NYT Discovers Antifa Is Real

Politics and Social Issues
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Only a few of these can be called right wing terrorism. Really? Which ones did I get wrong?
Charleston and the synagogue shootings were definitely right wing terrorism. The shooters outlined their plans and wanted to go down in history as terrorists.

Las Vegas massacre had an unknown motive but the victims were at a country music concert and that is a conservative fan base. So unlikely motivated by right wing sentiment.

Pulse nightclub shooting was Islamic terrorism.

Charlottesville was only terrorism if you think certain groups should not have the right to assemble. The driver of the vehicle that ran over the girl was not part of the rally.

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2017
New York, New York, March 2017: Police
arrested white supremacist James Harris Jackson
after the fatal shooting of an African-American
man. Jackson had allegedly traveled to New York
to launch a series of violent attacks on black men
and had stabbed his victim as a “practice run” for
later attacks. He was charged with second-de-
gree murder as a hate crime and with a state
charge of terrorism.
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, February 2017:
FBI agents arrested white supremacist Benjamin
McDowell of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on
a weapons charge in a sting operation after
allegedly learning that McDowell made repeated
anti-Semitic postings on social media and wanted
to commit an act of violence “in the spirit of
Dylann Roof.” Based on Internet postings McDow-
ell allegedly made, he may have been considering
targeting a local synagogue. An undercover FBI
agent posing as someone associated with Aryan
Nations allegedly recorded McDowell’s statements
about wanting to conduct a “big scale” attack. Mc-
Dowell, a convicted felon prohibited from owning
a firearm, was arrested after allegedly buying a
gun from the undercover agent.
2016
East Kingdom, New Hampshire, January
2016: An FBI sting operation resulted in the
arrest of Daniel Musso and his indictment on four
counts of receiving and possessing unregistered
explosive devices (grenades). Musso allegedly was
attempting to find someone to sell him grenades,
shoulder-fired rockets, and C-4 explosives, among
other items. Musso allegedly bought four grenades
from an undercover informant, describing himself
as part of a group of people who wanted to “bring
forth the original constitution.” As of this writing,
Musso seems to still be awaiting trial.
Columbus, Ohio, April 2016: Sovereign citizens
Alphonso D. Mobley, Jr., and Roberto M. Innis, Jr.,
were arrested after Mobley blew his own hands off
while allegedly making the deadly explosive TATP.
Authorities claimed that the two planned to set
off a bomb as a diversion while they carried out a
bank or armored car robbery. They were charged
with aggravated arson and criminal use, posses-
sion and illegal assembly of a chemical weapon.
In early 2017, Innis pleaded guilty to aggravated
arson and criminal use of an explosive device.
Stockton, Utah, June 2016: Militia leader
William Keebler of Stockton, Utah, was arrested in
June 2016 after allegedly attempting to set off a
bomb at a Bureau of Land Management facility in
Arizona. Keebler had allegedly scouted the facility
in October 2015 along with LaVoy Finicum, who
a few months later would become a ringleader
in the armed takeover of a federal wildlife refuge
in Oregon—and be killed by law enforcement
officers attempting to arrest him. Keebler also
allegedly scouted a mosque, an FBI office and an
Army National Guard building as possible targets.
He allegedly attempted to obtain two bombs for
his plot from someone who turned out to be an
undercover FBI agent. He was charged with one
count of attempted damage to a federal facility
by means of fire or explosive.

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Las Vegas massacre had an unknown motive but the victims were at a country music concert and that is a conservative fan base. So unlikely motivated by right wing sentiment.
Sorry, that was the 2014 Las Vegas shooting I was talking about, not the more recent one.
Pulse nightclub shooting was Islamic terrorism.
You got me on that one.
Charlottesville was only terrorism if you think certain groups should not have the right to assemble. The driver of the vehicle that ran over the girl was not part of the rally.
Incorrect. Fields drove from Ohio to attend the rally. He had undeniable neo-Naxi and white supremacist beliefs and kept a photo of Hitler by his bedside. The actu was deliberate and motivated by his political beliefs. It's on a list of right-wing terrorist attacks on Wikipedia.

But, um, had this to say:

Only a few of these can be called right wing terrorism.
I listed 14 things, nine of which were either right-wing terrorist attacks or groups of right-wing terrorist attacks. You took exception with 3. Of those 3, you were wrong on 1 and another was ambiguous, so you took it as the wrong attack. But let's say you were right on all 3. Out of a list of 9 attacks, several of which were groups of multiple attacks, but we'll take them as one, would you say the word "few" more accurately describes the number "3" or the number "6"? When the number is actually 8 out of 9, would you say that the word "few" accurately describes 8/9ths of the whole?

