Once a year, on May 1st, flocks of Nazi/skinheads and punks/anarchists gather to Berlin from all around Europe to condense in two specific locations in order to throw bottles and fists at each other. The police prepare by blocking off streets, parking older and empty cruisers to be a 'presence' and provide activist tourists something to flip over and burn rather than the neighboring stores.

Normal locals mostly stay inside that evening, some young people come out to drink beer, keep their distance, watch the violent entertainment.

The hospitals fill up, fires get put out, dawn rises, everyone goes home, the city sends crews to clean the streets, all goes back to normal.

Holy crap, they've got a "purge"!

I just love that the Germans even have organized riots. It's just so... German.

One of these two places is a public park with a wall officially designated to spray-paint graffiti, illegal in the rest of the city. Whenever you visit, it's mostly all new, the better art maybe lingering somewhat. Kids with whitewash just pick a spot they think should be their own, whitewash over, and actualize their vision. People who paint there know it's temporary, like building a sandcastle, so there's apparently no drama.

Are there no snipers in Berlin?

ETA: This question is totally off topic. And has nothing to do with the situation you describe in which Nazis are known to gather at a particular place and time. Nope. Nothing to do with that. Just curious. It is bad to even joke about violence, mK?

The cognitive dissonance on display in this discussion is the principle reason why I gave up on the current state of liberalism in this country and the DNC in general.

Antifa is not a group of freedom fighters trying to make sure fascism isn't allowed to spread.

They're dumb college kids convinced that their brand of anarcho-communism is the only true path to reaching utopia. The same EXACT mentality that empowers fascism in the first place. So naturally, they engage in the same practices as fascism while being willingly blind or genuinely ignorant of how they're behaving. They want to bully everyone into thinking their way, and violently suppress any vocal dissent. Yet I'm supposed to cheer them on as some kind of respectable revolutionary? Fuck that.

But if you dare bring up these facts to the current people dictating karma on this mess of a website, they go out of their way to censor your posts. Much like the fascists they so love to SPEAK against.

Basically, Antifa, as well as most of you, need to grow the fuck up and learn that your actions are more important than your words, and a hell of a lot more important than your feelings.

If only SE karma came from a disproportionately representative subset of the userbase, rather than direct votes...

I don't know man. Most people who have a high karma post often and on a variety of topics they find interesting. Try posting about some other topics. Chances are that someone else will also be interested in and have insight to share on some of those topics. Fatigue also plays a factor. I find partisan politics in general boring and I have sometimes downvoted a post simply because I am tired of being inundated with all Trump all the time. Honestly if you are that worried about your E-peen(karma) just look for somthing on the interweb that gets you rock hard other then political hot button issues. Post it and see what happens. Hell, you may even get an upvote from sanepride.

IF you view SE as nothing more then a collective of subhumans with diametrically opposing viewpoints towards your own then I fail to see what the point of commenting or posting here is for you other than an attempt to stir up the nest of insects. If that is the case than you are just a sad internet troll. I chose to believe otherwise.
I have noticed that framing an argument in a constructive way often gets better results than simply stating what you don't like about somthing. So what is it that you like about SE? What are some constructive thoughts you have that you think would make this site better for everyone?

(BTW- If I am not mistaken, you can post a link in your comments even if you can not post.)

It was the Hive mind comment that led me to question whether or not you view liberals as sub human. On a daily basis Conservative radio host put forth the notion that liberalism is a disease, liberal are incapable of critical thought, are intellectually impaired, and not even real people. Likewise Liberal media says the same thing about conservatives. In reality all mainstream media including talk radio is owned by a very small group that would like nothing more than to keep the masses divided and turned against each other. I am glad you can see past that.


About the karma point system. It does have it's flaws but without some form of moderation this community would quickly become more of a sewer than it sometimes is. In my opinion, it works for the most part except when it doesn't. Maybe one day we can have an AI to babysit the forum. Unfortunately some people forget that they are adults and make complete asses out of themselfs. I don't down mod as much as I should. As a long time lurker, my default response is to ignore however fag jokes and name calling is simply not cool. Perhaps steele can address this because it seems to becoming more commonplace.

I'm not sure where the confusion is but as can be seen in the post log, I did in fact down vote and chided rylex when he insulted you and I down voted morris homophobic comment as well when you pointed it out to me. I don't see where I have characterized you as a troll I simply pointed out to rylex that "if" you were a troll then you have won. Anyways this conversation seems to be going in circles so I will leave it at that. Have a good one.

