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When Pawlenty tried to claim a Leftist Convention would have "goofballs" like the Proud Boys too [1]
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Date: 2023-06-21
This is a blast from the past — Jan 2021 — but yeah, like seriously man.
Here wherein Tim Pawlenty is asked whether it is appropriate for CPAC to have Proud Boys and III Percenters walking around openly he responds with Both-Sides and Whataboutism.
Pawlenty: I’ll bet if I went to any number of leftist gatherings I could find bunch of goofballs as well. Keiller: Do you know of any? Pawlenty: Well, look… do I know of any militant leftists? Keiller: I’m saying.. do you have an actual example of that because, this is an actual example? Do you know of an actual example on the left basically says its all the same Left and Right here? Pawlenty: Well we have all kinds of examples of people who are encouraging violence, behaviors that we would accept are outside the norm on the Left, demonstrating all over the country. Keiller: But at a political conference where a former President is speaking?
Pawlenty: What difference does it make whether it’s in a hotel ballroom or a street corner, what’s the difference? Keiller: I think it speaks to whether they feel welcome at a particular event. And I ask because you’re aware that the U.S. government has made clear about how big of a threat anti-government extremism is. That this is a huge threat to national security. Pawlenty: And I would put Antifa and other groups on the Left in the same category. Keiller: But they — I hear what you’re saying about that — we have seen some violence. The Federal government does not put them in the same category just to be clear. And I’m just wondering, you said that you would find goofballs on the Left — I don’t see the example on the left at a political conference where you have anti-government extremists show up and I’m just asking you if you do because you said if you look you would find them? Pawlenty: Alright, I think if you and I sent a CNN crew to an obvious and evident Left gathering, not the Democratic Parties national convention, but some ancillary group like CPAC and you went around with a camera or a notepad, we can find you some people who would be problematic from your perspective and from ah, the typical population’s perspective.
Your point is that Proud Boys or whoever who are milling around CPAC who people are uncomfortable with shouldn’t be embraced by the Republican party. Ok. That’s a fair point. But let’s also agree, in fairness, that this is not just a problem of the Right, there’s also an extemist militant element on the Left and we should call that out as well.
So, to shorten his answer to the substantive bit. “That’s a fair point.”
Several times I've been to Netroots Nation, which is the primary Democratic Convention that does indeed feature former Presidents and potential Presidential candidates, [sadly Pawlenty couldn't even *think* of the name of a Dem Convention] and we simply DON'T have violent people or militias openly included or featured. I went to one that had Mark Ruffalo, Chuck Schumer, then VP Biden and Rev. Barber, and another that had Cynthia Nixon, Elizabeth Warren, Al Gore and Corey Booker. That simply does not happen.
I went to one panel at Netroots that was specifically about Right-Wing violence and their various tactics which happened the year after the Charlottesville riots.
During the panel, they talked about this and how organizations such as Color of Change have been trying to work with social media providers such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as going after the online funding sources for hate groups such as Paypal and Visa. However, they’ve had mixed results as blanket bans of hate speech purveyors have also sometimes shut down the pages for those who have been fighting against that speech. Exactly that was described by queer activist, and musician Evan Greer who was a member of the panel. As Evan has stated on Fighting For the Future: Facebook announced with much fanfare yesterday that the company had scrubbed 32 pages and accounts that they suspected “were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior.” But as it turns out, an event sponsored by one of the pages they deleted was for a perfectly legitimate and permitted protest being organized by local activists in Washington, DC. According to the organizers, the event page was deleted because one one of the co-hosts was a page that Facebook suspected of being “inauthentic.” The event had attracted thousands of interested Internet users, and has now been effectively squashed by Facebook’s purge, just weeks before the protest, giving organizers little time to regain momentum. “Arbitrary mass censorship is not the solution for the challenges democracy faces in the digital age,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, “Calls for more censorship, whether they come from the left or right, pose a dangerous threat to legitimate freedom of speech and undermine the power of the Internet as a tool for people to organize, educate themselves, and challenge tyranny and corruption. Do we really want an Internet where giant tech companies like Facebook are the arbiters of what is ‘real’ and what is ‘fake’ and can censor whatever they want without oversight or accountability?” Apparently, online social media companies such as Facebook have found it difficult to recognize what hate speech actually is. They seem to have been trying to balance the safety concerns of targeted minorities on one side with the “free speech” claims of those on the other side as if the two were equal. There has been some success with Milo Yiannopoulos being kicked off Twitter, Steve Bannon being shunned by Breitbart, and with Alex Jones being knocked off Apple, Youtube, Amazon, Spotify, and Facebook at least temporarily.
