Asymmetrical Information

Not a surprise for those of us here on the ground in Toledo. They march took place in a neighborhood that was already tense with poverty, drugs, gangs and racial tension.

Six stupid Nazi's and 600 counter-demonstraters, consisting in good part with gang members.

When things starting getting out of hand, the police had a meeting with the counter-protesters (read, gang members). Talks broke off when the protesters set a business on fire.

Police then retreated in the face of the crowd, which had begun throwing rocks and bottles. Police reported that they had reports that many in the crowd had guns (gang members with guns? Get out.)

At one point on the video, it looked like the police probably could have broken the whole thing up if they charged and cracked heads of those chucking bricks, but they didn't and had to regroup.

There is now a city wide 8:00 pm curfew (apparently only applicable to those on foot).

I'm not surprised either. Imo, Allowing a Neo-Nazi march to take place in a black neighborhood is the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theatre.

Doesn't take much to get blacks to start looting, does it?

John -

Doesn't take much to get whites to espouse racist cant. Asshole.

OSAMA BIN LADEN IS PLANNING TO KILL YOU -- RIGHT NOW! The CIA knew where Bin Laden was and was trying to KILL him. Bush knew too, and he pulled the troops OUT -- then he LIED about it! Now the LEADER of the CIA operation to kill Bin Laden is trying to get that story out, and he is being CENSORED! Wasn't bush's daddy the Director of the CIA??? Which crony did this bush appoint to this un-important job?!?! WHY DOES BUSH-THE-DRAFT-DODGER HAVE OUR TROOPS TIED UP IN IRAQ AND NOT HUNTING DOWN BIN LADEN -- THE TERRORIST WHO ACTUALLY ATTACKED US ON SEPTEMBER 11TH????????????????????????


"Osama was there, we were aware he was there, and we were doing everything in our power to capture, kill him, and destroy his forces," says Bernsten, who was the leader of a secret CIA paramilitary unit pursuing bin Laden.
http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=593756


Remember what Bush-the-draft-dodger said!!!!

The president called his opponent's allegation "the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking." Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan border.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/


(Why the HELL isn't this news? What the HELL does Iraq have to do with this??? Why the HELL aren't our troops hunting Osama? OSAMA BIN LADEN IS PLANNING TO KILL YOU -- RIGHT NOW! WHY IS HE STILL ALIVE AND OUR TROOPS IN IRAQ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?)

Lessee, a few stupid people want to protest violent gangs. The violent gangs object, and proceed to commit many acts of violence, including arson and assault. And this is somehow the fault of the few stupid people? Seems to me they made their point. This is not "racist cant", it's basic observation of reality.

I remember a few Nazi/KKK marches in the news as a kid groing up in Ohio. It was always the same... 5 or 6 of those guys and a couple of hundred counter protesters throwing rocks at them, even in white neighborhoods. I am proud to be a Buckeye.

Shorter DSmith: Hey, sometimes Nazis are right.

i do not care that they crowd wanted to throw bricks at the protesters. i do care that they did not want them to march. reminds me of the south in the 60's, or the fact that when they did not march they rioted. seems like the gangs in that part of ohio are out of control. this problem is a lot bigger then what is being reported. time for the black leaders to respond. see if what they are saying in D.C. really holds water.

Gosh, Hank, that's real witty. Know what you folks need? A nice marching banner. How about a stolen color TV, rampant on a field of self-pity?

The neo-Nazi message in part asserts that people with dark skins are extremely emotional, stupid, violent, and generally not able to control themselves. Well, hmm, the old saying about "takes one to know one" comes to mind...

On the other hand, once the police removed the neo-Nazi's, SOME of the counter-demonstrators proceeded to break into stores and loot them, break into houses and steal things, and ultimately engage in pointless vandalism such as throwing working TV sets out of 2nd floor windows. In other words, the counter demonstrators acted out in a violent, very emotional, downright stupid and criminal fashion...

Does anyone besides me see any irony here? It would be interesting to ask some of the foolish young men who smashed into stores and stole things a simple question: "Why are you so eager to live up to the lies the Nazis and Klan tell about you?"

I for one would be very interesting in the answer...

Personally, I find it hilarious that there are still people out there that try to defend the base actions the racist bigots.

They chose the streets to walk down, even after being warned by the city that they couldn't protect them if things went south, which is from the denial of the parade permit. They chose the streets that took them into the middle of known gang territory, and a known predominately black neighborhood. They chose to walk.

And no, I'm not defending the counter-protesters here. They went beyond the line by a few thousand feet. However, if it wasn't for the idiots that started walking down that street, the situation would not have happened.

Are you people kidding me? I do not support Nazi parades but I do support their right to have them. This is a simple freedom of speech issue. These nuts have a right to march. There is no other side to this part of the issue. Nazis have a right as Americans to be racists piece of shits, just like any idiot has a right to be an idiot.

On the other hand, every American has a right to exert his freedom of speech without being attacked. Furthermore, the police have a right to do their job without being attacked. Faulting the Nazis for this situation is absolutely rediculous. Fault them for being jackasses, but not for starting the riot.

The blame for the riot is with the people who are rioting. Excusing their behavior leads to a slippery slope which is unacceptable. Should we excuse the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank for killing innocent babies because someone believes they are oppressed?

I am sick and tired of this inner city gang crap. Either the police do something about it or just let them all kill each other. When faced with this current situation the police backed down. What the F**K is that? The police back down to violent thugs. That is the exact way to keep this crap going on forever. This is the same stuff that happened in N.O. Gangs/drug dealers are unchallenged in their areas of dominance and when the opportunity presents itself they come out and cause havoc.

As I would have done in N.O., the police should be allowed to shoot at will. When the hell did this country become a freaking place where police do not uphold the law but rather drive around all day looking to write traffic tickets like tax collectors?

The nazi's are stupid? Ha. They didn't want a peacful protest--- they wanted to get attacked. You're assuming that this rioting isn't the fulfillment of the their wildest dreams.

Let's go through the events
1) 12 neo nazis turn a minor local news event about some assholes walking around town to a national news event.
2) said news event is video of black people rioting with not a nazi in sight. How this upsets the nazis, I don't know. My guess is that white supremacy groups are going to get a lot of mileage out of this whole thing. Basically, Machiavelli couldn't have planned it better. They get to cast themselves as the good guys just trying to protest violence; they get lots of footage of their rights being opressed by black people doing exactly what neo-nazis say black people do.

The nazi's won this round big time because of a few thugs.

Several points:

Firstly, I'm getting tired of seeing quotes in the mainstram media where they use a man on the street to make some point - in this case, the black resident who said "They let them come here and expect this not to happen?".
This is sloppy journalism of the worst kind. After all, in any crowd you can pretty much find somebody to say anything, like denial of the holocaust, or Bush was to blame for the earthquake in Pakistan, etc.

Second somewhat unrelated point - the person making this quote was woefully misinformed (why wouldn't he be?). In fact, the Nazis were not explicitly allowed a permit to demonstrate; rather, they exercised their CONSTITUTIONAL right to walk through a neighborhood, and there wasn't a thing that the police could do to stop it.

Third point - the gangs smashing their way into business and homes of terrified residents did not look much like "counter protesters" to me. Rather, they were the worst kind of looters and thugs taking advantage of a lack of visible police authority. One consequence of this might be more citizens buying guns to protect themselves.

Off Colfax wrote:

They chose the streets to walk down, even after being warned by the city that they couldn't protect them if things went south, which is from the denial of the parade permit. They chose the streets that took them into the middle of known gang territory, and a known predominately black neighborhood. They chose to walk.

That’s nice, but since the actual victims here were the owners and employees of the stores that got looted, would you care to share with us what their offense was? You know, besides being stupid enough to provide goods and services for people in that community.

Talk about your sloppy AP headlines:

White Supremacists Riot in Toledo,
OhioMayor of Toledo, Ohio, Declares Emergency, Sets Curfew After Hundreds of White Supremacists Riot

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1220242&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Say it is possible to for Jane or Mindless to ban "LiberalRepubliKlanNaziSlayer" and delete that last post? That particular troll has been posting that same garbage over at another site.

The police arrested 65 rioters/looters several hours after the idiot Nazis departed. So the Nazis were only an excuse for looting stores whose only offense, as Thorley said, was "being stupid enough to provide goods and services for people in that community."

Now, I don't think the majority of that community participated in the looting or encouraged the looters then. Most of the blacks living there would have either stayed home, or went home once the Nazis left. But how many of them are going to continue supporting "community leaders" who demand that those looters be released?

I have to register a small objection to, "Violence breaks out..." Violence is an abstract noun that cannot do anything. Some people committed violence. In Jane's case, this is sloppy phrasing, probably copied from the news reports; however, when I see the mass media using phrases like this again and again, I have to wonder how often they are deliberately trying to obscure the fact that someone did it.

Oh well, at least I think we can trust Jane to never write that a gun went on a killing spree...

Thorley Winston wrote:

That’s nice, but since the actual victims here were the owners and employees of the stores that got looted, would you care to share with us what their offense was? You know, besides being stupid enough to provide goods and services for people in that community.

Them? They had no offense.

