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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsExtremist Experts Are Beginning To Worry About A Rise Of Violence On The Left
Levin, a former New York City cop who studies domestic extremism as the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, was documenting a Klan rally in Anaheim, California, when a counterprotest suddenly took a violent swing forcing Levin to physically place himself between a Klansman and a furious, anti-fascist mob that seemed ready to kill.
It made Levin wonder if in his focus on the obvious subject the white supremacists hed overlooked a growing source of extremism: the far left. At that point, I said we have something coalescing on the hard left, Levin told VICE News.
Wednesday mornings shooting of Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice in Virginia seemed to raise the question again. The shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, was a Bernie Sanders-supporting man from Illinois with a record of anti-Trump rantings on social media. His politics have quickly become a talking point among some conservative pundits seeking a quick political score: proof of a looming leftist campaign against the government.
Experts in homegrown extremism say its not so simple Hodgkinson had no known association to any left-wing extremist group. But they also say that the past few months have seen enough of a rise in politically motivated violence from the far left that monitors of right-wing extremism have begun shifting their focus, and sounding the alarm. They see indications that the uptick in extremist rhetoric and anti-government activism that characterized the early years of the Obama presidency are beginning to manifest on the far left in the early days of Trumps, and that the two sides are increasingly headed for confrontation.
https://news.vice.com/story/extremism-experts-are-starting-to-worry-about-the-left
So I guess the Proud Boys and III%ers are out of the question then?
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)these RW kooks expect people to stand still and allow themselves to be assaulted or worseby a bunch of Trumpian goons? Is that what they expect?
atreides1
(16,093 posts)They've been told for years that people on the left are too afraid to use violence, and they've taken advantage of that! Now, the myth has been busted...some on the left have had enough and are doing to the right what the right has been doing to the left for decades!
Call it payback, karma, what ever...they are getting what they've been dishing out, and they aren't happy!!!
Initech
(100,102 posts)They've been dishing out intimidation tactics against the left for decades and they've never been called out. Same with voter suppression and gerrymandering. We're finally starting to call out their crap thanks to Orange Douche, and now they're calling us extremist? Get fucking real!
atreides1
(16,093 posts)You can only push someone so far before they snap! Especially if you're an advocate for changes in the law that are a threat to the safety of their families!!!
Initech
(100,102 posts)The GOP has been bullying us for the last 40 years and getting rich off the lies, bullying, and conspiracy theories. We can only be pushed so far before we start to fight back, and we have to fight back.
Paladin
(28,272 posts)trump comes out with a statement about easing off on the divisive rhetoric, Dems and repubs in D.C. start holding hands and talking cooperation, and even Ted Nugent promises to not shoot his filthy mouth off as much.
I'm with you: when things get bad, we have a right to fight back.
madinmaryland
(64,933 posts)Levin, is probably a right-winger.
Initech
(100,102 posts)I think the reason why Hodgkinson wasn't attached to a "left wing extremist group": NONE EXIST!!!! That should be the talking point from this article. The right has tons of extremist groups like Focus On The Family, the Proud Boys, and the III%.Aside from Antifa, but they're as big of douchebags as the Proud Boys and III%ers.
Mc Mike
(9,115 posts)There was a NY Times article posted here a few days ago, about reich wing fringe groups:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=9154976
It mentions that Vice Media founder, Gavin McInnes, a big dRumpf supporter, founded the proud boys:
"The founder of the Proud Boys, Mr. McInnes, 46, a Canadian with a hipster-lumberjack aesthetic, is no stranger to controversy. He helped found Vice Media and edited its edgy magazine before leaving in 2007 over differences with his partners. In one episode that drew his colleagues ire, he told The New York Times in 2003, I love being white.
Mr. McInnes has seemed to find sophomoric pleasure in offending liberals, feminists, beta male culture and transgender people. His work is often inflected with a tone of crass, satirical bigotry that leaves him just enough room to declare it all a joke. While Mr. McInnes insists that the Proud Boys are are a normal fraternal organization like the Shriners, the sentiments that unify its members are often tinged with disrespect for nonwhite culture."
...
"Some groups like the Proud Boys have initiation rituals that include violent hazing and require an oath of fealty to Western culture. Their followers thrive on hyper-masculinity and celebrate when one of their brethren hits a leftist agitator. They mock Islam and purport to be soldiers against a war on Whites, while being mindful not to embrace overt white supremacy. Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime associate of Mr. Trumps, has taken the Proud Boy oath.
The Alt-Knights were initially conceived as a paramilitary wing of the Proud Boys, designed to provide protection for audiences listening to conservative speakers like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, whose public events have been canceled because of threats of violence."
I know McInnes and his Vice partners 'split up' 10 years ago, but I'd take Vice's reporting about 'fears of a surge in lefty violence' with a grain of salt. Because they've had ample opportunity to do a story covering the nazi goon squad aims and actions of the guy with whom they had an acrimonious split, but instead theychose to do a story that seems to dovetail nicely with McInnes' fantasy that his people are about 'defending themselves' against the violent left, and are completely 'justified' by the existence of a violent leftist threat.
JHB
(37,161 posts)Criminologist and attorney Brian Levin is a professor of criminal justice and Director of the nonpartisan Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino where he specializes in the analysis of hate crime, domestic and international terrorism and related legal issues.
