Terrorist Attacks Thread

[PuB]

Of course they do

That's the joke...

 

[Carver]

 

[Martino Quackavelli]

A 13 minute video where they've misspelled 'Islam' in the title. Pass.

 

[Carver]

A 13 minute video where they've misspelled 'Islam' in the title. Pass.

It's a deliberate spelling error so that the YouTube gestapo may not find it through their filter as it is a known atheist channel.

 

[TheMinsterman]

Yeah in fairness YT are demonetising more or less any video that's got certain words in the title, even people that half the guys on here would agree with politically get struck too.

 

[Aber gas]

Yeah in fairness YT are demonetising more or less any video that's got certain words in the title, even people that half the guys on here would agree with politically get struck too.

It's terrible really. Paul Watson's dear old mum is never going to get him out of her attic room. Bless him.

 

[TheMinsterman]

It's terrible really. Paul Watson's dear old mum is never going to get him out of her attic room. Bless him.

Paul is too busy being bitchslapped by historians on twitter to have noticed tbf.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

Still got a genuine sense of wtf-ery about Charlottesville. There's something really rather chilling about fascists parading around draped in Swastikas, chanting Nazi slogans while militias roam the streets (at least our nasty racists try to maintain a veneer of respectability). That a President (however much of a colossal dickhead) can't bring himself to swiftly and unambiguously condemn a terrorist attack that took place in this context, which left one dead and many others injured, is just sickening and deplorable.

 

[smat]

Still got a genuine sense of wtf-ery about Charlottesville. There's something really rather chilling about fascists parading around draped in Swastikas, chanting Nazi slogans while militias roam the streets (at least our nasty racists try to maintain a veneer of respectability). That a President (however much of a colossal dickhead) can't bring himself to swiftly and unambiguously condemn a terrorist attack that took place in this context, which left one dead and many others injured, is just sickening and deplorable.

Interesting that you fail to condemn the anti-fascists also present.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Still got a genuine sense of wtf-ery about Charlottesville. There's something really rather chilling about fascists parading around draped in Swastikas, chanting Nazi slogans while militias roam the streets (at least our nasty racists try to maintain a veneer of respectability). That a President (however much of a colossal dickhead) can't bring himself to swiftly and unambiguously condemn a terrorist attack that took place in this context, which left one dead and many others injured, is just sickening and deplorable.

I don't agree with this. The UK has a sizeable population of right-wing activists every bit as ideologically extreme and violence-minded as the US.

Their most recent significant outing was in Dover last January. That came as the peak of a surge of activity from the extreme right. On display that day were:
- Combat 18 (the 18 stands for 'AH') flags with SS totenkopfs.
- A Nazi naval ensign with the swastika replaced by NF
- A banner with the 14 words written on it
- National Action flags (with their logo based on the SA logo) - now considered a banned terrorist group.
- flags with the Wolfsangel rune - associated with both the historical SS and the current Azov Battalion
- flags/armbands of the BUF
- various flags with the White Power Celtic cross, including those of the British Movement.

Some of the most violent extremists were detained by antifascists in a service station in Maidstone (they were found to have caches of weapons - including knives, knuckledusters and clubs with them). One of them managed to daub a swastika on an antifascist coach in his own blood though.

I say that was the peak of a surge - the surge was organised by a group called the South East Alliance: an EDL splinter group based in London and Essex. They called their marches the Unity Project (sound familiar) and their activity had involved organising increasingly violent demonstrations in Dover, various attacks on leftist groups and demonstrations and fascist foodbanks and housing campaigns.

Since January 2016, this movement has pretty much been dead in the water due to much of the leadership of the extreme right being jailed for violence in Dover (as well as Brexit driving a wedge in the alliance between domestic fash and Polish and Ukranian migrant fash). But they're still there, and organising, and as extreme as ever.

What's interesting about Unite the Right (and, to me, doesn't have a direct parallel with the UK) is the way that Donald Trump has brought together the intellectual and physical far right (I use "intellectual" as loosely as possible). Britain has violent neo-nazis and it has secretive neo-nazi groups that organise talks and dinners. But it has difficulty synthesising the two together. The former is working-class/petit-bourgeois while the latter is upper-class. Whereas Unite the Right seemed to attract frat-bro-fash like Richard Spencer and his ilk and southern rednecks.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Antifa are as bad as fascists latest
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ft_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html

 

[Aber gas]

Antifa are as bad as fascists latest
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ft_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html

This is the reality. Fascists always seem really upset when they come looking for a few students/ clergy/ stereotypical "lefties" and end up getting punched in the fucking face. I know you've ( at least I think it's you on Twitter ) been critical of some of the politics of the more militant antifa ( 161 crew, red action) and you're right but we do perform a useful function.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

It's amazing how quickly everyone forgot about the radical leftist that tried to disarm a police officer and assassinate Trump. They can all be varying degrees of cunty, it shouldn't be a competition, but apparently it is.