However, reading between the lines, I think I know what you're getting at. You're wondering if I'm saying that the rioters themselves should get a free pass. After all, it wasn't them that chose to initiate this event in the first place.

Categorically, no. All offenders should, shall, and (hopefully) will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I am merely expressing my hopes that the neo-Nazi imbicilic morons will get charged with, at the very minimum, conspiracy to incite a disturbance of the peace as well. Why?

One simple exercise in logic suffices. What was the necessary and sufficient factor for this incident to occur? Was it the presence of gang members and the random street crime that traditionally follows them? No. Those items were already present and in vast evidence. The presence of the neo-Nazi "marchers" were the flashpoint for this entire incident. Should they have not appeared, on that street and at that time, this incident as described would not have happened. They chose the location and time with, at least apparent to me, malice aforethought in order to create a specific response to justify their world-view and philosophy.

Hence my laying the penultimate blame on those individuals.

What was the necessary and sufficient factor for this incident to occur?

That the rioters have no respect for other people's rights.

Re:Off Colfax
"I am merely expressing my hopes that the neo-Nazi imbicilic morons will get charged with, at the very minimum, conspiracy to incite a disturbance of the peace as well."
Your kidding, right? Freedom of speach, even that which is unpopular, even wrong, is protected in this country. I remember when those idiots marched thru the mostly Jewish neighborhood in Chicago many years ago. It was offensive, it made your blood boil, but it was a demonstration of the 1st admendment. There was also no riot following. When you start locking people up for speaking in public things that of which most of us dont agree, where do you stop?

Off Colfax, what you are suggesting is known as the "heckler's veto." This is the idea that one person's rights should be restricted because another person may respond in a criminal way to the free exercise of those rights. The heckler's veto has been resoundingly rejected by the Supreme Court. It is entirely improper to punish one person because someone else is unable to control himself.

I'm with Toxic on this one -- this has been a huge (and entirely planned) victory for the neo-Nazis.

I can't decide if the ABC news headline writer decided to lie deliberately, or if he/she/it/they/? just read the first line of the article and leaped to the conclusion that if there was a riot associated with a 'white supremacist march' it simply must, must be the white supremacists rioting. At least the good news is that there weren't hundreds of Nazi pinheads available...

But what does this say about the press and its biases?

Turning to a practical question, I see that an old guy in his 70's or 80's lost his entire business, a tavern. Would anyone care to offer odds on whether Jesse Jackson's "PUSH", whatever Al Sharpton's organization is called, or the NAACP will be offering to help him rebuild any time soon?

If not, why not? I mean, really, shouldn't organizations made up of black people, allegedly dedicated to protecting the rights and image of black people, go out of their way to help a guy like that, if for no other reason than the public relations benefit?

Off Colfax wrote:

I am merely expressing my hopes that the neo-Nazi imbicilic morons will get charged with, at the very minimum, conspiracy to incite a disturbance of the peace as well.

I share your frustration and anger at the Nazi-wannabes. However, you should bear in mind that this exact argument, "You can't march here, because if you do, you'll cause some people to start a riot!" was used against Martin Luther King, Jr. more than once...look up "Selma, Alabama " just for a start.

Fortunately it didn't work, in the long term. But do you see the implications of what you are proposing? Do you see what side you are taking with regard to freedom of speech?

Maybe reconsideration of this position is in order...

The position of those who say the rioting was the fault of the Nazis reminds me of something Laurence Auster has written (which I paraphrase): the more public and serious the failings of blacks, the more loudly and vociferously the blame must be laid at the feet of whites.

And while you're condemning Nazis you might want to consider the words of a black speaker named Kamau Kambon, whose speech to the "Black Media Forum on Image of Black Americans in Mainstream Media" forum, which was broadcast on C-SPAN on October 14, contained the following:

"Now how do I know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem. I know it because they have retina scans, racial profiling, DNA banks, and they’re monitoring our people to try to prevent the ONE person from coming up with the ONE idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve the problem."

(You can see his speech at the C-SPAN website. Look for the link for the forum mentioned above, and go to approximately the 3:40:00 spot in the clip.)

Mr. Kambon was applauded by members of the audience in attendance for this call for white extermination.

As I white man, I've reached the limit of my ability to feel any guilt whatsoever for the condition of blacks in this country. Much as I disagree with the Nazis' policies, I think that irrational black hostility and violence is a much greater threat to our society.

However, you should bear in mind that this exact argument, "You can't march here, because if you do, you'll cause some people to start a riot!" was used against Martin Luther King, Jr. more than once...look up "Selma, Alabama " just for a start.

To say nothing of the fact that an official government statement saying "You can't march, because if you do then black people will turn criminally violent" would be a fantastic recruiting tool for white supremacists. It would, in effect, be an official statement that black people can't be trusted to act like civilized Americans.

The appropriate thing to do here is to ignore the Nazis (who are politically irrelevant) and simply stick to enforcing the law.

http://www.thecobraslair.com/images/WOOD-SHAMPOO-STREAM-OF.gif

What I find quite interesting is the suggestion by many posters that rioting and looting is somehow racially based...as if blacks are exclusive participants in such things.

Dan writes:

>>>"It would, in effect, be an official statement that black people can't be trusted to act like civilized Americans."

Well, the fact that you're missing about Selma, Alabama and other civil rights marches and sit ins in the South, was that they were NON-VIOLENT, and the only VIOLENCE that occurred was from WHITE PEOPLE. Remember those firehoses, Dan? The attack dogs? The beatings?

>>>"SCLC felt that it could not sustain demonstrations in a town as small as Selma for too long, so it turned its attention to protests in neighboring towns. On February 17, it planned a night march from the church to the jail in nearby Marion. Police spread rumors that participants in the march would break James Orange, an SCLC field secretary, out of jail. [61] At the conclusion of the march, police and state troopers attacked the marchers. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black Vietnam veteran, was shot as he attempted to protect his mother. He died seven days later. Black leaders were "stunned" by Jackson's death, according to Andrew Young. [62] Albert Turner described the Marion situation as

[p]robably one of the most vicious situations that was in the whole Civil Rights Movement . . . . They beat people at random. They didn't have to be marching. All you had to do was be black. And they hospitalized probably fifteen or twenty folks. And they just was intending to kill somebody as an example, and they did kill Jimmie Jackson. [63]"

http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/selma.html

Or...

>>>"The activists who had led these sit-ins formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 to take these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further. Their first campaign, in 1961, was conducting freedom rides, in which activists traveled by bus through the deep South to desegregate these companies' bus terminals, as required by federal law. CORE's leader, James Farmer, supported the freedom rides, but backed out at the last minute.

That proved to be an enormously dangerous mission. In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives. In Birmingham, where an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor had encouraged the Ku Klux Klan to attack an incoming group of freedom riders "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them," the riders were severely beaten. In eerily quiet Montgomery, a mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking John Lewis unconscious with a crate and smashing Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded Jim Zwerg, a white student from Fisk University, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.

The freedom riders did not fare much better in jail, where they were crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, Mississippi, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100-degree heat. Others were transferred to Parchman Penitentiary, where their food was deliberately oversalted and their mattresses were removed. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe."

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ANiaLIni_DMJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Rights_Movement+white+violence,+Civil+Rights+movement&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

I won't even begin to discuss the propensity for white rioting at rock concerts, soccer matches, and Boston Red Sox Pennent victories???!?

>>>"The Boston Police Department "accepts full responsibility" for the death of a 21-year-old college student killed by a police projectile fired to disperse crowds celebrating the Boston Red Sox victory over the New York Yankees.

Preliminary findings indicate that Victoria Snelgrove, a journalism student at Emerson College, was hit in the eye by a projectile that disperses pepper spray on impact, Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole said Thursday.

Snelgrove died at 12:50 p.m. at Brigham and Women's Hospital, hours after the overnight melee...

...Police have said some 60,000 to 80,000 people took to the streets in the area around Fenway Park late Wednesday. Although most were simply celebrating the 10-3 victory that thrust the Red Sox into the World Series for the first time since 1986, some in the crowd vandalized property, set fires and tried to overturn cars. At least eight people were arrested."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/10/22/fan.death/

As far as the latest published reports, the death count riot scoreboard has:

Boston (1)
Toledo (0)

--Cobra

I am amazed at the people who sit and say that the content of the nazis speech is a 'justification' for what happened in Toledo. By that tiken, whites would have been justified to riot and loot in Washington--where hate was actually spewed in a much larger setting by the NOI. And I say 'actually spewed' because the nazis didn't get to march. The city thought that it was too dangerous, that they could not protect them and invalidated their permit. There was no nazi march

I am amazed at those that take offense at the notion that blacks can not be trustsed to behave like civilized people. Again, the much larger, media-feted, government protected march in Washington must have upset some white people--particularly white racists. And yet thet did not riot. They did not loot. They acted like civilized people.

The black people in Toledo won.

They suppressed the nazis first amendment rights--and they still rioted.

And, as so eloquently put, all white people can do, when faced with this, is try to figure out how to blame themselves

Jack, you're all over the place here.

You write:

>>>"By that tiken, whites would have been justified to riot and loot in Washington--where hate was actually spewed in a much larger setting by the NOI."

