UKC

Nice to see that Trump’s promise is being delivered 

Video of US teenagers taunting Native American draws fire http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46935701

if being ‘Great Again’ includes a return to showing open contempt for the people that lived there first. 

‘Build that wall, build that wall’...

Absolute scumbags. Especially that one that stood in front of him smirking. 

I visited the Lincoln Memorial a few years ago.  A surprisingly deep and powerful place for the USA.  It saddens me greatly to see smug little s—theads behaving like that anywhere, but the ignorance for their own history shown by doing it there is astounding.  The irony is completely lost on the idiot kids as well.

Its disturbing to see how easily people can turn towards ignorance and fascism.

Good effort not punching him in the face - that’s more dignity and sense than I would be able to manage...

I was hoping someone would post this  I saw the video this morning and was appalled. Although, for balance, I think we all did monumentally stupid things at that age. I hope they’ve learnt enough from the outcry to feel genuinely ashamed.

It’s a shame the Native Americans didn’t have time to build their own wall to keep the land-stealing colonials out of their country. 

Sorry, but have any of you watched the fuller versions of these videos?   Those kids did nothing wrong.

The kids were there on a school trip, they were a bit rowdy (groups of teenage boys usually are), but were doing nothing wrong.

The drum-banging Native American approached them; he walked into their group.  He approached the kid in the video and drummed in his face. The kid just stood there (with an awkward smile, not really sure what to do).  The kids did not get in the way of anyone, the drummer approached them.

There was no "mockery" or taunts of the Native American gentleman (who, by the way, is close to a professional political activist). There were no chants of "build the wall". All this is on video. 

There is, however, video of one of the Native Americans telling the boys to go back to Europe and insulting them simply because they are white.   During all this the boys are overall pretty restrained, good humoured, threatening no-one and not being offensive to anyone. 

Difficult to avoid thinking that despite Pinker et al we're going through a really turbulent time right now, with uncertain outcomes. Yes, the US political system has broken down but we're hardly in a position to be smug, with egregious liers like Johnson, Fox, Farage and Mogg totally outclassing (easily outclassable) May and Corbyn, for what God only knows; there is China wrestling with issues that we can't possibly imagine, and an out and out dictator in Putin wrestling with all the issues dictators inevitably face, and a willingness to use the tools that dictators inevitably end up using.

The complacent b*stards who say this is all project fear are the same ones who said the same thing in 1933, 1910, 1826, 1790... There are some pretty grim episodes in history, and I genuinely worry that my generation may have bequeathed another to our children and grandchildren.

Ashamed of what exactly? Please be specific in your reply.

Basically the media have done a metaphorical lynching on them simply because some of them were wearing MAGA hats and because they are white and male (and Catholic), and these days white males are always in the wrong. 

Their school seems to disagree with you.

You seem to be suggesting this is a bad or suspicious thing? Why?

I can't comment on the rest of your post because I haven't seen the full video (though your post intrigued me and I intend to seek it out).

The school did indeed put out a statement condemning the kids.  But they, like many people, may have been deceived by the selectively edited videos and the spin put on them. 

There are many other videos and they exonerate the boys.  In essence, the kids just stood there while the Native American gentleman created the "incident".

https://twitter.com/GSpellchecker/status/1086998133098401792

https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1086866650446655488

https://twitter.com/Uncle_Jimbo/status/1086796139817504768

I'm suggesting that he may have been trying to create a political scene.  Indeed he quite blatantly was. 

I'm actually more bothered by the fact that the school sent its kids on an organised trip to a pro-life rally.

https://twitter.com/almostjingo/status/1086933224419278848

https://twitter.com/KatieAKaras/status/1087021645422825472

https://twitter.com/JacobFreeman95/status/1087077427979927554

Yes.   I agree with BnB’s comment that many of us did dumb stuff when younger, but I never went on an anti-abortion rally let alone a school organised one.  Such an alien world to me, to politicise teenagers to such a degree over an issue they can have very little personal awareness off.  A boys’ school trip to protest about women controlling their bodies.  

I watched all the videos I could of this incident before I posted.  I stand by my earlier post.  It wouldn’t have cost the group anything to step out of the way of the other protestors, but no.  Enclosing, blocking, laughing, jeering.  They chose to do all those things.  Their actions are clear and to me fall far short of the acceptable.

To head off the inevitable response - I didn’t see a video of any of the tribal protestors being racist to the boys but if that happened it’s clearly also deeply unacceptable.  One wrong does not justify another however.

One or two of the boys caught in some videos did look disgusted at it.

Regardless of who is at fault, it says a lot that this crap is unfolding in front of the Lincoln memorial.

I can also understand the anger of tribal protestors more than the school children.  The statistics on the life chances of the tribal peoples are atrocious.  What’re the life chances for pupils from a boy’s school that can afford to travel thosands or miles to protest abortion?  The divisions in American society are strong and deep and behind all the protests and politicising, they are getting worse.

Have you watched this video?: https://twitter.com/matthewschmitz/status/1086994001801158656

It shows that the protestors approached the kids.  The kids did not "block" or "enclose" them, the protestors walked into their midst.  As for "laughing, jeering", there's not actually much jeering, more good-natured rowdiness and singing along as much as anything.

Try here: https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1086818056523968513

Or for a fuller version:  https://twitter.com/almostjingo/status/1086933224419278848

Is there anything wrong with that?  I mean, I'm just about the last person to sympathise with Catholic theology, yet I support their right to hold their views and to voice them at a rally. 

I think there is, yes. I don't think schools should send kids on political rallies. 

Even private Catholic schools?  

Of course there is. No one should be teaching children opinions and beliefs dressed up as fact, which is what the catholic church does ( and plenty other institutions).

Yes. There is a level of indoctrination in underdeveloped minds. To then send them to swell the numbers on a political rally feels like a manipulation. There will almost certainly be peer pressure so that kids who might not ordinarily attend or support the position still feel obliged to be there. 

'Even private Catholic schools?  '

WTF? Yes. Not sure that there is any place for 'faith' schools frankly, private or otherwise.

Here's another video from the incident. 

One of the group of Catholic boys, who is black, is being taunted for being part of the mostly-white school group. 

https://twitter.com/concretemilk/status/1087088054580457472

It does not seem to me that the worst behaviour on display was by the boys.

This seems a pretty sensible summary of the whole affair:

https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/20/covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-video

"Journalists who uncritically accepted Nathan Phillips' story got this completely wrong."

It does seem to me to be a contrived situation with some manipulation and selective editing for political gain. It's probably a good snapshot of the current polarisation of the American political scene at the moment.

Fair play- more fool me for taking the bbc account at face value.... 

its still up on their website too; disappointing to see the beeb spreading fake news

How about the fact that the abortion issue isn't black and white?  And that as crazy as the pro-life brigade look, the pro-choicers on the other side are equally extreme.

The pro-life lobby in the US actually have fair points; why is an unborn child considered to have fewer rights than an unconscious human-being?  Yhy does the moment of birth change everything?  How can it be ok to simply decide not to have a child for reasons other than an immediate threat to life and limb?  The issue doesn't stop being contentious simply because the extreme conception=life argument is patently absurd.

I'm pro-choice, but the automatic assumption that the issue is black and white, and that teenagers don't have a right to take a religious OR ethical stance on the issue is hard to support.  In many cases abortion is simply being made more difficult, not outright banned.

All that aside, as Coel has highlighted, and as anyone would have noticed in the last couple of days if they followed social media feeds from across the political spectrum, the actual protest where this altercation took place is being HUGELY politicsed in a partisan nature.  This seemed to start with the left milking the "indigenous man attacked by MAGA supporters" with some very selective editing and choosing to take the worst possible reading from the situation.  Footage released from the other side shows things very differently.

Rather than jumping on board the outrage machine because Vox or the Guardian has decided this is a clear-cut example of Trump inspired bigotry, which only proves Trump-supporters' points, its worth reading a bit deeper. 

https://quillette.com/2019/01/20/truth-and-disfavored-identities/?fbclid=Iw...

Dunno if I'd go as far as "nothing wrong" (wearing a MAGA hat doesn't exactly scream "nice young man"), but I appreciate you giving the additional context. I hadn't seen that reported anywhere.

The boys mother is blaming Muslims, specifically black Muslims. Which seems an odd twist.

You have completely missed the point. If someone is pro life then that is their choice. If they felt the need to attend a rally then that also is their choice. But an organised school trip for kids who might not have had a whole lot of choice on which school they attended or the opportunity to express or develop their own opinions seems a little off. 

Seems a little harsh that a student gets DOXXED to the degree that his mother's political persuasions are being used to indict his character.

Doesn't that say less about the kid and more about the depths those looking to make a meal out of this have sunk?

Yeah, I get that.  But it's hardly unusual for kids to be dragged off to events they have no choice in.  Kids are made to attend church services, get made to sing Christmas carols, we even got dragged off do a song and dance for the queen when she was in town.  It might be distasteful to us, but the rights of the unborn child are a pretty central tenant of Catholicism and rightly or wrongly are probably shared by the students there by default.  I don't see it as particularly awful or surprising that they are made to put on a performance of their own to support it.

Pretty depressing if wearing a Make America Great Again hat is a sign of guilt.

Over the last few years I've been increasingly unsurprised at the level of support for Trump.  If wearing a red hat with MAGA on it is enough to signify wrong-doing then few people should be shocked if he gets re-elected.

Doesn't make it right though?

Not ideal.  But this is probably a private school so maybe bound by different rules.  If parents send their kids to it they are no doubt intended for religious teaching and certain types of morality to be pushed on their kids.  Abortion, suicide and euthanasia are pretty big issues for Catholics so I can understand why, from their perspective, abhorrence to abortion (which like I said above, I can understand) doesn't end with teaching in class but involves a degree of political mobilisation. 

The closest equivalent i can think of would be if such a thing as a vegan schools existed.  I'd imagine the kids, parents and school authorities wouldn't see much wrong with sending the kids to campaign for an end to meat eating if such an event were being held.  I suppose Hindu schools might just do something similar.

Not sure why everyone thinks it is a private school?

As I said earlier, none of what you say makes it right.

What's this? Coel defending religious schools...?

What has happened to the world...?

To be fair, good on you Coel for checking the facts, rather than being led by the headlines. It's all making me a little depressed. I often try to look behind the headlines, but didn't on this occasion so have been caught out. 

What can be done about the media and politicians distorting the facts, and blatantly lying to us for political/monetary gain? 

Well yeah, I'm against the UK's taxpayer funded "faith" schools.  If I were PM the very first thing I'd do is remove those schools'  exemption from the 2010 Equality Act, which allows them to discriminate over religion. 

But I'm also a classical liberal. I wouldn't go as far as outlawing home schooling or private schools run by religious groups.   And I wouldn't prohibit Catholic groups from holding anti-abortion rallies.  Nor would I prevent kids going along on them if they wanted.

It's unclear whether any of the kids were *made* to go, as opposed to being given the opportunity to go.  Of course from their point of view "free trip to Washington with all your mates, what's not to like?".

As for kids not having "... the opportunity to express or develop their own opinions ...", that's just part of childhood, that they are influenced by their parents and parental choices.

Are people also going to object to kids attending a climate-change rally, or a stop-the-war rally or whatever for similar reasons? 

Because it is.  (In America all religious schools are private schools, since state promotion of religion is banned by the first amendment.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covington_Catholic_High_School

I’d say that what it actually says is that the boys mother has seen fit to make a public statement about who she sees as responsible. 

Yes. I would definitely be against a school deciding to invite the whole of year 9 for a biology trip to a climate change rally. I’m more unclear if it was an environmental society within the school, where there is a slightly higher level of choice. I’m more unclear if it was a trip to see a particular speaker - Mandela or the Dalai Lama.  But it would not be an appropriate trip for a whole school intake to go to any political rally. 

Having seen that i tend to agree with your assessment Coel. Once more it serves us to look at the broader picture when memes pop up

Exactly, this is the big problem.  The pro-Trump media such as Fox News are now having a field day about this. 

