Some folks a scheduled “Free Speech” rally in Boston today. This was characterized by “counter-protesters” (not sure the term is apt, given that the Free Speechers may not have been “protesting”) as Nazi-oriented, hate-oriented, racism-oriented, and/or white supremacist. Here’s my IM exchange with a friend who attended:
- How was the rally? How many Nazis showed up?
- dunno. i think just a few dozen people showed up for the whole rally (vs. about 10,000 counter-protesters), but i never saw them. being in a large crowd is not necessarily the best way to know what’s happening at an event
In other words, my friend was protesting people whom he never saw and opposing ideas that he never heard expressed.
As a reenactment of the Nuremberg Rally, it seems as though Boston was a bit short on Nazis.
It is interesting to me that nobody seems to care what the purported Nazis had to say. A New York Times article on the rally provides detail on the “counter-protesters”. There were about 40,000 of them in Boston and their mission was “to denounce racism, white supremacy and Nazism.” They “shouted down their opponents.” But there was no reporting on the number of Nazis and no detail on what they said before they were shouted down.
Shiva Ayyadurai, the inventor of email, was quoted briefly, but no other speaker is even mentioned. (Ayyadurai is running for U.S. Senate against Elizabeth Warren, a race that an MIT friend characterizes as “Indian v. Indian.)
Readers: Did you find a source of information about the speeches that the “protesters” gave? If so, please share!
[Separately, I’m wondering if we run short of Nazis whether some of the counter-protesters will step in to handle both sides of the altercations. Otherwise how can counter-protesters say “We fought against Nazis like those brave souls depicted in the Dunkirk movie”? Related phenomenon: In The Elements of Style, the authors noted that “another segment of society that has constructed a language of its own is business. … Its portentous nouns and verbs invest ordinary events with high adventure, executives walk among toner cartridges, caparisoned like knights. We should tolerate them–every person of spirit wants to ride a white horse. … A good many of the special words of business seem designed more to express the user’s dreams than to express a precise meaning.”]
https://twitter.com/evanmcmurry/status/898989750295470080
“As a reenactment of the Nuremberg Rally, it seems as though Boston was a bit short on Nazis.”
I don’t know. 40,000 people showing up to protest free speech sounds like a pretty good turnout. Any news on whether they were burning books written by people who didn’t vote for Hillary?
Perhaps the New York Times could hire some actors to be Nazis to keep the story alive. I don’t think the two minutes of hate required any actual opposition to be present.
Someone posted this comment on one of the websites I read. I think it really captures what’s going on:
“The DNC’s platform of more gun control, more government, more Obamacare, more illegal aliens, more Muslim refugees, and an alliance with the cop-haters of BLM was inexplicably unpopular among many Americans in 2016, so Democrats have decided to switch to an anti-free speech, anti-statue, pro-Antifa platform. That should work.”
Shiva Ayyadurai did not invent email. There is no factual basis for his claims as mentioned in the wikipedia article you cited. This should give some insight as to his credibility.
Here’s a clip of the actual “free speech”.
It certainly doesn’t look like the nazis showed up to Boston. Clearly Bostonians were protesting Charlottesville. I wonder if this is what we should expect for unapproved assemblages on the go forward.
race that an MIT friend characterizes as “Indian v. Indian” – except only one of them is an Indian of any kind.
Pretending to be a fake Indian has a long history in Boston – see “Tea Party”.
We all know that Boston is just infested with Nazis. They were just too cowardly to show their faces. And what about those thinly disguised Nazis who pretend that they are just interested in upholding “free speech” – everyone knows that free speech is just a code word for Nazi. Everyone has the right to free speech as long as they say the right things. Down with free speech, I say! Your right to swing your free speech ends where my safe space begins!
While the citizens of U.S.A. are marching against the ever more violent and scary “Nazis” who are turning our lives to hell and taking our freedom away, Europe is surly having fun under the sun with the “moderate” freedom fighters [1]. Maybe U.S.A. needs some dose of reality check so we can better focus our energy?
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40990927
Here’s Boston Antifa’s official position: https://www.facebook.com/BostonAntifa/photos/a.1312871942084794.1073741828.1312402372131751/1497664996938820/?type=3&theater
There were about 3 to 8 Nazi-related flags at the Charlottesville protest, from what I am able to count in the videos I saw.
If the media was actually doing its job, reporters would talk to the people carrying them and report back on why they felt Nazi symbolism best represented their views.
Further, some of the flags still had very visible crease marks on them, meaning they had just been taken out of the bags they were shipped in.
I certainly know that if I wanted to undermine someone’s march, I would slip in a few paid protesters to fly a Nazi flag …surely that would be a scoop for a reporter to report on, yes?
I certainly know that if I wanted to undermine someone’s march, I would slip in a few paid protesters to fly a Nazi flag …surely that would be a scoop for a reporter to report on, yes?
It would be a scoop if it actually happened, but there’s no evidence that it did. There may have been only a few flags with swastikas on them, but there was video of a larger number of people chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”. Those people in Charlottesville were the same sort of people who spend a lot on the internet commenting about Jewish control of the Federal Reserve and put Jewish names in parentheses. And, of course, the guy who is accused by these people of paying protestors is also Jewish.
Vince, I am puzzled by that idiotic slogan. What could it mean? It flies against demographic situation, actual events and people involved. And who is ‘guy who is accused by these people of paying protestors’ ?