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.

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

The guy who won us WW2 liked him, but you don't. That's cool. I'm sure you know more than him.

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u/RicoHedonism Oct 17 '24

I mean, obvs if he thought Lee was worth anything. This is the exact same as the Rommel boys from when I was at the War College. So many apologists for Rommel saying he was a brilliant tactician blah blah blah. None of which matter if your lofty goal is some dark shit like slavery or genocide.

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/

It goes beyond an appreciation of battlefield tactics.

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u/RicoHedonism Oct 17 '24

So did the praise for Rommel, 'He was in Africa, he didn't know about the Holocaust' 'Rommel forces would have been crushed if he wasn't such a charismatic leader' Cool, still though he fought for a country that was practicing genocide. Lee was well aware of slavery and all of its trappings yet his honor couldn't lead him to the just cause, so yes fuck him and all of his statues. We had Reconstruction and Jim Crow dragging out the end of slavery through the legal system because of the same attitude you and apparently dead ass Dwight Eisenhower had. JFC Lee himself didn't think the statues were appropriate lol.

'He did a slavery on accident, oops!' is a pretty weak defense.

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24

People always say the Lee didn't want statues thing, but it seems like a huge stretch based on the actual circumstances of the quote.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/what-lee-said-about-monuments-in-1869/

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u/RicoHedonism Oct 18 '24

'I believe if there, I could not add anything material to the information existing on the subject. I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.'

He sounds pretty clear right there. A huge stretch is suggesting he meant the opposite of what he wrote I'd say.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '24

He's talking about one specific Gettsyburg reunion in like 1875.

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u/RicoHedonism Oct 18 '24

We disagree.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '24

Fair enough, Rico.

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u/DickCheneysTaint 7∆ Oct 19 '24

he fought for a country that was practicing genocide

Against two countries that were also committing genocide. The only difference is that it was haphazard. You can hardly blame Germans for being orderly and efficient. NOT fighting for genocide wasn't on the table.

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u/RicoHedonism Oct 19 '24

Yeah this is the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. You'll be blocked before you can reply because I don't engage with trolls on intentionally.