And then you write:

>>>"I am amazed at those that take offense at the notion that blacks can not be trustsed to behave like civilized people."

So you're JUSTIFYING the use of uncivilized behavior by whites in the face of the Millions More March (exactly what "hatred spewing" occurred there?) and then turn around and claim that blacks can't be trusted to behaved in a civilized manner.

Well, given the documented examples of riotous WHITE behavior I posted in the preceding post, exactly where should trust be granted to in American society regarding "civilized behavior?"

--Cobra

No sir, I am pointing out tat, based on the fact that the nazis beliefs are being used as a justification for the rioting in Toledo, the beliefs of the NOI can be taken as justification for whites to riot in DC.

The notion that someone expressing their beliefs justifies violence is absurd--yet it is routinely used to excuse black riots.

And, regarding the 'civilized bhavior point. The nazis were attacked. The NOI wasn't. Both groups upset people--yet the upset white people didn't riot in DC. The upset black people rioted on the King verdict. The upset white people didn't riot at the OJ verdict. I can go on....

Your use of celebrations becoming riots in an apples-to-oranges comparison, and it in one that is used often to try to accuse whites of similar behavior--yet it overlooks several things.

1. Crowds in attendence at sporting events are not mono-racial.
2. Crowds in attendence at musical events are not mono-racial.
3. Race-based grievances do not fuel these types of riots.

> Well, the fact that you're missing about Selma, Alabama and other civil rights marches and sit ins in the South, was that they were NON-VIOLENT, and the only VIOLENCE that occurred was from WHITE PEOPLE. Remember those firehoses, Dan? The attack dogs? The beatings?

Not all white people - Democrats.

You remember - the party of Jim Crow.

Jack writes:

>>>"Your use of celebrations becoming riots in an apples-to-oranges comparison, and it in one that is used often to try to accuse whites of similar behavior--yet it overlooks several things.

1. Crowds in attendence at sporting events are not mono-racial.
2. Crowds in attendence at musical events are not mono-racial.
3. Race-based grievances do not fuel these types of riots."

Where do you get your facts here, sir? Do you have a source you can cite that verifies your implication that EVERY Toledo rioter was black? If you cannot, then the corresponding riots are perfectly fair comparisons.

As far as the racial makeup of music concerts, come on Jack. If you were to check the demographics of the average mosh pit or death metal concert, I wouldn't anticipate a disproportionate number of African Americans in that audience.

As far as the Boston Red Sox riots, remember...Boston won the pennant at YANKEE STADIUM. It was an away game. People gathered in the streets outside of Fenway Park and then the riots began. Check for yourself...I kid you not.

As far as "race-based grievances not fueling these types of riots", I would agree that's not the case in most sports and concert riots. If you're asking for examples of non-sports or concert related white rioting, I suggest you read up on the American History a bit further, such as the draft riots in New York City during the Civil War:

>>>" Perhaps no group was more resentful of these inequities than the Irish immigrants populating the slums of northeastern cities. Poor and more than a little prejudiced against blacks-with whom they were both unfamiliar and forced to compete for the lowest-paying jobs-the Irish in New York objected to fighting on their behalf.
On Sunday, June 12, the names of the draftees drawn the day before by the Provost Marshall were published in newspapers. Within hours, groups of irate citizens, many of them Irish immigrants, banded together across the city. Eventually numbering some 50,000 people, the mob terrorized neighborhoods on the East Side of New York for three days looting scores of stores. Blacks were the targets of most attacks on citizens; several lynchings and beatings occurred. In addition, a black church and orphanage were burned to the ground.
All in all, the mob caused more than $1.5 million of damage. The number killed or wounded during the riot is unknown, but estimates range from two dozen to nearly 100. Eventually, Lincoln deployed combat troops from the Federal Army of the Potomac to restore order; they remained encamped around the city for several weeks. In the end, the draft raised only about 150,000 troops throughout the North, about three-quarters of them substitutes, amounting to just one-fifth of the total Union force."

http://www.civilwarhome.com/draftriots.htm

Also read up on Tulsa:

Racial unrest and violence against African Americans permeated domestic developments in the United States during the post-World War 1 era. From individual lynching to massive violence against entire African American communities, whites in both the North and the South lashed out against African Americans with a rage that knew few bounds.

From Chicago to Tulsa, to Omaha, East St. Louis, and many communities in between, and finally to Rosewood, white mobs pursued what can only be described as a reign of terror against African Americans during the period from 1917 to 1923. Although the number of lynching had declined from 64 in 1921 to 57 in 1922. In 1921 Tulsa was the site of one of the worst race riots in U.S. history. From the evening of May 31st, to the afternoon of June 1, 1921, more Americans killed fellow Americans in the Tulsa riot than probably anytime since the Civil War.

The official death count in the days following the riot was around 35, but evidence has surfaced through an investigation to suggest that at least 300 people were killed. Rumors still persist that hundreds, not dozens, of people were killed and that bodies were crudely buried in mass graves, stuffed into coal mines and tossed into the Arkansas River. If so, the Tulsa race riot would go down as the worst single act of domestic violence on U. S. soil since the Civil War; worse than the 1965 Watts riot, the 1967 Detroit riot, the 1992 Los Angeles riot and the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing.

Those events left a total of 301 dead. Two days of violence and arson directed by whites against African American neighborhoods left hundreds dead, hundreds injured, and more than 1500 African American owned homes and 600 businesses destroyed. Also destroyed in the African American neighborhoods were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 stores, 2 movie theaters, a hospital, a bank, the post office, libraries, and schools."

http://www.exodusnews.com/HISTORY/History007.htm

Or Busing?

>>>"June
Judge Arthur Garrity issues an elaborate plan to desegregate Boston's public schools, ordering the busing of 21,000 students. In response, race riots erupt in high schools in Hyde Park, Roxbury, and South Boston. Governor Francis Sargent calls in the National Guard and appeals to President Ford to send federal troops to quell the disturbances.

The violence in Boston represents the height of national tension over busing. Also in the early 1970s, dynamite explosions in Denver destroy over one-third of the city's buses; a mob in Lamar, South Carolina attacks school buses carrying children; protesters in Pontiac, Michigan boycott the schools and firebomb buses; and in Trenton, New Jersey, race riots by students and others force the schools to close for two days.

In the same month that Boston erupts in race riots, the public swimming pools in Jackson, Mississippi are finally integrated."

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/brown/1975.html

Andy writes:

>>>"Not all white people - Democrats.

You remember - the party of Jim Crow."

The Dixiecrats, like Strom Thurmond, who turned to the GOP after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed? Those "democrats?" LOL.

--Cobra

> The Dixiecrats, like Strom Thurmond, who turned to the GOP after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed? Those "democrats?" LOL.

Ah yes, the Civil Rights Act. Let's look at who voted for it. Dems, who had a majority in both houses, provided a minority of the votes for. They also filibustered it, with Clinton's mentor (Fulbright) and Byrd leading the charge.

Yup. Democrats. Which convention did Bull Connor attend as a prominent local official? Who dominated the state houses and the Congressional seats? (We're still seeing "first Repub elected since reconstruction" for various offices.)

Dems, especially the progressives, have a long history of legislated segregation. Davis-Bacon anyone?

Well, now that "Cobra" has showed up to tell us all how rioting in Toledo, Ohio circa 2005 is somehow justified by rioting in Tulsa in the 1920's, the usefulness of this thread has just taken a nosedive.

Too bad. Maybe he and LiberalRepubliKlanNaziSlayer can have a good time trading conspiracy theories...

Re: ellipsis -- "But do you see the implications of what you are proposing? Do you see what side you are taking with regard to freedom of speech?"

The Court has found many times that speech, verbal and non-verbal, intended to incite violence or cause harm to another is not universally protected.

See R.A.V. v St. Paul: Where the government does not target conduct on the basis of its expressive content, acts are not shielded from regulation merely because they express a discriminatory idea or philosophy.

See Simon & Schuster v Crime Victims BD: The constitutional right of free expression is . . . intended to remove governmental restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of each of us . . . in the belief that no other approach would comport with the premise of individual dignity and choice upon which our political system rests.

You seem to be approaching it from the angle of Consolidated Edison Co. v Public Service Comm'n of N.Y.: The First Amendment's hostility to content-based regulation extends not only to restrictions on particular viewpoints, but also to prohibition of public discussion of an entire topic.

The base facts for me are these. After being denied a marching permit by the city, the marchers did so on the sidewalks of their chosen route, which is public property. This much is perfectly legal for any of us to do at any time.

Yet my understanding of their intent was not legal or protected. Should the city be able to prove the intent of the marchers was to fan the flames, thereby creating a situation where violence was imminent and entirely probable, their content is out of the boundries of constitutional protection.

Speech, whether verbal or non-verbal, that is intended to incite violence (the "fighting words" case of Chaplinsky v New Hampshire) is specifically excluded.

And this is where things get interesting. Under National Socialist Party v Skokie, they are allowed to march "display symbols", and "distribute literature". Everyone fine with that? Good. So how will that measure up against the injunction against speech "liable to cause a breech of the peace" as stated in Chaplinsky? Oddly enough, Skokie does not address that point.

