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Last Tuesday, Nairobi felt like a city awaiting the apocalypse. Streets normally clogged with traffic were eerily quiet. Grocery-store shelves had been largely emptied of supplies. Anxious wealthy residents booked flights out of town, conveniently scheduling their summer vacations to avoid the chaos of a Kenyan national election. The Chinese government, Western private-sector companies, and other foreign investors braced as well. A peaceful vote in Kenya, which is regarded as the most vibrant economic and democratic power in East Africa, could unleash billions of dollars in infrastructure and development contracts.

Kenya has had a long and calamitous history of political violence and corruption since it gained independence from British colonial rule, in 1963. Much of this conflict is rooted in ethnic tensions between different tribes, which many historians attribute, in part, to decades of British colonial rule that intentionally played major tribes against one another. Rich and poor Kenyans alike feared a repeat of the 2007 post-election violence between two of the countrys largest tribes, the Luo and Kikuyu, which killed more than twelve hundred people and displaced more than half a million.

In this years Presidential election, the Kikuyus and Luos were once again competing for the highest office in the land. Uhuru Kenyatta, the incumbent President, is a member of Kenyas largest, and arguably most powerful, ethnic group, the Kikuyu. His opponent, Raila Odinga, is a member of the Luo, who live predominantly in western Kenya. This years race was Odingas fourth bid for Presidency. After each past loss, he has accused his victorious opponents of corruption and fraud. After his loss in 2013, he unsuccessfully challenged the final results in Kenyas Supreme Court, citing the widespread failure of the countrys electronic voting system.

In an effort to insure fairness and prevent renewed violence, Kenyas nonpartisan Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, known as the I.E.B.C., was tasked with overseeing the countrys voting and tallying processes. But, just a week before the election, the police discovered the tortured and mutilated body of the I.E.B.C.s head of information technology, Chris Msando, on the outskirts of Nairobi.

On election day, throngs of voters across the country waited patiently to fill out their ballots. As I made my way through the crowds, I spoke to people who had woken up as early as 4 A.M. to beat the long lines. Many were fresh-faced young voters, such as Rafael Nyunge, a twenty-three-year-old who hoped that his generation could use their vote to end Kenyas legacy of entrenched tribal politics.

When Im voting, Im expecting change in our country, Nyunge told me. Im not concerned about tribalism. We dont encourage tribalism in Kenya. Right now were voting on how the quality of that leader is and how he or she is good to us.

Election day ended auspiciously, with no reports of major violence and only a handful of irregularities at polling stations. International observers, including former Secretary of State John Kerry and hundreds of others from the United States, European Union, and African Union, hailed the day as a success and said that the voting had run smoothly.

Over all, things went very well, Owora Richard Othieno, a Ugandan observer with the East African Community Election Observer Mission, said. He has observed the past three Kenyan elections and noted that this one had the highest voter turnout. Peaceful. No confrontations.

When the initial results began appearing on Kenyan televisions that evening, showing President Kenyatta in the lead, the mood began to shift. Overnight, Odingas National Super Alliance coalition ( NASA ) released a statement alleging election fraud and hacking of the election commissions electronic system, sowing doubt in the minds of his supporters. NASA claimed that the initial results being sent electronically to the election commission were incorrect, and could be verified only by comparing them with the hand-counted paper tallies coming in from polling stations. The I.E.B.C. rushed to post images of the hand-written forms online as proof.

On Wednesday night, small riots began breaking out in areas with high concentrations of Odinga supporters, in Western Kenya and in slums across Nairobi, with protesters chanting, No Raila, no peace. Kenyan police and government officials cracked down. On the Friday after the election, undercover police officers raided NASA s alternative tallying station and shut it down. Government actions just before the election had also fuelled doubt. Days before the vote, Kenyan officials deported several international analysts working on Mr. Odingas campaign. And the unsolved murder of Msando, the election-board chairman, stoked suspicion of election fraud as well.

I would say the real troubling issues in this election were the death of Chris Msando suspiciously close to the election, given how sensitive that position is, and the harassment of the NASA people, particularly at their tallying centers, a Kenyan human-rights expert told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity. These secret-police goons are seen to operate as though theyre above the law. There is a danger of the country going backwards in terms of political harassment.

The final spark for Mr. Odingas supporters came late on Friday. The election board officially declared President Kenyatta the winner. Violence erupted in Odinga strongholds across the country, and police, heavily armed with tear gas, water cannons, and live ammunition, battled protesters.