If the mainstream media can't be trusted to be fair and to care about truth, and if they regard being white, male, Catholic and wearing MAGA hats as automatically making them "deplorables", then the Trumpites can cry "fake news" -- with justification on some occasions -- and swathes of people will think "OK then, I'll vote for someone who isn't automatically against me". 

Are the media actively trying to hand the next election to Trump? 

There is a longer vid showing the background to the events. At 1h40, I confess I've only skimmed it.

There was a protest by black Jews, who seem to be pretty vocal. It looks like it got heated.

youtube.com/watch?v=t3EC1_gcr34&

There is another point of view being put forward which states:

"Now, a third narrative has emerged, thanks to the Detroit Free Press and other sources, which reports that Mr. Phillips, the elder, interposed himself between two jeering groups, chanting to bring peace. At which point the Covington students then turned their ire on him."

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1087108813331857411.html

I think, what we can draw from this, is that whatever your bias, there is something there for everyone to get excited about. Christians oppressing Jews, Jews oppressing white people, white people oppressing black people, Native Americans getting oppressed by MAGA students, and we haven't touched on the pro-life bit.

Considering that the kids at school now will be bearing the brunt of the climate change effects and that it is a scientific fact not a point of view or a political stance it is probably highly appropriate for a child to attend a climate change protest as much to defend science and education as anything else.

I know from talking to my 13 year old daughter climate change is a major worry for the next generation, she and her friends are highly aware that potentially a lot of the animals that feature on the living planet might not be around when their kids are born.

Just saying a better example than a climate change might have been chosen

Hats of Coel for the challenge

Though there is nothing in the video that amounts to the students "jeering" at anyone, nor "turning their ire" on Phillips.    

All there is is the students being a bit rowdy (in a good natured way), singing along when the drummer approaches, and being a bit confused as to what was happening, not really knowing whether this was a sing-along or a confrontation.

And one boy, when approached by the drummer, acts a bit confused, not sure what he should do, and stands there smiling awkwardly. 

But what to do about climate change is a political issue.

So kids are allowed to have views about climate change but not abortion? 

Not at all. iInstead, it is pretty depressing to see a brain washed idiot child wearing a MAGA hat, the swastika armband and brown shirt for the 21st century. Easiest way to show that you are complete scum already at your young age and deserve to be treated as such.

The risk is not in alienating Trumpists and their ilk (Pegida / AfD arseholes over here, BNP, Fidesz, PiS, or Lega elsewhere... ) but in appeasing them.

CB

No, I think it's a well chosen example, precisely because it is an article of faith to many, including me.

The principle is that you do not push children to take political stands and make political statements. Also political demonstrations can become dangerous situations.

It is hard to be absolutist though. If they choose to make a statement they should be allowed (hence why I think it is less clear in the case of a society). And clearly some inspirational figures are also strongly political figures so again it's tough to draw a strict distinction here - I wouldn't condemn a Harlem school that ran a school trip to a Michelle Obama speech.

Surely the only way to make America great again is to recolonise it after brexit, as part of the process of making Britain Great again?

That's a very charitable view of what he does regardless of the background.

For someone else who described the first groups as "Black Jews" above, there are a surprising number of Americans who are both black and Jewish, but this group isn't considered Jewish by anyone as far as I can see. They have been described as small cult with both odd and unpleasant views - it sounds rather like the reverse of the white supremacist Christian Identity movement, they are black supremacists and separatists (homophobic too) - but I read one report that said they are literally just a handful of people in DC.

Letting the right wing own Patriotism is a dangerous game.

'Make America Great' is exactly what young Americans should be aiming to do. A huge number of unpleasant views take shelter under the MAGA hat, but the slogan itself (with the questionable 'again') is positive.

The kid just stood there (with an awkward smile, not really sure what to do).  

Really?   Looked to me like he was trying to be clever.  I noted he motioned to move - as in blocking the guys passage passed hm. He  knew exactly what he was doing... being the hard guy stopping someone getting past.   Looking awkward my arse.

Global warming is a scientific fact unfortunately one that isn't recognised in any meaningful way in Washington, with Grave consequences for the next generation. Its a loaded gun pointed directly at the next generation surly they have the right to object?

Michelle Obama is a political figure.

Or stands there unmoving, staring unblinkingly right into Phillips' face - reminded me a bit of opposition rugby teams facing off the Haka. Doesn't seem to be finding things very awkward from here. Having said that, the Native American march could have gone anywhere but straight up to the group and from there everyone behaved predictably badly. I'd be amazed if they'd acted the same without hundreds of cameras pointed at them, and I'm sure that having a confrontation made both of their days. One important factor is that one group are supposedly mature adults and the other is a group of teenage boys, so I'd say the onus is on the grown-ups to act like it.

That's way over the top.  That kid is no more brain-washed than one in a Che shirt, waving an Antifa flag, or banging on with some half-formed ideas about "Rich people are Nazis!".

A turning point for me has been talking to Trump supporters, the kind who have issues with abortion and gun-control, and finding their rationales NOT to be based on brainwashing (i.e. religiously absolute, dogmatic, repeating mantras or shouting down opposing views) but to be strongly based in logic and able to hold a coherent argument even when being challenged.  To dismiss them as brain washed is a real problem.

As soon as you lump a bunch of kids from a Catholic school in with extremists on account of a MAGA hat, before you have even heard their arguments, let alone engaged with them, you have already lost the argument yourself.

This is a case in point.  The trusted mainstream media and regular progressive voices on social media damned these kids (Reza Aslan referring to the smiling kid: "I've never seen a face before I so wanted to punch") an account of their cause.  Where else do they have left to go to then, if not Trump?  And then you damn them for it again because they have gone to the one person who will support them?

THIS is why the far-right is in ascendency.

Post the link. 

Come on now, politics to one side, objectively, the kid has a punchable face.

Go back 50 or 100 years and imagine a protest for suffrage, gay rights, animal rights, or an antiwar protest.  Basically, something considered offensive and against the grain of proper behaviour

A protestor ends up been pilloried in the media as an agitator, a communist, a traitor.  Then you have the general public wading in saying "Yes, he's guilty, he 'knew what he was doing' and he looked like he was 'trying to be clever'".

Being on the wrong political side seems to make it open-season in a way we would usually take issue with.  In this case the kids are being threatened with expulsion, their reputations are being ruined in the media, their job prospects potentially destroyed.   Stepping back and thinking if this would be acceptable if targetted at someone with political beliefs we supported, is a useful exercise.  I get the impression it is tacitly accepted that Trump is so evil, and his supporters so evil, that no holds are barred and usual standards go out the window.

The guy was not trying to get past!  He approached the students with the intent of interacting with the students. After the face-to-face with that student he didn't continue "walking past", he wandered around in circles interacting with other students.

So you consider that Trump supporters are "complete scum" who deserve to be treated as such?

That attitude is a good way to persuade swathes of Americans vote for Trump next time.   "The Left" need to learn to get on with people who think differently from they do; they need to learn that they have to share society with other people as well.

Coel has posted multiple links higher up in this thread, and having watched several of them they present a very different view of what happened. Yes the lad could have moved instead of 'facing off' but he made no gestures and did not say anything, hardly the big evil portrayed in the original clip.

Yes what to do is a political issue but we aren’t actually at the point of doing anything and in Washington it isn’t even fully acknowledged.

if I’m climbing and someone starts dropping rocks off the cliff above me you ask them to stop and acknowledge that they are placing you in danger before you start discussions about who has what right with regards access to the cliff.

this is the position our kids are in with regards climate change, the science says if the grownups don’t change course in the next 12 years they are F£&@ed and every minute wasted makes any reverse harder.

Once the science and the seriousness of climate change is fully acknowledged then the debate can begin about how various countries tackle it.

This right here is the normalisation of Donald Trump. As if neo nazis openly marching in the streets of an American city, waving swastika flags and then killing a woman weren't enough, Trump went on TV said there were "very fine people" among them. So that's an American president failing to disavow nazis. And those nazis, for their part, support Trump. This is just one of the many disturbing things about him that include locking children in cages, bragging about grabbing women by their vaginas, encouraging violence at his rallies, throwing press out of the White House because they ask questions he doesn't like (then releasing doctored videos to justify it), lying compulsively, fawning over murderous dictators...

When someone puts on a MAGA hat, they are telling you that they approve of this man. All I'm doing is taking that at face value.

I was answering Nicks query about Muslims and how the confusion may have arisen.

You make a very valid point, and one that is evident in the vid I posted. They use the terms 'cracka' and 'fag', amongst others, to describe their opponents.

I also think it illustrates part of a wider issue about race and identity in America, and just how explosive and exploitative that can be.

Well I for one fully support the right of kids to have views about climate change and to be politically active about it.

I also support the right of kids to have views about abortion and to be politically active about it.

I

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Yes actually. I tried to show my son the way the world is in a neutral manner so he could make up his own mind as he matured. On matters of opinion or belief I believe everyone should reach their own conclusions.

OK, and if he decides he wants to march on a climate-change rally are you going to tell him that he is too young to have an opinion?

If he decides he wants to march on an anti-abortion rally are you going to tell him that he is too young to have an opinion?

Of course, because giving in to shouty arseholes (especially in East Germany and Eastern Europe) has worked so well. Yes I consider them scum.

CB

Of course not. If he made his own decision then fine. I would also feel at liberty to question the conclusion he had come to.

Young people deciding to go on a demo or support a cause is one thing. Young people being taught to hold particular opinions and beliefs and then being taken to demonstrations by organisations that promote those beliefs is quite another.

The kid himself (Nick Sandmann) speaks:

"The protestor everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him," Sandmann said in a statement on Sunday. "He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face.

"I never interacted with this protestor. I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves. To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me," he added.

[...]

Sandmann disputed those claims in his statement on Sunday and said he never heard "any students chant 'build that wall' or anything hateful or racist at any time."

"I did not see anyone try to block his path. He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face."

"I believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to diffuse the situation," he added.

"I realized everyone had cameras and that perhaps a group of adults was trying to provoke a group of teenagers into a larger conflict," Sandmann said. "I said a silent prayer that the situation would not get out of hand."

"I was not intentionally making faces at the protestor. I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation," he added.

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/teen-accused-taunting-native-...

It's also worth noting from the  video at the top of that report that if the Native American drummer had wanted to get past, he need only take a step to the right, there's a clear space.   At no point did Sandmann make any step to attempt to block anything such. 

And, by the drummer's own account, he was *not* trying to get passed, he went to the students  -- he says -- to intervene between them and the black protesters.

Basically, everything the kids are saying seems to be corroborated by the videos; what Nathan Philips (the Native American drummer) is saying seems not to be corroborated, but seems to (umm, how to put this?) be invented for effect.

I don't support Trump or the Republicans, but I've met many Americans who think that way (I lived there for three years) and no they are not in general "scum".  On the whole they are decent people (which is not to say that I agree with them politically).

The distinction is not so clear.  Kids are *inevitably* influenced by others, even when they are allowed to "make up their own minds".  

And there's no indication that the Catholic kids' presence on that trip was other than voluntary. 

So you're happy for your son to make up his own mind. Good!  Suppose he talks to an older climate-change activist, who is cogent and persuasive.  Your son then asks "may I go to the rally in town tomorrow, they've offered to take me?".  OK?

Yeah if you believe all that guff.  I'm not taking a pot shot at the kid, but lets face it, they were all goofing around, with some taking the piss out of the protesters (with the protester giving it back).  We've all been young and bored on school trips.  Nothing in the videos showed any real malice, just some being more dick-like than others.  I maintain the kid in question was trying to act the tough guy, but in the face of all this outrage the PR company hired has put the spin on things.   

Mr Philips maintains he was wanting to reach the memorial. Not sure how he would in that crowd to be fair, and the guy in my opinion did sway to the side as if to indicate you ain't coming past. But thats how I see it.  I've been accused in the past of looking fierce when I thought I was wearing a blank expression, so will have to give the kid the benefit of the doubt.  But he looks like he's staring down a bit.  

All a bit of a storm in a teacup to be honest...

