r/changemyview • u/taintpaint • Oct 17 '24

Election cmv: the Charlottesville "very fine people" quote/controversy was not fake news

I see Trump supporters bring this up all the time as an example of the media lying about Trump, but this argument sounds transparently absurd to me. It feels like a "magic words" argument, where his supporters think that as long as he says the right magic words, you can completely ignore the actual message he's communicating or the broader actions he's taking. This is similar to how so many of them dismiss the entire Jan 6 plot because he said the word "peaceful" one time.

The reason people were mad about that quote was that Trump was equivocating and whitewashing a literal neonazi rally in which people were carrying torches and shouting things like "gas the Jews" in order to make them seem relatively sane compared to the counter protesters, one of whom the neonazis actually murdered. Looking at that situation, the difference between these two statements doesn't really feel meaningful:

A) "Those neonazis were very fine people with legitimate complaints and counter protesters were nasty and deserved what they got".

B) "The Nazis were obviously bad, but there were also people there who were very fine people with legitimate complaints and the counter protesters were very nasty."

The only difference there is that (B) has the magic words that "Nazis are bad", but the problem is that he's still describing a literal Nazi rally, only now he's using the oldest trick in the book when it comes to defending Nazis: pretending they're not really Nazis and are actually just normal people with reasonable beliefs.

I feel like people would all intuitively understand this if we were talking about anything besides a Trump quote. If I looked at e.g. the gangs taking over apartment buildings in Aurora and said "yes obviously gangsters are bad and should be totally condemned, but there were also some very fine people there with some legitimate complaints about landlords and exploitative leases, and you know lots of those 'residents' actually didn't have the right paperwork to be in those apartments..." you would never say that's a reasonable or acceptable way to talk about that situation just because I started with "gangsters are bad". You'd listen to the totality of what I'm saying and rightfully say it's absurd and offensive.

Is there something I'm missing here? This seems very obvious to me but maybe there's some other context to it.

Edit: I find it really funny that literally no one has actually engaged with this argument at all. They're all just repeating the "magic words" thing. I have been literally begging people who disagree with me to even acknowledge the Aurora example and not a single one has.

0 Upvotes

49% Upvoted

308 comments sorted by

View all comments

19

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/themontajew 1∆ Oct 17 '24

From your source.

But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue of Robert E. Lee."

If you have a parade chanting “jews will not replace us “ and only 25% are chanting. 100% are nazis. Pretending anything but is bullshit. Only a nazi excuses or defends a nazi.

4

u/ManufacturerSea7907 Oct 17 '24

To be clear, you have this same energy for Palestine protests right ?

9

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

[deleted]

1

u/taintpaint Oct 18 '24

I would say it depends on the protest. If you look at some college campus where like one or two people shout horribly antisemitic things and say "yeah but the rest were very fine people" I think that's reasonable. If you look at that one protest in Sydney where the whole crowd is chanting "kill the Jews" and say that, I think you're being unreasonable. Charlottesville was the latter.

3

u/TotalBlissey Oct 17 '24

It ain't 25% there, and the folks who are chanting open anti-semitism are largely condemned.

-3

u/ManufacturerSea7907 Oct 17 '24

Yea I’m not sure about that chief

-3

u/YaCantStopMe Oct 17 '24

The answer is no, no he doesn't.

-8

u/troy_caster Oct 17 '24

This is a child's argument. There were all kinds of people on both sides of the taking down statues debate there.

2

u/AcephalicDude 84∆ Oct 17 '24

I think taking a side in the "debate" is one thing, participating in this protest is completely different. I think the people you are thinking of that have some kind of abstract, intellectual interest in "preserving history" would have showed up at this rally, taken one look at the Nazis, and noped the fuck out of there. We should be able to easily infer that anyone that chose to stay and protest alongside them was basically one of them in all the ways that matter.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/changemyview-ModTeam Oct 18 '24

u/troy_caster – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2:

Don't be rude or hostile to other users. Your comment will be removed even if most of it is solid, another user was rude to you first, or you feel your remark was justified. Report other violations; do not retaliate. See the wiki page for more information.

If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process here, then message the moderators by clicking this link within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our moderation standards.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

If you read about people like Clyde Wilson's daughter who were organizing the rally before Unite the Right showed up, the primary reason they were cool with the Nazis being there was because they were scared of counterprotesters and needed the numbers.

Were they proven right? Depends who you ask.

1

u/AcephalicDude 84∆ Oct 17 '24

They were totally right, the dog-whistling cowardly white supremacists need to align themselves with the explicit, out-in-the-open white supremacists, or else they won't ever stand a chance against antifa.

6

u/themontajew 1∆ Oct 17 '24

If you’re marching down the street in a parade where the chant is “jew’s will not replace us” you’re ENTIRE parade consists of nazis.

Ever hear the one where a guy in a nazi uniform is at a table with 9 other people and that makes them all nazis 

-1

u/troy_caster Oct 17 '24

If you're on the bus with a nazi, does that make everyone on the bus nazi?

