On the rising plague of right-wing violence.

[Oniya]

The ability to edit has been disabled in the Politics section, due to people abusing it.  As a consequence, it is advisable to consider your words carefully before hitting 'Post'.

[Saria]

I have before seen Indian members of E but I dunno if there is a large active number of people on E from India since it is mainly a US based site.

My family is Indian. Personally, it doesn't bother me one iota that an English-speaking American accidentally misspelled a Hindustani name. If you want to be that pendantic, "Gandhi" isn't even the real spelling in any case; it's "ગાંધી". But I don't think anyone really cares that much. As they say in India: « Comme ci comme ça. »

Actually, the elevation of Gandhi to a level of sainthood where merely misspelling his name is a sin because you don't "care enough about the legacy of the man in question to bother spelling his name correctly" is far more offensive to me than merely misspelling his name. And Gandhi himself would find that attitude just as off-putting as I do.

But I don't understand why there would be so many typos, including ones which are immediately perceived as racist by, um, 20 percent or more of global population?

There is literally no one in the entire world who "perceives" typos as racist. 120% of the global population agrees with that.

Deliberate misspellings can be racist. Typos are just accidents. Humans are just apes; we were not designed to communicate by typing on keyboards. Mistakes horpen.

The title of this thread, and its placement at the top of the section, suggests that E is not at all welcoming to anyone on the "right-wing."  Is that really a message you want to send?  Maybe it is, I don't know.

The enemy is violence, not the right wing, or Republicans, or even d.j.t.

That is as ridiculous as saying: "Why are you obsessed with cancer deaths? The problem is dying, not cancer!"

We can't fight "violence". That's nonsensical. Violence is not a target, and it is not a cause. It's not even a specific act or group of acts. It's a vague abstract idea that isn't even always bad. Violence can be legitimate, if, for example, you're fighting off an oppressor. "Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission."

That was Gandhi I quoted, by the way.

If you're really serious about fighting "violence", then the first step is determining where the violence is coming from. The undeniable reality is that at this point in time, violence is overwhelmingly coming from the right. That's not just a matter of opinion anymore - everyone tracking the stats has noticed the trend. In my country, in the last five years, every single politically motivated massacre has been done by a right-wing fanatic. Every single one. (And I stopped at five years arbitrarily. It's probably true if I go back ten years.)

We need to talk about this trend, and we need to do so desperately because too many people are trying to not talk about it. I can't speak with certainty about the US, but at least in Canada we have had a serious problem with our law enforcement community not taking the rising tide of right-wing violence seriously. In fact, our version of the CIA actually shut down its monitoring of right-wing extremism in 2016 or 2017, because they didn't care about it; they didn't think it was a problem. They were forced to reopen it when a Trump-loving lunatic shot 24 Muslims in a mosque - in the backs as they were praying - because he was upset that our Prime Minister was defying Trump's Muslim travel ban.

It's a serious problem, and it's getting worse. There were three politically-motivated massacres in my country in 2018... all right-wing. That was more than the previous three years combined (at least!), and more people were killed in this one year.

And this isn't an accidental fluke. At least in my country, all you need to do to see the evidence is just go into left-wing and right-wing communities on Facebook or other places like that.

• In the left-wing community you'll see plenty of memes about how racists, fascists, capitalism, and so on suck, and discussions about how people can do better in individual interactions (things like how to deal with latent racism, misgendering, or microaggressions) or how to make a better society (whether this or that form of anarchism would better).
• In the right-wing community you'll see people openly talking about murdering the Prime Minister.

I'm not joking or exaggerating about that. And I'm not the only one who's noticed.

And by the way, because you care so much about Gandhi and India, rising right-wing extremism is a huge problem there, too. The right-wing parties there are actually celebrating the assassination of Gandhi!

If we're going to be serious about fighting "violence", we need to identify where it's coming from. It's coming from the right. That's an undeniable fact. And we need to say that out loud, and acknowledge it.