I'm just glad there wasn't smart phones in my day - many others on this site too probably.  Stupid things done without malice intended just got forgotten when I was a teenager.  Not so much now.  I would hate to be on the wrong end of a viral video in this age of hang em high public outrage, and that includes feeling sympathy for the lad, who lets face it didn't club the guy with a stick or anything, given the internet treatment the world over for being motionless.

And if the opposing side's political candidate declares your entire community of lifelong Republican voters to be "deplorables"? 

If you are lumped in as racist scum for believing in robust border security, economic restraint and the sanctity of constitutionally bound protections on innocent life and freedom of speech?  

If your ideals are basically conservative, you have no time for a plethora of gender pronouns, believe small business owners have a right to bake cakes for whoever they see fit, and your eye's glaze over when Dworkin quotes extend to a hundred words without punctuation...but are basically a salt-of-the-earth, communitarian, good-hearted, and accepting of all people who approach you in a respectable manner.... and for that are portrayed in the media as some monolithic group of pussy-grabbing incipient Nazis?

....and all of that coming from a Left that is supposed to be the "defender of the people" and which embodies all that is good and fair?  A Left that has essentially recycled Bush's "You either with us or against us" for its own ends?

Wouldn't Trump and MAGA hats become attractive? 

There is a solid historical precedent for the Left being responsible for some of the worst atrocities humankind has ever witnessed, all the while pointing its finger at the opposition and denying it even happened.  There's increasing evidence of those same mistakes being repeated.  Do you really blame rank and file Republicans, half the US population, for choosing the only alternative?

Trump is normalised in no small part due to the Left abnormalising and pathologising the Right.  People are hardly going to disavow Nazis when every other day, for holding pretty mainstream views, are being called Nazis themselves.

'they need to learn that they have to share society with other people as well.'

That's not always correct, is it? The conundrum at the heart of democracy is what to do about those who do not respect democracy, see it as a weakness, and are happy to use it to gain power then run it down and destroy it. That's what the Nazis did (and no, I won't apologise for the N word); that's what Putin has done, and Erdogan is trying to do. Arguably Trump and some of his more rabid supporters - not necessarily the rust-belt ex-workers - are of that mould.

It is indeed.  No one should be faulted and judged for what happened.

What isn't a storm in a teacup is the reaction on social media and mainstream media. 

In all likelihood, if these kids weren't lucky enough to have documentary evidence to the contrary, the witch-hunt and outrage aimed against them would have gone without challenge, the mud would have stuck, expulsions would have occurred and lives been ruined.

This is far from an isolated event and should (though is unlikely to) provoke a serious amount of soul searching on the Left and its associated unqestioning outrage apparatus.  From the looks of social media, instead they are doubling down. 

I have also lived in the US, but my point goes beyond Trump, it is more about extremists anywhere: If you associate yourself with racists and anti-democrats like Trump or the AfD / Pegida movement in German you are a racist and anti-democrat, no ifs or buts.

It is time to call these people out for what they are, rather than politely look away everytime they spout their crap. Even if some group had a legitimate grievance, some answers simply exclude you from polite and intelligent society. I resent having our liberal democracies undermined by antidemocratic racists in MAGA hats (yes, you can even see people wearing these in Germany).

The fatal consequences of 30 years of misplaced tolerance and everyday appeasement can be seen in East Germany, where neonazism has become acceptable and almost mainstream in some areas. 

CB

My point is the fact of climate change isn’t an opinion it is a fact, there are many opinions as how to best tackle it but we aren’t at that point, if someone has a loaded gun pointed at me with their finger on the trigger I am not going to enter a debate on my opinion on gun control, I want the gun pointed away from me, the finger off the trigger and the bullet out of the chamber. Then maybe we can debate “opinions” about guns.

i don’t think we disagree fundamentally, I do think that climate change needs to move on from the opinion debate, it was The everyone’s opinion counts that allowed the BBC to give Nigel Lawson equal time on the question of climate change and is being mercilessy levaraged by vested interests in the debate.

Like wise in the debate that I dare not name opinion is seen as equally valid to fact on both sides but blind faith is definitely a theme on one side of the debate

it it reminds me of my kids doing something naughty, they would desperately try and ignore you, pretending not to hear you whilst desperately trying to squeeze the last bit of naughtiness out of the situation before you intervened 

But what to do about it is political rather than factual, and climate-change rallies are mostly advocating action, and so are political. 

I don't think it's fair or accurate to regard all Trump voters or MAGA-hat wearers as "antidemocratic racists".

I'm not convinced that dismissing half of America like that is a vote-winning strategy either.

All fair enough, but how can you be so sure your chosen 'side' is in the right when the clips clearly show the MAGA hatted teens being told to 'go back to Europe' by one group of protesters and being berated as 'fags' and 'crackers' by another?

Seems to me when you get far enough from the middle, both sides are liberally populated by idiots.

It blows my mind, and is unsurprising that Trump' s Fake News warcry was so resonant, when all progressive media fails to feature the abuse hurled at these kids. But finds everything that is wrong in the world embodied in the teenager's grin.

Well it's all getting a bit hypothetical now but I'd ask him about why he believes what he believes to test how well thought out his conclusion was. Talking to people in the first person isn't that different from listening to someone on the radio or reading a book. If of course I discovered someone deliberately targeting young people and using dishonest methods to persuade them to hold a certain view I'd be very pissed off and do my utmost to stop them.

Can’t help wondering what the automatic media reaction would have been to black teens on a school trip, perhaps wearing pro-Hilary caps and demonstrating for pro-choice, peacefully facing off against white adults slinging racial epithets and telling them to go back to Africa.

Edited for a better comparison.

Why not? Judge them by the actions of the government they voted in and still support.

CB

Absolutely, and neither form of intolerance deserves tolerance. 

CB

I dont think it's arguable I think it's a fact and they abuse freedom of speech to do it. It's a weakness of the US constitution in my view and protects some dangerous groups and allows them to treat some ordinary citizens attrociously (especially some of the protests around abortion clinics).

It seems to me much of the media hype around this event is the growing backlash... there is a massive fuss about something overhyped from an individual on the liberal left with no sense of irony about the many much more plain and obvious lies from right wing media like Fox. I agree with other posters above that such distortion of journalism behaviour in major providers like Fox is very worrying when linked with power (and again partly a consequence of too much freedom of speech in the US). I don't see Coel and Pan Ron chasing down all those Fox lies on UKC... as such their intervention here is at best partial and could look like Trumpist propaganda...

Coel and Pan Ron are right to call out the demonisation of Republican voters. Most white college educated voters voted for Trump. Their motivations are politically tribal and most of them see Trumps popularist idiocy as a secondary issue (I think they are dangerously wrong).

So far I can't think of anything that Trump's government has done (compared to, say, Obama's actions as a standard) that is actually "antidemocratic" or "racist".  

Anyhow, in both the US and UK systems we don't get a choice of voting for a candidate we ideally like, we have to choose between only 2 or 3, and may have to vote on the basis of disliking someone least. 

Antidemocratic is easy: "Lock her up!", constantly demanding loyalty to the person rather than the office, and of course the current shutdown.

Under the US constitution (as with any other that separates legislative and executive and hands control of the budget to parliament) it is the job of the president to run the executive with whatever budget he is given by congress. 

Refusing to do so, and using the entirety of government as a means of blackmailing parliament is profoundly antidemocratic.

Racism? "There are good people on both sides....", Mexicans are drug dealers and rapists.

But of course there is none so blind etc....

CB

edit: The Obama hagiography is also ridiculous, especially the Nobel peace prize, especially given the massive drone war campaign.

But what to do about it is political rather than factual, and climate-change rallies are mostly advocating action, and so are political. 

“My point is the fact of climate change isn’t an opinion it is a fact, there are many opinions as how to best tackle it but we aren’t at that point, “ if your quotin quote the whole sentence

Given that Coel has framed his point in terms of what the Trump government has done, you have to separate out his racism - easily shown - from his government’s actions. These are less clear, partly perhaps because his government aren’t actually very good at implementation, but some of their policies and actions are described here: 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/07/08...

In which case, why does that very same constitution allow the presidential veto and in what sense is it undemocratic (as opposed to unreasonable) to act within those rules.  Obama used the presidential veto on a number of occasions and I have not heard any (reasonable) people call him undemocratic.

In any case, as I'm sure you are aware, Trump has not vetoed any budget that congress has passed to him for the simple reason that congress cannot (or will not) agree a budget to give to him.  It is ridiculous, but it is a failure of politics, not  unconstitutional, and certainly not undemoctatic.

I disagree. The veto is the power given to the president (balanced again by congress being able to override the veto), the shutdown is an abuse of process.

CB

Arg, I agree with what you wrote right up to this point. It is not a problem of "the Left", it is a problem full stop. The ridiculous allegations of assault against the CNN journalist when the White House intern tried to grab the microphone off him is just one instance that leaps to mind where "the Right" have tried to use dubiously edited video footage to provoke outrage in their favour, not to mention all the videos of migrant caravans which turn out to be library footage from elsewhere in the world. Interrogation of sources is an essential skill in this age and everyone needs to address it.

Well he hasn't locked her up, has he?

But all of those are, in the US system, political appointments. Previous presidents have also appointed to posts based on political considerations.

A feature of the US system that requires an impasse between two sides.  And there have been plenty of previous shutdowns.

Or, rather, the US constitution deliberately separates power in order to try to curtail any one part of government.

"Since 1976, when the current budget and appropriations process was enacted, there have been 22 gaps in budget funding, [...] since 1990 the practice has been to shut down the government for all funding gaps."

Including 8 under Reagan, 2 under Clinton, and 1 under Obama.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_United_States

So were Clinton and Obama also "profoundly antidemocratic"?

Those are his personal attitudes, not acts of government. 

And is that any worse than regarding large swathes of the US population as "deplorables" or "scum"?

If the above is the best you can do then it's feeble.

Fair enough. But I think this might be misinterpreted in the UK. The Schools are privately funded by the Catholic church which is slightly different to the usual understanding of what the term "private school" might mean in the UK context.

https://www.internationalstudent.com/student-news/articles/catholic-schools...

I agree with you so far, these issues exist. But just to note that the role of white working class in Trump's victory is often overstated. Data from 2016 shows that most of his voters were in high income brackets.

Don't conflate the two things; voting for him in 2016, and wearing a MAGA hat in 2019.  There were people who voted for Trump because he said he was going to fix their healthcare, or reopen the closed factory in their town. I understand how someone who is desperate, and politically unengaged, might hold their nose and vote for him. I listened to a podcast of focus groups of these voters, and many of them are now embarrassed about voting for him. And they're angry with him. They wish he'd stop tweeting and get to work helping them like he promised.

But to wear a MAGA hat in 2019, that's very different. That means you look at the horrible things he's done that I mentioned in my last post, and you're proud of them. You want to let everyone else know how proud you are. That is the hallmark of a thug.

First off only 19% of the US population voted for Trump (26% of eligible voters).

Second, are you trying to argue that people in the US voted for Trump in 2016 because of something to do with Mao and Stalin? I don't follow.

I must admit I have a hard time understanding how anyone could vote for him. But its nothing to do with his political views, to the extent that he has any. He's a compulsive liar who is stupid and incurious, a personal coward who encourages other to violent acts. He has no respect for anyone, he measures people merely on how useful they are to him.

I say this with the knowledge that Obama has a far higher bodycount that Trump (so far). That Obama legalised execution without trial, and lied a fair bit himself. But Trump is orders of magnitude worse.

Agreed. But again, Trump has the backing of literal, card carrying nazis.

Here is the statement by the boy in full:

"I am providing this factual account of what happened on Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial to correct misinformation and outright lies being spread about my family and me.

"I am the student in the video who was confronted by the Native American protestor. I arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 4:30 p.m. I was told to be there by 5:30 p.m., when our busses were due to leave Washington for the trip back to Kentucky. We had been attending the March for Life rally, and then had split up into small groups to do sightseeing.

