When we set out to look at far-right extremism in Upstate New York, we had a few basic questions. What do people believe in? What groups and militias have been active? We found that all kinds of extremist groups have tried to recruit people across the...

There’s a little wine shop in downtown Ballston Spa, New York with rainbow-colored bottles lining the shop’s front window. The village is small, about 5,000 people, and attracts tourists from all around the world.

Last summer, the owner of the wine shop, Jes Rich, noticed a group of masked men in the street. “As soon as I saw them I ran out the door,” said Rich, who is openly queer and sees her shop as a safe and welcoming space for other queer people.

The men in the street were wearing black and yellow face coverings and T-shirts identifying themselves as members of the Proud Boys, a violent, far-right extremist group. A yellow truck drove alongside the group, blasting the provocative country song “Try That in a Small Town.”

  • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
    5·
    10 months ago

    I really don’t want to live in a world where feeling threatened grants a person all the powers of judge, jury, and executioner. Do you want lynch mobs? Because that’s how you get lynch mobs. And minority groups, however much more justified they are in feeling threatened, have historically not been nor will they ever be the ones doing them.

    • Kool_Newt@lemm.eeEnglish
      02·
      10 months ago

      I really don’t want to live in a world where feeling threatened grants a person all the powers of judge, jury, and executioner. Do you want lynch mobs?

      We have this now but worse because it’s organized against specific groups.

      • The state is nothing but an organized group of people who feel entitled to use lethal force to make you comply with their will.
      • Police are a huge organized hierarchical gang with a license to kill

      We are simply propagandized to think this is the right way and every other way is wrong. Humans have been around for 2-300,000 years, 99% of that time with no state and it was sustainable. Now we have state and shit is being destroyed in a few generations. The state is the problem, not a few lynch mobs.

      EDIT: I want to add, if you don’t defend yourself from fascists, you end up in their world. This world of fascists will certainly grant effective judge, jury, and executioner status (i.e. they won’t get in trouble) to any privileged person over any unprivileged person. Choose your future.

      • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
        1·
        10 months ago

        I don’t disagree with a lot of that, but that doesn’t make it right to murder people just because you felt threatened by them. This isn’t a kill or be killed society, there are alternative means to deal with threatening. If those means are insufficient for you, then you should want to create better ones long before you want the state to start sanctioning vigilante executions without any form of trial. You also seem to have missed this part of my comment

        minority groups, however much more justified they are in feeling threatened, have historically not been nor will they ever be the ones doing them.

        That’s just the nature of being part of a minority. It’s a lot more difficult to organize a mob, and even if you manage to do it you’re just going to be met with a bigger mob on the other side cause you decided to go and kick the hornet’s nest of bigotry.