Speech is a projection of the power that allows that speech to be heard. As such, political discourse isn't a marketplace of ideas where the best one wins out, but a constant struggle between rival discourses to gain access to the positions where they can drown out the others.

A Telegraph columnist might claim his right to free speech should prevent his column being censored*, but my right to the same free expression he enjoyed is censored by my lack of a telegraph column. So he can advance positions that cannot be rebutted except by people who also have newspaper columns**.

So we need to be aware that the right to free speech is like the right to own a yacht - a freedom that is theoretically universal but cannot exist universally in the state - because of social inequalities and power-relations that the state's existence is contingent upon.

The radical left know only too well that at the point where our politics win out and threaten the state's existence or even threaten to mildly reform social relations within it, the state will not "respect our right to free expression" and will in fact have us killed or jailed. Historically, they either just make up charges, or use extrajudicial killings rather than directly criminalise our expression so as to preserve their own founding myths, though sometimes they will completely abandon the liberal state and allow fascists to control it.

Two hundred years and thousands of bodies of our martyrs lie as testament to that. Fred Hampton's theoretical right to free expression meant nothing when he was shot in the back of the head by Chicago PD, nor Rosa Luxemburg's when she was tortured and murdered by fascist paramilitaries at the behest of the Weimar government. Joe Hill's free speech meant very little when he was framed and executed for a murder he didn't commit, nor Medgar Evers when he was murdered by the Klan, with the collusion of the FBI.

There is barefaced hypocrisy in liberals calling us authoritarian for giving people who literally agitate for our deaths bloody noses when they are historically ok with the mass suppression of leftist and anti-imperialist tendencies domestically and to an even greater extent in the global south. When they're happy to preside over mass death in the Mediterranean that is a direct consequence of tightening borders and imperialist wars.



Historically, militant antifascism has been the best way of defeating fascism. Group 43 smashed the Mosleyites after the war with a ferocity and intensity that would give today's liberals a heart attack. The Asian Youth Movements and British Black Panthers destroyed the NF as a political force and Anti-Fascist Action kicked the BNP bodily out of their organising bases in the East End. More recently, an attempt to unify the most extreme far right groups in Britain floundered in the face of extreme resistance from antifascists in Dover.

If AFA turned up on the Isle of Dogs talking about Socialism in 1993, the BNP would have beaten the shit out of them. That's the reality of your "marketplace of ideas". Winning the battle on the streets is a component part of winning the battle of ideas - because you can't advance your ideas if your mouth is full of knuckles.

And FWIW I don't support state bans on fascists. This sums up my feelings on it quite well.
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/9b8ja7/is-banning-neo-nazi-groups-actually-going-to-be-effective

* Good luck claiming "free speech" if he wants to criticise the Barclays, though.
** The state, of course, recognises that this power imbalance exists and hence that's why libel laws exist.

You're seeking to conflate free speech with platform in an effort to manufacture an inherent inequality within the former where one only exists with the latter. You have the right to express yourself freely, a right applied equally (save for hate speech/terrorism legislation and the like), but that doesn't mean you're entitled to an audience. You don't have much of one because you don't deserve much of one, you haven't earned it - in an information age where it's easier than ever. The practicalities of going door to door are a different argument entirely, not just from the free speech argument but from violent counter-protest in general. Attacking a march is not an act of self-defence to preserve your ability to reach the people, it's a supremacist move. You're so convinced of your righteousness that the ends seem like they justify the means. This is exactly what puts the extreme left in the same camp as the Nazis and the Islamists. They live a symbiotic existence that keeps any of them from going anywhere. If a Nationalist party rises up it won't be because they've won the streets, it'll be because they've abandoned infantile street violence altogether.

As an aside, if many more people thought about free expression and political violence as you do, do you imagine there'd be more harassment, more injury, more death, or less?

 

[PuB]

As an aside its amazing how many can't equate people marching with Nazi flags, with firearms, chanting Nazi songs and threatening others; to actual Nazis.

Baffling.