"When we arrived, we noticed four African American protestors who were also on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I am not sure what they were protesting, and I did not interact with them. I did hear them direct derogatory insults at our school group.

"The protestors said hateful things. They called us “racists,” “bigots,” “white crackers,” “faggots,” and “incest kids.” They also taunted an African American student from my school by telling him that we would “harvest his organs.” I have no idea what that insult means, but it was startling to hear.

"Because we were being loudly attacked and taunted in public, a student in our group asked one of our teacher chaperones for permission to begin our school spirit chants to counter the hateful things that were being shouted at our group. The chants are commonly used at sporting events. They are all positive in nature and sound like what you would hear at any high school. Our chaperone gave us permission to use our school chants. We would not have done that without obtaining permission from the adults in charge of our group.

"At no time did I hear any student chant anything other than the school spirit chants. I did not witness or hear any students chant “build that wall” or anything hateful or racist at any time. Assertions to the contrary are simply false. Our chants were loud because we wanted to drown out the hateful comments that were being shouted at us by the protestors.

"After a few minutes of chanting, the Native American protestors, who I hadn’t previously noticed, approached our group. The Native American protestors had drums and were accompanied by at least one person with a camera.

"The protestor everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him. I did not see anyone try to block his path. He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face.

"I never interacted with this protestor. I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves. To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me. We had already been yelled at by another group of protestors, and when the second group approached I was worried that a situation was getting out of control where adults were attempting to provoke teenagers.

"I believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to diffuse the situation. I realized everyone had cameras and that perhaps a group of adults was trying to provoke a group of teenagers into a larger conflict. I said a silent prayer that the situation would not get out of hand.

"During the period of the drumming, a member of the protestor’s entourage began yelling at a fellow student that we “stole our land” and that we should “go back to Europe.” I heard one of my fellow students begin to respond. I motioned to my classmate and tried to get him to stop engaging with the protestor, as I was still in the mindset that we needed to calm down tensions.

"I never felt like I was blocking the Native American protestor. He did not make any attempt to go around me. It was clear to me that he had singled me out for a confrontation, although I am not sure why.

"The engagement ended when one of our teachers told me the busses had arrived and it was time to go. I obeyed my teacher and simply walked to the busses. At that moment, I thought I had diffused the situation by remaining calm, and I was thankful nothing physical had occurred.

"I never understood why either of the two groups of protestors were engaging with us, or exactly what they were protesting at the Lincoln Memorial. We were simply there to meet a bus, not become central players in a media spectacle. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever encountered any sort of public protest, let alone this kind of confrontation or demonstration.

"I was not intentionally making faces at the protestor. I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation. I am a faithful Christian and practicing Catholic, and I always try to live up to the ideals my faith teaches me – to remain respectful of others, and to take no action that would lead to conflict or violence.

"I harbor no ill will for this person. I respect this person’s right to protest and engage in free speech activities, and I support his chanting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial any day of the week. I believe he should re-think his tactics of invading the personal space of others, but that is his choice to make.

"I am being called every name in the book, including a racist, and I will not stand for this mob-like character assassination of my family’s name. My parents were not on the trip, and I strive to represent my family in a respectful way in all public settings.

"I have received physical and death threats via social media, as well as hateful insults. One person threatened to harm me at school, and one person claims to live in my neighborhood. My parents are receiving death and professional threats because of the social media mob that has formed over this issue.

"I love my school, my teachers and my classmates. I work hard to achieve good grades and to participate in several extracurricular activities. I am mortified that so many people have come to believe something that did not happen – that students from my school were chanting or acting in a racist fashion toward African Americans or Native Americans. I did not do that, do not have hateful feelings in my heart, and did not witness any of my classmates doing that.

"I cannot speak for everyone, only for myself. But I can tell you my experience with Covington Catholic is that students are respectful of all races and cultures. We also support everyone’s right to free speech. I am not going to comment on the words or account of Mr. Phillips, as I don’t know him and would not presume to know what is in his heart or mind. Nor am I going to comment further on the other protestors, as I don’t know their hearts or minds, either.

"I have read that Mr. Phillips is a veteran of the United States Marines. I thank him for his service and am grateful to anyone who puts on the uniform to defend our nation. If anyone has earned the right to speak freely, it is a U.S. Marine veteran.

"I can only speak for myself and what I observed and felt at the time. But I would caution everyone passing judgement based on a few seconds of video to watch the longer video clips that are on the internet, as they show a much different story than is being portrayed by people with agendas.

"I provided this account of events to the Diocese of Covington so they may know exactly what happened, and I stand ready and willing to cooperate with any investigation they are conducting." 

A brave article:

"The story is a Rorschach test—tell me how you first reacted, and I can probably tell where you live, who you voted for in 2016, and your general take on a list of other issues—but it shouldn’t be."

"If the Covington Catholic incident was a test, it’s one I failed—along with most others."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/julie-irwin-zimmerman-i-f...

Unfortunately I see much doubling down elsewhere - https://twitter.com/mrFawkes51/status/1087212573525565440

Digging up dirt to make blackface allegations (apparently the picture is "blackout", no idea what that is but as the black goggles and ski-mask might indicate, it is apparently unrelated) thus proving yesterday's smiling student really is a Nazi.

A lot is said about Trump's influence in culture war.  I suspect the stirring up of hatred online has a far greater effect than anything Trump says.

Bit weird to have a photo of a kid making the "White Power" sign on the school website though, eh? Curiouser and curiouser.

Looks as fake as a Piers Morgan front page to me.

Trump isn't the first idle, incompetent, inadequate, incoherent demagog to have discovered - inadvertently - that his total absence of shame and conscience is a positive benefit in some scenarios. Used to be orchestrated, open air rallies; now it's twitter.

I didn't know that that was a 'white power' sign.  Just realised that my scuba-diving instructor must have been a white supremacist.  If it wasn't for the internet I'd never have known!

maybe especially catholic schools given the subject matter.   Teaching these moral issues should be in very general terms. Kids should be free to make their own judgement  as they grow intellectually. I recall a lecturer who droned on about socialism (read Communism) to us 16 and 17 year olds. It was an invitation to be bolshie (not that the print trade was shy there). Even at that innocent age I wondered if his dept head and above were aware of his lessons.

It's more a question of trust in journalism and the effect of social media. The short version, if accurate, would be right to condemn. That it was widely believed and reported in serious news outlets taking Twitter etc at face value without checking and verification is troubling. 

Agree completely. Every day I read stories which are simply regurgitations of something an intern read on twitter, or what are effectively corporate press releases repeated verbatim, or "fell 3000feet from Mount Nevis" stories written without any fact checking.

Do anyone actually do serious Journalism rather then opinion pieces to generate click-bait?

Not so long ago, there were two sides to every story. Now, with social media, there are many sides, that cater for different biases.

There is a word for this as well: post-truth.

Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

We don't want to live with a binary world view set by the media. 'This bad thing happened. It was bad, trust us.' But I don't think we are capable of making sense of the shades of grey that surround some events. We don't have all the information and the context. Short of a full impartial investigation of every twitter outrage that reaches the headlines, I don't know what the answer is.

Good old fashioned Journalism is the answer.

maybe we should accredit them, if you fall below certain standards you get highlighted as a bad player, this would be anything from the Daily Mail “health stories” to putting out unverified press releases or carrying out basic fact checking.

face book needs to be treated as a news outlet and take ownership of its news feeds with some independent oversight.

Which, however, costs actual money to pay people; whereas re-hashing outrage stories without checking does not. 

"I'm not smirking sir, I'm sneering..."

Is that Evelyn Waugh?

Apparently this misunderstood youth's family have hired a PR firm to explain that their son was actually more sinned against than sinning

We all went to school. We know exactly what these lads were doing . 

In my opinion the masters in charge of them are more responsible . Why on earth are the boys allowed to wear MAGA caps on a school trip? How on earth can a believing Catholic be on Trump's side? 

In my experience there is nothing to compare with the fury and tenacity of a mother trying to get their son out of trouble. 

It's this kind of hysterical nonsense and seething hatred (usually from the self-proclaimed compassionate, reasonable, intellectual radical left) that is going to propel Trump into a second term.  I predict a landslide.  And I predict a subsequent lack of self-awareness from the loons and SJWs on the far left, who will be utterly astonished, find the whole thing inexplicable, and conclude that the only possible explanation is that the US is even more fascist than they originally thought.

Precisely, "seething hatred" is the only reasonable response.

CB

edit: The point being that appeasing radicals, especially on the right but to a lesser extent also on the left manifestly does not work. Tolerate dog whistle racism for too long, and open xenophobia becomes acceptable in public discourse. So let's stop pretending that imagined or even real grievances justify any deplorable opinions or actions. 

If you have nothing but "seething hatred" for a swathe of the population large enough to vote in a president, then perhaps you are as much a part of the problem? 

Not every one agrees with your benign interpretation of the teenagers actions https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1087394069419122689?s=12&fbcli...

No, hatred and contempt is the only reasonable reaction to people who willingly support a racist, self confessed sex offender, compulsory liar and serial fraudster. There cannot be any excuse for this, whatever it is they are unhappy about with their circumstances.

One simply does not vote for nazis or their enablers, the same way one does not rape children. The two acts are of course completely different, but the one thing they do have in common is that there are no circumstances that could ever make them appropriate. 

Showing any kind of tolerance sends the wrong message.

CB

True, they don't, but I still don't get it. 

The school kids were singing school sports chants and dancing.   

Into this, the Native American walks, drumming and singing.

The kids now dance, clap and sing along with the drummer. 

People are calling this "racist mockery".  Why? It seems to me good-natured singing along. 

Of course if one is determined to interpret it as racist mockery ("they were wearing MAGA hats, therefore they are racists, therefore it is racist mockery") then I guess one can indeed do that. 

But to me it just seems like a good-natured, slightly rowdy, sing-along continuation of the school-sports chanting/dancing that they were already doing. 

The more you express your "hatred and contempt" the more I consider you part of the problem.

 It's not like you have any concerns labelling hundred of millions because of their religion. Why does this case excite you so much (especially given the mea culpas from major liberal news sources) and not any of  muliple  lies with no apology from Fox and pals or even when modified footage was used  by the President's office (as per the faked CNN journalist touching video)

What labels are you on about?   For the record, I have never expressed "hatred and contempt" for hundred of millions because of their religion, nor called them "scum" or whatever.  

I have indeed criticised some religious ideologies.  See the difference? Care to put some actual substance in your critique?

Because I expect the BBC and CNN and similar to care about truth and fair reporting.   I don't expect that from Fox or from White House spokesmen under the current regime. 

And because the sheer hypocrisy and nastiness from many on the "left" and who consider themselves "liberal" is perturbing.  To express "hatred" of teenagers just because they might be Trump supporters, and to deny them any sort of fair hearing just because they are white and male and Catholic and wearing MAGA hats is a rejection of the basic principles that society should operate on.  

The fat kid taking his top off and basically leading a haka style dance doesn't set warning bells off?

Sports chants are meant to be mocking and intimidating, that's the whole point of them, they are about creating a them and us scenario.

Spirit chants, WTF, they are a Catholic school, they wouldn't have spirit chants, using that sort of terminology could be seen as mocking Native Americans. And apparently they asked permission from their priest who can clearly be seen keeping his distance during the exchange with the Israelites.

Googling the term suggests that you are wrong and the term (as relating to schools and sports teams) is one that is recognised in the USA.  Possibly you are making assumptions about a culture you don't really understand and jumping to a convenient conclusion.

And vice versa.

CB

Maybe fair do's that it is a term used in the US but my point stands about sports chants and what they are about. What do you think the kid with his top off was doing. Promoting peace or challenging the opposing team?

There is no indication that that was aimed at the Native Americans.  

One could plausibly maintain that it was aimed at the "Black Israelites".  Either that or the kids were just bored, and perhaps getting cold (it was approaching dusk in January).

There seems to be a huge amount of supposition of the intent of the kids that is largely "in the minds of the supposer", rather than arrived at from the evidence. 

Or just making a distracting noise because he's 17 years old and out of his depth in a situation he's not experienced before?

