Does anyone else think Trump has a point?

No I don't believe Trump "has a point".
It's simple though isn't it. Nazi's, the KKK, white supremacists can't be compared to people who oppose them. The KKK, segregation, hanging of black Americans by white Americans in the southern states were all still happening during our life times. The 60's, the Civil Rights marches, the support for Dr King from black, white and every other community in the USA led to a period of hope.
The election of Trump has, as was predicted, given a semblance of legitimacy to attitudes to race most of us hoped had been consigned to history.

I wonder if he will survive this?

The trouble is we seem to be saying this once a week and he is still there with things just getting worse and worse.

The President of the United States has just turned his face to the world to defend Nazis, fascists and racists. For shame

Ruth Davidson

Somehow GNHQ hasn't put this thread on FB/Twitter

Trump did

Wretched man.

Just saying they are 'vile' BlueBelle, even if the majority agree, isn't a solution.

Who excused them Notme?

I am in no way a Trump fan and hate all that the white supremacists stand for. However there was apparently some violence from the other side too. (On a totally different scale) and I assume thats what he was referring to. So in that snse I suppose you could say he had a point. . But by saying there was fault on both sides the implication is that that the fault was equal which it was not of course.
He then bows to political pressure and denounces the alt right etc. But then repeats what he really thinks! He really is not fit to be President.

You are totally right people aren't bad because they don't agree with a certain viewpoint but when they spew out racist vitriol and try to hurt maim or kill just because someone is a different colour to them then they are vile

They 'the white extremist' in terms of history have only be on 'American'
soil for a blink of an eye.
On the one hand you have Americans (I Count my newly found cousin in this)
Who spend time looking into their family tree in the hope that they have relatives in the UK and Ireland.

And then you have people spouting that they have some God given right to America or at least the Deep south.
It was their forefathers that took the slaves from their homeland.

I wonder what history is actually taught in the South.

these are the people you are talking about

Never excuse them.

ww that chimes with what I read - so what the neo-nazis are defending is a re-written history of Lee promulgated in the 1920s. Whole new slant isn't it? Good on the Bushes by the way - again no moral ambiguity or equivalence

There had to be one - your not you!

I'm pleased to see that most people answered the OP in good faith and many (not all ) accepted that was the way I had put it forward.

I find the fact that the KKK and the Nazi party - or any other hate preaching group - are allowed to exist in the USA makes me even more sure we are more like Europe than America.

I have learned more from you posts about the way history is being, perhaps, put in it's proper place rather than expunged.

I have still not really found an answer how we address and what we say about those who wish to attack the people who come in the name of hatred of some inborn part of another person.

There is an Article in "The Atlantic" an American publication.

They argue that General Lee's fiction of kindliness and heroism is based on a person that never existed.

They argue that he was not the stratetician that history would have us believe but in fact his decision to attack the North was a poor one. He was responsible for killing thousands of Americans in the defence of the South's authority to own millions of humans as property because they were black.
Lee's elevation is part of 150 years propaganda campaign to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate case as noble.

In fact "white supremacy" was one of Lee's core convictions.

He talks of slavery as a necessary evil, arguing that "the painful discipline they (the African) are under going is necessary for their instruction as a race"

So rather bizarrly Lee argues that slavery is bad for white people but good for blacks. What the blacks wanted was not important to Lee. As a white (supremacist) he was entitled to make the decision.

His cruelty as a slave owner is well recorded inflicting both physical and mental cruelty on his property. He was notorious for rupturing his black families - something most slave understood was beyond the pale.
He undertook punishment beatings himself upon his property.

Marie who is wiping out history?

Totally agree, can't re-write history, but what you can do is learn and so improve. Isn't that every parent has always tried to teach their young?

I think the criticisms of Lee and what he is a symbol of are a little more sophisticated than 'he owned slaves'. Not only has Charlottesville voted to remove the statue from the city park( a very public place) but New Orleans removed his statue and that of 3 other Confederate era figures after a democratic City Council vote. Houston renamed a high school that had been named after him - again by a democratic vote of the School Bowrd. As for rewriting history, 'The Lost Cause' revisionist narrative about the Civil War was adopted by Southerners with Lee as its central figure after his death. This grew in popularity and in the 20s monuments to him were erected just as the new Jim Crow segregation laws were adopted and the KKK was experiencing a resurgence. So in fact the statues in the first place resulted from a rewriting of history - it could be said that pulling them down is re-establishing the truth.

You cannot wipe out history. You will get resentment from other groups.

Well done Theresa May - a clear statement about the far right and the lack of moral equivalence.

The council did vote to remove it Roses.

I don't think the Savile anology is the same tbh.Savile was a criminal of the vilest sort.
What some posters are saying is that they don't like a statue of a Confederate General from the Civil War because he owned slaves at that time.Presumably there are reasons that some townspeople ( other than white supremacists who quickly got in on the act) like the statue because Lee represents the bravery of a lot of men who fought for the losing side, the war was about territory after all ( it always is)
Freeing the slaves was a bonus side issue for Lincoln.
Perhaps the council there should have had a vote on the removal issue.
The neo nazi thugs will always seize upon something and be ready to mob the streets.
It's not such a cut and dried issue ( the statue not the violence) as people in the UK think IMHO.

As Teresa May pointed out this morning, here in the UK Far Right groups are banned. They work underground on football terraces etc but the authorities know who they are.... they are kept "under control". Thank God we live in a civilised society and not that of America ...we have learned lessons over the years...America seems not to have done. You would have thought by now the KKK would have almost been extinct if there was the political will to do so...obviously not.

Bluecat first rate post - the perfect example and much better than references to the Elgin Marbles

When Oswald Mosley and his fascists tried to march through the East End in 1936, they were confronted by many anti-fascist demonstrators. Would any of us say that both sides in the Battle of Cable Street were equally to blame? And that there were some "very fine people " amongst the Blackshirts? Or would we see it as brave resistance to fascist ideology, which helped to stall the progress of the British Union of Fascists? I think most people take the latter view.

It is very clear that Nazis like David Duke are prominent in the "alt-right" movement which is responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, and I doubt it will stop there. It takes courage to stand up to these white supremacists. and to tar their opponents with the same brush is absurd. Trump is well aware that many of his supporters are on the racist far-right - hence his appointment of Steve Bannon - and is trying to avoid losing their support.