And there was David Neiwert, who I met at that Netroots, who documented the previous year that most actual domestic terrorism is being generated by white nationalist and right-wing hate groups, not from the left wing or even from Muslims.
Number of Terrorist Incidents From January 2008 to the end of 2016, we identified 63 cases of Islamist domestic terrorism, meaning incidents motivated by a theocratic political ideology espoused by such groups as the Islamic State. The vast majority of these (76 percent) were foiled plots, meaning no attack took place.
During the same period, we found that right-wing extremists were behind nearly twice as many incidents: 115. Just over a third of these incidents (35 percent) were foiled plots. The majority were acts of terrorist violence that involved deaths, injuries or damaged property.
Right-wing extremist terrorism was more often deadly: Nearly a third of incidents involved fatalities, for a total of 79 deaths, while 13 percent of Islamist cases caused fatalities. (The total deaths associated with Islamist incidents were higher, however, reaching 90, largely due to the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas.)
Incidents related to left-wing ideologies, including ecoterrorism and animal rights, were comparatively rare, with 19 incidents causing seven fatalities – making the shooting attack on Republican members of Congress earlier this month somewhat of an anomaly.
Nearly half (48 percent) of Islamist incidents in our database were sting operations, more than four times the rate for far-right (12 percent) or far-left (10.5 percent) incidents.
So Pawlenty’s entire premise was completely bogus.
I’ve attempted several times to bring up the subject of Antifa, particularly when they helped save a group of clergymen during the Charlottesville riot including Cornell West.
But the response here is generally weak. I get that. We, as mainstream Democrats have really nothing to do with anyone in Antifa. However, as essentially knowing nothing about them we have been absent when they have been relentlessly attacked and blamed for practically everything under the sun.
Antifa were not deployed to cause mayhem and violence during the Floyd riots. That literally didn't happen. They also weren't present during the attack on January 6. They are used as a scapegoat and boogeyman by the Right and blamed for practically everything and anything they decide they don’t like.
To be fair, there was another moment later during the Charlottesville rally where this group of clergy acted as a human shield blocking members of Antifa from attacking the Neo-Nazis in the park. Antifa wanted to attack, but the clergy wanted to keep the peace. So that’s also something to think about.
I've had personal contact with similar conflicts. When I used to be the sound man for a downtown Sacramento Punk Rock club that was frequented by S.H.A.R.P.s they would often be challenged and attacked by racist skinheads. There were lots of fights. It could get ugly, and sometimes quite out of control. But then again, when you’re attacked what should do other than defend yourself?
Honestly, I think we *should* have Antifa representatives at events such as Netroots. We should have a chance to hear directly from them, and to respond directly to them.
I thnk the intentions of Antifa and other Black Bloc groups, which is to stand up to and physically defend against Neo-Nazis and Fascists is a noble effort. I do have some quibbles with their implementation and I think a tendency to get into the conflict for the sake of the conflict — but I think we need to educate ourselves about them, in order to help educate others.
Trump blamed “Both sides” as if they were interchangeable. Specifically, the case against DeAndre Harris who was the young man who had his skull split open by Neo-Nazis at Charlottesville ultimately found that he had been acting in self-defense and charges were dropped.
Deandre Harris, a black man beaten and later charged with assaulting a white nationalist during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville last August, was found not guilty Friday. After footage of Harris’ beating at the rally went viral, Harold Crews, a North Carolina lawyer and chairman of the state’s The League of the South, brought the battery charge against the man whose assault became an anti-racist rallying cry. Shortly after the rally, Crews convinced a magistrate to file charges against Harris, who swung a flashlight at him while under the impression the white nationalist lawyer was assaulting his friend with a flagpole. Charlottesville General District Court Judge Robert Downer determined that Harris swung the flashlight accidentally.
Again, the case against Harris was dropped because he had been trying to aid another protestor who Crews was attempting to impale with the tip of a spear.
“They came charging with clubs.”
Yes, they did. They did so to protect people. And it was a good thing that they did.
Harris was innocent. Most often, so is Antifa. We don't agree with them about everything, but we should be able to at least say that.
“Fascism has to be confronted,” says the member of Antifa during a Vice interview.
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