I think you're over analysing in an attempt to justify your erroneous earlier assumptions.

I do hope you're not indulging in fat shaming, and you also seem to made an assumption as to the person's gender...

Obviously we read different things into what we watched. So be it.

Obviously not as the Native Americans weren't (prominently) on the scene at this stage.

You are having a laugh. It was so obviously directed at them.

Climate change is about as much an article of faith as gravity is.

Acting like children possibly?  For what it's worth, I'm glad that some of my actions when I was a teenager weren't published around the world and analysed as if they were globally significant news items.  I'm also sure that I inherited a lot of political opinions from my parents and have developed my views significantly since I was at school.

I am certainly not supporting all the actions of the students, and I realise that, in some senses this isn't about them, but I haven't seen anything in the videos that justifies the sort of vitriol and supposition that has been on display across the internet, particularly when aimed at a teenage boy.

In the UK, this boy, even if he had committed a serious criminal offence, would have a right to anonymity. However in this case, his actions will follow him for a very long time to come and during his most important years.  I suspect that when the dust settles, a lot of online commentators and tweeters should have a very long hard look in the mirror.

However they weren't actually larger in number than those who voted against him.

Unfortunately for the USA (and the rest of the World for that matter), they were unevenly distributed in certain States. Some of which have "Electoral College" (or whatever it is) votes way out of proportion to their population.

So what are you accusing them of?   Being disrespectful to the "Black Israelites" who had been taunting them and insulting them for an hour, or being disrespectful to the Native Americans? 

False accusations and false reporting are always wrong. Twitter pitchforks and doxxing disturb me. Jon Ronson wrote a good book on this topic.

Coel, you've done us all a favour by giving us additional context. But I think there is some context that you haven't considered:

• Donald Trump is a malignant racist. This is not up for debate.
• MAGA is his symbol. minorities feel threatened by it. They ARE threatened by it.
• These boys were wearing MAGA hats at the Lincoln Memorial - the guy who freed the slaves and split the country in half doing so.
• It was the eve on Martin Luther King weekend - the civil rights leader who was assassinated.

Obviously wearing a hat isn't and shouldn't be a crime. But MAGA is a facist symbol. Wearing it scares and atagonises people. So an easy way to not get accused of being a racist and a bully is to not wear a hat that tells everyone that you support a man who is a racist and a bully.

'However in this case, his actions will follow him for a very long time to come and during his most important years. '

I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think it will tbh, he's put up a good defence and if he now keeps his head down the story - and his role - will soon be forgotten.

You've expressed plenty of hatred and contempt towards their religion. What must we expect on your views of the vast majority of such people who hold such beliefs...are they nearly all  just stupid and deluded?

What on earth is fair or sensible  in holding the BBC and CNN to higher standards than Fox? All media should be held to the same high standards. And you talk of sheer hypocrisy and nastiness of the left?  Any such problems on the left in the US are trivial compared  to that on the right... the US hardly has socialism let alone extreme far left groups...again your target and moral concerns seem very skewed to me.

I suspect they will.  And they'll see a paragon of virtue and political insight, a steadfast voice against Nazism, and a champion of the oppressed.  The sort of hero ready at a moments notice to face down 'scum' children with the wrong political views and punch them. 

It didn't look like the boys were calmly intoning Taizé chants to me. 

They are not scum but they are very naughty boys.

It's not exactly one-sided....

Hillary Clinton is a liar, a fraudster, and a white-washer of her husband's sexual exploitations.  She illegally ran a private parallel communication system as Secretary of State to conduct affairs of state, and when that system was requisitioned she shredded the evidence.  This is not up for debate.

Radical leftists and SJWs are her vanguard, and millions of Americans feel threatened by them.

This is the silliness I referred to earlier.  The stuff that is guaranteeing Trump a second term, because a) it simply isn't true, and b) America isn't buying it.

An even easier way not to be accused of being a racist and a bully is to do, say, and think everything the radical left tell you to - and America isn't buying that one, either.  Wild hysterical exaggerations did not serve the American left well in the run up to the last election, serving to drive voters in their millions towards Trump.  Predictably, their response has been even more eye-bulging hysteria, an intensified propaganda campaign that paints the US as the Fourth Reich, and a determination to out-screech any and all opposition.  Not to mention fabricating nonsense like this 'scum' kid.  I wonder if it will ever sink in with the radical left that American voters are not on board with their increasingly totalitarian and oppressive tendencies, not to mention their dishonesty?

<applause>  :-D

True, though it has been used by many other Republicans, back to Reagan.

I think it unreasonable to suggest that people should not wear an emblem of support for the currently elected president. The whole basis of democracy is that people can support and vote for different political parties.

Oh look, trying to put words in my mouth.  Please, please, try to realise the difference between disliking and criticising ideologies, and hating people. 

The distinction really does matter. 

How about, for starters, because the BBC is a public-service broadcaster paid for by all of us?

This sort of whataboutery is just a tactic to disallow criticism.  If I posted about plastic in the ocean, no-one would say that I should instead post about climate change.  

Both are important; posting about either is legitimate.

Does whataboutery still work now everyone has caught onto it?

"Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be."

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1087689415814795264

Excellent own goal folks! 

"If You Still Think Nick Sandmann’s Smile Is Proof of Racism, You’re Seeing What You Want to See"

https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/22/nick-sandmann-covington-catholic-racism

This is the nuance that I think you're overlooking. I'm not saying they should not wear it. People can wear whatever they please. I'm saying if you wear a facist symbol then you have to expect other people to react to it. Other supporters will greet you, decent people will challenge you, unscrupulous people will edit videos to make you look bad. But in any case, you have to expect reactions.

So when I read that boy's statement and he said things like:

I think he's being disingenuous or naive.

Ok, but I don't really accept that MAGA is a fascist symbol, sorry.

But the boy would not regard MAGA as a fascist symbol, and would not think of himself as a fascist. So I think he's being open and truthful in his statement. 

Let's consider this for a comparison.

The hijab is a symbol of a powerful, misogynist and totalitarian belief system. It subjugates women who, in many countries, are legally compelled to wear it.  Yet, in this country, many women choose to wear it.

So:

"I'm not saying they should not wear the hijab. People can wear whatever they please. I'm saying if you wear a facist symbol like the hijab then you have to expect other people to react to it. Other supporters will greet you, decent people will challenge you, unscrupulous people will edit videos to make you look bad. But in any case, you have to expect reactions."

Everyone happy?   

Anyone going to argue for the right of women to wander around in public wearing a hijab without anyone reacting badly to it?

I should've used a different word. The nature of arguing on the internet means we're going to get lost in the weeds trying to pin down a definition of fascism. 

It is Donald Trump's symbol, so it embodies what he is. The unspoken second part to "make America great again" is "when there were less brown people and women knew their place". Do you agree with that?

No, I don't agree.  I don't think it's fair to read into symbols "unspoken second parts" that go beyond what the wearers say about themselves. 

It's not a workable analogy because if you challenge someone who is wearing a hijab then you're challenging the oppressed, not the oppressor. That would be misdirected.

So you're taking Donald Trump at his word?! This is where I get off.

And that is the sort of analysis that I completely reject.  It's utterly hypocritical: "we can act like arseholes because we're oppressed, and we can be as obnoxious to you as we like because you are privileged, but if you act the same way as we do then that just proves that you're fascist scum". 

Sorry, it's ludicrous.  If we want a decent society where people treat each other decently then start with yourself, and include everyone in who gets treated decently! 

Sheesh, the whole point is to treat people as people, as individuals, not as though the only important thing is their membership of an identity group, and how supposedly "oppressed" that identity group is.

And in much of the world plenty of hijab-enforcing Islamists are among the most oppressive around.

And plenty of hijab wearers in this country are NOT oppressed! 

And plenty of MAGA wearers are no better off than average.

Yes, there used to be real oppression of minority groups in Western countries.  But there hasn't been any significant systematic oppression for decades now. 

The MAGA hat is a symbol of the gangster oligarchy trump is turning America into . 

If you wear one or respect the message you are on Trump's team . 

No, I am not taking him at his word.  And that's not a fair thing to read into anything I've said. 

I'm surprised anyone thinks he wrote that statement himself.

Again, your sharp critical analysis seems to blunt rather significantly when turned in certain directions.

I don't need to put words into your mouth: you writen them down (albeit mostly now on deleted threads). You seem to take every oporrtunity to smear Islam and its adherants despite the majority of those in the religion being peace loving people, especialy so in the Western world. If distictions are important its easy enough to make them (and prove my comments are unfair) ... just say you agree with me a large majprity of muslims in the west are peace loving good people. I'm happy to admit some practice of Islam has many serious issues and many muslims are evil.

On the press we are talking about the US, so CNN is more pertinent (even though no system should be allowed to pick and choose different regulations.. thats one of the the first signs of failing democracy). What Trump says on this subject is dangerous (claimed fake news he knows full well isn't.. trying to get the people of America to blame newspapers, and other media doing their job properly, as a distraction from his crimes) and what you say gives him succour.

On plastics, if you  were picking on one small company when suspiciously ignoring  much bigger plastic polluters it would be an equivalent. Its very rare to see manipulated video in the mainstream US liberal media. I cant find any big players that don't admit the original shortened videos were a mistake. I still think such demonstrations tend to jnflame and are no place for kids (eeven late teenagers) and their behaviour was far from ideal and their teachers culpable. I find the freedom of speech issues in the US weird... in this case a school organised trip on pro life issues with kids wearing political slogans.

You posts demostrate constant bias regularly complaining against small centre left US issues and ignoring the massive abuses of the US right. Calling out your obvious bias isn't whataboutery.

You've lost me. I think you misunderstood me. I'll try again.

Some people who wear hijabs haven't made a choice to do so. So challenging them for wearing them doesn't make sense because they may not even want to.

Everyone who wears MAGA hats chooses to wear one (we've got no reason to think otherwise). So challenging them is fine because they made a choice.

For that reason, your analogy doesn't work.

Edit: But in an effort to address your question lets pretend that everyone who wears a hijab chose to wear one and hasn't been wearing one every day since they were six. In that case then yes I'd be completely comfortable with people challenging them, as long as they observe the "don't be a dick" principle.

I agree that whataboutery is wrong, but that wasn't what I was attempting. Apologies for being unclear, I'll have another crack at it. 

The left paint Trump as Hitler, picking apart his every word and deed. Which is good, up to a point, because we should keep a sharp eye on politicians while reigning in any silly accusations. At the same time, they turn a blind eye to their candidate's obvious crookery and smirking dishonesty.

What I'm trying to get across, is the hypocrisy of the American left.

On a related note, I have to say that I find the behaviour of the American left very sad indeed. They used to have politicians I could admire and respect - Gary Hart, Michael Dukakis, Jimmy Carter. These people were credible alternatives to the Republicans. Western democracy needs the left as a balance to the excesses of the right, just as we need the right as a balance to the excesses of the left.

The modern emotionally infantile, dishonest, hard line left has almost no point of similarity with its forbearers and this is bad for politics and bad for democracy.

Show me all these US leftists who compare Trump with Hitler.

I think he is a blow hard crook with politics mangled to suit his situation ... he's obviously worked with the Democrats in the past. Most people with my views seem to think the same.

I get the impression most choose to, at least in the UK and at least in as far as free-choice over any traditional attire exists.  Certainly presented that way in the media which is most supportive of women's rights and Muslims more generally - "my hijab is a personal choice, its empowering, etc etc".  If you were to walk up to a hijab-wearing woman in the street and commiserate with her for what she is being forced to endure, I reckon 9 times out of 10 she'd tell you to feck off.

The analogy is a sound one.  The whole sad case of these kids highlights a surprising lack of empathy from the side which usually prides itself on its empathy.  A stark inability to put yourself in their shoes, see the world through their eyes, and instead seeing them as something more akin to classic "baddies".  The Right has been circulating an "Orange Man Bad" meme for some time, which seems right on the money in this regard.

Well I never!

I was partly speaking figuratively, but it did happen literally:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/02/jane-fonda-donald-trump-adolf-...