But R.A.V does. "What they mean is that these areas of speech can, consistently with the First Amendment, be regulated because of their constitutionally proscribable content (obscenity, defamation, etc.) - not that they are categories of speech entirely invisible to the Constitution, so that they may be made the vehicles for content discrimination unrelated to their distinctively proscribable content."

And all of this means, in plain language, the intent of the speaker determines the level of First Amendment protection their speech recieves. They have the right to speak their honest opinions, just as we all do. I could, right this very moment, walk down the streets in a gangland neighborhood and pronounce a belief (one which I do NOT hold, by the by) that the base cause of their economic sitation and violence is due to their race. Where that constitutional protection fails is when I do so with the express intent to incite violence, whether against myself or others.

It is simply my hope that the office of Toledo's District Attorney can prove the intent of the neo-Nazis as being to incite violence. Which brings in the conspiracy charge that, as many of us know by now, is a felony.

Yes, OffColfax, by all means, let's focus on trying to prove whether the Nazis may have intended to instigate a riot. Because, as I said above, when blacks behave very badly, very publicly, then the first order of business is to find some white people to blame. The people actually burning, robbing, and looting aren't the ones we want to focus on...noooo, it's the guys who wanted to march down the street. It's THEIR intentions that matter, not the demonstrated intentions of the rioters.

Is there any doubt that if the races involved were reversed, that the blame would all be on the white rioters and not the blacks who were doing the marching?

In fact, according to your logic, Martin Luther King should have been prosecuted for conspiracy to incite a riot since he could reasonably have known how the whites in the south would react to his marches.

Andy writes:

>>>"Ah yes, the Civil Rights Act. Let's look at who voted for it. Dems, who had a majority in both houses, provided a minority of the votes for. They also filibustered it, with Clinton's mentor (Fulbright) and Byrd leading the charge."

At what point did any of the politicians you mention cease being white?

Ellipsis,

No. Actually, Cobra's here to reply to statements like...

>>>"Doesn't take much to get blacks to start looting, does it?

Posted by John Tomerlin at October 15, 2005 10:57 PM

And...

>>>"As I white man, I've reached the limit of my ability to feel any guilt whatsoever for the condition of blacks in this country. Much as I disagree with the Nazis' policies, I think that irrational black hostility and violence is a much greater threat to our society."

Posted by MarkJ at October 17, 2005 07:47 PM

You see, only people who are ignorant of history can make these types of statements. I provided historical documentation that clearly shows white rioting has been more lethal and destructive. But because people aren't taught that history in school, and these events aren't discussed on Fox News or whatever information outlet that is popular, there is historical ignorance.

Fortunately, there are people around like Off Colfax who take the time to explain the legalities and complexities of the First Amendment.

--Cobra

Off Colfax wrote:
[Having provided some good cites on the issue of free speech...]

It is simply my hope that the office of Toledo's District Attorney can prove the intent of the neo-Nazis as being to incite violence. Which brings in the conspiracy charge that, as many of us know by now, is a felony.

That looks different from what you were asserting before, but perhaps it is what you meant to write all along and I was not reading what you intended.
By all means, feel free to use the proper legal authorities and existing laws to pursue justice in the courts. Where I differed with you was in what appeared, and still appears, to be an assertion that any time any person or group of persons threatens to riot over the words of another person or group of persons, the latter have to shut up, or be shut up.

There's no law against shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theater, by the way, but someone who shouts that when they know there is no fire can be held liable for the results of their actions.

But under no circumstances do we put duct tape over the mouths of theater goers on the off chance that some of them might cause panic...

Cobra wrote:
Ellipsis,

No. Actually, Cobra's here to reply to statements like...

>>>"Doesn't take much to get blacks to start looting, does it?
Posted by John Tomerlin at October 15, 2005 10:57 PM

That comment has already been dealt with. As has the next comment, that apparently Cobra is much, much, much too busy to respond to:

John -

Doesn't take much to get whites to espouse racist cant. Asshole.
Posted by HankP at October 16, 2005 12:21 AM

Cobra's agenda is clear to me; it is to excuse some rioters, and to condemn other rioters, based solely upon the skin color of said rioters.

I prefer to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin...

Well, the fact that you're missing about Selma, Alabama and other civil rights marches and sit ins in the South, was that they were NON-VIOLENT, and the only VIOLENCE that occurred was from WHITE PEOPLE. Remember those firehoses, Dan? The attack dogs? The beatings?

I entirely agree that the southern white culture of the 1960s (and earlier) was every bit as vicious, racist, and intolerant as modern inner-city black culture is today. But that's not the point here.

The point is that the white-on-black violence of the civil rights era was a tremendous PR coup for the civil rights movement. That is what really put them on the map -- when all the people around the nation saw how viciously they were being treated by southern whites. If southern whites hadn't reacted that way -- if they had simply been passively racist, and confined themselves to tactics that didn't look bad on the 6 o'clock news, the civil rights movement would have taken far longer to gain popular support throughout the nation.

That's why I noted that this was a propaganda victory for the Nazis. They claim to be a minority oppressed by vicious thugs from other races, and now they've actually *been* oppressed by vicious thugs from other races.

Ellipsis writes:

>>>"I prefer to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin..."

Well, your preference isn't shared by many posters in this chatroom. I respond to comments I find objectionable at MY discretion and convenience...not yours.

If you disagree with my statements or philosophy, that's fine too. That's part of that First Amendment you were defending in your previous post.

--Cobra

Off Colfax,

I am wondering how one could go about proving that such a march was deliberately intended to incite violence against the marchers or anyone else. Or, rather, I am wondering how you could differentiate the current case on such grounds from the famous Nazi march through Skokie. Any ideas?

Cobra writes:

Ellipsis writes:

>>>"I prefer to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin..."

Do you recognize the line? I doubt it, doubt it very much.

Well, your preference isn't shared by many posters in this chatroom.

So far I only see a few that do not share this, and one of those is clearly Cobra.

I respond to comments I find objectionable at MY discretion and convenience...not yours.

Of course! And I strongly suspect that Cobra will never find it convenient to respond to any form of racism so long as it is propagated by someone with the "right" color of skin, but will always find the time to respond to racism from those with the "wrong" color of skin...if I recall correctly, there is a name for this...

If you disagree with my statements or philosophy, that's fine too.

Great, now I have permission to disagree with Cobra. I was worrying about that, really I was...

That's part of that First Amendment you were defending in your previous post.

Unless Cobra is from the Government (and here to help me...) the 1st Amendment isn't relevent in a forum like this one. Perhaps Off Colfax can help out, here, that poster seems to have a firm grasp of 1st Amendment issues?

When is Cobra going to let us all know what Louis Farrakhan thinks about Toledo, I wonder?

Michelle Dulak Thomson wrote:

Off Colfax,

I'm not that person, and that person is fully competent to reply, but I can offer a notion or two...

I am wondering how one could go about proving that such a march was deliberately intended to incite violence against the marchers or anyone else.

If that was the intent, then surely it was discussed at least among the leadership and may or may not have been committed to some recoverable form; handwritten notes, computer files, email, etc. These could be legally seized using a search warrant, however, getting that warrant would take time.
Or, the FBI informer within the group can likely provide testimony of such intent provided he heard it from the leadership; if he heard it from the followers, it would probably not carry as much weight. Of course this would almost certainly destroy the FBI informer's cover, so it would have be be considered worth the trouble by the US Attorney for that part of Ohio.

Or, rather, I am wondering how you could differentiate the current case on such grounds from the famous Nazi march through Skokie.

That's a stickier question to answer, although the lack of a parade permit might help. But then we are left with basically non-Federal conspiracy charges...

Michelle Dulak Thomson wrote:

Off Colfax,

I'm not that person, and that person is fully competent to reply, but I can offer a notion or two...

I am wondering how one could go about proving that such a march was deliberately intended to incite violence against the marchers or anyone else.

If that was the intent, then surely it was discussed at least among the leadership and may or may not have been committed to some recoverable form; handwritten notes, computer files, email, etc. These could be legally seized using a search warrant, however, getting that warrant would take time.
Or, the FBI informer within the group can likely provide testimony of such intent provided he heard it from the leadership; if he heard it from the followers, it would probably not carry as much weight. Of course this would almost certainly destroy the FBI informer's cover, so it would have be be considered worth the trouble by the US Attorney for that part of Ohio.

Or, rather, I am wondering how you could differentiate the current case on such grounds from the famous Nazi march through Skokie.

That's a stickier question to answer, although the lack of a parade permit might help. But then we are left with basically non-Federal conspiracy charges...

ellipsis,

Thanks. That tells me what I wanted to know, which is basically whether such a case could be made to stick merely on "Well, any idiot could see there'd be a riot, so obviously they wanted one" grounds.

Yep, that's exactly what I was driving at, ellipsis.

MarkJ: In fact, according to your logic, Martin Luther King should have been prosecuted for conspiracy to incite a riot since he could reasonably have known how the whites in the south would react to his marches.

Ummmm, no. Read it again. I said "the express intent" to cause or incite violence. Not a byproduct of the constitutional espression of opinion, but a deliberate intent to provoke such a reaction. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the rest of the civil rights movement prayed that there was not violence at one of their marches. There is a specific difference between the two intents and, therefore, are not related.