 

[JoshBCFC]

A van has smashed into a crowd in Barcelona, police saying it's a terrorist attack. Reports saying 2 are dead and 2 armed terrorists are in a restaurant in Barcelona.

 

[Super_horns]

Is this down to ETA (who have attacked in Spain before) or Isis?

 

[PuB]

Not ETA would be my guess, daesh maybe

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Is this down to ETA (who have attacked in Spain before) or Isis?

Very unlikely to be ETA as they renounced armed struggle and disarmed earlier this year.

 

[Stevencc]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ight-wing-anti-fascist-alt-left-a7906406.html

Just dropping this in here for people more involved in the topic to debate.

"As for Antifa, it's a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were," the linguist and political philosopher told the Washington Examiner. "It's a major gift to the right, including the militant right, who are exuberant."

"What they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally self-destructive,” the 88-year-old told the conservative paper.

He added: "When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it's the toughest and most brutal who win – and we know who that is. That's quite apart from the opportunity costs – the loss of the opportunity for education, organising, and serious and constructive activism."

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ight-wing-anti-fascist-alt-left-a7906406.html

Just dropping this in here for people more involved in the topic to debate.

There's a decent rebuttal to Chomsky on libcom. I agree with most of their points.
http://libcom.org/blog/6-reasons-why-chomsky-wrong-about-antifa-18082017

My take: militant organising against fascists is good because a) it makes our side better at militant organising and b) fascism needs crushing.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

I liked this from the Washington Post - discussing the inadequacies of the liberal response to Trump and the importance of militancy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...efeat-white-supremacy-only-direct-action-can/

 

[Super_horns]

Troops attacked in Brussels and policemen injured outside Buck Palace.

 

[Stevencc]

Considering how easy it is to conceal a weapon, go to an area with a large amount of unexpecting people and attack without prejudice with said weapon it's quite telling how often these maniacs get subdued/walloped before they can do any real damage.

It's almost as if they are idiots to begin with.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Neo-nazis murder someone in Charlottesville
"fault on both sides"

Massive anti-fascist mobilisation shuts down fascist rally in Berkeley, a couple of scuffles break out
"declare antifa a terrorist organisation"

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Four soldiers arrested for being part of proscribed neo-nazi group National Action. A member of the group was behind an attempt to behead a Sikh man in Mold tescos.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...rs-of-outlawed-neo-nazi-group-national-action

 

[AFCB_Mark]

At least it's already been correctly deemed a terrorist organisation....

As somebody who generally isn't big on religion or religious people, Sikhs are awesome. If more of the world was Sikh it would probably be a better place.

 

[Carver]

The group they were part of held banners up that read 'Hitler was right'.

Ok so the holocaust was right was it? Oh wait no they deny it ever happened because some crazy internet conspiracy theorist probably told them so, despite all the clear evidence and first hand accounts of survivors that prove the holocaust really did happen.

These simpleminded people really can't think for themselves and they believe anything they're fucking told and forget that the Nazis were pure evil and wanted a whole new generation devoid of a conscience.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

At least it's already been correctly deemed a terrorist organisation....

As somebody who generally isn't big on religion or religious people, Sikhs are awesome. If more of the world was Sikh it would probably be a better place.

The guy who committed the attack was basically on the lookout for someone with brown skin (which, if you know anything about Mold is not an easy task).

In general, I think we should resist the temptation to put religions on pedestals (or whatever the opposite of a pedestal is). Progressive sikhs currently struggling against reactionary tendencies - but while the victims of reactionary sikhism are themselves sikh, it kind of goes unnoticed.

It's also interesting that there's been an alliance of sorts between far-right secular and christian groups and fundamentalist sikhs (see the Sikh Awareness Society and their links to the EDL/FLA for example).

https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/sukhwant-dhaliwal/resurgent-sikh-fundamentalism-in-uk-time-to-act

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

The group they were part of held banners up that read 'Hitler was right'.

Ok so the holocaust was right was it? Oh wait no they deny it ever happened because some crazy internet conspiracy theorist probably told them so, despite all the clear evidence and first hand accounts of survivors that prove the holocaust really did happen.

These simpleminded people really can't think for themselves and they believe anything they're fucking told and forget that the Nazis were pure evil and wanted a whole new generation devoid of a conscience.

National Action actually celebrate the holocaust
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sick-neo-nazi-gang-set-8866999
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...uchenwald-concentration-camp-in-a7050161.html

 

[smat]

The guy who committed the attack was basically on the lookout for someone with brown skin (which, if you know anything about Mold is not an easy task).