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-his...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/30/trump-borrows-tricks-...

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/hank-johnson-compares-trump-hitler

No quotes I see?  And how convenient that you claim they're in deleted threads!    Sorry, you're wrong.  I've not said the things you attribute to me in your attempts to disallow criticism of a certain religion.

That would be "appropriate opportunities" to make "appropriate criticism" of Islam.  How revealing that you regard criticism of Islam as "smears".

OK, where have I "smeared" the adherents in general?

Why sure they are!   But how come that's never trotted out as an excuse to disallow, say, criticism of Trumpism?  Most Trump voters are peace-loving people (just as with most people everywhere). Does that mean we should not criticise Trumpism, vehemently if we wish? No, it doesn't.

Why of course they are! Of course the majority of Muslims in the West are peace-loving good people!  The fact that you ask me to say that says way, way more about your prejudices than it does about mine.

"For good people to do bad, that takes religion" -- Weinberg.  

Just as the people who suffered most from communism were those living in communist countries (and *communism* was bad, but most of the people living under it were not) the people who suffer most from Islam are the Muslims in Muslim countries.   

Why is mass migration away from Islamic countries and towards the secular West, if living under Islam is not worse than living in the West?

Ok then, what "systematic oppression" still exists in Western countries?

Another meme was "Trump Derangement Syndrome". I used to think this was funny, but it does seem to be an actual thing with plenty of swivel-eyed loons eager to whip themselves into an emotional frenzy in their opposition to Trump. Their behaviour has much in common with - and may actually be - religious mania.

BTW, is anyone else perturbed by the dilution of the terms ''Nazi' and 'fascist' caused by their constant overuse and inappropriate use?

Perhaps you should be more careful about the ways you present your arguments if you would rather not be seen as an apologist for Trump and his supporters. 

You also said:

Naive complacency at its most misguided. We know there is real significant systematic oppression of minority groups in industrialised countries such as China. We know that racism is alive and kicking in the USA, and that discrimination against minorities is rife in the USA. We have a president who is open in his xenophobia, and who is supported by racists and white supremacists. We have a Republican party which openly acts to prevent minorities from voting - I would class that as systematic oppression, but I'm sure your enthusiasm for nit-picking will find something to quibble over. We all know the picture it the USA and it is not an attractive sight. If unopposed now, it will not get better. 

If we are to support the oppressed minorities the world over, we can have no truck with the racists and the xenophobes and the Islamophobes who thrive in Trump's America. It has to be understood that Trump's America does not represent a progressive enlightened world in which oppression of minorities is truly a thing of the past. There will be decent Americans who voted for Trump, and who are proud to wear their MAGA caps. They may wear them in the belief that Trump will lead them into some bright sunlit future. But it needs to be spelled by those who value the freedoms to which all Americans are entitled that Trump's vision for America is a rich white man's future, and that minorities, the poor, the ill and the frail, the immigrants on whom much of the American economy depends will suffer in Trump's America. 

Those who oppose Trump may overstep the mark sometimes, but voices of opposition to Trump must be heard, loud and clear. Quibbling about who said what at a rally in Washington misses the point entirely. Indeed, I suspect Trump is delighted to have distraction, to divert attention from the debacle of his shutdown. 

You have the opportunity to choose which side of history you want to be on. 

"if American politicians routinely associate Latino immigrants with murder and rape, Americans may grow less outraged by such accusations simply because they occur so often. Stanley supports this scholarly insight with a personal one, from his grandmother, a German Jew who wrote about the way Jews in Berlin psychologically accommodated themselves to Hitler’s rule as late as 1937: “We were still able to leave the country; we could still live in our homes; we could still worship in our temples; we were in a Ghetto, but the majority of our people were still alive.”

By calling Trump a “fascist” — a word that strikes many Americans as alien and extreme — Stanley is trying to spark public alarm. He doesn’t want Americans to respond to Trump’s racist, authoritarian offensives by moving their moral goal posts. The greater danger, he suggests, isn’t hyperbole, it’s normalization. And 20 months into Trump’s presidency, the evidence is mounting that he’s right."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/books/review/jason-stanley-how-fascism-w...

Well I was explicitly talking about Western countries.  China, agreed. 

Do we?  Ok, go on then, make the case for it.  Yes this is often asserted, but I'm interested in the real substance of the charge.

I think that complaint does have some validity, yes.  The amount of political tinkering in the voting system allowed in the US is excessive, especially all the gerrymandering.  I'm not sure that it quite ranks as "oppression" though.  

On voter suppression attempts, there's an account here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45986329

Yes, it would be a lot better if non-partisan bodies oversaw the voting system, but does the stuff in that link amount to actual "oppression"?

What does a 'politician' have a to do for you to consider he maybe subverting the basis of democracy? Disparage and attempt to circumvent the rule of law? Check. Lie egregiously and be indifferent when caught out? Check. Demonise minorities and assign all manner of evils to them, quite independently of any facts? Check. Attempt to disparage and eliminate legitimate journalistic review? Check.

Is calling those who marched in Charlottesville 'Nazis' diluting the term?

Is calling Representative S King a 'Nazi' diluting the term?

2 simple questions that require 2 Yes or No answers.

And the difference is that everyone knows not to trust Fox News.  I would always be sceptical of a Fox News report unless it were corroborated by a more reliable news source. 

Until very recently I *would* have trusted CNN to be reasonably accurate, and even more so the BBC.   That's why I'm making an issue of it.

No, what gives Trump succour, what hugely helps him, is actual and real examples of the mainstream media putting out "fake news", news that fits a political agenda rather than being true. 

I say that those who (rightly) want to call out Trump need also adopt standards for themselves.

Everyone? 

Is this not a part of the problem- for many people Fox will be their primary source of news, and they will trust it more than CNN or MSNBC. Given that, and its capacity to drive an agenda in the sector of the population that turns to it for news, it should surely be held to the same expected standards as other outlets, and its failings excoriated as relentlessly as those of the liberal news platforms.

i agree with the rest of your point- this plays into a narrative that CNN/beeb/guardian/NYT et al are just Fox with a different editorial slant, and so further erodes the sense of there being a shared set of facts that society uses to evaluate choices. 

Anyway, it appears every participant in the incident now has their story straight, and its everyone else’s fault. I don’t think any party comes out particularly well from it, and none showed a great amount of respect for the location or context. 

Fake news is not a difference of opinion about whether a teenager smiled or leered at a Native American or whether some 'spirit chant' was actually a tribal sports chant.

Fake news is the sort of bullshit that Trump and his supporters come out with on a daily basis about a crisis on the Mexican border. Or that the Nazi scum in Charlottesville had some good people. Or that Trump had the biggliest inauguration crowd ever.

Trevor Noah covers a lot of the things I've been thinking about this. Worth a watch:  youtube.com/watch?v=cm80MKn_ZQ8&

The myriad of ways the US criminal justice system treats poor people and African Americans in particular would be a very obvious place to start as it actually results in incarceration of so many. 

I'm actually surprised we haven't seen more political violence from extreme left origins in response to the utter moral squalor of many Trump policies, like family separation, but it seems even the hard left in the US have ceded that floor to the far right. It's interesting when you look at domestic terrorism incidents in the US up to the 80s, they were predominantly left-anarchist and left-nationalist (Puerto Rican). That has almost disappeared.

I do wonder if there will be violence in future from alienated Trump supporters when they understand how badly they've been sold out.

Really? What makes you think that? I'd so most are at best indifferent about peace. 

Economics would be the main factor. Plenty of immigration to wealthy Islamic countries. 

Is there any thread you can't pervert to your two obsessions of Islam and support for the populist right. 

I'm not supporting the populist right, I'm supporting basic fairness.  And it was Offwidth who diverted the topic to Islam. 

But the reason so many Islamic countries are economically undeveloped is because Islam is a totalitarian, stifling system that prevents progress.

The  "wealthy Islamic countries" are wealthy because they sit on top of oil, not because such societies are actually good at generating wealth and progress.

Which is to do with things like drugs policy, which I don't agree with much, but I think it is stretching things to say it amounts to "oppression" of particular groups.

But then left-leaning argument these days usually seems to revolve around stretching the meanings of words and concepts. 

I refer you to both of our comments about fake news. Trump doesn't stretch meanings he creates whole new galaxies for his meanings of words and concepts. You seem to be following him into the black hole.

You can't say that with a straight face. There are daily examples of the right supporting media outright lying about events, often deliberately, and you are silent. A rare example of a mistake involving the populist right and you pounce on it. 

Interesting new piece from the Washington Post (last 3 paragragphs)

"The problem is, neither of these distillations captures the truth, which is hidden somewhere in a mess of different segments of different recordings showing different offenses by different parties. It’s true that the Hebrew Israelites shouted invective at the kids, and it is true that the kids chanted school cheers to drown them out. It’s also true that the schoolboys, whether someone else was mean to them beforehand or not, were giggling as they let loose with offensive war whoops and tomahawk chops while a Native American man beat his drum before them. It’s true that one of them ripped his shirt off in a signal of self-assured dominance. And it’s true that a smirk is a smirk.

Most important, it’s true that context demands more than watching a single event from all possible angles. It also means understanding the world where the event happened. Anyone who wears a Make America Great Again hat knows what it stands for, and who it stands against. Anyone with an understanding of American history knows that white people have long made excuses for other white people’s racist behavior — protecting their own as a method of protecting themselves. There’s a sense that outright condemnation often misses some essential reality. But sometimes, instead, condemning what is genuinely condemnable is the most real thing one can do.

The quarrel over the Covington teens is not only a story of social media hate-mobbing. It’s also a story of the groupthinking tendency to hop off a bandwagon as unthinkingly as we hop onto it. More important, it’s a story of our desire to make every cultural controversy fit into a framework that tells some distillable truth about the state of our country today. Any actual truth about the rifts running through America right now can’t be cleanly distilled. That’s a harder story to tell — which might be why so few are trying."

If escaping Islam was the main motivation you would see mass apostatism. You don't. 

Yes. A failure of journalism (specific and general) is the main story. 

Oh yes I can.

Yes, in the US, there is, particularly by such as Fox News.  But then I don't watch it, so don't comment on it.  And in the US there is also plenty of anti-Trump media that call out Fox News.   Joining in is a bit pointless.

When I started on this particular incident, *none* of the mainstream media was reporting it correctly, nearly all of them were mis-reporting it.    Only a few valiant sleuths on places like Twitter were standing up for accuracy and fair reporting. 

And it wasn't me who started the thread.

First, this incident does not really involve the "populist right", it involves a bunch of school kids who likely have a range of opinions (and only a small number of whom, by the way, were wearing MAGA hats).

Second, this is not a "rare mistake". This sort of thing, putting an ideological slant on the news, is getting quite prevalent, including among mainstream media that one would think one could trust.

[Don't bother telling me that it's also prevalent in the pro-Trump media such as Fox -- yes it is, we know that!]

I never suggested that "escaping Islam" is the main motivation for migration.  But, still, it is indeed domination by Islam that is (to a large extent) responsible for such places being poor places to live.  But the population know little else so can't really see that.  In a similar way, the communist countries were worse places to be a citizen, but the communist citizens didn't have the perspective to realise that.  

Well done Coel, a lesson to us all to look and think before we jump on the outrage bus.  I saw this last night and watched a couple of fuller videos and was impressed by the calm and dignity with which this young man presented himself.  Let's not forget he is a kid, navigating a maelstrom of adult politics.  

It isn't particularly. The issues are much wider and more systemic than for example sentencing policy on drugs. There are serious Republican thinkers who accept that there needs to be root and branch changes to the criminal justice system if you are interested in such things, its very far from what you describe as left leaning arguments stretching the meanings of words. 

I'm sure you'll quibble further over what oppression means, but things aren't exactly rosy in the UK when it comes to BAME groups and criminal justice: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

And I disagree with your comment.  The initial reporting of this incident and the spin put on it was a classic example of "fake news". 

Wrong. Your first post on this at 19:42 said

"Sorry, but have any of you watched the fuller versions of these videos?   Those kids did nothing wrong.

