glad someone was murdered, and seek to do more. They're getting desperate.

Alright, just fucking stop. All you're doing at this point is just nitpicking.

Yes, what happened in Charlottesville was horrible. Yes, the Alt-Right was responsible for what happened. That doesn't just automatically make what Antifa did just magically disappear and make them the good boys in this shitshow. In this horrible climate of political violence it takes two to tango. Attempted murder is still a criminal charge alongside actual murder. I honestly find it disgusting how you just seem to constantly want to just ignore this, when ignoring this is what fucking led to all this shit happening to begin with.

We all are responsible to some degree for this chain of violence spreading far out of control to begin with for not speaking out against it more at the very beginning. We should've stopped this right when it first began, whether it was a righty or lefty that threw the first punch.