In a step that exacerbated suspicion and anger among Odinga supporters, many Kenyan television stations that night aired only footage of jubilant celebrations across the nation. And, the following day, police arrested and harassed international and local journalists covering the protests. The total number of dead remains unknown, but at least twenty-four people, including a young girl, have been killed since election day, according to the nonpartisan Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. The Kenyan Red Cross said that a hundred and eight people had been injured. Kenya, poised to move past ethnic divides and emerge as one of Africas most promising democracies, was behaving like some of its more dictatorial neighbors.

But some signs emerged that electoral reforms, namely devolution, are succeeding. In 2010, Kenya revised its constitution to allocate more power and development funding to local governments. The hope was to place checks and balances on central-government power, and to reduce corruption and encourage voters to consider competence over ethnic affiliation in local races, according to Kenyan political experts.

In Makueni County, in southern Kenya, Governor Kivutha Kibwana gained public attention when he gave local communities the power and funding to implement their own development projects. Kibwana is a prominent human-rights activist and a Harvard graduate. During his last term, he refused to bribe local members of the county assembly for support, an expert told me, and unsuccessfully called for the assembly to be dissolved. Kibwana switched parties this year and ran as an outsider, but he still won, with nearly eighty-eight per cent of the vote. Many of the members of the county assembly who had opposed him were voted out.

During the first devolution cycle, we laid the foundation. On this second cycle of devolution, we will emphasize on development, Kibwana tweeted two days after his election win. One of his supporters responded, We also made sure that you have 100% new faces who we think will support you. But, in other parts of the country, candidates who ran campaigns that did not rely heavily on ethnic affiliation or traditional political parties, including Boniface Mwangi , a photojournalist turned activist who is the countrys best-known critic of established political machines, could not capture enough votes to win.

Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy and international development at the University of Birmingham, who was in Kenya for the vote, told me that it was unrealistic to expect an overnight shift in Kenyan politics. Its very difficult to break out of this cycle of mistrust and a cycle of violence, he said. That kind of memory exerts a strong hold. Its going to take incrementally better elections, and Kenyas going to eke up there slowly. Maybe over twenty years it can do it. On Sunday, Odinga addressed huge crowds of supporters. He pledged to remove the government of Kenyatta and encouraged his supporters to skip work on Monday to observe a day of mourning for the dead.

But some Kenyans ignored Odinga and returned to work. Weve [been] resting at home and the little money we have is depleted, Joseph Kirui, a fifty-nine-year-old Uber driver in Nairobi, who decided to work on Monday, told me. He said it was very irresponsible for Odinga to encourage a strike. Because we, the voters, have done our part, so its [up to] them, the politicians, to sort out their issues.

On Wednesday, Odinga held a press conference and announced that he would, in fact, take his challenge to Kenyas Supreme Court, after initially stating that he would not use the legal system. He referred to this years post-election violence and the recent crackdown on civil-society organizations in the days after the vote as evidence of the current governments unfitness to rule. Odinga encouraged Kenyans to keep resisting, albeit peacefully, and to not become sheep who will willingly go along with democracys slaughter.

Cheeseman said that Kenyas traditional politicians were squandering a chance to use the election to move the country forward. I think this is Kenyas wasted opportunity, Cheeseman told me. Because, in contrast to all those other elections, less seems to have gone wrong this time. The question here is why? Why, even when the process is right, can Kenya not seize the opportunity to build public confidence in the state? And thats the Kenyan conundrum.

More here:
Kenyan Democracy's Missed Opportunity - The New Yorker

Remember the reply Benjamin Franklin gave when asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had created. He stated, A republic, if you can keep it.

Many Americans believe that we live in a democracy. This claim is almost universally accepted in the news media, but is it true?

If the United States of America is a democracy, then why, in the Pledge of Allegiance that used to be universally recited by schoolchildren every morning, is reference made to the republic (not democracy) for which it (the flag) stands? Why is the famous war hymn not titled The Battle Hymn of the Democracy?

In The Federalist, No. 10, James Madison clearly spells out the difference between democracies and republics. A pure democracy he defined as a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, while a republic is a government in which the scheme of representation takes place. Based on the example of the ancient Greek city-states, Madison opined that democracies are inherently unstable and short-lived, spectacles of turbulence and contention that were actually injurious to liberty; as in the French Revolution (1789-1799).