The kids were there on a school trip, they were a bit rowdy (groups of teenage boys usually are), but were doing nothing wrong.

The drum-banging Native American approached them; he walked into their group.  He approached the kid in the video and drummed in his face. The kid just stood there (with an awkward smile, not really sure what to do).  The kids did not get in the way of anyone, the drummer approached them.

There was no "mockery" or taunts of the Native American gentleman (who, by the way, is close to a professional political activist). There were no chants of "build the wall". All this is on video. 

There is, however, video of one of the Native Americans telling the boys to go back to Europe and insulting them simply because they are white.   During all this the boys are overall pretty restrained, good humoured, threatening no-one and not being offensive to anyone. "

Your last paragraph shows in particular that you did what you accuse others of, ie that you watched some videos and drew conclusions. At no stage did the Native Americans insult the teenagers, that was the "Black Israelites" yet you claim that. And if you thinking that tomahawk chopping is not taunting then sorry but you are living in a different reality.

You're right, I will quibble over what "oppression" involves.

If rival largely-black drug gangs are warring over turf, such that black teenagers are more likely to be killed (by other black teenagers) and more likely to get jailed for criminal offences, then yes, that is a serious issue for society, but it is not "oppression". 

The "left" seem to adopt the "Critical Theory" lens such that any inequality in outcomes can only be the result of  "oppression" of one group by other groups who are "privileged" and "oppressors". This is simply wrong.  There are a vast number of other possible explanations for disparity in outcomes.    

But leftist ideology rejects all the other possibilities owing to its utterly impoverished understanding of how the world works.

So can you reply to my comment from 20:19 Tue and justify why you think this is fake news in the way that Trump portrays fake news.

And why your initial spin including the inaccuracy about the Native Americans abusing the teenagers is any different from the initial posts. Or should I shout "FAKE NEWS" because that is what you posted.

That you think this was deliberately misreported, rather than carelessly (possibly recklessly even) by e.g the bbc further shows how skewed you views have become. 

The claim I made (as you just quoted) was: "There is, however, video of one of the Native Americans telling the boys to go back to Europe and insulting them simply because they are white."

That "go back to Europe" interaction was indeed by a Native American (one accompanying the drummer) and is on video.  The video is linked to up-thread. 

I'm sticking to my suggestion that nothing captured on video amounts to the boys "taunting" the Native Americans, as opposed to being good-tempered singing along and dancing (which they were already doing before the Native Americans approached).   If you disagree then ok, we disagree. 

Sorry but fook off with that whataboutism. Systematically restricting the right to vote for any particular group is oppression. Full stop. Period.

Restricting the right of the none property owning class to vote was oppression. See the UK only a couple of hundreds of years ago.

Restricting the right of women to vote was oppression. See the UK a hundred years ago.

My claim is that it is "fake news".   My claim is not that it "is fake news in the way that Trump portrays fake news".

The initial reports were fake news because they said that the boys had "blocked" the path of the Native Americans, "surrounded" them, and "mocked" and "taunted" them.    The first two are definitely false.  The second two are at best  highly subjective interpretations and should not be reported (by serious news media) as factual.

The bit about one of the Native Americans saying "go back to Europe" is on video.  That is factual.

Yes, agreed.  But none of the US laws do that.  They're all much more ambiguous and indirect -- things like requiring a voter to have a home address when registering -- and their impact is much smaller and less clear.

That is very different from "women can't vote" or "black can't vote" which would indeed by oppression. 

Well all that I can say is that you must have remarkable hearing. Despite repeated watching I could not hear any such words from the persons accompanying Nathan Phillips.

Nor to be fair have I claimed that the kids chanted any particular words including "build the wall" because nothing is distinct apart from whooping (eg the White Stripes 'tune', the Haka-style chant etc) and the miming.

Don't you ever get bored of churning out the same old boilerplate guff Coel? (Obviously not - we all have our crosses to bear!) 

If you want to ignore the legacy of centuries of policy, official and unofficial, or white supremacy in the US and say that has no impact on the current day, fine. Racism was obviously solved and everyone moved on... when?... after Brown v. Board of Education? The day before MLK got assassinated? When Obama won? Last Thursday around tea time?

If you're not interested in following the rich and multifaceted debate in the US about the intersection between criminal justice and race then fine, but come on man! Oppression is the state, it's not the cause. "Leftist ideology"? "Critical theory"? Any other bogeymen you want to add?

"But none of the US laws do that.  They're all much more ambiguous and indirect -- things like requiring a voter to have a home address when registering -- and their impact is much smaller and less clear."

Sorry but totally wrong. Lots of US State Laws are totally unambiguous. And there impact arguably changed at least 2 of the last 4 Presidential elections.

And do you own research about these facts.

Some people did indeed *deliberately* misreport this incident.  The first people to report had to have done that. 

Many others picked it up and re-hashed it without checking.     To suggest an ideological bias is NOT to suggest *deliberate* bias, ideological biases can be non0-deliberate. 

For example, if a story fits their ideological bias they run with it without checking.  If it doesn't fit their ideological bias, or is counter to it, then they check very hard, try to look for alternative views, downplay the incident, etc.   That's how bias works, it does not have to be deliberate. 

And if you're suggesting that my views have become skewed, even though I didn't suggest that the BBC had *deliberately* slanted the story, then may I suggest that you consider your own biases?

Go no then, point me to a US law that says "blacks can't vote" or anything such.   

Go on then, quote some actual facts.  Take your own advice and produce some substance to your claim. 

So you think all the voter ID laws brought in, or trying to be brought in, by Republican lawmakers across the country are really about stopping the supposedly massive voter fraud that even Trump's specially appointed commission on voter fraud couldn't actually find?

As I said, the video is linked to up-thread.  If you want it on a plate, where it is:

https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1086818056523968513

The words: "White people go back to Europe" and "this is not your land" are quite clear. 

OK. This is interesting - what about you? What are your biases? How might you be seeing this story through your biased lens? How do you know that, for example, you aren't more understanding of the actions of other white men - being a white man yourself?

You see a friendly smile on the kids face, other see a smirk. Why is your interpretation the right one do you think?

No I don't think that.   I think exactly what I said. Which was:

"I think that complaint does have some validity, yes.  The amount of political tinkering in the voting system allowed in the US is excessive, especially all the gerrymandering.  I'm not sure that it quite ranks as "oppression" though. "

Sure, I might well be!  But the *intent* of those kids is important so understanding their intent is relevant.

I see both, the smile and the smirk.  Both are obvious!  But kids do that, boys especially, they smirk, especially if in an awkward situation and unsure what to do.     You're a school teacher aren't you, have you really not noticed that?

Take any male kid or teenager.  Look at them directly from close range, stare at them.  They'll smirk!   Or they might look away, but they'll find it very difficult to just look back at you with a straight face.  Go on, try it!  That's just boy and teenager nature.  

Those making some big deal out of the kid's facial expression are doing so because they are ideologically opposed to what they perceive the kid to stand for. 

I posted the original link; I admit I projected my negative impression of his intention onto the smile, and as I said upthread, thanks for posting the links that give the wider context 

but I think you are also projecting a positive interpretation of his intent; no one really knows what his intent in the situation was, and I’m inclined not to take the lengthy statement he gave at face value, any more than I’m giving a free pass to the drumming Native American with his claim he was just acting out of public spiritedness to defuse a confrontation.

the school party are a long way from being the villains of the piece as originally portrayed; but neither were they passive bystanders. I do wonder at the actions of their supervisors - when it became clear a confrontational situation was emerging, with their students being abused and the atmosphere becoming charged, I’m unclear why the adults in the party left it to the students to handle the situation instead of taking charge, and moving the students away. 

Disturbing thread. The willingness to double down, to find justifications for the misleading original assertions, all in face of clear evidence to the contrary.  And to then turn the argument around as if to point all this out is some sort of support for Trump. The Left's capacity to score own goals, to repel people, and to be devoid of self awareness, even in the context of a Republican leadership like this one, is staggering

Look up the thread. There's plenty of people who have revised their opinion and pretty much everyone else has added nuance to their original opinion.

You wrote "Second, this is not a "rare mistake". If you don't think it's a mistake or deliberate, what do you think it is ? 

https://www.indy100.com/article/maga-hat-boys-covington-catholic-harassing-...

Can you quote some examples. I haven't seen any. 

Yes, agreed.  But isn't taking the charitable interpretation of his actions the right thing to do?  If an innocent interpretation of his actions and attitudes is compatible with the evidence, then surely that's what we should accept? (Especially, but not only, because he's a minor.)

Isn't that what everyone would want if it was their family member?  Or do we just demonise him and take the least charitable interpretation because he was wearing a MAGA hat?    If anyone thinks we should do the latter then don't criticise Trump for being divisive because you're just as bad!

I was suggesting that it was not *rare*.  I accept that it was a mistake and not deliberate, but rather a mistake arising (partially) from an ideological bias. 

Much of the media in the Western world is hostile to Trump (understandably and reasonably so, since he's the least competent and least qualified president ever, and a hugely damaging figure), so their inclinations are anti-Trump. 

Along came this story, appearing to fit exactly in to their anti-Trump inclinations, so they re-hashed it totally uncritically without stopping to think whether it was fair or true. 

That sort of bias is getting too prevalent, not just in big media corporations (CNN, BBC, etc) but also other highly influential corporations such as Twitter, Google, etc.

[And yes, feel free to point out that Fox is even worse, along with informing us that the Pope is Catholic and that bears poo in the woods.]

A nice variant of Occam’s razor! 

I've never had a problem with you criticising what you see as clear negative aspects of Islam ... it's the impression you give as regarding it as an intrinsically flawed religion that I have great concerns with. Thats my view of the difference between fair criticism and smearing.

So if the vast majority of muslims in the west are peace loving good people how on earth can they attach themselves to a religion you label as medieval. It's not a logical position. If you want a common quote  "If the moderate Muslims don't like being "tarred with the same brush" by association with Islam then they're welcome to either reform their religion or leave it." You can't have it both ways: either the religion as mostly practiced in the west is OK (I'd certainly agree, as an example, any minority Wahabist teachings are not OK) or it's not and most western muslims are not peace loving good people.

Back to the analogy with Trump and his supporters I do think rich intelligent Republicans who can see past the Fox propaganda have major moral issues to answer about their support for him, just like muslims who live in the UK who support Wahabist views have major moral issues to answer. The moral questions are different but supporting Trump now knowing what he is like as President is to me a serious problem. The people who will suffer most from Trump in the end will include blue collar MAGA hat wearers. The people who will suffer most from a hard Brexit will be poor UKIP voters. It's the same tragedy again and again when popularism raises its ugly head. Popularist leaders seem to me to often be sociopathic liars who lust for power and don't give a shit about the ordinary people.

Your Weinburg quote probably does sum up our differences. I just don't see that good people do serious bad because of religion. They do it through fear maybe but if a mainstream religion is being used as a political or bogus ideolgical justification for evil, and people can safely oppose that, it's the peoples' fault, and the religious leadership fault, not the religion. 

It's always peoples' fault. What is religion without people or religious leaders? Nothing, it doesn't exist, it can only be because of people. 

Let's say you and I are Muslim and we live in a Muslim nation and the penalty for apostasy is death - either at the hands of the state or the feet of an outraged mob.

We both want to leave Islam.  Go on, you first.

To be clear I think it's the specific people who choose to do bad things in the name of religion.  Religious bureaucratic structures if anything seem to me to make things worse. If hell existed I think many people with positions of power in such structures would still to this day be heading there for when they 'protect the church' over their own stated morals in the case of terrible crime.

Islam is indeed an intrinsically flawed religion! So is Christianity!  Communism is also an intrinsically flawed ideology. So is fascism and Nazism.

Are you really saying that I'm not allowed to think and say that Islam has intrinsic flaws?   That I'm allowed only minor criticisms of a religion, in a hat-doffing way, and only provided that I accept that the religion is basically good? 

Because if so, then I beg to differ.

