I just saw on Facebook that someone I know is going to peek into this rally in Buffalo today.
Yikes. This is not good. That symbol on the poster is the runic odal — it stands for the Volksdeutsche movement, or the ‘pure’ Germans. WLM is a racist movement, plain and simple; the NSM are outright neo-Nazis. The ARS is the Aryan Renaissance Society. ANA is the Aryan Nationalist Alliance, an umbrella organization trying to bring a hodge-podge of bigots together. The person posting it is Rebecca Barnette, who is a nasty piece of work. The “88” in her email address is a “Heil Hitler” reference.
I suspect this rally will be small, but the reek of concentrated flaming shit will be intense.
Still, this is in upstate New York, home of CFI. I just learned that it may also be home for my son Captain Connlann, who has been given a preliminary (it may change between now and November) assignment to Fort Drum. If he ends up there, I’ll certainly be making the trip to the Syracuse area every year or so.
I will credit them for honesty, though. They at least know what the “All Lives Matter” slogan implies.
They’re also big fans of Donald Trump. Surprising, I know.
Is it a neo-Nazi rally when only one neo-Nazi shows up?
On a warm, sunny Saturday at Cazenovia Park in South Buffalo, well-known white supremacist Karl Hand of Lockport was the only evidence of a much-anticipated “White Lives Matter” rally.
And Hand was outnumbered by about 350 to 1.
I don’t suppose that these yahoos are natural allies of all decent people and, when they say:
“We will not tolerate terrorism in our streets and cities any longer”
they’re talking about LAPD, NYPD, and CPD?
Probably not.
That is terrifying.
Black Lives Matter has caused ? What colour is the sky on their pla— no, scratch that, it’s obviously pure white, with swastika-shaped clouds…
Re Fort Drum, the winters may remind him of home; and it’s near the Thousand Islands, a vacation paradise.
Those guys have a serious psychological/emotional need to live in a black and white world.
They need a symbol of supposed evil to fight against. It’s childish.
This is the same kind of impulse that leads Rush Limbaugh to intimate that Bernie Sanders had to endorse Hillary Clinton. If he hadn’t, Limbaugh hinted, Clinton would have had Sanders killed.
Link
That’s how their minds work. Maybe they are telling us what they would do.
And they use that old canard “mud people” to describe people with darker skin. They need an “other” that is, to them, subhuman … so they create one.
He he “ARS”. Does that make members Arses?
What does “All Lives Matter” really mean?
I’ve pretty steadfastly avoided this whole mess so i lack contextual knowledge, but i’ve seen the idea referenced critically a a few times now. I guess it’s meant to further marginalize black struggles by attaching them to all other races, particularly whites and their historical (and current, of course) level of privilege?
So, it looks like their rally drew a total of eleven misfits, plus the camera person.
Solid Drumpfh supporters.
I suspect a lot of people who see the initials ARS will think of ’70s southern rock band Atlanta Rhythm Section, known for songs like “Imaginary Lover.”
Ooops, sorry for the imbed.
in “Trump logic” [N.B.]:
Hand was a double agent using the bad guys to bring out the good guys to rally against the bad guys and get the good guys to get together to express their unity and not just sit by the wayside shaking their heads at all the stuff occurring they disagree with. And it worked 350 opposition showed up while all the supporters chickened out. How committed are these supremacists to their cause.
crap. I’m fabricating nonsense.
That and to smear the movement by implying that they have neutral or positive feelings about the deaths of non-black people.
Upstate NY is a lovely area, especially around the Finger Lakes. My mother’s from a little village outside of Syracuse, and so I spent a lot of time there as a kid, driving down the NY Thruway (thump… thump… thump…–if you’ve been there, you know what I mean), swimming in Lake Skaneateles, watching the Syracuse Chiefs.
It’s also where I got my first exposure to unapologetic racism.