And then there’s this:

...they are busy taking care of imaginary right wing terrorism
EVEN IF you count it as only 6 out of 14 (because I know you would like to even though the other 5 were clearly labeled as reports and never claimed to be "instances" of right-wing terrorism, but I'll give it to you here), if something is 3/7 real it is hardly "imaginary", is it?

At least this response was based loosely in a fact-based reality. I miss the conservatives of old. Yeah, they always lied through their teeth. They would always feed you some bullshit line that you knew was bullshit and then act all indignant when you called it as bullshit. But at least they respected facts. They didn’t throw away every report from every intelligence agency we have to instead believe Russia did nothing to help Trump, AND THEN add to that a dumbass conspiracy theory that Russia ACTUALLY helped Hillary! They didn’t throw out multiple reports from multiple agencies, including the DHS, to simply accept Bill Barr’s version of things. And let’s face some actual reality here, you all know Barr is a dishonest weasel of a Trump lackey. You know this as well as I do. You know that he tried to drop the case against Flynn, not because Flynn did nothing wrong, but because Flynn is a Trump ally. It’s a federal-level “ticket fixing” scandal. When you lie to the FBI in the course of an active investigation IT DOES NOT MATTER if what they are investigating leads to actual, legitimate charges being field, it’s a crime either way! We all know that. But one side pretends that they don’t know that. And I am getting really sick of smart people acting stupid so they can drag me down the damned rabbit hole with them into their deranged fantasy land where they’re right all the time and I can be right too, if I just agree with them on everything. Yeah, they always though it was “fair” that their guy would lose an election and become president anyway and also “fair” that they do everything in their power to remove the rightfully elected president when their guy lost. And they pretended that the Benghazi investigation was totally not a political abuse of power, it just happened to end the month after Hillary’s presidential bid was over, by sheer coincidence. But at least conservatives used to accept some things as actual facts.

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Incorrect. Fields drove from Ohio to attend the rally. He had undeniable neo-Naxi and white supremacist beliefs and kept a photo of Hitler by his bedside. The actu was deliberate and motivated by his political beliefs. It’s on a list of right-wing terrorist attacks on Wikipedia.
I mean he didn't have anything to do with organizing the event. It was a target of opportunity. The vehicular assault could be called terrorism but not the rally itself -- unless you think that sort of group assembling is inherently terroristic.
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I listed 14 things, nine of which were either right-wing terrorist attacks or groups of right-wing terrorist attacks. You took exception with 3. Of those 3, you were wrong on 1 and another was ambiguous, so you took it as the wrong attack. But let’s say you were right on all 3. Out of a list of 9 attacks, several of which were groups of multiple attacks, but we’ll take them as one, would you say the word “few” more accurately describes the number “3” or the number “6”? When the number is actually 8 out of 9, would you say that the word “few” accurately describes 8/9ths of the whole?
As for the others listed, they all are right wing terrorism except for the boogaloo thing, which seems to be a bunch of dorky posers who haven't done anything, and "mosque shootings" are debatable.

Still, a very small percentage of criminal activity overall.

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I mean he didn’t have anything to do with organizing the event. It was a target of opportunity. The vehicular assault could be called terrorism but not the rally itself — unless you think that sort of group assembling is inherently terroristic.
I did not mean to imply that the rally itself was "terrorism". And you already knew that. This is exactly what I was talking about with the conservative mindset. You knew what I meant, but it wasn't technically accurate, so you counted it in the "doesn't count" pile, even though you accept that what I meant, what you already knew I meant, does count.
As for the others listed, they all are right wing terrorism except for the boogaloo thing, which seems to be a bunch of dorky posers who haven’t done anything, and “mosque shootings” are debatable.

Still, a very small percentage of criminal activity overall.


You’re sticking to your guns and pretending you were right all along, BUT you are accepting that facts are facts. I can respect that. That is a “normal” level of “I don’t want to be proven wrong” which one might see from any given person, myself included when I don’t notice I’m doing it, in any given discussion. I must apologize because I thought very little of you before, thinking that you were brainwashed and ignorant, incapable of admitting fault or accepting reality. I see now that assessment was completely and utterly wrong and you are, in fact, someone I can have an intelligent conversation with even when we disagree. And yes, I did just say, “I was wrong”. Try it out. Take it for a spin. See how it feels. It’s not so bad now and again.

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@thatoneguy I would like you to clear up a couple of things here, just so that I clearly know your position for the purpose of any further discussion.

I agree that right-wing terrorism is “a very small percentage of criminal activity overall”, as you stated. My first question is, would you not agree that Antifa, even if your view of them is 100% correct, is ALSO “a very small percentage of criminal activity overall”?

And second, are you, as it appears you are, conceding that right-wing terrorism is not “imaginary” as you had previously stated?