Cobra: Fortunately, there are people around like Off Colfax who take the time to explain the legalities and complexities of the First Amendment.

I'm not actually an amateur First Amendment scholar, but I play one on the Internet.
[/sly grin]

Seriously, I got my start on this area thanks to a former professor of mine. When it came time for everyone to really start thinking about the term paper, he had a little bingo ball hopper filled with various topics. I ended up pulling out Reno v ACLU, and have been slowly pulling myself into the topic ever since.

Off Colfax,

Now that you're here, what grounds do you think there actually are for the assumption that the Nazis intended a riot? And how would you distinguish them from similar grounds re the Skokie march?

Several people here seem to be under the mistaken impression that "inciting a riot" is defined as "doing something you believe will cause a riot". I don't think that is correct, legally speaking; I believe you have to be deliberately exhorting people to riot. E.g., standing in front of a Klan gathering and saying "black people should enjoy the same rights as white people" is not "inciting a riot", even though a reasonable person could believe it would lead to a riot.

I suspect that the short-sighted fools who have been advocating prosecution of the neo-Nazis haven't stopped to consider that setting that low a standard for restriction of free-speech rights would have the dual effect of encouraging riots and destroying the ability of oppressed minorities to make their voices heard?

E.g., if you don't like gay people, well, just be sure to riot and burn down some buildings during the next Gay Pride parade. Then, when they try having a Gay Pride parade the next year, you can get your local social-conservative District Attorney to drag all the marchers in front of a grand jury to see if there's any evidence of incitement. Wash, rinse, and repeat until you've bankrupted them with legal bills and/or convicted them on felony conspiracy charges.

Ummmm, no. Read it again. I said "the express intent" to cause or incite violence. Not a byproduct of the constitutional espression of opinion, but a deliberate intent to provoke such a reaction. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the rest of the civil rights movement prayed that there was not violence at one of their marches.

You obviously haven't read much of King's writing. They hoped that nobody would be seriously injured, but they most definitely meant to provoke a violent response from the authorities. That was the genius of Gandhi's approach, which King copied.

Besides, even if your claim were true, it would still be a white DA presenting evidence to a white jury and a white judge. What are the odds that they would decide that a civil rights leader's recorded observation that "there will probably be violence, but we're marching anyway" constituted a knowing decision to provoke a riot? If you guessed "100%", you've taken a step closer to realizing why prudent and intelligent people don't favor your strategy of using the government to strip small, unpopular political movements of their voices.

Michelle Dunak Thomson wrote:

Now that you're here, what grounds do you think there actually are for the assumption that the Nazis intended a riot? And how would you distinguish them from similar grounds re the Skokie march?

I have no hard evidence, unfortunately. I have a hypothesis that came to me in the middle of reading between the lines of the AP and Toledo Blade stories, however. If I did have hard evidence, it would be in the mail to the Toledo DA in a plain manila envelope, believe you me.

Point 1: Environment. What is the one way to insure a negative response to your message? Put it in the place most attended by the people that would disagree with your message. Think back to Die Hard With A Vengence, specifically the fourth scene where McLane is given instructions to walk through the middle of Harlem while wearing a sandwich-board that reads "I Hate [perjorative]!" This was done with malice aforethought, no? Admittedly, it was entirely fictional. But that does not negate the possibility that it could happen. After all, 9/11 came after the publishing date of Tom Clancy's novel Debt Of Honor, where the final act is the crashing of a 747 into the Capitol Building.

Point 2: Circumstance. This significant sentence from the Rocky Mountain News' AP wire says it for me. "[Police Chief Mike Navarre] said the white supremacists left shortly after the march was canceled." And with no reported injuries, as well. Which says to me that there was a planned exit route for when things went terminally south, which in turn infers that, if there was an exit route planned, the "protesters" were planning on the counter-protest to turn violent.

Point 3: Deniability. The day after the riots took place, the home page of The Nationalist Movement suddenly featured an article that denied association not only the original protest in total, but even its organizer. The final paragraph is a virtual who's-who of the nationalist movement. I will quote the text here so you don't have to click through.

Meanwhile, although news reports describe White as a "white-supremacist," none of the groups White claims to represent wants anything to do with him. Cecilie Surasky of Black Flag says that anarchists have "repudiated" White. Jessica Arivett, a pro-white activist, urges whites to steer clear of him. Jenkins, who terms White "a leftist looking for different approaches," claims to have "stopped" White. Jenkins made a similar vow, however, to "stop" The Nationalist Movement, but failed when ten of his cohorts were arrested for rioting at a Fourth-of-July rally at George Washington's headquarters. Skinhead Brien James said that he "would not work with" White, who had "obviously ignored" him. Even White's former "girlfriend," Erica Hoesch, had White arrested. Barry Hackney noted that Nationalists had rallied in York, Pennsylvania and sued the city, when previous pro-majority protesters had been roughed up, but had no interest in supporting White.

Now, perhaps I'm too jaded by modern politics to see a completely honest "was not ever associated with us" article (That jaded feeling seems to be too common in the modern political arena.), yet this is quite a bit on the speedy side to enter under plausable deniability. In under 20 hours, they put out this part denial, part character assassination, complete with quotations, multiple references to his criminal records, and denials from every single "major" neo-Nazi group within the continental United States. Relatively fast work for a fringe group, even in the age of instant communication, which leads me to the impression that this was a canned response, opened only after the deed was already done.

Sheeesh. That took me a while to type. I'll get to the Skokie part at a later time...

Well, your preference isn't shared by many posters in this chatroom.

Loosely translated, this means "I have a 150,000 lumen projector that displays whatever I want to see, wherever I point it." Fact is, only a couple parties (at most) have displayed attitudes that could be fairly classified as "not sharing [the MLK Jr.] preference." The rest seem to want an honest conversation, but keep getting derailed by a certain individual who could be a very productive source of counterpoints, but has corrupted that possibility by running all of his thoughts on race-related issues through a notch filter.

I respond to comments I find objectionable at MY discretion and convenience...not yours.

"Your convenience" seems to be that of an unemployed research librarian, until you encounter a point of argument that doesn't survive the aforementioned notch filter. So no, that response just won't sell.

> Which says to me that there was a planned exit route for when things went terminally south, which in turn infers that, if there was an exit route planned, the "protesters" were planning on the counter-protest to turn violent.

Planned by whom? In many of these cases, the exit route is planned by police. Does that imply that the police were inciting violence?

One serious problem with the "incitement" argument is that the violence was NOT directed at the supposed inciters. (I doubt that anyone wants argue that the Nazis said "trash whitey" AND the rioters took their orders.) Moreover, it wasn't an immediate and uncontrollable response, which is at the core of the "fighting words" doctrine.

The incitement argument is an attempt to defend a bunch of thugs. You're making the Nazi's "they're subhuman" case for them.

Anony-mouse writes:

>>>"Fact is, only a couple parties (at most) have displayed attitudes that could be fairly classified as "not sharing [the MLK Jr.] preference."

That's not true at all. "Asymetrical Information frequently attracts all sorts of posters who judge people by the color of their skin and not the content of their character. Are you reading this blog, sir? Maybe you missed the whole "blacks are only 85% as intelligent as whites" thread, or the "The Poor are different" thread. Maybe you didn't read thoroughly the very blog thread you're on now, where posters accuse blacks of having a congenital monopoly on rioting and violent behavior.

Ellipsis writes:

>>>"When is Cobra going to let us all know what Louis Farrakhan thinks about Toledo, I wonder?"

I'm not a conservative like Farrakhan, or one of his followers, so I didn't keep up with his bulletins this week.

Dan writes:

>>>"The point is that the white-on-black violence of the civil rights era was a tremendous PR coup for the civil rights movement. That is what really put them on the map -- when all the people around the nation saw how viciously they were being treated by southern whites."

Your statement raises two interesting points, which dove-tails into Toledo. The PR coup only existed because of the advent of television. The more people who witnessed the behavior with their own eyes, the more effective the movement.
The problem with comparing this with Toledo is that the civil rights movement was precisely that; gaining basic civil rights as alluded to in the bedrock principles that founded the nation, that no rational person could argue against, affecting millions of citizens.

The aims of the neo-nazis in Toledo?

>>>"Members of a neo-Nazi group plan an Oct. 15 march through a North Toledo neighborhood to challenge two local black gangs there and to prevent the "victimization of whites by blacks," a spokesman for the group said yesterday...
...Members of the National Socialist Movement's Toledo-area unit are planning the march in response to crimes and threats allegedly committed against whites by the Dexter [Street] Boyz and Stickney 33 gangs, said Bill White, a national spokesman for the group and leader of its Roanoke, Va., unit. He said a few dozen members of what the movement claims is the largest socialist group in the United States are expected.

Mr. White said members plan to wear their uniforms of brown shirts, black pants, and red swastika armbands...

"We will be directed to events in that [North Toledo] neighborhood and Toledo's black crime problem in general," Mr. White said. "We want to let white people know that other white people are defending them ... "
...Members of a neo-Nazi group plan an Oct. 15 march through a North Toledo neighborhood to challenge two local black gangs there and to prevent the "victimization of whites by blacks," a spokesman for the group said yesterday.