Democracy in theory was more beloved of egalitarians (later named socialists) than of true partisans of liberty. In republics, the instability occasioned by direct self-government is tempered by the scheme of representation. Delegation of government duties to elected officials, stated Madison, would refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Put otherwise, republics, by ensuring that decisions are made by bodies of elected or appointed magistrates, are far less likely to act precipitously and unwisely, especially in times of crisis or public agitation. This is because duly-appointed government bodies have the ability to deliberate, which the general public does not.

Thus, while our electoral system is partly democratic, and other features of direct democracy, such as town hall meetings and referenda, are found here and there, the United States was created to be, and remains (at least in intent), a republic a government of laws, and not of men.

Remember the reply Benjamin Franklin gave when asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had created. He stated, A republic, if you can keep it.

Let us strive to keep it.

Steve Czonstka, Okaloosa Republican State Committeeman, Niceville

Link:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: A Republic, not a democracy! - Crestview News Bulletin

The trolley problem, that hoary old mainstay of philosophy syllabi and drunken ethical squabbles, is, to put it bluntly, hot right now. Just this year, its popped up in episodes of both Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Orange Is the New Black, as characters wrestled with the principles of utilitarianism and what it means to try to do good in the world. Its also become a meme, as New Yorks Select All explored last year: a framework for people to explore everything from pro-life principles to the death of Harambe.

The problem, in its most basic form, goes like this: A runaway trolley car is heading toward five people, and if it hits them, they will die. You, the problem solver, are standing by a lever that enables you to redirect the trolley to a siding where only one person is standing. By pushing the lever you will save five lives but be directly responsible for the loss of one. Do you pull the leverseek the greatest good for the greatest numberor do nothing, and let fate take its course?

Escaped Alone Finds Comfort at the End of the World

The issue with this particular conundrum, though, as Sarah Bakewell wrote in 2013, is that while people think theyre creatures of reason, our instincts are actually fickle and easily manipulated. And this is also the problem with direct democracy in generalwhen were asked to vote on matters of national importance, we tend to be uninformed, personally biased, or swayed by the strangest of factors. The Majority, a new show at Londons National Theatre by the performer and playwright Rob Drummond, is inspired by a wave of recent electoral upsets, from the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 to the Brexit vote last year. Throughout the show, Drummond asks a series of timely questions to which the audience votes yes or no on in real time, with the results immediately revealed, as he demonstrates how easily the shape of a question can alter its answer.

The questions range from the personal to the timely. Are we, the audience members, liberal? (90.55 percent yes.) Are we white? (91.18 percent yes.) Do we use social media? (67.29 percent yes.) Do we believe in absolute freedom of speech? (61.68 percent no.) Is violence sometimes the answer? (51.16 percent no.) Would we pull the lever to save five people? (70.94 percent yes.) What if, instead of pulling the lever, we had to push a fat man over a bridge to save five lives? Could we do it? (71.05 percent no, almost exactly the same percentage that would pull the lever the first time.) Its different when its a person, isnt it? Drummond notes, as if pondering our inconsistency.

These votes tend to play out as if the audience is participating in a game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? While we vote, on small devices that are given out before the show begins, jaunty music plays and a giant clock projected onto the stage ticks down the time remaining. The votes are interspersed with Drummonds narrative, a strange, meandering story about how he got involved with the anti-fascism movement and ended up being arrested for punching a white supremacist. Drummond seems to want to use his personal experiences to illuminate the questions at hand, but his gonzo style means its hard to tell whats real and whats creative license.

As the show proceeds, the tone of the recurrent trolley questions gets darker, as if to emphasize to the audience the potential consequences of even the most theoretical questions. Would we save one innocent person to kill five nonviolent neo-Nazis? Should we vote for Drummond to dox a Scottish white nationalistwho pops up a handful of times in the storyright then and there? (On the night I attended, the audience voted yes, and Drummond dutifully typed the mans name and address into a comment section on a website that may or may not be real.)

Drummond is an engaging host, although the shows frequent jumps in style and tone sometimes make him feel like an interrogator rather than an entertainer. The pace often drags in his measured descriptions of his friendship with a mentally ill Scottish beekeeper obsessed with bringing down the Nazis who were overtaking his town, and the narrative doesnt cohere as well as it should with the questions The Majority asks. But the shows concept is a fascinating one, exposing the foibles and contradictions embedded in the minds of an audience of majority white, liberal, non-male theatergoerswhich is exactly the audience Drummond wants to target, although conservatives who attend might find themselves in the majority more than theyd think. When he asks people to vote on whether they believe in absolute freedom of speech, and only 38.82 percent say yes, he pauses. Liberal, he says, with ironic emphasis.