This happened during the busing crisis in Boston. I was around 11 or 12, living in a suburb of Boston. My aunt took me to dinner at the house of an old friend of their family, and at one point during the dinner, the father said something about “the n*****s in Boston”. I think that was one of the few times in my lift that my jaw actually dropped, and I just stared at him. My aunt (who was living in Queens at the time) clearly noticed, because she tried to excuse him in the car on the way home by explaining that people there didn’t weren’t as sophisticated or something (I don’t remember the exact excuse).
Later I figured out that there was a more genteel version of that naked racism that some people very close to me practiced.
Anyway, as I said, it’s a lovely part of the country, with a lot to do and see.
But this doesn’t surprise me.
Don’t we just love arguing about correlation vs causation issues?
you know, EG a correlation of all pickpockets being left-handed is not valid to conclude that all lefties are pickpockets. [substitute metaphor variables to current politics; you know what I mean].
This is what gives rise to persistent racism attitudes. Watching news reports daily of latest crimes and seeing the apprehended person is a POC (disregarding the “alleged” qualifier in the newsreport) can give rise to the appearance that a POC is inherently a criminal. Part of the problem is reporting only POC’s getting apprehended, but ___ [gee correlation v causation is biting myself]
aside: reporting POC preferably over nonPOC is correlated to persistent racism. I was about to declare it a cause, but it could be a result, or a spurious correlation. ugh
I might have tied my argument into a knot, but I hope I made my point. Which is that this kind of persistent racism from confusing correlation for causation could be associated with relatively isolated communities where people only hear stories of distant events (like upstaters hearing reports of Boston events). or am I strawmanning???
batflipenthusiast wrote:
To put it bluntly, it means “shut up”. The purpose is to subvert and block the message of “Black Lives Matter” so that nothing happens.
@16 ck the Irate Lump — it also means “I hate back people”. It’s a way to stand up and shout for your Racist Libertarian Tribemembers, “I’m right there with you, I hate black people too!” It’s like saying “homosexuals don’t deserve special rights” or “men get raped too”. It’s partly to say “shut up” to oppressed classes, but also to show tribal solidarity with the forces of oppression.
@15 slithy tove — yeah, my girlfriend consistently complains about the press never mentioning Latino lawyers or doctors or scientists, as if to imply that ALL Latinos are sneaking under fences and across rivers to drain our healthcare and education funds and steal all those (awesome) field labor jobs rich white Christian straight men are so interested in landing. Including the ones whose families have lived here for centuries before we stole half the country at gunpoint, only to find that the people who’ve always lived here still live here — and this somehow surprises us? The media is clearly complicit in the narrative that the people whose country we invaded, occupied, and then appropriated half of (on behalf of continued slavery below Missouri and Kansas) somehow shouldn’t be here.
I think a more generous interpretation of “All Lives Matter” is that it results from misunderstanding the intent of BLM. Those ignorant of the root causes or motivations of the movement might misinterpret “Black Lives Matter” as “only Black Lives Matter” or “Black Lives Matter more” and thus “All Lives Matter” is a rebuke to what is seen as a divisive message. Certainly most people who’ve made this mistake aren’t neo-nazis (just look at the signs those white supremacists are holding, they’d want nothing to do with an egalitarian message like “All Lives Matter”) , and probably many of them mean well and think they’re on the side of equality. Calling anyone who thinks or writes “All Lives Matter” a racist is just throwing fuel on the fire. Instead try to explain why Black Lives Matter isn’t divisive or something to be feared, and is in fact something worth supporting.
On her Twitter page she’s posting Joker memes.
White supremacists since the original Nazis love using their Norse runes don’t they? That they use symbols of the bloody rapey pillaging and looting Vikings to claim they are against “tolerating terrorism on the streets” shows they’ve never heard of Iona and Lindisfarne at the very least.
@Adam James #18
I live in country in EU that is and has always been >95% white and I have no experiencw with BLM whatsoever. I am also not an activist of any kind. But nevertheless I suspect your proposed strategy relies on some pretty naive assumptions.