You're right, people do not adopt religions out of logic!  They adopt them out of cultural inculcation.   Isn't that obvious?

Again, you need to better distinguish between people and their religions. Most people are way better than their religion!  Islam is indeed an deeply flawed, totalitarian and damaging ideology.  But most *Muslims* are decent, good, peace-loving people. 

[Again, this dichotomy is normal.  Stalin's ideology was a deeply flawed, totalitarian and damaging ideology.  But I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of Russian peasants living at that time were decent, good, hard-working, peace-loving people who only wanted to farm and raise families.]

Sadly, where Islam is dominant (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc) the harmful aspects of Islam come to the fore, despite most of the population being decent human beings. 

And it is the people living under those regimes who suffer most, whether they realise it or not, just as the same was true under Mao or Stalin.

So take the hundreds of thousands in Pakistan, perhaps millions, who would want to put Asia Bibi to death owing to a charge of blasphemy, and who march through the streets wanting to lynch her.  Or the 100,000 who rallied at the funeral of Mumtaz Qadri.

Are those all simply bad people?

Or are they basically good people, persuaded to act very badly by a harmful ideology?

I'd go more for the second, how about you?

You've accused me of hating on Muslims, but I suggest that my answer is the more compassionate one. 

That's not the situation we are discussing.  The point is most migrants from Islamic countries migrate for economic reasons, not religious or political ones.  So, claiming migration to Europe, US etc from Islamic countries is evidence of  discontent with Islam doesn't follow.  There may be discontent and Islam is a terrible way to run politics, but large-scale migration isn't evidence of this

I agree demonising this young man is entirely wrong. Even is the new information in the link provided by Stuart above, suggesting a pattern of behaviour from the group, turns out to be accurate, there were still 3 parties that contributed to the incident, and all bear some responsibility for how it progressed. Who ‘started’ it? Probably not the school group, but who knows, the cameras all provide a viewpoint but they don’t capture everything 

irrespective, he doesn’t deserve to be the centre of a global media and political event

the reports suggest that the students approached their group leaders about the situation and asked if they could engage in the school chants, I think I read that in one of the reports? If that’s correct, then I think the group leaders share most responsibility; the immediate reaction is surely not, ‘yes, inflame the situation by engaging with the confrontation-seeking and aggressive behaviour from the other group’; it’s to either deal with the situation yourself, or move your students away. Had they done that, their school wouldn’t be on the world news

Yep, I think most people in lynch mobs are not fundamentally good people being bad, although some might be, only being there out of fear (eg families of bad angry men, especially wives). Most fundamentally good people will do some bad things in life  but would be horrified by such a mob. Fear is important... if you look what happened in totalitarian states when facing such crime  you either compromise your moral objections at the time or likely become a martyr. Many muslims in Pakistan will effectively be in that position. I think Pakistan's problems are way more from poverty and corruption and the internal and external  politics, than they are from Islam. Where Islam is a big problem in Pakistan,  politics and some religious leaders made it that way, not the religion.

If, under Islam, the penalty for apostasy is death and the religious leaders in Pakistan enforce that, is religion the problem or are people the problem?

But my claim was not that migration owes to discontent with Islam.   

My claim was that migration owes to discontent with the quality of life in those countries (economics being a big part of that), and that the economic and social backwardness results (to a large extent) from Islam. 

Previously poor countries that are not shackled to Islam can actually develop quite fast economically (e.g. Singapore, South Korea).

Or one could say that there is no "responsibility" on anyone, because there was no incident, nothing to be "responsible" for! 

Neither the kids nor the Native Americans did anything that could be sensibly regarded as wrong.   It was a complete non-event. 

Maybe the "Black Israelites" could be declared at fault.  There's remarkably little censure directed at them by the media.  Is that because they are black, or because they are anti-Trump and thus get a pass, or because they are well known to be loons? 

So you're writing off large swathes of Pakistanis as bad people, and yet want to criticise me for thinking like that?

It really is amazing the lengths people will go to to exculpate and excuse Islam of any blame for anything.

Swathes is fair: in the context that there are about 200 million people in the country. Yes, sadly,  the world has a lot of bad and hateful people in it and the poorest countries suffer most from this. I'm not writing off those I see as bad...despite not being religious I believe moral redemption is possible. 

I'm not excusing all of Islam.. just the opposite. I blame distorted hateful versions of the religion (that are normally banned in the UK). I can see Islam as a whole can have major factions that are mostly good and others clearly bad, whereas you seem to think only a tiny minority of the religion can be good (whilst its believers are mostly good).

The idea of a "distorted version" of a religion implies that there is a "true and accurate" version.  There isn't, all versions of all religions are simply made up.  None is any more "distorted" than any other. 

If one means "faithful to the original" and "distorted from the original" then, actually, the "distorted hateful versions" are in many ways closer to the original than the peaceful, moderate versions. 

For example, Mohammed himself, as far as we can tell, was a violent warlord, and the most peaceful and moderate version of Islam is the Ahmadiyya movement, which is a rather recent version. 

I consider that, running through mainstream Islam, are a set of fundamental ideas that are very harmful.   For an account of this see Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book "Heretic".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heretic:_Why_Islam_Needs_a_Reformation_Now

Many religious and state leaders from David, through Charlemagne, to William of Orange were hardly any different.

I see religious factions that are moral and compatible with modern western state laws and ideals as the ones that are mostly good. Sure it's a western moral viewpoint but we are the best the world has seen so far in linking law, ethics, freedoms and morals. Its nothing to do with accuracy... its pragmatic and probably what you say you wanted (those muslims have adapted and put behind a lot of the bad in their past, as most other religious people in the west have.). Times change: before the Renaissance the most modern and enlightened states were Islamic. 

Why sure.  Did anyone suggest otherwise?  None of them are good moral role-models for today, which is why we need the secularist principle of church-state separation to have a decent society.

Agreed, which is why most mainstream versions of Islam are bad.

That's because they:
-- don't accept the principle of Mosque-state separation.
-- don't accept freedom of religion, including the right to leave Islam.
-- don't accept free speech, including the right to openly dissent from and criticise Islam.
-- place Sharia law above secular law as an ideal.
-- have an ideal in which everyone is subject to Islam.

My whole point and my only point is that the school group look like, and behaved like, a bunch of complete a****holes. If my child was in there I would be ashamed of his / her behaviour

Malaysia’s on the phone, they want to talk to you.

Not in the UK they don't.

Yes they do.  Just because they don't have the numbers to impose those things in the UK doesn't mean that they aren't part of their ideology.

40% of the population of Malaysia is not Muslim, and Malaysia is officially a pluralistic, secular state.   Those things help to prevent Islam being too harmful there.

Who is this they? Certainly not the majority of individuals in one of the few major surveys, the ICM poll.

I was talking about teachings of mainstream versions of Islam, including versions prevalent in the UK.

As to how many people hold to particular doctrines, well, as I've said, you repeatedly fail to distinguish between religions and people.

For example, it is perfectly fair to say that "Catholicism teaches that using a condom for birth control is wrong", even if many Catholics think that is silly. 

But anyway, ask how many British Muslims would want it to be illegal to publish a satirical and offensive cartoon of Mohammed.  Do you have a poll on how many would say that satirical and offensive cartoons of Mohammed are fair-enough free speech in a free and tolerant society?

Snap. I think you fail to distinguish between religions and people. 

A Vatican committee must have tried to read the mind of their god to decide on condoms ... it seems perfectly sensible to me have a catholic faith in a New Testament sense, through St Paul and yet think they got that wrong. Past misdemeanours of the Vatican were far worse..... the church is not the faith. Muslims in western countries  mostly respect western laws irrespective of your views and are not as you portray mostly some kind of mass sleeper cell pretending to be law abiding and just waiting to take over and apply sharia law.

I'm bored with your obsession with your cartoons and the shitty libels it led to, the  last time you got angry.... go find someone else to play with on that subject. Offending people for the hell of it, as some bastion of  freedom of speech, sucks.

Aw diddums, I'm glad it annoys you!  And no I didn't get angry, I was just defending free speech.  

And as for "go find someone else to play with on that subject", who raised the topic of Islam on this thread? Oh yeah, it was you.

And no, it's not "offending people for the hell of it" it's offending people as a means of maintaining the principle of being able to criticise religion.   

Whereas you want to disallow criticism of religion as being "barely legal" and "hate speech". Of course you'll claim to allow minor criticism, if done in an obsequious, cap-doffing way, and so long as one maintains that the religion is basically good, but -- quite explicitly -- you want to disallow any criticism that sees a religion as "intrinsically flawed".

And you're a complete hypocrite, since you want the right to criticise using offensive language when it suits you.   For example, calling a politician an "idiot hypocrite" guilty of behaviour that is "despicable" and "as scummy as it gets". 

Those are examples of what you think is offensive language? Jesus/Muhammad, you're easily offended... #snowflake

Yep!  At least, when I've used milder language than that, Offwidth has suggested that it is "barely legal" and "hate speech".

And he's said that anyone who tutors in a university shouldn't be saying it because students might be upset and demand to change tutor groups.   Of course no-one suggests that pro-Brexit students or Tory-voting students might be upset by normal criticism.  Why the double standards? 

Might I suggest you both go in a small room together, measure each other's willies and be done with it. 

Well it's good you got that off your chest! 

So a majority Muslim country (with 60% of its population subject to Sharia law) that's doing well.

No, he wants to disallow criticism of Islam as being "barely legal" and "hate speech".  Do try to be precise 

they won't get away with it you know, God'll still see them at it, even in a small room...

Good point!  

In the interest of precision, I've just typed those search terms into google. Oh dear...might need a new hard drive.

Relax, Barely Legal is The Hives first, and arguably best, album.  A raucous and righteous noise that affirms your good taste, sir.

I don’t order music online anymore. I once tried to buy QOTSA, ‘Feel good hit of the summer’, but could only remember the chorus. That mishap saw me drummed out of the PTA.

The Hives and QOTSA... this thread has taken an unlikely and highly welcome direction...!

From Orwell’s 1984:

“... to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.”

The plot thickens 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/tech/twitter-suspends-account-native-america...

Yes, point well made

what do you make of the report I linked suggesting the Twitter account that posted the original video is not what it seemed? Not a teacher from California, the blogger whose photo is in the account denies knowledge, and the account may not originate from the US. And:

Molly McKew, an information warfare researcher who saw the tweet and shared it herself on Saturday, said she later realized that a network of anonymous accounts were working to amplify the video.

A perfect storm of racial and political buttons being pressed, further polarising opinion in the US as the 2020 elections start to come over the horizon.

Cui bono?

It doesn't surprise me. There are a lot of "activists" on Twitter who will distort things for political gain (plenty on the right as well as on the left of course).

As I said up-thread, it was fairly obvious that the people who initially edited, spun and promoted the original video and story had to have been deliberately presenting it in a distorted way.

I think we all need to be on the lookout for fake news, **especially** when the story fits and supports our biases.  

Too many people are only good at spotting fake news when it's the other side doing the faking.

By the way, here's excerpts from an interview with the kid (16-yr-old Nick Sandmann),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ZhDGaQMS4&feature=youtu.be

Just thought, are you suggesting that the original story was actually "edited" and promoted by pro-Trump activists.

... with the intent of getting the anti-Trump left to be outraged by it, ... so that they would then be discredited?

Hmm, that would be pretty Machiavellian if so ... but so far I think it more likely that it was spun by anti-Trump activists trying to fire up the anti-Trump half of America. 

Indeed, too easy to see fault in those we disagree with and blind ourselves to reality when the story fits our existing assumptions 

Re the mystery origin of the twitter feed; my reading of that was an implication that went beyond activitists, to a significant operation with substantial resource behind it; concealed origin of fake account, concerted amplification of the story. 

I think we can expect more of this sort of thing as 2020 elections approach 

It could always be Russia doing it to further split the USA and divert attention from what they're doing elsewhere.

The sooner the real culprit is found the better. And if/when that happens then truly effective action needs to be taken.

Possibly; but I was more thinking of foreign state actors, who have been shown to have tried to influence the outcome of a previous US election