By the end of the 90-minute production, after Drummond has shared his disgust with himself for, as he puts it, punching a man for having an opinion, the audience seems shaken. When he asks us again whether its okay to abuse someone for something they personally believe, 87.64 percent say no. He has, essentially, converted us. But the ease with which hes done it is yet another unnerving element to bolster his argumentthat few of us really know or deeply consider what were voting for.

Here is the original post:
The Majority Tests the Limits of Democracy - The Atlantic

Remember the reply Benjamin Franklin gave when asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had created. He stated, A republic, if you can keep it.

Many Americans believe that we live in a democracy. This claim is almost universally accepted in the news media, but is it true?

If the United States of America is a democracy, then why, in the Pledge of Allegiance that used to be universally recited by schoolchildren every morning, is reference made to the republic (not democracy) for which it (the flag) stands? Why is the famous war hymn not titled The Battle Hymn of the Democracy?

In The Federalist, No. 10, James Madison clearly spells out the difference between democracies and republics. A pure democracy he defined as a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, while a republic is a government in which the scheme of representation takes place. Based on the example of the ancient Greek city-states, Madison opined that democracies are inherently unstable and short-lived, spectacles of turbulence and contention that were actually injurious to liberty; as in the French Revolution (1789-1799).

Democracy in theory was more beloved of egalitarians (later named socialists) than of true partisans of liberty. In republics, the instability occasioned by direct self-government is tempered by the scheme of representation. Delegation of government duties to elected officials, stated Madison, would refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Put otherwise, republics, by ensuring that decisions are made by bodies of elected or appointed magistrates, are far less likely to act precipitously and unwisely, especially in times of crisis or public agitation. This is because duly-appointed government bodies have the ability to deliberate, which the general public does not.

Thus, while our electoral system is partly democratic, and other features of direct democracy, such as town hall meetings and referenda, are found here and there, the United States was created to be, and remains (at least in intent), a republic a government of laws, and not of men.

Remember the reply Benjamin Franklin gave when asked what type of government the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had created. He stated, A republic, if you can keep it.

Let us strive to keep it.

Steve Czonstka, Okaloosa Republican State Committeeman, Niceville

See the rest here:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: A Republic, not a democracy! - The Northwest Florida Daily News

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Im Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzlez.

JUAN GONZLEZ: President Trump is facing widespread criticism for his latest comments on the deadly white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. Speaking at Trump Tower Tuesday, Trump said the violence was in part caused by what he called the "alt-left."

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: OK, what about the "alt-left" that came charging atexcuse me. What about the "alt-left"? They came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? Whatlet me ask you this: What about the fact they came chargingthat they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. So, you know, as far as Im concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day. Wait a minute, Im not finished. Im not finished, fake news. That was a horrible day.

REPORTER: Mr. President, are you putting what youre calling the "alt-left" and white supremacists on the same moral plane?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Im not putting anybody on a moral plane. What Im saying is this: You had a group on one side, and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs, and it was vicious, and it was horrible, and it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this sideyou can call them the left, youve just called them the leftthat came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but thats the way it is.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trumps comments were widely decried. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney tweeted, "No, not the same. One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes," unquote. Earlier this week, Cornel West appeared on Democracy Now!. He painted a very different picture of Charlottesville than President Trump, saying anarchists and anti-fascists saved his life.

CORNEL WEST: Absolutely. You had a number of the courageous students, of all colors, at the University of Virginia who were protesting against the neofascists themselves. The neofascists had their own ammunition. And this is very important to keep in mind, because the police, for the most part, pulled back. The next day, for example, those 20 of us who were standing, many of them clergy, we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists who approached, over 300, 350 anti-fascists. We just had 20. And were singing "This Little light of Mine," you know what I mean? So that the

AMY GOODMAN: "Antifa" meaning anti-fascist.

CORNEL WEST: The anti-fascists, and then, crucial, the anarchists, because they saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and Ill never forget that.

AMY GOODMAN: To look more at the anti-fascist movement, known as antifa, were joined by Mark Bray, lecturer at Dartmouth College. His new book, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

First, pronounce it for us, Mark, and then talk about antifa.