So the bottom line is this:

• Right-wing extremism is a serious problem.
• Most (all in some countries, including mine) political violence comes from right-wing extremists.
• It is getting worse.
• People aren't taking it seriously enough - particularly authorities
• So we need to talk more about it.

Now, because I know someone is going to bring up left-wing extremism: Yes, it exists. However, authorities have been harassing left-wing groups for decades, and as a result, there are no real left-wing extremist organizations anymore that have any sort of operational capacity. There have still been lone-wolf left-wing extremist attacks in the last decade or so, but none of them have targeted people - they've always targeted structures (pipelines, mines, and I think a bank or two). Yes, these are still bad. But:

• Left-wing extremist incidents are few and far between; nowhere even close to the amount of right-wing incidents.
• They are always less dangerous; they target pipelines and stuff, and take active steps to avoid killing people (I can't remember off the top of my head whether they always succeeded; I'd have to check), whereas most right-wing incidents are directly targeting people, and often large numbers of innocent civilians.

So yes, left-wing extremism exists. But it's not really a problem in 2018, although law enforcement still monitors and disrupts left-wing groups. Right-wing violence is a major problem, and it's being mostly ignored by law enforcement.

(All the incidents and data above are from Canada. I don't know the data for the US off the top of my head.)

One more thing:

The title of this thread, and its placement at the top of the section, suggests that E is not at all welcoming to anyone on the "right-wing."

The title of the thread is: "On the rising plague of right-wing violence." How in the world could that drive "anyone on the 'right-wing'" away? If they're so wrapped up in their political identity that even talking about the violence coming from their community drives them away, then I say good riddance. I don't want those people around. Does anyone?

I mentioned above that we need to acknowledge and talk about right-wing violence, but the people who need most to do that are... right wingers. Right-wing people need to be aware that there is a serious problem lurking in their communities, so they can spot it, and deal with it.

Left-wing people can't stop right-wing violence, only right-wing people can.

Only right-wing people can do something about the hateful, violent rhetoric in their communities. If right-wing people really don't agree with violence or extremism, they need to clean it out of their spaces.

The only thing left-wing people can do about right-wing violence is talk about it, to force people on the right to acknowledge the problem and hopefully do something about it. The only other option would be violent retaliation in self-defence - because you can't seriously expect them to just sit around and wait to be killed because right-wing people get too upset at even the mention of right-wing violence. I don't think anyone on the left (or the "centre") wants things to go that far. So instead they will keep talking about it, to force people on the right-wing to face the demons in their midst.

That's the way Gandhi would want it done. And, in fact, you know what Gandhi would have called right-wing people who ran away from discussions of right-wing violence? "Cowards". (It was one of those words he was fond of using.)

So I don't agree that talking about right-wing violence should drive right-wing people away. On the contrary, anyone driven away by it deserves to be gone.

[Lustful Bride]

As someone fairly right leaning in a few topics I am in agreement with Saria for the most part. The first step to correcting a problem is to recognize it is there, and many on the right tend to plug their ears or just blame the left for everything, even when you can directly prove it is the right at fault. It might be because I am more loyal to the Country as a whole than any one party or group, but if someone loves their party, be it right or left, then it behooves them to work hard to ensure their party is as noble and just and whatever else the propaganda says, even if it means coming to terms with uncomfortable truths, and past and present, actions.

It sucks, but it is necessary and something we must do. I call out my country when it messes up, just like I call out others. Why? Because I know that if everyone busts their humps working to make the country better, to work together for all Americans, and all people who come to join us and be Americans, we can really be the shinning city on the hill that we claim to be. We aren't saints, we aren't perfect, but we can sure as hell try to be.

We need to stop pulling to the extremes of both sides and meet in the middle more, talk and discuss, work things out, the way politics and society are supposed to work and have worked for hundreds of years (with mixed results granted but the point still stands).

Also Rick, you do realize that Autocorrect is a thing and can actively change spelling right? There's countless jokes about how autocorrect is a pain. Your sudden tantrum over the spelling of Gandhi comes off more as trolling than trying to make a point and it really comes out of left field.

