Neo-Nazis hold rally in Georgia. Police show up....and start arresting peaceful counter protesters. Wait, what?

I just witness the most over-aggressive policing I've ever seen in #Newnan. Tackling protesters and arresting them... for wearing masks. pic.twitter.com/Mf1e5cfKH2

— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) April 21, 2018

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

A Neo-Nazi rally happened in tiny Newnan, Georgia today. 

According to some reports, as few as 35 Nazis showed up to hear their leader mock men wearing skinny jeans. To protect them, the state had to send 400 heavily armed law enforcement officers in full riot gear. 

But that doesn’t mean things were smoothly. The cops were very aggressive with counter-protestors, according to reports from the scene and videos which show use-of-force arrests because of bandanas. 

Huffington Posts’s Christopher Mathias was shocked by the brutality of the cops. 

“I just witness the most over-aggressive policing I’ve ever seen in #Newnan,” he wrote on twitter. “Tackling protesters and arresting them… for wearing masks.”

The issue was that anti-Nazi activists covered their faces with bandanas—which the cops responded to with violent confrontations and arrests.

Boy leave it to Georgia to avoid upsetting the actual Nazis, and instead focus their hostility on the folks protesting the Nazis.

I think this is the result of the anti-Antifa mentality (Anifa protesters often cover their faces) that has been promoted by Fox News and Right Wing radio.

So now the police in the South see bandana wearing protesters as the enemy, instead of the swastika wearing fascists.

Seriously, where ARE we right now?

So apparently today begins the Civil War 2.0. Or not.

Courtesy of The Guardian:

If you are inside the “alt-right” information bubble, you might be preparing yourself for a civil war to commence this Saturday. 

Since late September, the idea has been circulating on Facebook groups, subreddit message boards, Twitter, and leading conspiracy media outlets that on 4 November, anti-fascist groups will begin a violent insurrection. 

Some websites are telling their readers that antifa groups are “planning to kill every single Trump voter, Conservative and gun owner” this weekend. Hundreds of Facebook posts show how seriously consumers of such media are taking the news, and comments like “One more threat against white people and I swear to God I’m going to take a goddamn car and run over every fucking one of them” are not unrepresentative of the response. 

But antifa groups have no plans to protest that day, and the small leftist groups who are planning protests have only dubious connections to the antifa movement. So what gives? 

Beginning in late September, three things kicked it a into higher gear. First, Refuse Fascism, a small group linked to the Revolutionary Communist party, staged a visually spectacular protest in Los Angeles. They blocked the 101 freeway and held up signs that enigmatically spelled out “Nov 4 it begins”. This is the same group that is organizing a series of protests around the country against the “Trump-Pence regime” this weekend. 

Second, a video posted on a Facebook page called Vets Before Illegals went viral. The video, entitled “Antifa sets a date for civil war”, claimed that “on their website, they are calling for an open civil war that will start in November”, and set out alleged plans for attacking police officers, then citizens and the government. 

Last, but by no means least, the rumor was picked up and amplified by Alex Jones, the radio star with an audience of millions. As Sunshine explains, Jones “is a kind of meta-conspiracy theorist now” who “harvests other people’s theories” and repackages them to fit his narratives and his audience.

Good old Alex"I never met a conspiracy theory I didn't like" Jones.

So helpful isn't he? 

There was also a report from Gateway Pundit based on a bad joke written on a Twitter account, with no actual connection to the antifa movement, which claimed that on November 4th  a leader of that movement promised to "behead white parents."

Now my first thought is that this is much ado about nothing , and that there will likely be NO actual armed conflicts or violence today. Especially since there do not seem to be many protests actually available for these wingnuts to flip out over. 

However this could also be a dry run just to see now many people can be agitated in anticipation for a REAL call for violence against a larger antifa, or progressive protest.

That could easily result in a number of fatalities, which I would assume is the whole goal here.

I would also like to know if the Russians are involved in promoting this thing, since it sounds like it is right up their alley.

The major message to take away from all of this, is that people are incredibly high strung right now, and in all honesty it would only take a small spark to ignite a very real, and very dangerous civil war in this country.

It behooves all of us to watch our rhetoric and to make sure that while we are expressing our very reasonable anger and outrage, that we are not also giving others an excuse to turn to violence.

Nazi armband wearing racist harasses black man in Seattle, gets tracked down knocked out.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:

On Sunday afternoon, a Twitter account called @bigotbasher posted a photo of a man apparently riding Seattle's D line while wearing a swastika armband. 

The user wrote that the photo was submitted to them by a third party. @bigotbasher wrote in their tweet that the man in the armband was harassing a black man on the bus. BuzzFeed News has reached out to the person behind the @bigotbasher account for comment.

The picture was picked up by a few anti-fascist–affiliated Twitter accounts that quickly got to work trying to identify the man.

That all led to this post:

 Somebody took @teethinclaws up on his suggestion, and this was the result. (Warning: video contains brief violence and language.)

The gentleman who punched the neo-Nazi out has not been identified, but apparently he is NOT a member of AntiFa.

I am have a couple of opinions about all of this.

First I don't think that anybody should feel that it is okay to walk around adorned in Nazi paraphernalia. And to verbally harass a minority while wearing said paraphernalia is just looking for trouble.

And secondly I can tell you that if I were 30 years younger I would undoubtedly be applauding these actions and wanting to knock a few Nazi assholes out myself.

However I am NOT in my twenties and I know that as much as this asshole was asking for trouble he was not using physical aggression so did not deserve to be met with physical aggression.

Verbal interactions, however heated, are still only verbal interactions.

When you introduce physical violence, now matter how justified you may feel, you are now in the wrong.

Not only that but this will certainly be used by other Nazis and White Supremacists as a recruiting tool and to prove that the white man is under assault, which will then justify in their minds any violence that they may resort to in future confrontations.

If people are not more careful this all may actually lead to an honest to goodness race war, and I don't see how that benefits anybody.