Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." - Gore Vidal

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Upping the Antifa: Leftist riots feared for May Day - The Local

"In radical left-wing circles they’re known as “sport groups” – teams of young men whose game is beating up neo-Nazis.

“Maybe a punch in the face … then I’d say, ‘Okay, he’s lying on the ground, that’s enough.’ I don’t want to kill anybody”...

Although he has retired from "sport" and moved into more organised political activity, Lukas says he’s still comfortable justifying violence against neo-Nazis...

“A friend once told me, ‘You have to speak the language that people understand.’ Those guys, the neo-Nazis, they don’t understand any other language. Why should we be the only ones to refrain?”...

For the first time since the current system of record-keeping began in 2001, assaults committed nationally by the left outnumbered those by the right...

While he admits that car-burning has become a fashionable “cult,” he maintains that attacks on the upmarket property developments in Kreuzberg are a legitimate expression of anger – and are a real deterrent to gentrification...

The banners for the radical left are broad, even nebulous concepts: anti-militarism, anti-repression, anti-fascism...

Leftists bristle at the suggestion that increasing violence is in danger of making them as bad as the neo-Nazis they hate. As Lukas the former “sportsman” puts it: “The difference is that we don’t go around beating immigrants. And I don’t see a problem with attacking people who do.”

Yet left-wing radicals’ defence that they only attack property, neo-Nazis or symbols of the state – including police during demonstrations – is fiercely rejected by authorities and by the police union...

“In their expressions of violence, the extreme left and extreme right are barely distinguishable from one another”"


The further to one extreme you go, the more like the other extreme you seem. So you have people against wiretapping who support Chavez who do not see any problem.

The first comment is quite sad:

1) "What is the essential difference between beating up a neo-Nazi because of what he is and beating up an immigrant for what he is?"

A neo-nazi CHOOSES his path of intolerance and inhumanity - an immigrant doesn't. If you really can't see the difference then you're probably half way to becoming one yourself. Anyone battering a Nazi of any sort is a human hero.

2) "The best way to stop this is to eliminate May 1. After April 30 goes May 2. Problem solved. Heh."

It's funny proposal, but then you'd go directly from Hitler's Todestag (April 30) to the anniversary of the Red Army's conquest of Berlin (May 2). That might be too much Vergangenheitsbewältigung bzw. Geschichtsaufarbeitung at one stretch.

3) If the British National Party is "the only party that truly reflects the wishes of the British people," let's see how well it does in the elections next week.

4) One problem is that we are taught to view the differences between communism and fascism according to WEALTH. In that, they are different. The fascists allow private wealth. Communists disallow wealth.

However, we should be taught to view governments on how they govern. In that, the far left and far right are essentially IDENTICAL. Both rule as dictatorships that use fear and force as primary methods. Plus the elimination of individual rights, free speech, etc.

From this article, I can see SOME difference between Germany's left and right wing extremes--but only in ideology, not in their actions.