[Crystalis]

This is such a needed and eloquent post for a very important issue. I'm lucky to live near an area that is fairly diverse, and in a town that is mostly non-violent. But every time I turn on the news and see the reports of hate crimes as their numbers rise more and more, it breaks my heart and makes me want to cry. We are not seperate species here. Black, white, cis, trans, gay, straight, from this country or that, no matter what your heritage, skin color, or various identifications are, we are all human. Why should we act like animals and treat each other like lessers just because they're different? We are not lions and gazelles. We are all human, and we all have the same ultimate goal. We all just want to experience happiness, as often as we can. What reason do you have to inhibit someone else from reaching that goal? Sadism has no place in society. Please, be kind to each other. If you can treat a pet with love and affection, then you can absolutely treat someone of your own species the same way. There is no reason for bloodshed, death, or even hateful comments. We are all humans, and it's time we start acting like it. Cobras don't try to eat cobras.

[Saria]

Cobras don't try to eat cobras.

Weeeeeeell...  :P

But yes, I mean, other than that detail, I agree with the sentiment.

[Tamhansen]

we are all human. Why should we act like animals and treat each other like lessers just because they're different? We are not lions and gazelles. We are all human, and we all have the same ultimate goal. We all just want to experience happiness, as often as we can. What reason do you have to inhibit someone else from reaching that goal? Sadism has no place in society. [/b]

Humans, by their very nature are tribal. We've spent tens of thousands of years bashing in heads of people who just happened to belong to the village over the next hill. Then, technology and politics made societies grow beyond what our little ape brains could handle, and societies became enormous. So now we are adjusting by forming tribes not based on familial lines or geographical location, but rather based on ideas and morals. Some rather benign like liking the same artist, the same fashion items or the same sports teams (though that can turn violent too on occassion). Some less benign, like grouping around skin colour, religious beliefs and political affiliation.

Sadly, one of the downside of tribal behaviour is that there is the outsider, those who do not belong, those who are not like us. Most of us have learned to deal with that part of our brain to a certain extent, and simply deal with the outsiders peacefully. We act polite, we might ignore them at times, avoid them perhaps, when among our own, we might even mock those who are different, but in general we coexist with them. Some among us however, do not have that control over this part of our brain, and for them, the fear and distrust and anger that kept our ancestors alive for so long is still very much there. This can lead to disturbing behaviour from (on the relatively benign side) people who go apeshit if their idol is mocked or insulted, via hategroups to at the deep and dangerous end, people who truly believe that the 'others' must die.

Now don't misunderstand me, I didn't write the above to excuse the hatred. (They can't help it, it's just how they're wired) because that would only be true for a very, very small fraction of this group who have other issues beside this one. But in studying, and gaining a better understanding of the underlying causes, we strive to recognise the behaviour and perhaps intervene sooner, and hopefully get to these people before they reach a point where they use violence.

[Skynet]

I've been debating whether to post it here or make it its own thread, but figured it would be best to post here given the relation and the thread's stickied nature.

This provides a good insight of how many young depressed white men in the Western world get suckered in to reactionary ideas and hate groups, and the uploader talks about his own story of how it affected him. Halfway through the video he explains how he got out of it, which I found to be very strong.

[Vekseid]

I go over isolation in a blog post here.

[karkas132]

Its definitely good to highlight the issue of right-wing violence because it has become very prevalent. Political violence, and of course violence in general is a generally bad thing. I think that a lot of the people who call out left wing violence but act like the right wing violence isn't there come from the few areas where left-wing violence is more prevalent, I had to climb out of that rabbit hole myself. Living in Portland the past couple of years Antifa showing up and starting fights with anyone who disagrees with them was something that happened like once every other month or so, and for a long time I was one of those people who didn't see much of the right wing violence other than the Proud Boys eventually began showing up to oppose antifa though it wasn't until after they had hospitalized Joey Gibson once or twice and called him a white supremacist (the irony of him being Japanese-American is not lost on me).

However eventually I did a lot of reading and analyzing of current trends, right wing violence is most definitely a threat and especially in the wake of the Christchurch massacre in which I wrote a paper on for a think tank, in which I will of course share if they decide to publish it and maybe so even if they don't.