MARK BRAY: Yes, well, its pronounced on-tee-fah. The emphasis is on the first syllable, and its pronounced more on than an, so on-tee-fah. Its commonly mispronounced. But antifa, of course, is short for anti-fascist.

And, you know, President Trumps comments that the altquote-unquote, "alt-left" and alt-right are equivalent moral forces is really historically misinformed and morally bankrupt. The anti-fascist movement has a global history that stretches back overabout a century. You can trace them to Italian opposition to Mussolinis Blackshirts, German opposition to Hitlers Brownshirts, anti-fascists from around the world who had traveled to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War. More recently, modern antifa can largely trace its roots to the anti-fascist movement in Britain in the 70s, and the postwar period more generally, that was responding to a xenophobic backlash against predominantly Caribbean and South Asian migration, also to the German autonomous movement of the 80s, which, really, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, had to respond to a really unprecedented neo-Nazi waveunprecedented in the postwar period, of course.

And then, in the United States, we can look at anti-racist action in the 1980s, 1990s and the early 2000s, which took some of these methods of confronting neo-Nazis and fascists wherever they assemble, shutting down their organizing and, as they said, going where they go. Today, in an article I wrote for The Washington Post called "Who are the antifa?" I explain this and show how todays antifa in the United States are really picking up the tradition where these groups left off. And their movement has really accelerated with the unfortunate ascendance of the alt-right following President Trump.

The other minor note I want to make before we continue is that antifa is really only one faction of a larger movement against white supremacy that dates back centuries and includes a whole numberthere are a whole number of groups that fight against similar foes, sometimes using the same methods, that arent necessarily anti-fascists. So, its important not to subsume the entire anti-racist movement within this sort of one category.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And, Mark Bray, in your bookand I want to quote a few lines from ityou say, "Most people have an 'all-or-nothing' understanding of fascism that prevents them from taking fascists seriously until they seize power. ... Very few really believe that there is any serious chance of a fascistic regime ever materializing in America." And Im wondering about that and the importance of understanding that concept of yours, for those who are looking at whats happening today in America.

MARK BRAY: Right. So, the way people understand fascism, or the way theyve been taught about it, is generally exclusively in terms of regimes. So, the thought goes, as long as we have parliamentary government, were safe. But we can look back to the historical examples of Italy and Germany and see that, unfortunately, parliamentary government was insufficient to prevent the stopto prevent the rise of fascism and Nazism, and actually provided a red carpet to their advance. So, because of that reason, people think of fascism in terms of all or nothing, regime or nothing.

But we can see in Charlottesville that any amount of neo-Nazi organizing, any amount of a fascist presence, is potentially fatal. And, unfortunately, Heather Heyer paid the price for that. So thats partly why anti-fascists argue that fascism must be nipped in the bud from the beginning, that any kind of organizing needs to be confronted and responded to. Even if, you know, people are spending most of their time on Twitter making jokes, its still very serious and needs to be confronted.

AMY GOODMAN: Can youcan you talk aboutI mean, very interesting, during the South Carolina protests against the white supremacists, there were flags of Republicans in Spain fighting Franco.

MARK BRAY: Right. So, one of the most iconic moments in anti-fascist history is the Spanish Civil War, and, from an international perspective, the role of the International Brigades, brave anti-fascists who came from dozens of countries around the world to stand up to Francos forces. Franco had the institutional support of Nazi Germany and Mussolinis Italy, whereas the Republican side really only had support of the Soviet Union, which, as I discuss in my book, had a lot of problematic aspects to it. So, if we look at the role of the International Brigades, we can see that anti-fascists view their struggle as transnational and transhistorical. And so, today, if you go to an anti-fascist demonstration in Spain, for example, the flag of the International Brigades, the flag of the Spanish Republic is ubiquitous. And these symbols, even the double flags of anti-fascism that people will frequently see at demonstrations, often one being red, one being black, was originally developed as a German symbol, which, in its earliest incarnation, dates back to the 1930s. So, its important to look at antifa not just as sort of a random thought experiment that some crazy kids came up with to respond to the far right, but rather a tradition that dates back a century.

JUAN GONZLEZ: You also talk, in your examples, of other countries, not only the period of the 1930s and 40s, but more recent periods, in England in the 80s, and in Greece, as well, even more recently, and the importance of direct action by anti-fascists to nip in the bud or to beat back the rise of fascist movements.