I was able to observe on the internet the “rational” frothing at the mouth induced in some people when you try and explain to them why it is appropriate to use terms “feminist” and “feminism” instead of “egalitarian” and “egalitarianism”. There is a lot of prejudiced would be Vulcan smugpeople out there who think their preconcieved notions are The Rational Truth and who in fact cannot be reasoned with. They really think that term specific to one group implies either desire for supremacy or privileging said group. And there is no way they will change their mind in this regard.
But why is it seen as a divisive message? Why do they make the leap to “only Black lives matter”? Focusing on the arguments people use distracts from why they’re using those arguments. The underlying motivation is where racism comes in. When people argue for better treatment of e.g. veterans, nobody concludes that the intent is to remove rights for non-veterans. Why this difference?
A neo-Nazi called Enrico Pridöhl called a demonstration in the Schleswig-Holstein town of Bad Segeberg. He went through all the proper procedures of registering the demonstration with the local authorities.
170 police officers and 50 opposing demonstrators turned up, but no other neo-Nazis apart from him.
re @22:
good question I keep asking. Sometimes I rack it up to basic inconsistency. They find racism a horrid idea and invented the inverse term of “reverse racist” for the people who work to stop racism. And then cluster under a label that they consider a forgotten label that people deliberately forgot because it was for the nice people fighting the nasty racism. Not realizing the people they are calling racist are the people subjugated to racism.
crap writing my self in circles again.
BLM is objected to not so much the misinterpretation of OnlyBLM (by people trying to thread both sides) but by the residual racism I wrote about a few replies ago. If all POC are criminals, then POC lives do NOT matter, they are criminals only law abiders matter. And since a few cops were killed by POC (very few actually, fact check me) Blue Lives Matter more than BLM. (disregarding the overwhelming number of POC killed by Blues).
ugh. too much. Recognizing how saturated our culture is with racism is literally [literally, not just for emphasis] overwhelming.
I also hate seeing people struggle with fighting their racism, not just denying it, yet still showing bits of it. “talking the talk, but not walking the walk” so to summarize. People who genuinely oppose obvious racist events and things but will still say things like “all POC [actually using the other word] belong in jail” thinking they are simply recognizing how the POC really behave, that they are saying it out of bigotry. But if someone else said the same thing they would immediately jump on them as being a bigot.
geeze it seems i am pretty gloomy this morning, need more coffee.
Ironically, the people behind the “All Lives Matter” movement don’t actually believe that.
No matter how you look at it though, “All lives matter” is a response to “Black Lives Matter” and a response means one doesn’t believe “Black Lives Matter” is the correct and good position. As I think “Black Lives Matter” is a *perfect* position to a systematic condition where black lives are being killed and the killings dismissed — as though… gosh, the lives didn’t matter—, I disagree with an insistence our stand ought to be modified.
Actually, I find the attitude rather appalling and arrogant. Although the sentiment all lives mater is in itself, innocuous. I mean, duh, of course, that why I’m so pissed off at the systematic condition where black lives are being killed and the killings dismissed — as though… gosh, the lives didn’t matter—
Okay, okay… Caz Park? South Buffalo? That’s where I grew up.
And (a) I am totally NOT shocked that’s where a white supremacist chose to hold a rally (good lack of god, do I have some South Buffalo stories) and (b) I AM actually totally shocked that only one dude showed up. The neighborhood must be changing for the better.
So… more of a failed gathering of wickedness than an actual gathering. That’s good.
Re: Black Lives Matter. One interesting analogy I’ve heard is thinking of a group of suffragists chanting “votes for women.” Now imagine some men show up and shout “votes for all.” Do you think that they are supporting female enfranchisement, or are they defining “all” differently? We have a history of “all men” not meaning ALL men.
Here’s an experiment…
Go up to certain people and say “Black Lives Matter.”
Go up to them again and say “Blue Lives Matter.”
Report back with which one got “All Lives Matter!” as a response.
/OT
mickll@20–while some of the Vikings looted and pillaged, others were incredible explorers and merchants and craftsman. Lets not dismiss an entire culture just because the Nazis borrowed some of their symbols.