I spent a lot of time condemning left-wing violence, and I still do, but I have come to realize that right wing violence is far more prevalent. I think this is one of the videos that spoke the most to me and honestly while I do not agree with this man on all of his view points I attribute a lot of the way I think now and a lot of where my beliefs come from to this video that came out in 2017, especially this quote.

"Conversations stop violence, conversations start countries, they build bridges and when the chips are down conversations are the last tool humans use before we pick up the guns."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdHJw0veVNY

[Silk]

Its definitely good to highlight the issue of right-wing violence because it has become very prevalent. Political violence, and of course violence in general is a generally bad thing. I think that a lot of the people who call out left wing violence but act like the right wing violence isn't there come from the few areas where left-wing violence is more prevalent, I had to climb out of that rabbit hole myself. Living in Portland the past couple of years Antifa showing up and starting fights with anyone who disagrees with them was something that happened like once every other month or so, and for a long time I was one of those people who didn't see much of the right wing violence other than the Proud Boys eventually began showing up to oppose antifa though it wasn't until after they had hospitalized Joey Gibson once or twice and called him a white supremacist (the irony of him being Japanese-American is not lost on me).

However eventually I did a lot of reading and analyzing of current trends, right wing violence is most definitely a threat and especially in the wake of the Christchurch massacre in which I wrote a paper on for a think tank, in which I will of course share if they decide to publish it and maybe so even if they don't.

I spent a lot of time condemning left-wing violence, and I still do, but I have come to realize that right wing violence is far more prevalent. I think this is one of the videos that spoke the most to me and honestly while I do not agree with this man on all of his view points I attribute a lot of the way I think now and a lot of where my beliefs come from to this video that came out in 2017, especially this quote.

"Conversations stop violence, conversations start countries, they build bridges and when the chips are down conversations are the last tool humans use before we pick up the guns."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdHJw0veVNY

Personally I think left wing violence is more prevalent, but often more micro scale, assaults, damage to property etc so a lot of it gets overlooked or not reported on. While right wing violence happens less often overall. But tends to be on a much more devastating scale. One does not make the other ok and all forms of violence regardless of political leanings should be called out on and stopped.

[Tolvo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZswuCGPwM

If people are interested, there was a livestream of the House Judiciary Committee on the rise of white nationalism in the USA and the world. It is a bit questionable at times(For some reason the Neo Nazi Candace Owens is there though they do address her defense of Hitler at least). But it is at least full of decent discussion on the subject and they talk about a lot of incidents and possible legislative changes(Like making hate crimes handled by the FBI rather than local law enforcement with many states having different laws and not recognizing many marginalized groups as protected such as gay people).

[Skynet]

You didn't even post 3 minutes of the best part! :(

[Tolvo]

Well I didn't want to come across as cherry picking.

https://forward.com/fast-forward/422268/washington-man-charged-in-terror-plot-im-shooting-for-30-jews/

Also for those who missed it a man was arrested for posting about killing Jewish people, while stockpiling weapons an threatening bombings. The FBI were notified in November, a month later they finally investigated. He was arrested then and is now being charged with felonies. This is happening more and more and so many times the FBI just doesn't seem to care.

[Vekseid]

Feel like there ought to be a listing of these somewhere.

For now, At least 20 dead, including 3 Mexicans, and 26 injured in El Paso shooting.

[Oniya]

Of course there's a list somewhere.    The El Paso shooting has been put on the list of individual incidents, but does not seem to have been added to the monthly agglomeration chart yet.

The short-short version:
This is the 249th mass shooting of 2019.  August 3rd is the 216th day of 2019.

[Oniya]

Make that 250.  Dayton, Ohio.

A spokesperson for the local Miami Valley Hospital, Terrea Little, confirmed to NBC News that the hospital was treating 16 victims.

