You know, after the right gathered to march with Nazi flags and Klan paraphernalia and one of their pieces of shit murdered a woman with his car, I thought at least that should be the end of the "both sides" conventional wisdom in the corporate media.
This was published the very next day in the New York God Damn Times!
What Trump Got Wrong on Charlottesville
As a conservative, I see both the social justice warrior alt-left and the white supremacist alt-right as two sides of the same coin.
Okay, set aside for the moment the question of how Erick Erickson keeps getting work at once-respectable outlets. (First CNN, not the NYT!~?!?!?) Forget that he should have been drummed out of the profession when he first referred to a Supreme Court Justice as "goat-fucking child molester."
Forget all that. But one day after this:
And this:
he actually has the gall to compare the Nazis, Klansmen, and assorted hatemongers of the "alt-right" to people who push for "social justice?" Two sides of the same coin? Well, they do say that love and hate are two sides of the same -- no. No, forget I said that.
Both would punish others for wrongthink. Both see the other side not as opponents, but as evil that can justifiably be silenced.
Okay, so both sides see the other as an evil that can be justifiably silenced? Okay, sure. But one side's opponents are LITERALLY FUCKING NAZIS AND KLANSMEN. It seems quite a different thing to say "I would like to silence this person because he preaches hatred, violence and fear." and "I would like to silence this person because I don't think minorities should have the same position in society as us white men."
One side sees the other as an enemy because they literally are actual Nazis and Klansmen who advocate violence and hatred and bigotry. The other side sees thir opponents as enemies because they have dark skin. Or an accent. Or female body parts. Or are anything other than cis/het. These two do not compare. At all. And fuck you for saying they do, Erickson.
Also, what one side sees as "wrongthink" is racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.
What the other side sees as "wrongthink" is a belief in human equality.
Now, to be fair - not that Erickson has done anything to deserve fairness - in the bulk of this column, he does actually make the correct point:
But white supremacists, not social justice warriors, were the ones marching with citronella-filled tiki torches in Charlottesville, Va. this weekend.That is why it is perplexing that President Trump condemned the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides — on many sides.”
Right. Except that it's not perplexing at all.
And it would be one thing if it was just Erickson. He's always been a scumbag, so what else is new? But the "both sides" beast refuses to die. And it spreads it's tentacles of dishonesty into some surprising places.
This is an op-ed written by New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, published in something called the Yeshiva World which, I have to assume, is a Jewish publication.
Op-Ed: Lessons From Charlottesville: The Alt-Right vs. The Alt-Left
(By NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind)
Five hundred demonstrators chanting about the Jews, many carrying Swastika flags. Five hundred. That’s a scary number when you think of how many people didn’t show up but support the hateful rhetoric and deeply bigoted sentiments being spewed. Five hundred.. . .
. . . The problem is the hatred at both ends of the spectrum: Swastikas and racial slurs and horrible, murderous hatred from the Alt-Right; economic pogroms like BDS and verbal attacks on women marching with Stars of David from the Alt-Left. The hatred and danger from both sides is evident, and Jews, as historically precedent, are caught in between.
Let's see. . . there is one group that strongly disapproves of Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians. And there is another group that likes to refer to Jewish people as "oven-ready." (That's not a joke, I've seen that phrase many times on Twitter.) So, gosh, it must be tough to decide which of those two groups to be more concerned with!
And, not being Jewish, I feel like it's not my place to say this to someone who probably is, but the word "pogrom?" In reference to a boycott? Seems wildly inappropriate.
On the plus side, Teen Vogue continues to do the Lord's work here on Earth.
. . . As president, Trump has a responsibility to lead this country with moral authority, and equating a racist mob with the counterprotesters who stood up to resist them constitutes a passive sanctioning of weaponized bigotry. Just ask the KKK and neo-Nazis, who respectively said that the demonstration was intended to help “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” and praised his lack of outright condemnation as “really, really good.” Anything other than a vocal denouncement of the horror of Charlottesville undeniably fuels the forces that fueled it. . . .How "Nice White People" Benefit from Charlottesville and White Supremacy
Stop furrowing your brow over “the partisan divide,” and loudly declare your position in this fight against hatred.
