There’s a little wine shop in downtown Ballston Spa, New York with rainbow-colored bottles lining the shop’s front window. The village is small, about 5,000 people, and attracts tourists from all around the world.
Last summer, the owner of the wine shop, Jes Rich, noticed a group of masked men in the street. “As soon as I saw them I ran out the door,” said Rich, who is openly queer and sees her shop as a safe and welcoming space for other queer people.
The men in the street were wearing black and yellow face coverings and T-shirts identifying themselves as members of the Proud Boys, a violent, far-right extremist group. A yellow truck drove alongside the group, blasting the provocative country song “Try That in a Small Town.”
A home in Glens Falls displaying three confederate flags
confederate flags
Glens Falls
New York
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Or “states rights”.
I don’t think this proves that it wasn’t or isn’t that for anyone else
Uncle Billy’s gonna need a lot more matches this time
“When you really, truly have the back of the people, the people will literally give the shirts off their backs for you. You need to know that. I pledge my militia,” Mizrahi said as the crowd applauded. “We will forever stand by your side, for someone who stands by ours.”
So there’s one thing that jumps out at me about all these types of movements: People want something to believe in. People want close allies, people they can march with, neighbors they know personally who they’ve been through some real shit with. Human beings need a “tribe” or a tight-knit village to be a part of. I think that’s basically nonexistent in modern American society, and I think a lot of the draw of these movements is that finally, I’ll have some people standing by my side that I can trust and depend on and do some real shit with.
I think some of the people in these movements just want to do violent things or are inherently drawn to the fascist ideology. But I think a much larger percentage just want something to be part of. I think if they had a real community to be part of day to day, the attractiveness of the dangerous community for them to be part of would be much less.
The lack of in-person community in modern American life has a profound and far reaching impact that I think many people fail to appreciate.
It’s alienation in its worst form. But it gets repackaged as “rugged individualism” and people end up finding an “other” to blame
I don’t know about small town social norms but I would guess you really don’t want to stand out, and being liberal or even questioning conservative leaders and talking points is a great way to become the black sheep.
I’m convinced that Jan 6th wouldn’t have happened if pro sports hadn’t gone on hiatus during covid. Before covid a lot of people found their tribes via sports (or NASCAR). When the events stopped or got lame, the people needed something Trump and Fox News jumped on that. If you watch Trump rallies they’re basically tailgaters with a new sport.
panem et circenses
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Shoaff said he didn’t know at the time that McEachin was Black, but he still stands by his statement. “I said we should take him out in the middle of the street and hang him,” said Shoaff. “I said what I said because he advocated for using force against citizens,” he said. “Is that not treason?”
… is that not advocating using force against citizens?
Lol, what a bunch of pussies.
Go far enough north, and you end up in the south.
Rednecks, Rednecks everywhere. Trump signs as far as the eye can see.
This is going to get worse all over as most liberals move away and concentrate in specific places. They’re making it easy for the Republicans to trap them in cities.
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I hope you’re right, actually I hope we never have to learn if you’re right.
Not to mention that because land is what gets voted, all the city dwellers will have less representation than the country folk.
It would be great to move a few million leftists into rural areas and fix this, but every time I mention it they’re like “but there’s nothing to do there!”
And we’ll lose everything due to our unwillingness to sacrifice a bit.
“Does anyone know of any local gyms not flooded with NAZIs” &
“NAZIs are marching today; avoid downtown.”
… are common posts in the town closest to me represented on reddit.
NAZIs are now part of American life. Now when people in the future talk about what the NAZIs they will have to ask, “The ones in Germany or in America ?”
NAZI
Is this supposed to be an acronym for something? Why are you capitalizing it like that.
It’s weird that self-defense has this time limit on it’s validity. Like if someone tries to kill you and you kill them while they’re in the action of stabbing you it’s self-defense, but if a few minutes have passed it’s murder.
If someone has made their intention to kill you clear, self-defense is a valid response, no time limit, no need to wait for triggers to be pulled. This is a group of people making their intentions clear walking down the street.
I really don’t want to live in a world where feeling threatened grants a person all the powers of judge, jury, and executioner. Do you want lynch mobs? Because that’s how you get lynch mobs. And minority groups, however much more justified they are in feeling threatened, have historically not been nor will they ever be the ones doing them.
I really don’t want to live in a world where feeling threatened grants a person all the powers of judge, jury, and executioner. Do you want lynch mobs?
We have this now but worse because it’s organized against specific groups.
- The state is nothing but an organized group of people who feel entitled to use lethal force to make you comply with their will.
- Police are a huge organized hierarchical gang with a license to kill
We are simply propagandized to think this is the right way and every other way is wrong. Humans have been around for 2-300,000 years, 99% of that time with no state and it was sustainable. Now we have state and shit is being destroyed in a few generations. The state is the problem, not a few lynch mobs.
EDIT: I want to add, if you don’t defend yourself from fascists, you end up in their world. This world of fascists will certainly grant effective judge, jury, and executioner status (i.e. they won’t get in trouble) to any privileged person over any unprivileged person. Choose your future.
I don’t disagree with a lot of that, but that doesn’t make it right to murder people just because you felt threatened by them. This isn’t a kill or be killed society, there are alternative means to deal with threatening. If those means are insufficient for you, then you should want to create better ones long before you want the state to start sanctioning vigilante justice without any form of trial. You also seem to have missed this part of my comment
minority groups, however much more justified they are in feeling threatened, have historically not been nor will they ever be the ones doing them.
That’s just the nature of being part of a minority. It’s a lot more difficult to organize a mob, and even if you manage to do it you’re just going to be met with a bigger mob on the other side cause you decided to go and kick the hornet’s nest of bigotry.
Edited - reworded
doesn’t make it right to murder people just because you felt threatened by them
Totally depends on the threat. If the threat is real and mortal, I’d say it sure does give one the right to defend themselves in a way that eliminates the threat. On the other hand, a vague feeling of being threatened does not give one the right to harm others. If it’s not your life or something critical to your life being threatened a lesser response is probably more appropriate. I’m not saying shoot someone for stealing your Amazon package. Like every other situation, there is nuance.
Also, your quotation is not from me.
I’m curious what you define as “the state.” Government? Government essentially evolved with writing, in Sumer (that we know of historically)
Sure
State - An organized group of people who claim exclusive acceptable use of violence within a claimed geographic region and use violence to ensure this monopoly continues.
Within a state most self-defense or community-defense is denigrated as “vigilante justice”.
A government typically is also a state but it’s not necessary for a polity that is focused on say community coordination to claim exclusive legality to the use of violence.
