My comments on the Charlottesville Attack

[Alolan_Apples]

You saw what happened last Saturday, right? It was atrocious. What happened here was that the city officials decided to remove the statue of Robert E Lee from a public area. White Nationalists have protested the removal of the statue, but it drew in counter-protesters. Then it all went to hell when someone drove in and plowed through the counter-protesters in a car, killing one person and maiming 19 others. In my opinion, this was more barbaric than all the public shootings that happened within the last 20 years. The counter-protesters weren't even protesting like the Trump protesters during the post-election season. The car attack was intentional. Unsurprisingly, the perpetrator was literally a Nazi-sympathizer, and those that protested the removal of the statue were white supremacists. I'm not even being extreme here. If you read the news, you can see it.

Anyway, here are my opinions on the incident and related incidents:

1. I was initially against the removal of the monument of Robert E. Lee for a couple reasons.
   • First of all, statues like that show our nation's history. Regardless of how racist our history is, censorship of it isn't just destruction of knowledge; it's cowardice.
   • Second, to say that the confederate symbols are racist is redundant. They may have supported slavery, but it was for agricultural reasons. And do you know what else? The abolitionists of slavery before the Civil War supported the idea of white supremacy too. It wasn't exclusive to the South. Granted, the South did get worse during the Jim Crow Era, but racism came from both sides. It doesn't matter who you support.
   • Third, the Civil War was about more than just slavery. It was about states rights and federalism. The South opposed a strong and powerful federal government and believe states should have the rights while the North wanted to preserve the Union from splitting apart. Slavery may have been an issue, but other issues included taxes and tariffs, which were greatly opposed by the South.
   • However, after this recent drive-in terror attack, I'm fully in support of removing that statue of Robert E. Lee. Not only Robert E. Lee would support this decision if he were alive, but it's to punish the white nationalists that protested the removal. I hated how symbols of the Confederacy have evolved into symbols of racism, but these people don't deserve them.
2. Donald Trump was right when he said that both the alt-left and the alt-right were bad. They are both anti-American, socialists, fascists, and bigots that are extreme to their political views. He also said that they were to blame for the attack. Although the attack was solely done by the right-wing, the radical left has done their damage too. The riots in Ferguson, the post-election protests, the inauguration riots, the UC Berkeley Riots, and even the shooting at the congressional baseball game were all left-winged attacks on the right. You know what, hate begets hate, and violence begets violence. If peace is what you want, then you must show peace.
3. On the flip-side, Donald Trump is a coward. He didn't condemn both sides enough, If I were president, I would've sent the National Guard to Charlottesville. I would have them back off the counter-protesters while all of the other protesters, not just the driver, will be arrested. If it were the radical left being violent, they would be in trouble too. Trump was too weak to handle these issues. I felt that Obama was worse when it came to his handling of Ferguson and the Trayvon Martin incident, but Trump didn't handle this correctly either.
4. This attack would've still happened even if it weren't for the liberal violence incidents since the election. I may be a biased conservative, but I would never support violence done be conservatives either, nor will I forgive them. Even if it were to counter-balance the liberal violence. Violence is bad, and bad is a no-no thing to do.

As much as I am appalled at the liberal violence, I don't think violent conservatives are any better. In fact, the Republican Party opposed the attack too. Besides, removing the confederate statues is only making the confederate states win, as well as the union states since they still have honor. The only ones that are losing if the confederate statues are being removed are the white nationalists.

 

[Vizionari]

Hmm, does an "alt-left" even exist? The first time I heard the term was in Trump's speech about the attack in the news yesterday.

 

[Alolan_Apples]

Hmm, does an "alt-left" even exist? The first time I heard the term was in Trump's speech about the attack in the news yesterday.

Maybe, maybe not, but we do have an extremist leftist group called Antifa. Oh, and Black Lives Matter is just as bad as the group that attacked in Charlottesville last Saturday. But I see the KKK and neo-Nazis as evil too.

And nobody has mentioned this yet, but when I said that "slavery was supported for agricultural reasons", I didn't say this in defense of slavery. Granted, the slavery at the time was racist, and it has created racial stereotypes, but the reason why the south supported slavery was because it's a very agricultural region, and everything was done by hand. Even in Africa, the slaves Americans bought weren't free.