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comment by ArtemusBlank

I'm not sure we can completely do absolutely nothing about this. In the past, Neo-nazis used to have their own little corner or were completely hidden in the dark. Nowadays it's seems like the Internet has given them a bigger voice and better access to contact one another.

If a rally happened in Charlottesville twenty years ago, who would know about it? People in the local community and from the surroundings. But is a person from California or Alaska or Montana going to come out to this event? It may take those people a while to find out about where a rally of this nature to take place and they may be too late for it. But today, you can learn about such things in less than twenty minutes if you know where to go and you can definitely plan in advance when you hear about these things for the first time on Facebook or Twitter.

Also if nobody counter-protested at these rallies, wouldn't more nazis come out? If the protests were safe and there was no consequence wouldn't that enable more people to join up. I think the possibility of violence at some of these things deters some people from coming out. There are probably white nationalists out there that would want to come out and rally but can't because they're scared they would be outed to their job about their beliefs or injured or killed.

How can this be fixed though? Well that's a tough question to solve. I think this is more than just wanting a reaction anymore. It's a thing that's growing. The Westboro baptist church, remember them? Why aren't they a problem in today's America? Well they never really grew. They just mostly stuck to being Fred Phelps's family members even when they got internet attention. Everyone in America knows about them but no one is looking to join them. The Alt-Right/White Nationalists want to grow though, they want more and more members. They want the rich businessmen who want the old ways, the college kid who feels like he's falling behind, the poor factory worker who has nowhere to go, the gunmen who feel like the government is going to take away their guns at anymore, the suburban fratboy, the mother who is afraid her children will pick up bad things from minorities and so much more.





johnnyFive  ·  2417 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm not sure that's wholly right. I think your description is perhaps overstating their current power. Just look at what the KKK and the related groups were getting up to in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. They were better organized and a lot more violent, even without modern technology. Membership is definitely on the uptick thanks in large part to Trump. But there's not automatically a correlation between membership and violence, or membership and influence.

More to the point, though, this increase doesn't necessarily mean that I'm wrong. One of the things that seriously hurt the Klan back in the '80s was lawsuits over their use of violence. That becomes a lot harder if they're themselves the victims; this also is an easy way to engender sympathy or at least muddy the waters. Their recruitment at this point feeds on ignorance and being ostracized, so I'm not sure how shunning them is really going to help.