Your position has clearly changed. In my own mind I can see clearly what the answer to my second question is and, if you’re being honest with both of us, I know what your answer to the first question is. But I want to know how you would answer those two questions.

Yesterday I would have assumed you would simply deflect or not answer. Today I can see that is not who you are. You may do some mental gymnastics to minimize the damage when you accept that you were wrong about something (we are all wrong sometimes and we all do mental gymnastics to some extent to minimize that to ourselves, so I’m not accusing you of anything I am not guilty of a thousand times over), but you do accept facts.

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you here. The reason I am asking these two pointed questions is because I want to know which is more important to you, the fact or your narrative. You are obviously not the “believe at all cost”, frankly, idiot (once again, I’m very sorry that I thought that of you) that I took you for. So I want to know who you really are.

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Okay, apparently I was wrong THIS time and not the last time.

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@thatoneguy I would like you to clear up a couple of things here, just so that I clearly know your position for the purpose of any further discussion.

I agree that right-wing terrorism is “a very small percentage of criminal activity overall”, as you stated. My first question is, would you not agree that Antifa, even if your view of them is 100% correct, is ALSO “a very small percentage of criminal activity overall”?


Yes. Antifa is a drop in the bucket in nationwide crime.

And second, are you, as it appears you are, conceding that right-wing terrorism is not “imaginary” as you had previously stated?
Correct.
Your position has clearly changed. In my own mind I can see clearly what the answer to my second question is and, if you’re being honest with both of us, I know what your answer to the first question is. But I want to know how you would answer those two questions.

Yesterday I would have assumed you would simply deflect or not answer. Today I can see that is not who you are. You may do some mental gymnastics to minimize the damage when you accept that you were wrong about something (we are all wrong sometimes and we all do mental gymnastics to some extent to minimize that to ourselves, so I’m not accusing you of anything I am not guilty of a thousand times over), but you do accept facts.

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you here. The reason I am asking these two pointed questions is because I want to know which is more important to you, the fact or your narrative. You are obviously not the “believe at all cost”, frankly, idiot (once again, I’m very sorry that I thought that of you) that I took you for. So I want to know who you really are.


The facts have to support the narrative. The facts are antifa is real and is involved in BLM rioting that interferes with regular peoples lives but it is also not going to destroy America. And Right Wing terrorism exists but is less of a threat to normal life than the rioting.

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BLM has stated goals of increasing opportunity and equality. RW terrorists say they want to kill people based on skin color

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The facts have to support the narrative. The facts are antifa is real and is involved in BLM rioting that interferes with regular peoples lives but it is also not going to destroy America. And Right Wing terrorism exists but is less of a threat to normal life than the rioting.
First, let me say thank you for responding honestly and toning down the rhetoric a bit. A man who can be reasoned with is a man I can have a reasoned conversation with.

You are right. The facts do have to support the narrative. You say that antifa is “real”. That is an ultimately meaningless statement. What does “real” mean? The experts say that Antifa is an ideology. So yes, it is “real”. It’s a “real ideology”. If you are stating that it is a real…something else, please give evidence to support that.

You then go on to make an equivalency between Antifa and BLM without explicitly stating there is an equivalency. And then you equate that to rioting, ending with an unusually sentence expertly crafted to make your point seem more legitimate than it actually is. Right wing terrorism is less of a threat to “normal life” than rioting. That is what you’re saying. I gave 3 reports which each independently listed right-wing terrorism as the biggest terrorist threat in the US today and you are essentially arguing that Antifa, by proxy of BLM, is a bigger disruption to your Christmas shopping. I assume that’s what you mean by the bigger threat to “normal life”. Because in my idea of what “normal life” is there is no plot to kidnap a democratically elected official and try them in a vigilante court on completely imaginary charges just because the election didn’t go the way some butthurt right-wing conspiracy nuts wanted. In my idea of “normal life” we don’t have a president who is hinting heavily that if he loses the election his supporters should take the country back for him by force. In my mind the idea that there will be violence in the streets which targets PEOPLE instead of the store “Target” is a MUCH bigger disruption to “normal life”.

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By “normal life” I mean the day to day life most people live. Ripping up cities is disruptive to the people who live there.

Right Wing terrorism doesn’t affect many people except in an abstract way.

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Right Wing terrorism doesn’t affect many people except in an abstract way. - oneguy
Right-Wing terrorism targets left-wing disruptions the way anti-biotics deal with bacterial infections.
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Right Wing terrorism usually targets innocent people. Fortunately it is rare.

