Bootstrap wrote:The problem with this is that it forgets who the two sides are in the main event. The two sides are the Nazis, KKK, and white supremacists versus the citizens of Charlottesville that they wanted to intimidate. Let's call them the oppressors versus the victims. And the victims were not morally equivalent to the people who threatened and intimidated them. There were also people who fought back to protect the victims. That probably just poured fuel on the fire, and it was a really bad idea.1) That moral responsibility is a zero sum game.
But let's not forget the people who were threatened and intimidated. Leaving them out of the picture is a huge "error in moral reasoning". And it's a huge error in Christian compassion.
Actually I see the supremacists and Antifa as being on the same side. Even though their ideologies are opposed, they are objectively allies because they are cooperating together to achieve the same goal: to create polarization through violence. A pox on both their houses because neither of them is on my side. I think that people really have to get away from the idea that this is a beauty contest where you have to declare a winner.
Antifa has a long history of attacking anyone whom they deem to be a "fascist", and they are pretty indiscriminate about who they consider to be one. I have had a growing concern about this for awhile, because in my view they are Brownshirts in everything but name.
This frames my approach to the situation in Charlottesville. The Nazis are a known quantity and have been marginal ever since the war. On the other hand the culture of political violence promoted by Antifa is new and growing with hordes of sympathizers on the left (some of them Mennonites who should know better!). As long as they restricted their tactics to outright Nazis I didn't mind too much, but since the election they have been attacking pretty much anybody on the right who dares to have a demonstration or even public meeting or rally.
And now because of the moral panic which Charlottesville began, I am afraid that they will be emboldened even more. It is my apprehension that the left in the US will be using Charlottesville as a sort of Reichstag fire issue against conservatives.