Members of the National Socialist Movement's Toledo-area unit are planning the march in response to crimes and threats allegedly committed against whites by the Dexter [Street] Boyz and Stickney 33 gangs, said Bill White, a national spokesman for the group and leader of its Roanoke, Va., unit. He said a few dozen members of what the movement claims is the largest socialist group in the United States are expected.

Mr. White said members plan to wear their uniforms of brown shirts, black pants, and red swastika armbands.

"We will be directed to events in that [North Toledo] neighborhood and Toledo's black crime problem in general," Mr. White said. "We want to let white people know that other white people are defending them ... "

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051006/NEWS16/510060396

So in the DETAILS of this incident, heretofore not discussed in this thread, we find out that these neo-nazis weren't marching for "white jusice" or "civil rights", but they were marching to "challenge to two local black street gangs."

This gives some insight into the incitement discussion here, but you can see Dan, this is worlds apart from a non-violent sit in, or march to get rid of separate fountains or Jim Crow.

--Cobra

Let's take the "incitement" argument and run...well, maybe just wander around... with it, a bit.

Suppose the Nazi scum decide to open up a store and sell, oh, brown shirts, books, videos and so forth, in the same neighborhood. Would the argument that "THOSE PEOPLE don't belong here" justify arson against that building? How about behind-the-scenes pressure on all building owners to not rent/lease to the Nazis? Or quiet pressure to keep any lending institutions from financing a purchase, would that be a good idea? After all, we can't have "THOSE PEOPLE" in this neighborhood, right?

Or suppose that the Nazi scum decide to open up a "refuge house" in the neighborhood, specifically intended as a "safe haven for whites"; would this be incitement? Would it justify various pressure tactics to make sure that "THOSE PEOPLE" don't move in to the neighborhood?

Now let's turn things around a bit: suppose that the neighborhood is "white", and the people who want to open a book store or create a refuge are from the Nation of Islam. Would it still be appropriate to do anything, legal or otherwise, to keep "THOSE PEOPLE" out of the neighborhood?

Anyone (besides Andy Freeman, who already knows the answers) care to take a crack at these test questions?

Anyone care to see where "keep THOSE PEOPLE out of the neighborhood" can lead to, besides me (and Freeman)?

It is somewhat of a surprise that Cobra doesn't keep up with the opinions of Louis Farrakhan, but perhaps that's because Farrakhan isn't radical enough for Cobra...

Careful readers should note that not only does Cobra object to Nazis protesting in a black neighborhood, he also seems to take it personally that the Nazis were proposing to march in opposition to gangs.

I wonder, would he also object to a group of black people marching in opposition to gangs as well?

I'm not surprised that Cobra doesn't recognize where "content of character" vs. "color of skin" comes from, by the way...

Ellipsis,

You're changing the subject as a deflection tactic. My main point on this thread from the beginning...

>>>"What I find quite interesting is the suggestion by many posters that rioting and looting is somehow racially based...as if blacks are exclusive participants in such things."

I never questioned the right of Neo-Nazis to march or protest. I questioned the standard, knee-jerk attacks on black people that unfailingly appear in the wake of blog threads such as this.

I have also provided, with documentation, the reason GIVEN BY THE NEO-NAZIS for the protest itself, which was a direct challenge by name to two black street gangs. Why you can't comprehend the difference between goading street gangs and trying to get basic civil rights as a citizen, is beyond me.

If my passionate responses to anti-black attacks here are an affront to your sensibilities, that's a cross you'll just have to bear.

--Cobra

Cobra,

I have also provided, with documentation, the reason GIVEN BY THE NEO-NAZIS for the protest itself, which was a direct challenge by name to two black street gangs.

Well, that does pose a question, doesn't it? Is it illegal to challenge gangs, on the grounds that if you do someone will probably be physically assaulted?

Cobra, the article Megan linked said that the rioting started 15 minutes before the march was slated to begin, and a quarter of a mile away from the neo-Nazis. Tell me how this makes sense.

You know I couldn't help but notice, I'm definitely seeing a pattern emerging in America as of late. This latest thing in Toledo being a good example. For a very long time in this country black racist violence toward whites was such a taboo subject. Nobody dared speak of it out of fear of being labled a racist themselves. Didn't seem to matter that the cold hard figures straight from the U.S. Gov't plainly showed that the overwhelmingly and VAST majority of violent attacks with racist overtones were committed by blacks against whites and not vice versa. (Many apologies if this sounds "racist" to some but these are just the facts. And I am by no means suggesting that all black folks in America are white-hating racists.)

And this was, and still is in many ways egged on by the media, Hollywood etc. The fact that any and every violent attack committed on the basis of the victims race where a white person or persons were the offender(s) would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper and made the top story on every television news station in the country is a great example. And anyone with a grain of intelligence knows well that these types of attacks are extremely rare when compared to attacks where the races of the victims and perpetrators are reversed.

On the other hand you have the media and in many cases the law enforcement officials themselves seemingly going out of their way discount "racism" as an issue in any attack where a white person is the victim. One case of this that sticks out in my mind is one where a white student was beaten into a coma by several black students at his highschool. They were airing details of the case on the radio as it transpired (local case, local station of course)and when the teen who was said to have initiated the whole affair was asked why they did it his reply to the court was, and I quote, "I don't know, we just wanted to beat down a white boy." [End quote] And then later in the program it was reported that officials weren't calling the attack a hate crime. I was blown away. Completely flabbergasted. But this is the norm in our society.

And of course we all know that "White Men Can't Jump". And we all know that racist jokes on television are completely taboo, unless of course you are Dave Chapelle or some other comedian of color.

Oh yea, the Nazis in Toledo. Let me first inform you that I completely detest Nazism and it's "National Socialist" rhetoric. But did they have a right to march in Toledo? Of course they did. To state otherwise goes against everything America is SUPPOSED to stand for. And why were they there? I believe they stated their mission plainly. They were demonstrating in that Toledo neighborhood because a white man felt he was being harassed on a daily basis due to his race and that the police would not help him. Naaah! No way you have to be kidding me right? Now, that being said, had I been in this guy's shoes (and I have been in the past) I sure don't think I would have wanted the Nazis of all people there to protest on my behalf. But let's say it was the "Orginization of White Citizens Concerned That Other White Citizens Are Being Harassed Due to Their Race". The reaction from the rioters would have been no different I can assure you. Wait, no, "rioters" wouldn't be politically correct. I should have said "counter-protestors". Apologies.

And now I'd like to ask this. How many white rioters swarm in and overturn cars, chuck rocks at passing black motorists, ambulances and police cars when Louis Fahrakan makes a public appearance? (A man who by the way has publically praised Hitler for his treatment of the Jews and said that he was a man who is simply misunderstood.)

So, the idea that the Nazis are to blame for the incident in Toledo, whether you support their beliefs or not, is simply hogwash.

At any rate the pattern I am seeing lately is that more and more whites and even folks of other races out there are beginning to see the obvious double standard in our society today. Reading this board and many others like it over the past few days especially make this obvious to me. There is an article out on the net right now written by a student news editor at Oklahoma University concerning this double standard I'm speaking of. I won't post a link here but it's not hard to find, just do a Google search on it. Every comment posted under his article with the exception of two (as of yesterday) showed overwhelming support for his opinion. Something I couldn't have imagined seeing five or ten years ago. So public opinion is beginning to change. Most definitely. And it's about time. I feel that the number one reason you have so many black on white violent attacks in this country today is because in so many words society says it's ok. And society says "if you do, we won't call it a hate crime". Only whites commit hate crimes".

I'll agree that something needed to be done. Toledo is as good a starting point as any. The only problem being that the dang Nazis of all people were the ones who showed up. But even still I think alot was made apparent to the world reguardless of who they were.

I believe that ALL men, women and children should be treated equally. But that HASN'T been the idea of American society for many years.

Take care, sorry so long.

Jimmy

Jimmy writes:

>>>"I believe that ALL men, women and children should be treated equally. But that HASN'T been the idea of American society for many years."

When WAS the idead of treating ALL men, women and children equally in practice here in American Society? Could you give me some dates?

Two, if you look up the FBI statistics on hate crimes, you certainly won't see the picture you paint of black on white violent crime. I won't post them because it's off topic, but as you say, you can look it up for yourself.

Three, your question about Farrakhan is interesting. I don't recall any violent incidents at Farrakhan events, (NOI security is pretty tight) but I do know what happened to Rev. Al Sharpton on the streets of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, protesting the killing of Yusef Hawkins, a black kid by a pack of white thugs led by Joey Fama in the early '90's.

>>>"In 1991, Sharpton's activism almost cost him his life. A white man stabbed him in the chest while he was leading a protest on behalf of Yusuf Hawkins, the 16-year-old black teen killed by a mob of white youths in Bensonhurst, N.Y. Sharpton nearly died, but later forgave his attacker and even visited him in prison."

http://www.dmregister.com/news/stories/c4789004/22537691.html

Michelle writes:

>>>"Well, that does pose a question, doesn't it? Is it illegal to challenge gangs, on the grounds that if you do someone will probably be physically assaulted?

