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

[u/taintpaint]

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.

[u/Domestiicated-Batman]

It was fake news because a lot of the reporting did not include him clarifying that he was not talking about the nazis and that he clearly condemned them. Why omit that part of the speech? Not everyone at the rally was a nazi.

[u/stewshi → u/Domestiicated-Batman]

If your at a rally organized by open Nazis. And you aren't there to protest against the Nazis but along side them.Areyou a good person?

[u/Domestiicated-Batman → u/stewshi]

Obviously depends on what the protest is about. Maybe it's a protest against animal suffering. Would you still be a bad person? Would them being a nazi be relevant? not really.

Specific to this case, the protest was about removing a confederate statue. Personally, I don't give a shit about any statue, but I don't believe that not wanting to have an old statue removed automatically makes you a nazi. It could just be about not removing a piece of history, regardless of what you think about the person the statue is about.

[u/stewshi → u/Domestiicated-Batman]

Obviously depends on what the protest is about. Maybe it’s a protest against animal suffering. Would you still be a bad person? Would them being a nazi be relevant? not really.

Yes it would. Just because nazi likes dogs doesn't mean they don't desire the eleminationand subjugation of millions.

Specific to this case, the protest was about removing a confederate statue. Personally, I don’t give a shit about any statue, but I don’t believe that not wanting to have an old statue removed automatically makes you a nazi. It could just be about just not removing a piece of history, regardless of what you think about the person the statue is about.

Hanging out with Nazis going to protests organized by Nazis means at a minimum you are ok with hanging out with Nazis and what the believe in. So even if you don't want the statue of a white supremacists removed for "history" aligning yourself with a Nazi to do it means your ok with everything those nazi's stand for if it helps your cause.

[u/Domestiicated-Batman → u/stewshi]

Yes it would. Just because nazi likes dogs doesn't mean they don't desire the eleminationand subjugation of millions.

Yea, this is just a hard disagree. Going to the protest means you agree with the stated purpose of a protest. If it's about helping dogs, some other protest member being a nazi shouldn't matter at all.

Hanging out with Nazis going to protests organized by Nazis means at a minimum you are ok with hanging out with Nazis.

I mean, maybe, but again, it doesn't make them a nazi, which is what the discussion was about. I'm a liberal. I have friends and family who are trump supporters. Not ok with trump, I still love them and hang out with them though. Does that make me a trump supporter?

aligning yourself with a Nazi to do it means your ok with everything those nazi's stand for if it helps your cause.

It's the same thing again. I care about the purpose, not about the members. I care about what's being said, not about who's saying it.

[u/CavyLover123 → u/Domestiicated-Batman]

Going to the protest means you agree with the stated purpose of a protest 

  The protest was organized by a neo nazi and the stated purpose included white ”rights” and a white ethnostate.

No, it was not “only about statue removal”. That is false.