MARK BRAY: Right. So, part of what I try to do with my book, Antifa, is draw certain historical lessons from the early period of anti-fascist struggle that can be applied to the struggle today. One of them is that it doesnt take a lot of organized fascists to sometimes develop a really powerful movement. We can see that recently with the rise of Golden Dawn, the fascist party in Greece, which, prior to the financial crisis, was really a tiny micro-party and considered a joke by most. Subsequently, they became a major party in Greek politics and a major threat, a violent, deadly threat, to migrants and leftists and people of all stripes across Greek society. This was also true back in the early part of the 20th century, when Mussolinis initial fascist nucleus was a hundred people. When Hiller first attended his first meeting of the German Workers Party, which he later transformed into the Nazi Party, they had 54 members. So, we need to see that theres always a potential for small movements to become large.

And one of the other lessons of the beginning of the 20th century is that people did not take fascism and Nazism seriously until it was too late. That mistake will never be made again by anti-fascists, who will recognize that any manifestation of these politics is dangerous and needs to be confronted as if it could be the nucleus of some sort of deadly movement or regime of the future.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted you to talk, Mark Bray, about the presence of Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller in the White House and what that means to antifa, to the anti-fascist movement.

MARK BRAY: Right. Well, the other side of it is its not just about how many people are part of fascist or neo-Nazi groups. Its also about the fact that far-right politics have the ability to infiltrate and influence and direct mainstream politics. And we can see that with the alt-right. The alt-right is not really actually a lot of people in terms of numbers, but theyve had a disproportionate influence on the Trump administration and certain aspects of public discourse. So, the presence of Bannon and Gorka and Miller in the White House really just gives some sort of a hint as to why it is that Trump yesterday basically said there are good people on both sides of this conflict, that Friday night, when there were neo-Nazis wielding torches in Nazi style and they attacked nonviolent UVA student protesters, that he said, "Oh, well, you know, these are good people."

So, part of it is the organized street presence, but, as we saw, by confronting the organized street presence in Charlottesville, this created the question of just how bad these people are, becauseyou played earlier, Mitt Romney condemned the fact that there could be blame ascribed to both sides. Well, prior to Charlottesville, that was the dominant media narrative. Most mainstream media was saying, "Oh, well, we have, quote-unquote, 'violence' on both sides. Hands up. Whos to say whos right or wrong?" But by confronting this, by putting it in the spotlight, by shining a light on what these people really think, its shifted the public discourse and pushed back the ability of some of these alt-right figures to try and cloak their fascism.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And what do you say, for instance, to those who maybe are opposed to the viewpoints of the white nationalists and white supremacists, but also attempt to condemn any attempts to shut themshut them down or not allow them to speak? Orand, obviously, the American Civil Liberties Union fought for the right of the Charlottesvillethe white nationalists to have their rally in Charlottesville.

MARK BRAY: Right. Well, the question of how to combat fascism, I think, always needs to come back to discussions of the 1930s and 1940s. So, clearly, we can see that rational discourse and debate was insufficient. Clearly, we can see that the mechanisms of parliamentary government were insufficient. We need to be able to come up with a way to say, "How can we make sure never again?" By any means necessary, this can never happen again. And the people back there who witnessed these atrocities committed themselves to that.

So the question is: OK, if you dont think that its appropriate to physically confront and to stand in front of neo-Nazis who are trying to organize for another genocide now, do you do it after someone has died, as they just did? Do you do it after a dozen people have died? Do you do it once theyre at the footsteps of power? At what point? At what point do you say, "Enough is enough," and give up on the liberal notion that what we need to do is essentially create some sort of a regime of rights that allow neo-Nazis and their victims to coexist, quote-unquote, "peacefully," and recognize that the neo-Nazis dont want that and that also the anti-fascists are right in not looking at it through that liberal lens, but rather seeing fascism not as an opinion that needs to be responded to respectfully, but as an enemy to humanity that needs to be stopped by any means necessary?

AMY GOODMAN: This is Part 1 of our conversation, Mark Bray. Well do Part 2 and post it online at democracynow.org. Mark Bray is the author of a book that is coming out in the next few weeks called Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. He is a lecturer at Dartmouth College.

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Antifa: A Look at the Anti-Fascist Movement Confronting White Supremacists in the Streets - Democracy Now!