Cobra, the article Megan linked said that the rioting started 15 minutes before the march was slated to begin, and a quarter of a mile away from the neo-Nazis. Tell me how this makes sense."

There are many things you can legally do in America that are idiotic and can cause a major conflagration.

The article I linked pre-dated the march, and indicated what the Neo-Nazis agenda and focus was. Now, it's true, there isn't anything particualarly illegal about calling out a street gang. In fact, you Michelle, are free to do so yourself from where you live.

Here's a clip from MSNBC:

>>>"Navarre said the riots escalated because members of the National Socialist Movement took their protest to the neighborhood, which is predominantly black, instead of a neutral place. “If this march had occurred in downtown Toledo, we wouldn’t have had the unrest,” he said.

The neo-Nazi group, known as “America’s Nazi Party,” said they came to the city because of a dispute between neighbors, one white and the other black.

Police began receiving word midweek from officers on the street that gangs were going to descend on the neighborhood in protest, the police chief said. The disturbances were confined to a 1-square-mile area, but the crowd swelled to about 600 people, overwhelming police."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9707507/

So there was an ANTICIPATION of violence, and the American Nazi Party decided to choose a predominantly black neighborhood to march down.

Now, like I said, Michelle, there are plenty of legal things you can do in America that are just plain stupid.

--Cobra

Cobra wrote:

f you look up the FBI statistics on hate crimes, you certainly won't see the picture you paint of black on white violent crime

But of course the majority of violent crimes such as rape, robbery, assault, murder, etc. are never classified as "hate crimes", so this is a red herring.

Cobra was asked:
"Cobra, the article Megan linked said that the rioting started 15 minutes before the march was slated to begin, and a quarter of a mile away from the neo-Nazis. Tell me how this makes sense."

And replied:
There are many things you can legally do in America that are idiotic and can cause a major conflagration.

That's not answering the question. The Cobra account has "justified" rioting by a certain group of people in reaction to the presence of Nazis scum, yet the rioting appears to have started before the appearance of said Nazi scum, and happened in a different place than the Nazi scum were located.

As I pointed out earlier, Cobra is here to defend some people's rioting, and condemn other people's rioting, and the sole difference is color of skin. There is a name for that.

Cobra wrote:

Ellipsis,

You're changing the subject as a deflection tactic.

It is all the same subject: should people be judged by the color of their skin, or by the content of their character? That Cobra continues to dance around this issue, while attempting to justify rioting on the basis of the skin color of the rioters, is disgusting....but not surprising.

My main point on this thread from the beginning...

>>"What I find quite interesting is the suggestion by many posters that rioting and looting is somehow racially based...as if blacks are exclusive participants in such things."

This is a strawman argument, and has been from the beginning. The postings are all there, go and read them without that race-based hatred getting in the way...

I never questioned the right of Neo-Nazis to march or protest.

No, Cobra just decided that rioting was ok so long as people of the "right" skin color were doing it, and that if it shut up Neo Nazis, well, that's not his problem...

I questioned the standard, knee-jerk attacks on black people that unfailingly appear in the wake of blog threads such as this.

Nonsense, Cobra feebly attempted to justify rioting by black people by pointing to past riots by white people.

Here is a news flash: Cobra can dredge up 10,000 riots by white people, and it won't justify this riot in Toledo. Why? For the same reason that pinheaded Nazi scum cannot point to this riot and other riots in the past by black people in their racist attempt to justify whatever stupidity they want to commit...because riots are never justified.

No riot by anyone "justifies" any riot by anyone else, regardless of the color of skin, sports team, favorite music, or part of hair; riots are not justifiable. They are not "payback". They are not "getting some back". They are not part of "reparations". They are crimes, and that's all they are.

I invite Cobra to make a note of this fact for future reference...

I have also provided, with documentation, the reason GIVEN BY THE NEO-NAZIS for the protest itself, which was a direct challenge by name to two black street gangs.

This information is irrelevent to the issue, unless, of course, one is desperately thrashing around in search of some reason to justify rioting...

Why you can't comprehend the difference between goading street gangs and trying to get basic civil rights as a citizen, is beyond me.

Why Cobra can't understand that white people, even those who are despicable and hold racist, obnoxious views, have civil rights just like him...is not a mystery to me.

If my passionate responses to anti-black attacks here are an affront to your sensibilities, that's a cross you'll just have to bear.

Cobra's "passion" is an affront to me just as the "passion" of David Duke is an affront to me...and for exactly the same reason.

But in neither case is it my cross to bear...

Cobra,

So there was an ANTICIPATION of violence, and the American Nazi Party decided to choose a predominantly black neighborhood to march down.

That the Toledo cops anticipated violence doesn't necessarily imply that the Nazis did.

Now, like I said, Michelle, there are plenty of legal things you can do in America that are just plain stupid.

Of course there are. But the question I've been trying to hash out is whether this particular stupid thing was actually legal. Off Colfax cited cases suggesting that it would not have been, if the intent were to provoke violent reaction, even against the protesters themselves. You seem to think it was perfectly legal, though spectacularly dumb. OTOH, you also lauded Off Colfax's post:

Fortunately, there are people around like Off Colfax who take the time to explain the legalities and complexities of the First Amendment.

So which is it? Were the neo-Nazis violating the law or weren't they? Or (best yet) hadn't someone better charge them and find out?

Frankly, my mind still boggles at the idea that speech can be illegal if designed to provoke violence against the speaker. Cobra, imagine two "sting" operations. In one, a black man walks through suburban mostly-white neighborhoods, wired and wearing a hidden camera, to see whether he will be attacked or not. In the other, everything is the same, except that the man is wearing a T-shirt saying "Black POWER!" (or an image of Malcolm X, or whatever you like). If someone does in fact attack the man in the latter case, do we have to hash out whether the attack was because of the T-shirt, or the blackness? If Off Colfax is right about the law, maybe we do. Because being black and walking in a public place is unquestionably legal; but making a public statement (T-shirts are public statements) likely to incite violence, evidently, may not be.

I am still perplexed at the fact that the riots happened before any neo-Nazis even tried to walk through the neighborhood. I mean, what in hell was the grievance? The neo-Nazis didn't get their permit, they weren't even visible at this point to the people who started the riot. Was the rioting about the mere existence of neo-Nazis? Then we all should be rioting all the time, yes?

And the cynical bit of my brain says that the reason there was an early riot is that the people poised to "counter-protest" were peeved at the news that the Nazis didn't get their permit after all. What's the fun of counter-protesting a non-event? If we don't get to smash Nazi heads, at least we can smash something else.

Ellipsis writes:

>>>"It is all the same subject: should people be judged by the color of their skin, or by the content of their character? That Cobra continues to dance around this issue, while attempting to justify rioting on the basis of the skin color of the rioters, is disgusting....but not surprising."

First of all, I dance around nothing. Martin Luther King Jr., the man who's most associated with that phrase was not only persecuted by white conservatives, but had his brains blown out of the back of his head by another white man, James Earl Ray. If you believe that adopting this phrase somehow innoculates you from all criticism from African Americans such as myself, you're sadly mistaken.

Secondly, please point to the post I've made here on this thread "justifying" riots? My point of cataloging white riots is to enlighten those ignorant of American history to the trans-racial nature of rioting.

Ellipsis writes:

>>>"Cobra's "passion" is an affront to me just as the "passion" of David Duke is an affront to me...and for exactly the same reason."

Maybe you have me confused with some docile, conciliatory, "Fox News-type" minority who shivers aghast in terror at the prospect that some anonymous guy on an internet blog-thread doesn't like him.

Michelle writes:

>>>"So which is it? Were the neo-Nazis violating the law or weren't they? Or (best yet) hadn't someone better charge them and find out?"

As of right now, I don't know, but it doesn't change my belief that people can legally do stupid things. It's legal for me to fall asleep on the F train of the NYC Subway system, you know.

As Off put it, there has to be an investigation done. As far as the motivations of these Nazis, their own website lends a clue.

From the National Socialist Movements website: Point #7 of their 25 Point American National Socialism Plan:

>>>"All non-White immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Whites currently residing in America be required to leave the nation forthwith and return to their land of origin: peacefully or by FORCE."

http://www.nsm88.com/25points/25pointsengl.html

Another interesting point you raise regards your sting operation scenario:

>>>"In one, a black man walks through suburban mostly-white neighborhoods, wired and wearing a hidden camera, to see whether he will be attacked or not. In the other, everything is the same, except that the man is wearing a T-shirt saying "Black POWER!" (or an image of Malcolm X, or whatever you like). If someone does in fact attack the man in the latter case, do we have to hash out whether the attack was because of the T-shirt, or the blackness?"

On the same website, there is an account that is interesting:

>>>"After our National Meeting this Year in Kansas City, a jewish Rabbi at the Kansas City International Airport (KCI) assaulted one of our members, Steve Boswell. The jew threw steaming hot coffee in Steve's face, and both the NSM man and the jew were arrested for fighting in the airport.
The court date was June 24, 2005, and there is good news and bad news regarding the outcome. The good news is Cpl. Boswell is a free man, and left the courtroom with the charges dropped!

The bad news is the jew who actually committed a hate crime against our Comrade was also let go with the charges dropped.

