White supremacists and counter protesters clash in Charlottesville

[Divinity]

The majority of Confederate soldiers did not own slaves nor did they come from a family that owned slaves.  Most of them fought because their home state was invaded.  Studies of surviving Confederate soldier diaries find slavery rarely mentioned.  Hatred toward invading "Yankees" was much more common.

This is part of the turning the Civil War into a comic book thing I was talking about.  Some did fight for slavery, but most did not.

So basically celebrating hatred for their fellow countrymen?   The country everyone is now a part of again? So much fucking better

[Aegon]

On the contrary, It is EVERYBODY'S fault. 

These people are NOT the fringe. These people live and work among us everywhere, always have. This is what we need to face.

---

supremacists are a hate group. The BLM movement is a "please don't kill me for being black" group. 

My outrage at Trump's failure to denounce the hate has nothing to do with HIM. This is a fundamental wrong. This is not patriotism.

He denounced the hate! He denounced it on all sides. You weren't paying attention to his statement?

Yes. White Supremacists, far left anarchists, bamn, antifa, are all hate groups. If BLM is such a peaceful, "please don't shoot me for being black", movement, then why do they create an atmosphere of cop killing when they chant, "Pigs in a blanket, fry'em like bacon"?

Okay. Fill me in. Which side showed up with shields, bats, helmets, and a private militia with assault rifles? Which side rammed a car into the other side at almost 40 mph, killing 1 and injuring 19?

Not calling out the clearly incendiary side was pathetic. Acting like both sides were equally to blame. Disgusting.

[chimp3]

The Confederate flag and statues of Confederate Generals are symbols of white supremacy. It would be a great gesture to take them all down. Put them in a museum (Holocaust Museum) for the next generations. Never forget!

[Aegon]

[Divinity]

It's possible to be proud of what a person did and got right while simultaneously acknowledging what they did and got wrong.  The trouble only crops up when a person, for whatever reason™ is incapable of adequately identifying the latter.  All of us have ancestors that were on the wrong side of history in some x.  That much was, before the fact, an inevitability, and after the fact, an unfortunate consequence of that inevitability.

Sure we do.  I'm sure I have ancestors way back when that probably did some really shitty things.  I wouldn't know who they are because I can't trace my ancestry back very far.  But I'm sure they exist.  The thing is -- I'm not proud of them.  I don't see why i should be.  What, because their sperm met someone else's egg, and then that person produced a sperm or egg that met with another sperm or egg... process repeating itself until I'm born?

[Rahul]

So basically celebrating hatred for their fellow countrymen?   The country everyone is now a part of again? So much fucking better

No.  Celebrating the fact that their ancestors were willing to lay down their lives against invaders to protect their family and home.  Hatred was rampant on both sides.  The North exhibited a lot of hatred toward the South as well.  It was a horrible time in our nation's history.

The Northern soldiers, especially those with Sherman, laid waste to a lot of the South.  They not only took most of the food from Southern civilians, but they also tried to destroy any remaining food they couldn't carry.  The South to this day has an odd tradition that we are supposed to eat black eyed peas on the first day of the year.  This is because Northern soldiers didn't consider it food fit for humans during their destruction, so it was all a lot of what little was left that Southerners had to survive on.  Most Southerners don't even realize that's where that odd tradition comes from.

The South lost 25% of it's fighting age men dead, another 25% maimed, 40% of all livestock destroyed, most industry.  My ancestors were spread out all over the South when the Civil War happened.  But they all moved to east Texas after the war to escape the destruction.  It's odd to realize that if a certain war had not happened, you would have never existed.

Secession was most assuredly about slavery.  The war on the Southern side, though, was mostly about defense from invasion.  One idea that keeps popping up in my head when studing the war is that the war was much more popular among the South than secession was.  The county I was born in voted to remain in the Union.  But they fought like hell against the Union when they invaded.

All of this is really beside the point of this thread.  The problem now is that white supremacists are using Confederate monuments as lightning rods for hatred and violence.  So I am forced to agree that we need to start taking them down.

