An Open Letter to People Condemning the Antifa for Yelling at the Free Speech Rally

I am angry at you. You are using modifiers to describe the folks the antifa and other protesters were yelling at on Boston Common that seem to indicate sympathy — not for the antifa, and for the counter-protesters who showed up, but for the white supremacists.

Because, yes, they are all white supremacists. By choosing to march with and ally themselves with the Free Speech Ralliers, they chose to stand with white supremacy and Nazism. They chose to stand with racism. They chose to stand will all the terrible things Donald Trump and his cronies are saying and doing — things like not once mentioning the Jewish people on Holocaust Remembrance Day; things like saying ‘both sides’ were in the wrong in Charlottesville; things like deporting undocumented immigrants for responsibly showing up for court dates.

‘Free Speech’ does not include hate speech. It doesn’t include Sieg Heils. It doesn’t include the ’n’ word, or the ‘k’ word, or the ‘s’ word, or any of the other horrible slurs used to describe people who aren’t some flavour of white Christians. It just doesn’t.

But why doesn’t it, you ask? Why can’t people just say what they want to say, and be left in peace?

He continues:

Popper is saying that if we, as a tolerant society, keep giving space and room to intolerance, in the name of equal tolerance, our society will eventually be destroyed, because no one will raise a hand to stop the intolerant from teaching intolerance to others and the next generation.

Of course, he says, if these intolerances can be checked and countered by rational argument and thought, they are not ultimately harmful. But we don’t have a government in place that is willing to do this. In fact, we have a government that seems to support Nazism and white supremacy, as evidenced by the President’s lukewarm condemnation of the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and then his decision to retract that statement and condemn the counter-protesters.

We also see it in our Trump-supporting neighbours, and their refusal to hear the facts or to meet us at a rational level. If you talk with any Trump supporter, they solidly refuse to acknowledge when they have lost an argument. They either switch the topic, or keep going around with you in circles.

And when Trump calls the moderate-to-leftist media ‘the enemy,’ and retweets gifs and pictures of favoured punching bag CNN getting violently destroyed in one way or another, he is passively disallowing his followers from getting information from said outlets — the disallowing of rationality Popper talks about above. Even if he doesn’t outright say they shouldn’t source from them, he creates a stigma around using these outlets as sources. It’s human nature not to want to feel like an outcast, and to want to fit in with your chosen family. Thus, if the guy they support dislikes these outlets, it’s their implicit job to do the same.

Therefore, Popper concludes, we shouldn’t — we cannot — tolerate the intolerant. Tolerating the intolerant, he says, is akin to tolerating incitement to murder, to kidnap, to intentionally perform acts of violence. Doing so will be a slow, ironic death, but it will be death, nonetheless. Don’t believe me? Look at the rise of Nazi Germany. (And don’t even try to tell me I am not allowed to invoke the Nazis, because there were literal Nazis in Charlottesville, and there were literal Nazis in Boston today.)

So, all of you who are hating on the antifa for being loudly vocalising their hatred of the people at the Free Speech Rally on the Common today? Stop it. Just. Stop. They are doing the job you should have been doing yesterday.

Sincerely,

Carolyn

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