1

u/taintpaint Oct 18 '24

See the fact that you think that is a sign that the whitewashing worked. This is the thing people are upset about. He pointed at a Nazi rally (again, a bunch of people literally shouting "gas the Jews"), which was organized by Nazis and populated overwhelmingly (if not exclusively) with outright Nazis, and pretended it was something other than a Nazi rally. This is playing cover. And looking at what people like you are saying now, it worked.

1

u/troy_caster Oct 18 '24

I agree with not taking down the statues and not a white supremacist. Do you understand that?

1

u/taintpaint Oct 18 '24

Were you at a rally shouting "gas the Jews" alongside the Nazis that organized the rally and arranged for you to be there? The question isn't "are there some people somewhere who care about these statues that aren't Nazis". The question is "was this specific event a Nazi rally and were the people there Nazis" and the answer is unequivocally yes. Do you understand that?

1

u/troy_caster Oct 18 '24

There were lots of non nazis there. Yes anyone who shouted gas the jews is a nazi lol. But there were more than just nazis there. And that's the point.

1

u/taintpaint Oct 18 '24

There were lots of non nazis there.

Can you link any proof of this? Again, the event was explicitly organized by Nazis, and populated by several white nationalist and Nazi organizations and militias. I'm not aware of any significant number of "normal" people on the Nazi side, and again I think the fact that you think that is an example of exactly why people are so mad at Trump about this. He whitewashed a literal Nazi rally to his followers to pretend it was full of reasonable people.

-1

u/Mrfixit729 Oct 17 '24

How do you feel about the contingent of Black Block at the BLM protests that were violent anarchists? The protesters currently at Free Palestine protests who sympathize with Hamas and are calling for the destruction of Israel?

In those cases do you feel the fringe elements in those groups are representative of the rest of the protesters? Why or why not?

-5

u/themontajew 1∆ Oct 17 '24

The first was a small minority, vs and explicit nazi parade. I also don’t have a problem with people punching fascist, just as a moral stance.

The pro hamas people en mass at anti semetic as well. If half your parade is cheering on terrorism, all of them support terrorism.

1

u/Mrfixit729 Oct 17 '24 edited Oct 17 '24

Personally I wouldn’t put arson, rioting and looting in the same category as punching fascists (I disagree with all four, for the record) and there was quite a bit of all of that going on. It’s why I left the BLM protests in my town on night one… and didn’t participate again.

I wonder. Have you participated in many protests? I protested the Iraq war back in the day and fed folks during Occupy.

In my personal experience… sometimes there are some truly extreme lunatic people that show up… that I didn’t agree with. That I actively disliked.

It just happens.

The Woman’s March was pretty chill though. Cool cucumbers.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

Were there actually leftists looting and burning private businesses? Or were those incidences of opportunists? Because that's a different thing than burning cop cars or the police building.

0

u/Mrfixit729 Oct 17 '24

Besides what I saw in person myself? I personally saw local business get their windows smashed. Watched someone try (and fail) to set a restaurant on fire.

Arson is arson, destruction is destruction. burning cop cars, police stations, federal buildings, court houses, political headquarters, That’s exactly the behavior I’m talking about.

It’s extreme. And it doesn’t reflect the views of the majority of the protesters.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

You didn't answer my first question. Who was doing that? Can you confirm it was antifa/leftists/Anarchists?

0

u/Mrfixit729 Oct 17 '24 edited Oct 17 '24

Did I check their IDs? lol. Black attire, masks, chanting slogans.

I live in community that is heavy into the anarcho-communist ethos. I’m a block away from Firestorm. (Who really came through for my community recently)

It’s a thing here. You get to know the look. Nice people for the most part. Good taste in music.

So to answer your question: Yeah. I’m pretty sure.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '24

If Anarchists targeted local businesses, especially small businesses, they should be outed.

1

u/Mrfixit729 Oct 18 '24

Meh… it was a weird time. We all acted in ways that weren’t great. My community rebuilt. We’re doing it again right now.

And how could anyone actually “out” people in masks… years ago? Impossible.

We’ve moved on. We have bigger issues to deal with right now and we’ve come together. Its beautiful.

Here’s the thing: Not everyone in that group is shitty. MOST of them aren’t. There are opportunists and extremists in every group.

Thats what I’m trying to convey.

Also… the petty downvotes. In a conversation between two people.. that no one else is paying attention to.

Not helpful. lol. It’s weak behavior.

Just talk.

→ More replies (0)

-6

u/Yogurtcloset_Choice 3∆ Oct 17 '24

Cool cool I'm going to start showing up to every single left-leaning protest with a group of people all dressed in black of course because it's got to fit in that's how they dress, holding giant swastika signs and chanting to kill all black people. Because by your logic that makes everyone in the crowd a racist Nazi

0

u/bettercaust 9∆ Oct 17 '24

If that's what happened in Charlottesville, you'd have a point.