[Kosh]

The Confederate flag and statues of Confederate Generals are symbols of white supremacy. It would be a great gesture to take them all down. Put them in a museum (Holocaust Museum) for the next generations. Never forget!

They are also treasonous symbol of traitors.  I've always wondered how history of the Civil War was taught in the south.

[chimp3]

White supremacists are using the word "white" loosely. They do not mean "caucasian". If they ever gain power then Slavs, Portugese, Chechnyans, etc.,  will be next on their list.

[A Theist]

He denounced the hate! He denounced it on all sides. You weren't paying attention to his statement?

Yes. White Supremacists, far left anarchists, bamn, antifa, are all hate groups. If BLM is such a peaceful, "please don't shoot me for being black", movement, then why do they create an atmosphere of cop killing when they chant, "Pigs in a blanket, fry'em like bacon"?

Okay. Fill me in. Which side showed up with shields, bats, helmets, and a private militia with assault rifles? Which side rammed a car into the other side at almost 40 mph, killing 1 and injuring 19?

Not calling out the clearly incendiary side was pathetic. Acting like both sides were equally to blame. Disgusting.

These guys?




BLM, "Dead Cops"


You have the far left antifa and bamn radicals rioting and committing arson, assault, destroying public and private property and the BLM protestors calling for dead cops. White Nationalists rioting and committing murder, yes, I think the president was justified calling out the hatred on all sides.

---

So basically celebrating hatred for their fellow countrymen?   The country everyone is now a part of again? So much fucking better

No.  Celebrating the fact that their ancestors were willing to lay down their lives against invaders to protect their family and home.  Hatred was rampant on both sides.  The North exhibited a lot of hatred toward the South as well.  It was a horrible time in our nation's history.

The Northern soldiers, especially those with Sherman, laid waste to a lot of the South.  They not only took most of the food from Southern civilians, but they also tried to destroy any remaining food they couldn't carry.  The South to this day has an odd tradition that we are supposed to eat black eyed peas on the first day of the year.  This is because Northern soldiers didn't consider it food fit for humans during their destruction, so it was all a lot of what little was left that Southerners had to survive on.  Most Southerners don't even realize that's where that odd tradition comes from.

The South lost 25% of it's fighting age men dead, another 25% maimed, 40% of all livestock destroyed, most industry.  My ancestors were spread out all over the South when the Civil War happened.  But they all moved to east Texas after the war to escape the destruction.  It's odd to realize that if a certain war had not happened, you would have never existed.

Secession was most assuredly about slavery.  The war on the Southern side, though, was mostly about defense from invasion.  One idea that keeps popping up in my head when studing the war is that the war was much more popular among the South than secession was.  The county I was born in voted to remain in the Union.  But they fought like hell against the Union when they invaded.

All of this is really beside the point of this thread.  The problem now is that white supremacists are using Confederate monuments as lightning rods for hatred and violence.  So I am forced to agree that we need to start taking them down.

One of my Great Grandfathers, four generations back, was a Corporal in the Union Army manning artillery under General William Tecumseh Sherman. He was part of Sherman's march into the South burning and laying waste to everything they came across. The focus of Sherman's march was not only to destroy the Southern army's supply lines, but also to compromise the will of Southerners to continue fighting. I don't think Lee liked the idea of succession but fought for the South in defense of his home state, Virginia.

If Lee's statue and other Confederate monuments would have remained in place where they were do you think the White Supremacists would have come to riot in Charlottesville?

[Mr.wizard]

But those situations are not this situation, the violence in those protests has been called out and Trump has had no problem calling out "Black Lives Matter". The difference in this situation is he had the opportunity to call out known hate groups and condemn their actions , instead he he tried to make it seem like it was everybody was being equally violent, which isn't the case.

Also Black Lives Matter is not a hate group, the movement isn't about violence, supremacy, and segregation, it is about addressing policy issues that impact the black community. Have there been some violent protesters, yes and they are wrong, but trying to equate the motivations of Black Lives Matter and a group like the KKK is just idiotic.