Comment by imron

> where in any of your examples are the people waving Nazi flags saying they're Nazis?

Nowhere, because I'm not worried about the Nazis.

500 people showed up in support of that rally. Even if you think that real-life support for Nazis is a thousand times that amount (unlikely to be anywhere near that high) that still only represents a fraction of a percent of the U.S. population (0.15%). That is literally a rounding-error away from zero, and the real figure of Nazi support is likely to be orders of magnitude less.

If the Internet hadn't been popularising for months that it's ok to punch Nazis (drawing counter-protesters spoiling for a fight), if the police had kept the protesters and counter-protesters apart, if attendees hadn't been able to play the victim due to getting banned from Airbnb, and if the media hadn't given the rally such prominence it would have been a total non-issue. 500 people would have come, spouted off offensive, but protected speech and then fizzled out.

Instead, we were left with loss of life and a ratcheting up of tensions along racial and ideological grounds.

That concerns me far more, especially as significant sections of the population seem to be willing (and in some cases actively trying) to conflate right-wing politics with Nazis and white supremacism.

'Slippery slope fallacy' you cry, but it's not, because this is actually happening. Take for example the recent 'March on Google' that is being organised by various right-wing figures. The organisers are right-wing and regularly classified as alt right (a classification they refute), but they are also vocally anti-Nazi and anti white-supremacism (banning Nazis and Nazi symbolism from previous events they've held), and yet in the wake of Charlottesville, several major news outlets were claiming that the March on Google rally was also being organised by 'Nazi sympathizers' and the organisers started getting threats that they treated seriously enough to postpone the rally (http://www.marchongoogle.com/peaceful-march-on-google-postpo...).

The conflation of 'people with politics we don't like' to Nazis, along with the normalisation of violence against Nazis leading to threats of violence, has me far more concerned than any actual Nazis, and the parallels with very recent, very ugly history are close enough that more people really should be worried.