Then why exactly are you still here, again? It's not like you actually bring any insight to the table.

Looks like I still managed to hit a nerve, though.

Lol, the little pussy even made an extra account just to downmod the comments in this thread.

But the intellectually dishonest neo-liberals that infest this site want free and open discussion, don'tcha know?

downmodding doesnt stop a free and open discussion.

maybe you don't altogether grasp how things work?

Downmodding will stop posts appearing at all. If that's not suppression of discussion in your feeble mind, then nothing is.

change your settings. they will still appear.

Just FYI- 'neo-liberal' refers to a free-market ideology that is more like libertarianism than liberalism as we know it today.
Ron Paul = neo-liberal
Bernie Sanders = just plain liberal

So other than one comment by foobar advocating 'punching nazis', WTF are you talking about? Where is this 'cognitive dissonance' or any other actual defense of antifa violence? The only contention here is the question of whether antifa/left wing violence in any way approaches the scope of right wing violence, and the overall statistics seem to be a definitive NO.
If you want to try to counter this with some counter-stats, go right ahead, but otherwise you're being all whiny and defensive here just to be whiny and defensive.

If you think Foobar is the only one cheering these clowns on, then you yourself are willingly blind or ignorant of their behavior.

Sure, believe what you want, but unless you can back it up with some numbers numbers, as I said above- fact checks are moot when people's minds are irrevocably made up.
You're entitled to your own opinion, not to your own facts.

Your mind has been irrevocably made up regarding this entire Trump situation from shortly after his victory was announced. Russian meddling in our vote totals is pure fucking hearsay and conjecture and always has been, yet here you are, on this website, hammering the narative every chance you get that Big Bad Trump is a Nazi and every single thing he does is fascist and Un-American. Yet that's ok. Because Hollywood says so.

But if we dare to call Antifa out for what they are, we're judging them based on right-wing biases.

Fuck yourself Sanepride, and your bullshit psuedo-intellectual horseshit that somehow miraculously comes off as you spouting the latest DNC propaganda stance every single time.

You're kinda getting all bent out of shape here for no good reason dude.
If you take the time to read the article, there's no defense of antifa or any violent action, from the left or the right. In fact there's a condemnation of political violence and concern of escalation on both sides. What is here that seems to be raising some hackles is the notion that right-wing violence has been more prevalent in recent times, even with the rise of the antifa movement. Thing is, this isn't happening in a vacuum. We could be having a reasonable discussion about this, but look at how angry and off-topic your comment is. I'm not talking about Trump here, or the Russians etc. I'm not defending antifa or any violent action. Really you're just providing a good example of how folks need to just calm the fuck down.
Deep breaths man. OK?

Hey now, no need to go and drag our deviant fetishes into this gutter, OK?

Otherwise yeah, there's a bit of an echo chamber here, but opposing views aren't 'taboo', we've just got some folks who tend to be overly defensive and, quite frankly, dicks about it.

""The far left is very active in the United States, but it hasn't been particularly violent for some time," says Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.

He says the numbers between the groups don't compare.

"In the past 10 years when you look at murders committed by domestic extremists in the United States of all types, right-wing extremists are responsible for about 74 percent of those murders," Pitcavage says.

You have to go back to the 1970s to find the last big cycle of far-left extremism in the U.S."


If only you actually read the article, instead of seeing the post title and getting a giant whipping boy hardon.

Go and find a credible source for your world view, otherwise it's just your world view and nothing more. It's always easy to dismiss a source that happens to present information you don't like.
Meanwhile I'll point out that even the original creator of Pepe the Frog chose to retire the character because of what it had become. And while the lone baseball shooter had expressed left-wing views, go ahead and show us how he was in any way connected to or influenced any sort organized left-wing entity. Because when you decide one angry man is 'the left' as a whole, you're into Alex Jones territory. Y'know, the guy who actually has influenced violent right-wing behavior.

You think you "pass the laugh test"?

Case closed, I guess.

yes. indeed.

actions like posting on a neo-liberal web blog. 🙄

tl;rd

Yes, but their numbers are small, especially in comparison with right-wing violent extremists.

Right, but the thing is you get one guy like the baseball shooter (who wasn't even connected to any organized group) and the right-wing starts freaking out like we're on the edge of a violent bolshevik uprising.

Breitbart is calling it a "leftist attack." Then blames Obama because his divisive policies and rhetoric. It's literally the "whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you" defense. Fucking hell, hypocrisy just doesn't mean what it used to anymore.