[Tolvo]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/04/mass-shootings-el-paso-texas-dayton-ohio-8chan-far-right-website?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

And it should be mentioned more and more mass shootings are being announced on places like 8chan, reddit, Gab, and 4chan, before they take place. With 8chan often being the most direct and it being circulated from there to the others. It is home to many of the absolute worst one can find in public, with Neo Nazis, Incels, Pedophiles, and more, being the common users found there.

https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories-terrorism-160000507.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tw

Qanon content is also on there which as a reminder it has come to light that the FBI is treating Qanon content as a domestic terrorism threat(as they should). Cloudflare hosts 8chan and has been notorious because of their system for reporting. When someone reports a website to Cloudflare their standard procedure has been to then alert the site owner along with the information of who reported it, as such whenever someone reports Cloudflare within a day on 8chan they are doxxed with threats being made to them and their families(A common tactic is to go through a person's Facebook friends to find younger family members who may not know anything about this so they can get information from them or spam them with gore and child porn).

[gaggedLouise]

Yes, at least the El Paso shooting certainly looks like it was motivated by racism. And in the Dayton one, all three women killed (excepting the killer's sister) were black, and most of the men too.

The Dayton police showed a video early in their press conference about an hour ago, not a close-up (those came later I think) but a film snapped from across the street looking towards the bar - and the striking thing was, one could hear all the shots, the firing sounds thundering loudly across the semi-dark street, and coming fast, several within a few seconds - it sounded completely like a battle scene. Very scary.  :-(

[Vekseid]

I specifically want to only list unambiguously political, bigoted, or racist murders. This includes left wing incidents if and when they occur. There was one attempt I am aware of and I am sure there will be more.

As far as I am aware the Dayton shooting is still unclear. He has been called out as being atheist so of course that is the reason in some eyes.

I do not believe there is anything to gain from losing objectivity here. It does no good to have people who may be on the fence see what might be interpreted as hyperbole.

[Skynet]

Brandon Friedman over on Twitter looked over the El Paso shooter's manifesto and found that a lot of his talking points were directly lifted from and/or inspired by talk show hosts and politicians such as Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump:

[Tolvo]

https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/08/26/27039560/undercover-in-patriot-prayer-insights-from-a-vancouver-democrat-whos-been-working-against-the-far-right-group-from-the-inside

A person had semi-secretly gone undercover as a conservative and has been livestreaming various protests, riots, etc, in Portland. Now that they've done their duty, the Navy veteran has handed over much of the footage and evidence which shows members of the far right, alt right, patriot prayer, proud boys, and more, planning riots and engaging in unprovoked violence. In a more recent example his footage showed Patriot Prayer and allies planning to attack  an establishment where antifascists were meeting, with Andy Ngo on camera laughing at the jokes and along with the open plans of attack which Andy reported none of. He's gathered a lot of footage of full exchanges, not the cut down edited clips meant to show only the ends of fights. Now he isn't the only one, there actually is an entire antifascist organization with guides on how to go undercover and there have been many undercover antifascists recording things then releasing the like this, though this man's tour of duty against terrorists like Patriot Prayer is effectively over given he's going to be a witness in court and testify and his name will be made public. More and more in the courts these recordings and testimonies are showing just how many people have lied to try and hide right wing violence.

[Oniya]

Brave person indeed.  I seem to recall there were activists in the 60's-70's who did similar things with groups like the KKK.

[Tolvo]

It's a very long tradition helped a lot by the miniature cameras most of us carry around now. Also a great example of a person using their privilege to fight injustice.

[Beguile's Mistress]

Wasn't there also a story recently about a black police officer who went undercover and infiltrated the KKK?  I think it was all done online.

[Oniya]

In a more recent example his footage showed Patriot Prayer and allies planning to attack  an establishment where antifascists were meeting, with Andy Ngo on camera laughing at the jokes and along with the open plans of attack which Andy reported none of.

In related(?) news - Andy Ngo has removed 'Editor @Quillette' and 'Host Things @YouShouldNgo' from his Twitter bio.  ::)  Not sure if the latter is still even a thing, since the latest tweet (and episode) from it was at the end of May.  He's still listed as a 'sub-editor and photo-journalist' on Quillette's site.