Previously, Professor Levin served as Associate Director-Legal Affairs of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Klanwatch/Militia Task Force in Montgomery, Alabama; an adjunct professor of constitutional law and as a corporate litigator for the law firm of Irell & Manella. He was also a New York City Police Officer in the Harlem and Washington Heights sections of Manhattan when crack related violence was prevalent during the 1980s.
Prof. Levin received his law degree from Stanford, where he received the Block Civil Liberties Award. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania with honors and a BA in history. He is the author, editor or co-author of books, scholarly articles, training manuals, technical reports, U.S. Supreme Court briefs and studies on extremism and hate crime.
Prof. Levin has testified before Congress and state legislatures and makes frequent presentations at universities, international conferences, legal fora, civic group functions, and law enforcement training events. He is widely cited in top legal and social science journals and has appeared in major newspapers on six continents and on every network and most cable television evening news broadcasts as well as various network magazine programs including 60 Minutes and Dateline NBC.
bluecollar2
(3,622 posts)Planned Parenthood
The Sierra Club
Oxfam
Doctors Without Borders
Save the Whales
Meals in Wheels
National Public Radio
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Feel free to add to this list....
Do I need to add the sargasm thingy?
madinmaryland
(64,933 posts)Trade unions
Mc Mike
(9,115 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Hodgkinson sounds like the very definition of the disaffected loner. Not even his wife had a clue that he was ready to go on a violent rampage. Compare and contrast with organized violence from right wing groups, including the Tea Baggers, the III% numbskulls, Clan Bundy and their cohort, and the crowd at any Trump rally.
Eyeball_Kid
(7,434 posts)Three hundred thirty million in the nation, and idiots are calling ONE mass shooting a trend. And we also know that we can't attribute this one shooter as one who is representing "the left" anyway. There is no dogma, direct or otherwise, from "left" politics, that condones violence for political change. AND... Hodgkinson's behavioral history casts him within a very different profile than a political "activist". Hodgkinson had a history of nonpolitical violence-- a generalized coping strategy that expanded into the political realm.
Bettie
(16,125 posts)I've seen no one on the left against the government as an institution.
I've seen a lot of people wanting Agent Orange out of the WH. I've seen wanting several congresscritters voted out of office.
I've seen plenty of people being vocal about their feelings on various things their congresscritters have done or not done.
The time for politeness is done. We need to be loud to be heard.
But protest is not violence, which is what this guy seems to be trying to put forward.
Leith
(7,813 posts)First of all, the layout of the website is horrible. I have a large monitor and weak eyes, so I make the text on the screen larger than most people. This has never been a problem until I opened this site. 2/3 of the headline disappears off to the left of the screen. This is horrendously bad design.
Second, there is no header. No "Home," "About Us," "Contact," or anything else you would see on any legitimate website.
Third, I went to who.is and looked up vice.com. It is owned and operated by Perfect Privacy LLC in Jacksonville, FL. It is apparently a company that shows you how to protect your privacy on the internet. There's nothing wrong with that, but their homepage smacks of the kind of company that sponsors hate radio along with gold sellers and male enhancement drugs.
The whole outfit screams "Shady! Scammers!" and, of course, "fake news."
On the plus side, it looks like the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism is real and legitimate. And it does not look at the left with the nearly the same stink eye that vice news does.
Initech
(100,102 posts)Someone should let SPLC know this. That's where I got this article from.
Leith
(7,813 posts)It seems that it does. I really don't know what to make of this article. I can forgive the lack of header, etc., but when I see such bad web design - that actually has to be programmed in! - it makes me wonder about the people putting the site up there.
I can't put my finger on why I think so, but there is something not quite right with this vice.com.
TheBlackAdder
(28,211 posts)leftstreet
(36,112 posts)blogslut
(38,016 posts)Fuck Vice.
Mc Mike
(9,115 posts)mercuryblues
(14,537 posts)about call themselves Antifa (anti fascist) They align themselves with anarchists And use neo-Nazi type violence against the white supremacists. The big difference is the left denounces violence.
While the right invites them into the White House.
"Obama, he's a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary [Clinton], you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch."
"We need to ride onto that battlefield and chop their heads off in November." (The folks brandishing rifles in the background of the video above add another element of surrealism to the proceeding.)
I am heartbroken but I am not giving up. I think America will be America again when Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin, Michael Bloomberg and all of the liberal Democrats are in jail facing the just due punishment that their treasonous acts are clearly apparent.
I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist raised communist educated communist nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America.
Nugent said of our current president, whom he once wished would suck on his machine gun, that everything he does is insane, and that the guy is the Devil:
Earlier today, Nugent tweeted, Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav [sic] a president to destroy America.
https://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.0V54aLyhmcnD-U5Wbs1ScgEcDb&pid=15.1
frogmarch
(12,158 posts)Remember her?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cops-mccain-worker-made-up-attack-story/
Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false, police said.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)Seeing that the Conman's approval is dropping into the low 30's, the right has make some story up to pull down the left.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)The Weather Underground didn't come out of a vacuum, it came out of a radical but non-violent student organization. I think we're headed back that way and I think it will make things very, very difficult for our side.
tazkcmo
(7,300 posts)in a mass of mass shootings is a "sharp rise". I'll buy that as I can't recall any since Patty Hurst.
edit note: Not to say Hurst was a shooter but it's the closest thing I could think of w/o googling.