Comment by dragonwriter
2 years ago
> What does right-wing even mean to you if it covers people trying to gun Trump down?
Is your impression that “right-wing” should designate a hive mind within which there is no conflict?
Because that's not what right-wing (or left-wing) has ever meant. The political universe isn't divided into two teams that conflict with each other but lack internal conflict.
Alternatively, I guess you might accept divisions within the Right but think that the term right-wing is defined in terms of proximity to Trump's cult of personality, but, no, while Trump is a right-wing figure (or perhaps an opportunist leveraging a right-wing base) loyalty to Trump is not what defines someone as being ”right-wing”. In either case, being violently opposed to Trump is not inconsistent with being right-wing.
My impression is that "right" and "left" wing are fairly vague terms that don't really mean much.
But in this case jumpcrisscross is identifying political violence as an almost exclusively religious (technically muslim which seems a bit off to me, but whatever) or right-wing phenomenon - presumably including political violence against leftists and rightists as perpetrated under the banner of the right wing (although note in another comment he has clarified his position somewhat). If leftists declaring autonomy and militantly seizing a chunk of Seattle isn't terrorism to him then there are some interesting meaning-of-words questions to resolve here - like what he think "right wing" means. It might be that political violence is by definition right-wing to him.
Extremism isn't something that has been accepted as a right-wing position, historically speaking. The right wingers - like everyone - prefer to enact policy from government. Anti-government vigilantism is one of those highly ineffective strategies that nobody really lays claim to.
> leftists declaring autonomy and militantly seizing a chunk of Seattle isn't terrorism
It’s really not. It may be extremism, but it’s not threatening or using violence against civilians for political means.
> political violence is by definition right-wing
Wat? Left-wing guerillas are all over the Americas, Africa and Asia. We just don’t have a lot of them right now in America.
> ...some small business owners were intimidated by demonstrators with baseball bats, asked to pledge loyalty to the movement and choose between CHOP and the police...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest#...
Call me old school, but it sounds like there were threats of violence for political purposes. I'm not sure how an armed and ideological group can seize an area and block the police for any interesting length of time without being a terrorist group. If not political purposes, why are they doing it? If not violence, why do they need guns (there were a few shootings) and how are they holding the police off?
And you aren't really addressing the point I was challenging you on - how are you identifying 'right wing' and 'left-wing' here?
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