The Rabbi with his wife and President and Mrs BushRabbi Fine told the policeman who interviewed him that Sunday night that Boswell was wearing a red T-shirt and a necklace with swastikas on them above camouflage pants and combat boots.

Fine reportedly told Boswell he should be ashamed of himself, and Boswell responded by calling the rabbi inhuman. At that point, coffee and fists began flying, until the two men were separated. Both declined medical attention, were given summonses to appear in municipal court June 22 and were released on their own recognizance.

However, moments before a hearing was to begin on Wednesday, charges against the two were dropped by the consent of the city prosecutor."

http://www.nsm88.com/articles/rabbid%20rabbi.html

Now, I don't even want to begin to vouch for the accuracy of this account, but it compares favorably to your scenario. And it begs me to ask
whether some of the posters on this blog thread will cast the same aspersions upon the participants in this incident, as they have in Toledo.

--Cobra

>>>"In 1991, Sharpton's activism almost cost him his life. A white man stabbed him in the chest while he was leading a protest on behalf of Yusuf Hawkins, the 16-year-old black teen killed by a mob of white youths in Bensonhurst, N.Y. Sharpton nearly died, but later forgave his attacker and even visited him in prison."

Hmm. The "incitement argument" says that Sharpton should have been jailed.

Or, as the Nazis tell us, is it only black people who can be incited?

Andy writes:

>>>"Hmm. The "incitement argument" says that Sharpton should have been jailed.

Or, as the Nazis tell us, is it only black people who can be incited?"

Again, marching down the streets of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn wasn't in and of itself illegal. When it's Al Sharpton, an even more polarizing figure at that time than he is today, marches down the streets of Bensonhurst, it's a recipe for a confrontation, and that's exactly what happened.

Michelle writes:

>>>"And the cynical bit of my brain says that the reason there was an early riot is that the people poised to "counter-protest" were peeved at the news that the Nazis didn't get their permit after all. What's the fun of counter-protesting a non-event? If we don't get to smash Nazi heads, at least we can smash something else."

I would agree with you, and take it further. Think about this...the Neo-Nazi group not only called out two street gangs--Dexter [Street] Boyz and Stickney 33, but marched onto the home turf of those gangs as revealed on the Neo-Nazi website:

>>>"We had approximately 80 NSM members and 60 members of the public who showed up to demonstrate in Toledo. The plan which we had worked out with police had been this (and you can read old press releases on this website to confirm it):

We would gather at two locations -- one close to the rally site and one several miles away. We would send an advance security team to the public gathering place to secure it, and we would send another security team to secure the second staging area. Those security teams would arrive early, they would draw out the counter demonstrators, the counter demonstrators would do something stupid, like block a public street, get arrested en masse, and then we would have a peaceful march.

We realized there were problems the day before when the Toledo Police changed the parking situation. We had originally planned to enter the parking area through Mulberry. We told the Toledo Police we expected the protesters to march down Stickney. The day before the rally, the Toledo Police told us the protestors would march down Mulberry and that we would have to enter the parking area through Stickney. I told the police that the protestors would almost certainly block Stickney, and that they needed to be ready to have our members enter through Mulberry. They told me they had better intelligence than I did and that things were going to go their way. Well, they did -- they turned into a riot."

http://www.nsm88.com/articles/toledo-what-really-happened.html

This, to me, reads like a tactical deployment of troop movements, not a "protest march," so the anticipation level of the Neo-Nazis for violence cannot be dismissed viewing their account on their own website.

--Cobra

Cobra,

This, to me, reads like a tactical deployment of troop movements, not a "protest march," so the anticipation level of the Neo-Nazis for violence cannot be dismissed viewing their account on their own website.

Does it? To me, it reads like an account of protesters expecting the counter-protesters to do "something stupid," like blockade a street, and get themselves arrested before the march started. I don't see anything there indicating that the neo-Nazis expected direct physical violence against themselves, or courted it. Organizers of protest marches who expect counter-protests always consider alternate routes and plan for them just like this. There isn't anything particularly unusual about the passage you quote, apart from the idea of a neo-Nazi who writes better English than Harriet Miers does ;-)

But suppose they did think their march would cause a riot. (It would not surprise me if they thought so; I mean, they are neo-Nazis, and accustomed to thinking of black people as semi-civilized apes.) How bad is it that they didn't even have to march for there to be a riot? That any excuse, up to and including counter-protesting a protest that didn't happen on schedule, is good enough to break into stores and loot and burn things? That the "counter-protesters" didn't have to even be able to see any Nazis anywhere before they started smashing stuff?

I mean, what the hell, Cobra? Assuming you're right, I don't know which would be more humiliating: the neo-Nazis' easy assumption that any excuse will do to start a riot in a Black community, or the evident correctness of the assumption.

Re Sharpton, I don't see quite what your point is. That he should have expected to be attacked? That he wanted to be attacked? That his mere presence was an incitement to violence and should have been forbidden? (I suppose Yankel Rosenbaum's presence in Crown Heights was a like incitement, then.)

Michelle writes:

>>>"That the "counter-protesters" didn't have to even be able to see any Nazis anywhere before they started smashing stuff? "

Well, let's drop the "counter-protesters" phrase and call them what they really were...

The Dexter [Street] Boyz and Stickney 33 STREET GANGS.

I don't know how much more simply I can put this.
But I'm willing to take the old college try.

I have the Constitutional right to walk up to a Hell's Angels chapter at Sturgis, and spew vile anti-biker rhetoric and challenge their masculinity.

I have the Constitutional right to walk in front of a resturant that's a known organized crime hang-out in Queens, shout ethnic slurs and make derogatory remarks about famous gang leaders.

And I also have the Constitutional right to walk down a black street gangs home turf in full nazi regalia shouting slurs and white power chants.

Do you believe that any of those scenarios are in the best interests of my immediate physical welfare? If you don't, then you DO understand exactly what took place in Toledo, and why I repudiate the "blacks can't control themselves" pablum on this blog thread.

--Cobra

Cobra writes:
First of all, I dance around nothing. Martin Luther King Jr., the man who's most associated with that phrase

Google is such a useful tool, isn't it? Of course, it's been down off and on lately, perhaps that explains the delay...

was not only persecuted by white conservatives, but had his brains blown out of the back of his head by another white man, James Earl Ray.

Or so a court found. Certainly there were many white racists of various political philosophies who found King to be an obstruction of sorts. Then again, after Malcom X went to Mecca and had the experience of utter equality with white Moslems, he came back to the United States with a new tolerance for people of all colors....and shortly afterwards he was assassinated by - whom? In short, there were plenty of racists of all skin colors who wanted King dead...

But please do go on and tell us how the fact that some white people hated King and one white person was found guilty of assassinating him and rightly sentenced to prison proves anything about all people of the white skin color...

If you believe that adopting this phrase somehow innoculates you from all criticism from African Americans such as myself, you're sadly mistaken.

I'm sure that is the case. What's more, living it is surely not going to be enough, either, at least for "African Americans such as Cobra". In fact, there's nothing that anyone who isn't African American can do, in Cobra's eyes, to become human, it appears.

Secondly, please point to the post I've made here on this thread "justifying" riots

The first posting on this thread by Cobra was clearly an attempt to justify the riot in Toledo by pointing to other riots in history, as I've been pointing out for a while now in post after post.

Ellipsis writes:

>>>"Cobra's "passion" is an affront to me just as the "passion" of David Duke is an affront to me...and for exactly the same reason."

Cobra replies:
Maybe you have me confused with some docile, conciliatory, "Fox News-type" minority who shivers aghast in terror at the prospect that some anonymous guy on an internet blog-thread doesn't like him.

Since I seldom watch anything on television this is extremely unlikely. What I see when I read postings by Cobra is someone who judges people by the color of their skin, or in some cases by their religion, and nothing else....just like David Duke. I find such people to be despicable, and it doesn't matter to me what color they are, because of the lack of content in their character.

The irony of the day so far is to see Cobra citing an event involving a rabbi and a neo-Nazi scum; this is, after all, the same Cobra who in another thread on this site showed agreement with Cindy "Jews Out Of Palestine!" Sheehan...

Cobra writes:
I have the Constitutional right to walk up to a Hell's Angels chapter at Sturgis, and spew vile anti-biker rhetoric and challenge their masculinity.

And if Cobra is beaten as a result, he'd want the police to arrest...someone, but who?

I have the Constitutional right to walk in front of a resturant that's a known organized crime hang-out in Queens, shout ethnic slurs and make derogatory remarks about famous gang leaders.

And if Cobra were assaulted as a result, he'd want the police to take someone to jail, but who?

And I also have the Constitutional right to walk down a black street gangs home turf in full nazi regalia shouting slurs and white power chants.

And of course, were Cobra to do such a thing, he'd demand that he be arrested, right?

Do you believe that any of those scenarios are in the best interests of my immediate physical welfare?

Not particularly, but does Cobra believe that in each case he is the one who should be punished in the event of any violent reaction, and the actual persons who attacked him should be left alone?

If you don't, then you DO understand exactly what took place in Toledo, and why I repudiate the "blacks can't control themselves" pablum on this blog thread.

I understand that Cobra is fond of strawman argumentation...

--Cobra

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