White supremacists and counter protesters clash in Charlottesville

[KevinM1]

Wasn't Black Lives Matter just awarded the 2017 global peace prize? You are only picking protests where violence occurred and ignoring the work that the movement does globally.

I would be curious to know. I associate the BLM with burning down buildings, rioting, blocking streets, and violence. Haven't heard much else about them except that.

Much like with the Occupy Wall Street movement (among others), most of the violence attributed to BLM wasn't actually caused by BLM members.  Instead, some of it was perpetrated by those looking for cover to be jerks (story: when I was a freshman at UNH, there were riots in the street after the first football game of the season.  Why? Because drunk out-of-state jerks decided that the crowd leaving the field would give them cover to commit vandalism and minor arson).  Some of it was perpetrated in order to specifically damage the reputation of the group.

In Charlottesville, the Nazis and Clansmen had their own militia forces with them in the street.  Those guys that looked like National Guard?  They weren't actually the National Guard.  They were there to protect the supremacists while also attempting to goad the counter-protestors into action, hoping that they'd add to the narrative that it's the radical left instigating violence.  While some of them had obvious indications of their allegiance (Confederate flags and other symbols), others did not (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...90081.html).  In order to try to eliminate the confusion, the actual Virginia National Guard explicitly told people that they'd have MP patches on their gear (https://mobile.twitter.com/VaNationalGua...1067683841).

This kind of shadowplay happens a lot with protests, disproportionately with fascist groups attempting to discredit other groups by inciting them to violence.  And the mainstream media doesn't pick up on it, either out of ignorance or, worse, out of a desire for ratings by trying to create a binary story between two groups that aren't actually the same in either outlook or action.

And if you think I'm kidding about how these people operate, check out Storm Watch or 4chan.  They're literal havens/online meeting places for Nazis.  They applauded Trump's remarks and are trying to find a way to entice regular people (whom they call "normies") into joining their cause, with but one tactic being what I said above: to continue poking at counter-protest groups in order to appear victimized, thereby becoming sympathetic to those who consider themselves champions of the 1st Amendment.

Ultimately, no matter what BLM has or hasn't done, they're not 'just as bad' as actual Nazis.  There's no rational or moral underpinning that can justify a 'many sides' comment.  Nazis are a literal scourge, and they are not to be tolerated under any circumstance.  And they're engaged in an active campaign to make themselves look palatable to the masses.