Right's been using that for years, along with their other fave, the 'Well, you guys did it first!' defense, otherwise known as the four-year-old's argument.

Aww, did Goliath get a little owie on his toe from David's slingshot?

Thanks for supporting the Second Amendment.

We couldn't keep it without people like you.

You know that has nothing to do with the Second Amendment.

I think you mean "violence", no?

And it's the first amendment that America was built on. That's why it's the first one. There are plenty of countries with guns. The trick is having the right to speak free of certain consequences.

that's exactly what the right takes the first amendment to be.

freedom to say what we want without being taken to task for it.

The 'task' you're allowed to hold free speech to, is only further debate. It goes the same for those scurry Nazi's you people are selling your souls over.

You're allowed to say whatever you want in an uncrowded public place, period. If you don't like what you hear, you debate it peacefully, or you walk the fuck away.

If the Nazi's decide to get violent at their rally, we have a police force that can handle it. Delusional children with fantasies of battling the next Hitler aren't going to be any help in that situation.

please explain how the right to have a gun helps to enforce the other rights?

i personally haven't seen any armed uprisings to protect us from the oppressive government in oh, about 200 years.

It's been debated to death for centuries now. If you were willing to learn why the 2nd amendment is so important to the constitution you'd have found plenty of data as to why by now.

I'm guessing that your professor never included that lesson plan in your Humanities course though, so you just assume that the Bill of Rights is only 7 or 8 amendments long.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Is not about punching or shooting anybody. it is about calling up private citizens to protect a newly form government.

Plus I've always suspected 18th century English had words for ownership, and if they'd intended a right for individuals to own arms they would've just said so.

And you'd be categorically wrong.

"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined..."
- George Washington, First Annual Address, to both House of Congress, January 8, 1790
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787
"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
- Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776

And yet despite expressing one sentiment, they enacted a different one with extra clarification about it referring to groups (as opposed to individuals). It's almost like politicians might exaggerate or advertise a stance they might not fully support. No new taxes or whiskey riots and all that.

The militias ARE free individuals in the eyes of the constitution. It was written at a time when we had a small standing Army and relied on free men willing to fight alongside the standard regiments. If you think the founding fathers didn't wholeheartedly support the right to the individual to own firearms, you're sorely mistaken and/or trying to rewrite history to fit your own bias. There's literally thousands of pages of documentation from Jefferson and Washington alone meticulously outlining not just their support of an armed society, but demands for it. Many of them even advocated that regular citizens shouldn't be allowed to own just rifles and muskets, but cannon, mines and bombs as well. None of the bullshit that you claim is proof of the 'founding fathers secretly being anti-gun' is anything other than somebody trying to ignore the centuries of debate on the topic. The founding fathers were pro-gun as it gets. Educate yourself on this matter before you further look like a fool.

And that would all be very important if we were talking about the rifles and muskets and guns and cannons and mines and bombs of the 18th century, or the fantasy that anyone ever intended our society to be some kind of perpetual Hatfield and McCoy feud situation. They referred to a well-regulated militia, not every man for himself, not screaming anarchy. That's why crimes, riots, and armed rebellions were put down then, and are put down now. Screaming "Give me liberty or give me death!" when the government regulates something defined to be well-regulated from day one is being a loony, not educated.

So, you're saying he should shoot Nazis instead of punching them?

I'm saying if you punch someone, regardless of their politics and what you think of them, they have a human right to protect themselves.

Whether you like them or not.

Judging from fishpenner's view of Philando Castile, it seems he doesn't feel people of different skin color should enjoy their Second Amendment rights.

Good luck, but really nothing to understand. It's the incpenners brand troll. No discussion, just jingoism. Story on old SE was that he was a paid GOP shill, but I was always doubtful, mainly because his trolling was so lame it was hard to believe even the GOP would actually pay for such drivel.

You insult your own intelligence by calling an argument you can't win 'jingoism'.

Your 'opinions' are knee-jerk regurgitated Progressive themes.

You're afraid to have an opinion of your own, lest you draw the ire of the hive.

Weak mind.

Just remembered the classic incpenners 'funny' mod.
Seemed like a prefect opportunity to revive it.

He/she/its/they have obviously been around for a while but not really sure how that matters. They were anonymous on the old SE too. Now they're just a different anonymous.

For every problem, there's a genocide solution.

Stalin?

It came out of me one evening tending bar, listening to yet another overtly christian patron spout over his beer how we should just turn the middle east to glass.

Seems to have worked for Germany.