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Right Wing terrorism usually targets innocent people. - oneguy
I don't think terrorism is right-wing at all. Left-wing yeah but right-wing never. The right is for law and order. No right-wing guy would rudely sit at your sidewalk restaurant table, gulp your drink and eat your steak and potatoes. It's not in his DNA to act up like that. It's the left-wing that is terrorizing law-abiding folks in our cities. They are messing up Philadelphia now. Isn't that your town?
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Right-Wing terrorism targets left-wing disruptions the way anti-biotics deal with bacterial infections.
That is a real piece of shit thing to say. You just declared that terrorism against people you disagree with is not only acceptable, it's a proper solution, the way you should deal with people who disagree with you.
Right Wing terrorism usually targets innocent people. Fortunately it is rare.
THANK YOU!

But on that last sentence, biggest terrorist threat in America today, as I have evidenced repeatedly.

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Right-Wing terrorism targets left-wing disruptions the way anti-biotics deal with bacterial infections. – Sree

Just stop. Right there. You might want to get out of this thread entirely. Stop commenting on the use of violence. Don’t say anything about who deserves to be terrorized.

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No right-wing guy would rudely sit at your sidewalk restaurant table, gulp your drink and eat your steak and potatoes. -- Sree
https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2020/02/21/alabama-state-sit-in-brought-change-but-cost-students-dearly/4793116002/

They just went and sat at a lunch counter, and…

People all around them scrambled to move away while they hurled expletives and derogatory remarks at the college students. When a white woman who Reed sat next to looked up from her dish and saw his brown face, she jumped in shock, before quickly scurrying away.
Then they were lined up out in the hallway and later expelled.
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@thatoneguy I was thinking about this thread all last night and I had a couple of ideas that I really wanted to get across to you.

First, you started this thread with the express purpose of pointing out how dangerous Antifa is, citing only an opinion piece where the author claimed that a photojournalist claimed that his pictures of “hooded figures” somehow proved Antifa was a real, organized threat. You know as well as I do that this is speculation. The photojournalist didn’t get signed depositions from these mysterious figures. EVEN IF everything the opinion writer said that everything the photojournalist said were true, “Antifa!” is still a leap from there. You started out constantly playing up the threat of Antifa on the thinnest of evidence. And now you’re constantly playing down the threat of right-wing terrorism, which you at first denied existed outright, against the actual evidence. Do you not see the incredible double standard you use to evaluate whether information is important or not?

Secondly, I wanted to point out that you and the more liberal people in this thread are not at odds about everything as it may seem. The ONLY thing we really disagree on is whether Antifa is “real” or not. If you proved it were real tomorrow most of our differences would disappear. I hope you do realize that if “my side” believed that Antifa was what you believe it is instead of the “evil unicorn” we believe it is, almost ALL of our differences would disappear. We, too, would want it stopped. We would not get behind the “liberal conspiracy” to cover up crimes against our fellow man. We, too, would want these people rounded up and put in prison for their crimes, although I suspect the punishment you might imagine may be extra-judiciary while we tend to want punishment to be doled out by the letter of the law. But that’s it. That’s the totality of our differences. IF Antifa is the real, organized threat you believe it to be let me be the first liberal to state, “That’s bad, m’kay”. I’m not okay with terrorism, right or left wing. I’m not okay with property damage, I just don’t think it’s nearly as big a deal as ending a human life. If you show me a thousand buildings and one human being and ask me, “Which should I destroy” there’s a neighborhood burning down every single time. There is no comparison to the difference of importance between “stuff” and a human life. And when you’re not being a partisan hack :wink: I think you believe that too.

You seem to have this “us against them” mentality, but that’s not how it really is. I don’t hate all Republicans and love all Democrats because I’m liberal. Politicians have to earn my praise or ire with every move they make. And I value truth above all else. I want to know what is real. So I reject any source which doesn’t value that. I reject lies when they come from the left (which is why I wouldn’t wipe my butt with the Huffington Post these days), but more often it comes from the right. This thread is the perfect example. This is pure tribalism. I don’t reject it because it’s conservative, I reject it because your standard for evidence changes drastically depending on whether it supports or opposes the viewpoint you already hold. Claims about claims about mysterious people in hoodies was enough to make Antifa a real, credible threat. But our country’s top law enforcement agencies own reports are not enough to make right-wing terrorism a big deal. You value conservatism much more than you value truth. That’s why we really clash. For you it’s “us against them” and for me it’s “truth against falsehoods”. Of course we won’t see eye to eye until we both value the same thing in the conversation. Call me stubborn, but I’m not giving up “truth” as the thing I value. I don’t want to be lied to, even by myself. Unlike Sree, you do value truth at least to some extent, just not “above all” like me. That’s why I can talk to you, but also why it’s arduous.

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They just went and sat at a lunch counter, and…. - Lausten
Do you view the German people's attitude today towards Jews the same way? Perhaps, you are right. People don't change because, under the skin, they can't. And their attitude is locked in their DNA to be transmitted from generation to generation. You pride yourself as well-read and rational. Where did you read this stuff?